BR TO FRANCIS HERBERT BRADLEY, 2 MAR. 1911
BRACERS 53702. ALS. Merton College, Oxford. Bradley, Selected Correspondence, 5: 144–5
Proofread by K. Blackwell

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Trinity College,
Cambridge.1
March 2. 1911

Dear Mr. Bradley

I am much ashamed of not having written sooner about your article in the January Mind. I have been hesitating as to whether to write an answer, but on the whole I came to the conclusion that the questions at issue are too fundamental to be treated shortly, and that I must wait until I could treat them systematically. I had realized that a not had dropped out on p. 74, §1, but it was kind of you to write.

With regard to unities, I have nothing short to say. The subject is difficult (in any philosophy, I should say), and I do not pretend to have solved all its problems.

With regard to implication, I should say that disjunctions are facts, and deducibilities likewise. I was meaning merely to urge that such things merely are so, and have no special property of necessity.

In what you say about a term being related to itself, as well as elsewhere, I perceive that we are at cross-purposes as to axioms. When I speak of an axiom, I do not mean that we argue downwards from the general axiom to the particular case of it. On the contrary, I should say that the particular case is usually more evident and more worthy of credence than the general axiom, and that the general axiom is arrived at by starting from the consideration of particular cases. The general axiom is a compendious form for a number of self-evident propositions which are its instances (it is not merely this, but that does not matter at present). Your account of why you think diversity essential to a relation is just what I should mean by saying this is an axiom to you. (a)a You examine various special cases, in which it appears to you self-evident that diversity is essential. (b)b It also appears to you self-evident that this result did not depend upon their being those cases, but would have been equally true in other cases. (c)c Hence you are led to the general statement. This is precisely the process by which logical axioms are reached. The step (b) is apt to be ignored, but it is important, and has the same degree of generality as (c).

What you call “the result of an ideal experiment” seems clearly akin to what I call “self-evidence”.

I have been endeavouring to state what I mean by saying relations are external in the Journal of Phil. Psychy. and Scientific Method. I have no copy at present, but if I get one I will venture to send it to you.

Yours very truly
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against a photocopy of the original. Carol A. Keene provided notes in the Past Masters e-edition.

Textual Notes

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• b

  (b) inserted

• c

  (c) inserted