BR TO HAROLD MORLAND, 5 DEC. 1946
BRACERS 56220. TLS(X). Stephen J. Reinhardt
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Trinity College,
Cambridge.
5th December, 1946.

Harold Morland, Esq.,
Newland Park,
Chalfent St. Giles,
Bucks.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your letter.1 With regard to Carlyle’s remark about Plato, I have not time at the moment to look it up, but my recollection, of which I am pretty confident, is that it occurs in a letter to Emerson, and I am quite sure that it refers to Plato and not to Socrates. His letters to Emerson are not numerous, and if you care to look them up I think you will find that I am right.2

With regard to Boethius, you remark that Leo XIII sanctioned his cult as a saint, but it is not clear from what you say that he has been officially canonized, for such cults are sometimes sanctioned without canonization; if he has, in fact, been canonized, I must, of course, alter what I say.3

Yours faithfully,
<signed> Bertrand Russell

• 1

  your letter Of 3 Dec., record 2243.

• 2

  Carlyle’s remark about Plato … you will find that I am right Russell’s comment is: “Plato, as Carlyle said, is ‘very much at his ease in Zion’” (History, 1945 ed., p. 288; 1946 ed., p. 312; 1961 ed., p. 292). Russell used the same quotation in “The Aims of Education”, Chap. 2 of On Education (1926). There he included “a lordly Athenian gentleman” at the beginning of the quotation. It seems to have appeared originally in Sir James Crichton-Browne’s Introduction to New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (London: Bodley Head, 1903), p. lxxxi, where it is said of Jowett in a comparison with Carlyle. Was Russell wrong about the source being a letter to Emerson?

• 3

  Boethius … alter what I say In the 1946 edition of his History, Russell wrote that “In Pavia, he [Boethius] was regarded as a saint, but in fact he was not canonized” (p. 392). Russell did not revise the passage in the 1961 edition.