BRACERS Record Detail for 56445

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Collection code
RA3
Recent acquisition no.
709
Source if not BR
New York Public Library
Recipient(s)
Nichols, Robert Malise Bowyer
Sender(s)
BR
Date
1923/06/17
Form of letter
ALS(X)
Pieces
6
BR's address code (if sender)
COR
Notes, topics or text

See record 2348 for a typed copy sent to BR.

Transcription

BR TO ROBERT MALISE BOWYER NICHOLS, 17 JUNE 1923
BRACERS 56445. ALS. New York Public Library. SLBR 2: #355
Proofread by A.G. Bone


<letterhead>
Carn Voel
Treen
Penzance
June 17, 1923.

Dear Mr. Nichols

Thank you warmly for your book, and for the letter that came with it. I read “Golgotha & Co.” with the greatest appreciation. I liked the idea, I admired the development, and I thought some of the writing very fine. It seems to me altogether a very distinguished piece of work. Having premised this, may I say that I think the speeches of Magniferox and Mammon at the beginning are too long? You could give the atmosphere in less space, and I am afraid many people would stick in your opening before they got to the part where the story has movement. After that, I have no criticisms.

I read also “Perseus and Andromeda” with a good deal of pleasure. The other story I have not yet had time to read, but I shall read it soon.

I really don’t know what to recommend as a survey of philosophy in English. For history of philosophy, you might read J.E. Erdmann’s History, translated by Mr. and Mrs. Bosanquet.1 But I do not know of any attempt to survey the whole field of philosophy positively. They say Alexander’s Space Time and Deity2 is a very fine book; you might do well to try it. He is a kind of modern Spinoza: a Jew with Spinoza’s quality — I speak of him personally, for I haven’t read the book.

Yes, I regard metaphysics as dead. It is true that without metaphysics there can be no certainty; but as there is no certain metaphysics, that doesn’t help much. As to whether we “know” anything, it is necessary to define “knowing”, which is a difficult matter (see my Analysis of Mind chap. XIII). Our knowledge is all vague and approximate; the more vague, the less likely to be mistaken.

I hesitate to advise you about reading, or about the kind of abstract ideas to which, as an artist, you should give life. I have always felt, myself, that a sense of space, “the abysm about the world” (as you say),3 is calculated to calm people’s passions and make them less ferocious and grasping. Do you know Voltaire’s M. Micromégas4 (in his Contes), which does this in his way? I think Man, in our day, is too proud, but men (in relation to the mass of other men) are too humble. Both effects come from science via industrialism. Blake says “humble to God, haughty to Man”,5 but now-a-days we are the other way round.

As to the functions of the artist and the scientist: the scientist is concerned only with knowledge, which is valuable chiefly as a means. As an end, it has some value, but only as one among ends. As ends, the artist’s ends seem better. Blake, of course, is a moralist as well as an artist, which complicates matters. It is clear that to commend an ethic successfully, artistic gifts are required; but that is outside the value of art as such. In literature, Shakespeare is almost the best instance. Why was it worth while to write “Come unto these yellow sands” or “A great while ago the world began with heigh-ho the wind and the rain” or “Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind”?6 I don’t know; but I find a quality of magic or enchantment, which seems to flood the world with golden sunlight, and “gild pale streams with heavenly alchemy”.7 I think delight in life and the world is the ultimate good for man, or at least part of it,a but that as our mental powers develop delight has to have more and more mental content if it is to be satisfying and not very evanescent. It seems to me that the artist supplies the means of continuing to feel delight in spite of expanding mental powers. Mental power seems also good in itself, and is the business of the scientist. The moralist has a different function, dependent upon the existence of evil, and therefore not concerned directly with ends, butb with means. I doubt whether the moralist ever does good unless he quickens people’s sense of the value of ends; but to do this a man must be an artist.

This is all very vague, but it is the best I can do.

Yours very truly
Bertrand Russell.

P.S. I was interested to observe what I took to be the effect of the East on your outlook. It makes one see our civilization as a whole. I wonder whether you read my book on China, and if so what you thought of it.

  • 1

    J.E. Erdmann’s History translated by Mr. and Mrs. Bosanquet Johann Eduard Erdmann, A History of Philosophy (London, 1890–1993, 3 vols.). It was translated by Williston Hough, not Bernard and Helen Bosanquet as Russell supposed.

  • 2

    Alexander’s Space Time and Deity Samuel Alexander (1859–1938), professor of philosophy at Manchester University. In Space, Time, and Deity (1920), his main work, he proposes a form of emergent evolutionism in which matter emerges from space and time, mind from matter, and finally the deity from mind. Unlike most who held such views, Alexander was sympathetic to scientific realism.

  • 3

    “the abysm about the world” (as you say) This phrase is possibly from Nichols’s letter. It does not occur in Fantastica.

  • 4

    Voltaire’s M. Micromégas A philosophical satire of 1752, about a giant who arrives from Sirius to be impressed by mankind’s scientific knowledge but appalled by its wars and dogmatism. Voltaire uses the story to satirize various philosophical theories and to emphasize the insignificance of humans in the universe.

  • 5

    Blake says “humble to God, haughty to Man” William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel (c.1819), d, line 68; in Complete Writings, ed. G. Keynes (Oxford, 1976), p. 752.

  • 6

    Why was it worth while … cold wind”? Respectively: The Tempest, I, ii, 375; Twelfth Night, V, i, 414–15; King Lear, III, iv, 102.

  • 7

    “gild pale streams with heavenly alchemy” Shakespeare, Sonnet xxxiii.

Textual Notes
  • a

    or at least part of it, inserted

  • b

    , but after deleted predominantly

Publication
SLBR 2: #355
B&R H64
Permission
Everyone
Transcription Public Access
Yes
Record no.
56445
Record created
Jun 28, 1994
Record last modified
Jan 09, 2024
Created/last modified by
bone