BR TO LUCY M. DONNELLY, 23 MAY 1902
BRACERS 58426. ALS. McMaster. Auto. 1: 163–4
Edited by M. Forte. Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
The Mill House,
Grantchester,
Cambridge.1^, 2
May 23. 1902

Dear Lucy

Your letter to Alys, which she sent on to me, amused and interested us both very much. It is a kindness to write to her, and if you can find time, I hope you will do so again. All that you said about Hodder was balm, and your fix with Carey was delicious. — You will wonder at my writing to you: the fact is, I finished today my magnum opus on the principles of mathematics, on which I have been engaged since 1897. This has left me with leisure and liberty to remember that there are human beings in the world, which I have been strenuously striving to forget. I wonder whether you realize the degree of self-sacrifice (and too often sacrifice of others), of sheer effort of will, of stern austerity in repressing even what is intrinsically best, that goes into writing a book of any magnitude. Year after year I found mistakes in what I had done, and had to re-write the whole from beginning to end: for in a logical system, one mistake will usually vitiate everything. The hardest part I left to the end: last summer I undertook it gaily, hoping to finish soon, when suddenly I came upon a greater difficulty than any I had known of before. So difficult it was, that to think of it at all required an all but superhuman effort. And long ago I got sick to nausea of the whole subject, so that I longed to think of anything else under the sun; and sheer fatigue has become almost incapacitating. But now at last all is finished, and as you may imagine, I feel a new man; for I had given up hope of ever coming to an end of the labour. Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one’s humanity; one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself. But the thankless muse will not share her favours — she is a jealous mistress. — Do not believe, if you wish to write, that the current doctrine of experience has any truth; there is a thousand times more experience in pain than in pleasure. Artists musta have strong passions, but they deceive themselves in fancying it good to indulge their desires. The whole doctrine, too, that writing comes from technique, is quite mistaken; writing is the outlet to feelings which are all but overmastering, and are yet mastered. Two things are to be cultivated: loftiness of feeling, and control of feeling and everything else by the will. Neither of these are understood in America as in the old countries; indeed, loftiness of feeling seems to depend essentially upon a brooding consciousness of the past and its terrible power, a deep sense of the difference between the great eternal facts and the transient dross of merely personal feeling. If you tell these things to your fine-writing class, they will know less than if you hold your tongue.

Alys is getting on very slowly; it is a great anxiety, tho’ it is a comfort to think she is doing the right thing. I fear I am not to see her for a good while yet, which is intensely trying. I am up here seeing after the publication of my book,3 but my address is F’s Hill.

Give my love to Helen. My advice to any one who wishes to write is to know all the very best literature by heart, and ignore the rest as completely as possible.

Yours ever
Bertrand Russell.

N.B. This letter is not for Carey!

When I wrote this letter I did not realise that another 8 years work on the same subject lay ahead of me.b

• 1

  [document] Proofread against the original letter. BR marked a selection of the text for typing. The omission is indicated in the Autobiography.

• 2

  [envelope] Miss Donnelly | Low Buildings | Bryn Mawr | Pa. | U.S.A.

• 3

  my book  The Principles of Mathematics (1903).

Textual Notes

• a

  must written over illegible word

• b

  When … of me. inserted on typed copy in the hand of BR’s secretary (which explains the lack of an apostrophe)