BR TO GILBERT MURRAY, 20 AUG. 1911
BRACERS 52352. ALS. Murray papers, Bodleian
Edited by W. Bruneau. Proofread by A.G. Bone

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Trinity College,
Cambridge.1
Aug. 20. 1911

My dear Gilbert

I have sent off the MS to W and N. I paid attention to all the points you criticized, generally by making additions. Your point about what I know when xRy is true and R is unknowable I forgot to go into because there was no note in the margin. The answer is in the principle: Any prop which can be known or even understood must be composed entirely of constituents with which we are acquainted. Thus your case does not arise. But the working out of this principle is complicated. See forthcoming Aristotelian Soc’s Proceedings.

I extracted the island in the western ocean, reluctantly. I never said Plato said so, but it seemed to me any mystical reader might naturally regard the ideas as living in Atlantis until they were corrupted, and I should have thought Plato intended this. What do you say?

As for Hegel, I stick to my point, and have merely expanded the statements. Hegel turns (as do your objections, I think) on confusing knowledge of things with knowledge of truths. Acquaintance with a thing does not (theoretically) involve any knowledge of truths about the thing, and in practice involves often very little such knowledge.

I am very relieved you are satisfied with the stuff on the whole. I am afraid I ought not to come as far as Yorkshire partly on account of expense and partly because I have a stack of work I must get through. I wish you were in a more accessible region.

The railway strike is terrible, and Asquith seems to have been quite outrageous.

Yrs ever
Bertrand Russell.

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