Preface

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For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * BERTRAND RUSSELL MYSTICISM AND LOGIC AND OTHER ESSAYS _LONDON_ GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET MYSTICISM AND LOGIC AND OTHER ESSAYS BY BERTRAND RUSSELL _The ABC of Relativity_ _The Analysis of Matter_ _Human Society in Ethics and Politics_ _The Impact of Science on Society_ _New Hopes for a Changing World_ _Authority and the Individual_ _Human Knowledge_ _History of Western Philosophy_ _The Principles of Mathematics_ _Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy_ _The Analysis of Mind_ _Our Knowledge of the External World_ _An Outline of Philosophy_ _The Philosophy of Leibniz_ _An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth_ _Logic and Knowledge_ _The Problems of Philosophy_ _Principia Mathematica_ _Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare_ _Why I am Not a Christian_ _Portraits from Memory_ _My Philosophical Development_ _Unpopular Essays_ _Power_ _In Praise of Idleness_ _The Conquest of Happiness_ _Sceptical Essays_ _The Scientific Outlook_ _Marriage and Morals_ _Education and the Social Order_ _On Education_ _Freedom and Organization_ _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ _Roads to Freedom_ _Practice and Theory of Bolshevism_ _Satan in The Suburbs_ _Nightmares of Eminent Persons_ _First published as "Philosophical Essays"_ _October 1910_ _Second Edition as "Mysticism and Logic"_ _December 1917_ _Third Impression_ _April 1918_ _Fourth Impression_ _February 1919_ _Fifth Impression_ _October 1921_ _Sixth Impression_ _August 1925_ _Seventh Impression_ _January 1932_ _Eighth Impression_ _1949_ _Ninth Impression_ _1950_ _Tenth Impression_ _1951_ _Eleventh Impression_ _1959_ _This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher._ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN _by Taylor Garnett Evans & Co. Ltd., Watford, Herts._ PREFACE The following essays have been written and published at various times, and my thanks are due to the previous publishers for the permission to reprint them. The essay on "Mysticism and Logic" appeared in the _Hibbert Journal_ for July, 1914. "The Place of Science in a Liberal Education" appeared in two numbers of _The New Statesman_, May 24 and 31, 1913. "The Free Man's Worship" and "The Study of Mathematics" were included in a former collection (now out of print), _Philosophical Essays_, also published by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. Both were written in 1902; the first appeared originally in the _Independent Review_ for 1903, the second in the _New Quarterly_, November, 1907. In theoretical Ethics, the position advocated in "The Free Man's Worship" is not quite identical with that which I hold now: I feel less convinced than I did then of the objectivity of good and evil. But the general attitude towards life which is suggested in that essay still seems to me, in the main, the one which must be adopted in times of stress and difficulty by those who have no dogmatic religious beliefs, if inward defeat is to be avoided. The essay on "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians" was written in 1901, and appeared in an American magazine, _The International Monthly_, under the title "Recent Work in the Philosophy of Mathematics." Some points in this essay require modification in view of later work. These are indicated in footnotes. Its tone is partly explained by the fact that the editor begged me to make the article "as romantic as possible." All the above essays are entirely popular, but those that follow are somewhat more technical. "On Scientific Method in Philosophy" was the Herbert Spencer lecture at Oxford in 1914, and was published by the Clarendon Press, which has kindly allowed me to include it in this collection. "The Ultimate Constituents of Matter" was an address to the Manchester Philosophical Society, early in 1915, and was published in the _Monist_ in July of that year. The essay on "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics" was written in January, 1914, and first appeared in No. 4 of that year's volume of _Scientia_, an International Review of Scientific Synthesis, edited by M. Eugenio Rignano, published monthly by Messrs. Williams and Norgate, London, Nicola Zanichelli, Bologna, and Félix Alcan, Paris. The essay "On the Notion of Cause" was the presidential address to the Aristotelian Society in November, 1912, and was published in their _Proceedings_ for 1912-13. "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description" was also a paper read before the Aristotelian Society, and published in their _Proceedings_ for 1910-11. LONDON, _September, 1917_ CONTENTS _Chapter_ _Page_