BR TO GILBERT MURRAY, 18 JAN. 1939
BRACERS 52400. ALS. Murray papers, Bodleian
Edited by W. Bruneau. Proofread by A.G. Bone

University of Chicago.
Jan. 18, 1939.

My dear Gilbert

Thank you for your letter of Jan. 5. I think a book about how to think clearly might be very useful, but I do not think I could write it. First, for external reasons, that I have several books contracted for, which I am anxious to write, and which will take me some years. Secondly — and this is more important — because I haven’t the vaguest idea either how I think or how one ought to think. The process, so far as I know it, is as instinctive and unconscious as digestion. I fill my mind with whatever relevant knowledge I can find, and just wait. With luck, there comes a moment when the work is done, but in the meantime my conscious mind has been occupied with other things. This sort of thing won’t do for a book.

I wonder what were the points in Power that you wanted to argue about. I hope the allusions to the Greeks were not wholly wrong.

This University, so far as philosophy is concerned, is about the best I have ever come across. There are two sharply opposed schools in the Faculty, one Aristotelian, historical, and traditional, the other ultra-modern. The effect on the students seems to me just right. The historical professors are incredibly learned, especially as regards medieval philosophy. I am only here till the end of March, but intellectually I enjoy the place very much.

Yours ever
B.R.

Jan. 18, 1939. [Jan. 15, 1939. ?]