BR TO LUCY M. DONNELLY, 28 OCT. 1911
BRACERS 58513. ALS. McMaster. SLBR 1: #180
Edited by M. Forte and N. Griffin. Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
Trinity College,
Cambridge.1
London
Oct. 28. 1911

My dear Lucy

It was a great pleasure to get your letter a few days ago, and to have news of you again. You must have had a trying time in Brooklyn.2 There is something much better than flattery in being useful. After all, wisdom teaches one only to worry over what is within one’s own power, and therefore one can hope to have a mind at peace when one is useful but not otherwise. And apart from the self-centered wish to spend one’s time well, the love of humanity in general becomes a pain if one is not being useful to some part of humanity.

I am glad you feel me less lost now. My rooms are close to the Trinity Library, which you tell me you remember.

Tonight I am in London, having come up to meet Bergson at dinner. He is giving lectures in London which are reported in the daily papers — all England has gone mad about him for some reason. It was an amusing dinner. Our host was Wildon Carr, a humble stockbroker who happens to be Secretary of the Aristotelian Society — a man rather like the host in one of Peacock’s novels, but milder.3 He had Bergson on his right and Shaw on his left. I sat between Bergson and Younghusband4 (the Thibet man), who cares much more about philosophy than about soldiering. I had heard of him from MacTaggart,a but had never met him before — I liked him very much indeed — simple, sincere, and massive. The only other guests you would know about were Zangwill5 and Wallas.6 Bergson’s philosophy, tho’ it shows constructive imagination, seems to me wholly devoid of argument and quite gratuitous; he never thinks about fundamentals, but just invents pretty fairy-tales. Personally, he is urbane, gentle, rather feeble physically, with an extraordinarily clever mouth, suggesting the adjective “fin”7 (I don’t know any English equivalent). He is too set to be able to understand or answer objections to his views. Shaw made an amusing speech explaining how glad he was that Bergson had adopted his (Shaw’s) views,8 and expounding how Bergson thought we came to have eyes.9 B. said it wasn’t quite that way, but Shaw set him right, and said B. evidently didn’t understand his own philosophy. Everybody congratulated themselves and each other on their possession of freedom and on their escape from the barren scientific dogmas of the sixties.10 I still believe in these dogmas, so I felt out of it. When people laughed during Shaw’s speech he said “I don’t mean to make a comic speech, and I don’t know why you laugh, unless because religion is such an essentially laughable subject”. They seemed to me like naughty children when they think (mistakenly) that the governess is away — boasting of their power over matter, when matter might kill them at any moment. Younghusband, who held his tongue, was about for the first time after four months’ illness consequent on being run over by a motor-car.

I am interested to hear I have admirers in Columbia — the American Realists11 take very largely the same view of the nature of things as I do, and seem to be the dominant school among the younger men. I have at my lectures two Germans, one of them an engineer (or nearly one) from Charlottenburg, who came to the conclusion he would like to know about the foundations of his subject, and therefore threw up everything and came to Cambridge. I have also a Maltese who had studied for years to becomeb a Jesuit, and had already taken the first vows. But they told him he must accept the scholastic philosophy, and he wouldn’t. So now he comes to me, and will doubtless soon be an atheist. I have an uncomfortable presentiment that when that happens his morals will go to pieces, but there is nothing to be done.

I can still see in my mind’s eye the beauty of Bryn Mawr in autumn. Our autumn too has been very lovely.

Comparative literature be damned.12 When will Americans learn that intelligent people are only repelled by an easy familiarity with great names, without the knowledge and feeling that should go with it. Great men are to be approached reverently, when one’s mood permits a vivid realization of their greatness. The other is a sort of lust, like sexual relations without love.

I am much interested by what you say about Helen. It would be an excellent plan if she were to make copy out of her indignation against New York — besides, it would sweeten the indignation.

Your California victory is admirable.13 Our politics have been very confused — the Govt. behaved very badly over the strike, no one likes the Insurance Bill,14 and the shadow of German enmity lies over everything.15 Winston is an ardent Jingo, Lloyd George is becoming one; bigger and bigger navies seem inevitable. India is difficult,16 and the Italian–Turkish war17 is horrible and raises very complex problems for England, which is the leading Mohammedan power.

Yeats, whom I have only met twice, seemed to me a snob and a very acute man of business. But I dare say he is interesting really.

I am very busy and very happy. I enjoy my young men very much. Only two stuck to my lectures to the bitter end last year, but they both got fellowships.18 As only three fellowships were given, that was satisfactory. This year I have begun with about twenty, but they will no doubt diminish soon. I don’t know when my shilling shocker will be out.

Now I must go to bed, as it is after one. Write again soon. I am very glad you are feeling so well, but sorry your friends are all away. It must be very lonely.

Yours affectionately
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against the original letter.

• 2

  Brooklyn Lucy had been there to nurse her mother through an illness.

• 3

  Wildon Carr … a man rather like the host in one of Peacock’s novels, but milder The hosts in Thomas Love Peacock’s satirical conversational novels usually serve merely to facilitate the talk of their guests. Carr must have been mild indeed to be milder than Peacock’s hosts.

• 4

  Younghusband Sir Francis Younghusband (1863–1942), soldier, traveller and diplomat. In 1903 he had led a British army into Tibet to force the country to serve as a British trade route to China.

• 5

  Zangwill Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), the novelist, playwright, and Zionist. He was a friend of the Pearsall Smiths.

• 6

  Wallas Graham Wallas (1858–1932), sociologist and educator.

• 7

  “fin” “Fine”, “delicate”, “subtle” are possible translations.

• 8

  Bergson had adopted his (Shaw’s) views There is a good deal of similarity between the vitalism of Bergson’s L'Évolution créatrice (1907) and Shaw’s notion that evolution proceeds purposefully through the exercise of will which he expressed in Man and Superman (1901–03) and later plays such as Back to Methuselah (1922).

• 9

  Bergson thought we came to have eyes In L'Évolution créatrice, Bergson had argued that Darwinian natural selection could not explain the evolution of complex organs such as the eye. In its place, he posited “un élan original de la vie” (an original impetus of life) which operated throughout the universe and which was responsible for the evolutionary process.

• 10

  escape from the barren scientific dogmas of the sixties Nineteenth-century scientific materialism had its heyday in Britain in the 1860s. T.H. Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature (1863) was a key work. (See J.A. Passmore, 100 Years of Philosophy, Ch. 2, for a survey of themes and influences.) Bergson’s philosophy was hostile to the claims of mechanistic science, in particular to scientific determinism.

• 11

  American Realists A group of American philosophers — E.B. Holt, W.T. Marvin, W.P. Montague, R.B. Perry, W.B. Pitkin and E.G. Spaulding (often called “The Six Realists”) — who in varying degrees espoused the views of Russell and Moore in reaction to idealism. The group formed in 1909 and published a manifesto (“The Program and First Platform of Six Realists”, Journal of Philosophy) in 1910. Of the six, Montague and Pitkin were at Columbia University, New York.

• 12

  Comparative literature be damned. Lucy Donnelly had lamented that she had to teach a comparative literature course.

• 13

  Your California victory is admirable. California had allowed women the vote.

• 14

  Insurance Bill Lloyd George had introduced his National Insurance Bill which provided sickness and unemployment insurance, to be administered by private friendly societies under government supervision.

• 15

  shadow of German enmity lies over everything In June 1911, Germany had sent a gunboat to Agadir on the Atlantic coast of Morocco ostensibly to protect German interests there. The British saw it as a challenge to their naval supremacy in the Atlantic, and the two countries came close to war.

• 16

  India is difficult Lord Curzon’s years as Viceroy of India (1899–1905) had bequeathed many problems to the Liberal government — especially as a result of his partition of Bengal in 1905. A ferocious nationalist campaign, then at its height, succeeded in getting the province reunited in December 1911.

• 17

  Italian–Turkish war The Italo–Turkish war (1911–12) was for control of Libya, which Italy eventually achieved. Britain was not directly involved in the conflict, but her diplomatic position was difficult since she traditionally defended Turkey as a bulwark against Russia and yet would have liked to present herself as the defender of the oppressed peoples of the Turkish Empire and, though a friend of Italy, had no desire to see Italy dominate the Mediterranean.

• 18

  they both got fellowships C.D. Broad was one and E.H. Neville, a mathematician, was the other.

Textual Notes

• a

  MacTaggart BR usually spelled this name “McTaggart”.

• b

  become before deleted an engineer