BR TO RALPH BARTON PERRY, 4 FEB. 1913
BRACERS 54128. ALS. Harvard U. Archives
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Trin. Coll.
Cambridge.1
4 Feb. ’13

Dear Mr. Perry2

Today Royce came to see me and gave me much valuable information and suggestion with regard to Harvard and my lectures. I will therefore at once answer as much as I can of the letter I received from you about a month ago.

As to prescribed reading, I am at a loss in Logic. I should think whatever has been prescribed had better be prescribed again. Of course the proper reading is mathematics, and it is part of the mad folly of mankind that mathematics and logic were ever separated. So far as I know, no book on logic exists. But if there is one, I leave it to your discretion to recommend it.

In theory of knowledge, as you are good enough to say you will undertake the beginning of the course, I should think it would be a good plan, if you agree, for you to give them an outline of other contemporary theories of knowledge — pragmatism, idealism, etc. — so that they may be prepared to take one critically as an exponent of a certain type of philosophy. I suggest this because I suppose you would prefer that I should talk about my own views mainly, rather than set forth the views of others, in which I should have no special competence. But if you think otherwise, I would fall in with your wishes.

As to reading, I suppose I may assume that they wd. know your Introduction to Philosophy3 and James’s Pragmatism. I should like them also to know the last volume you edited, Radical Empiricism, or at least the essay “Does Consciousness Exist?“ Poincaré’s Science and Hypothesis is a good book for getting people in touch with the philosophy of science. Of the great philosophers, what I should most wish them to know is Hume’s Treatisea Book I. I suppose it could do no harm if they read my little book in the Home University Library, but I don’t think it matters if they don’t as they will be hearing my views anyhow.

As for a syllabus, I will send you some sort of syllabus before April, but I would rather not be too closely bound by it, as I can’t work at the lectures much till the summer, and I may wish to alter any arrangement that recommends itself to me now.

As for living, I should like if possible to have lodgings somewhere consisting of a bedroom and a sitting-room, not too grand, but as quiet as possible. I should be glad to have a room, as you suggest, in or near the College for seeing the men, if that is easily managed.

Yours very truly
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against a photocopy of the original letter.

• 2

  Perry His wife was Rachel Berenson (1880–1933), sister of Bernard Berenson.

• 3

  Introduction to Philosophy Perry’s The Approach to Philosophy (1905).

Textual Notes

• a

  Treatise italics added editorially