BR TO RALPH BARTON PERRY, 21 FEB. 1915
BRACERS 54135. ALS. Harvard U. Archives
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Trin. Coll.1
21 Feb. ’15

Dear Perry

Thanks for your letter. I am sorry you disapprove my article. One lives here in such an atmosphere of humbug, hypocrisy and self-righteousness that any person with a spark of honesty is driven nearly mad with disgust. The effect on Shaw has been displayed to the world; no doubt something of the same spleen appears in my article. I am sorry. You in America, not having followed diplomacy since 1904, are probably less aware than some of us of the weak points of our case. Still, obviously our case is infinitely better than that of Germany, and it is desirable Germany should suffer, tho’ not that we should triumph too much.

How happy, in retrospect, the times seem when I was in Harvard! Your mentioning Demos, Lenzen, Blake, and the others, bring them back very vividly to my mind. Please give my kindest remembrances to all who were in my logic class. I retain a very affectionate memory of them, and a wish to see them again.

I shall be very glad of a philosophical letter from you. Mrs Perkins yesterday showed me the review in the Nation that you mention — it is very good of you to take the trouble to write to them about it. The reviewer is not so wise as he thinks, but the review amused me.

There are very few people left here to lecture to, and they are not likely to be back yet awhile, so I have asked for 2 terms’ absence (the 2 winter terms, 1915–6). I shall in any case be lecturing again in April 1916. Woods very kindly cabled to ask about my coming to Harvard — I should love it, but I want to be here while the war is on and immediately after it. I am doing speaking and writing — of a sort, I fear, that you dislike — and I want to be free to give all my time to it. I hope you and Mrs Perry will come to Cambridge later on. Just now it is dreary — the young men are gone, the old men are bloodthirsty, the streets are dark, and one sees nothing but soldiers, wounded and unwounded, and the female population making love to them (the respectable as much as the others).

I am sending you herewith a lecture called “On Scientific Method in Philosophy” — but its real title is “Philosophers and Pigs” (cf pp. 12, 13), inspired by the bloodthirstiness of professors here and in Germany. I gave it at Oxford, and it produced all the disgust I had hoped.

Please remember me warmly to Mrs Perry.2 If she were at hand to poke fun at me, perhaps I should grow less cynical and despairing. I cannot escape the feeling of being a stranger to the human race, which is intolerably painful.

Yrs ever
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

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

• 2

  Mrs Perry Rachel, Bernard Berenson’s sister.