BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [17 MAY 1911]
BRACERS 17143. ALS. Morrell papers #71, Texas
Proofread by K. Blackwell et al.

King’s X.1^, 2
Wed. night

My Beloved

I cannot tell you what a difference today has made to my happiness. The discussion on religion is only begun, but it is begun in such a way that I feel quite certain it is all right as far as our love is concerned. I have known all along that it would be difficult to begin discussing religion — at first it was crowded out by other things, but obviously it had to come some day. I really do not think you will find me intolerant.

I am deeply ashamed of having forgotten all about a birthday present for Julian until after you were gone. Would you be so very kind as to get the thing you spoke of and give it to her as from me and let me know what it costs? I hope this won’t be too much trouble.

Your economical soul will be glad to hear that the hotel only charged 2s6d for the room when it found I was not staying the night. I dined properly at Reggiori’s opposite King’s X and am travelling by the 9.45.

Tomorrow I shall be so busy that I shan’t have time for more than a short letter in the morning. You asked me what there is that is positive in my views. What is positive is of course harder to express than what is negative — moreover it all wants working out. The essential point is that there are things whose existence is desirable and others whose existence is undesirable, and that we can, within limits, produce the one and prevent the other. This is the basis of morality. If everything that exists were sure to be desirable as a believer in God ought to think, there would be no basis for morality, because whatever happened would be sure to be what ought to happen.

As to what is desirable or the reverse, that has to be decided by one’s instinct. The question what matters are proper to be decided by instinct and what are not is very difficult and complicated. Where difficulty comes in is in the fact that most of the obviously best things, such as worship, are bound up with beliefs which at least may be false. I have wished to disentangle what things these are, such as the communion of saints, that belong with religion and yet don’t depend upon false beliefs, and then I have wished to express these things so that they would appear to others as good as they appear to me. Of course the communion of saints is not quite what it would be if one thought all the saints of the past really existed still. But still they give strength to the saints of our time, and the prospect of future saints gives strength to us — and so the ages are linked together. Beauty also belongs with religion in a way. I have a strangely mystical feeling about the Past. Almost ever since I can remember, until just lately, I have lived mainly in the past, or at best in the thought of the present as past. You have made me live actually and simply in the present — but that is new and strange, and can hardly last. I have found the habit of considering the present as past extraordinary purifying to passion, and a help in seeing things in proportion.

A large part of religion has been made up of the people I greatly admire, both in history and among people I have known. But the worship of my life, as you said, is Truth. That is the something greater than Man that seems to me most capable of giving greatness to Man. That is why I hate pragmatism — do read the last paragraph of my essay on Pragmatism in my book,3 where I have tried to express this. All this is bald, but you will fill it in.

My Dearest Heart, I must stop.

You will feel that whatever religion is, my love for you is filled with it.

Goodbye my Dearest, my life.

Your loving
B.

• 1

  [document] Document 000071. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

• 2

  [envelope] The Lady Ottoline Morrell | 44 Bedford Square | London W.C. Pmk: HATFIELD | 9. AM | MY 18 | 11

• 3

  my essay on Pragmatism in my book “Pragmatism”, Philosophical Essays (1910); 21 in Papers 6.