Preface

MYSTICISM
AND
LOGIC
n
i
i
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I
And Other Essays
ISI
The eleventh impression of a collection of essays, some of which were included in an early volume, now out of print, entitled Philosophical Essays. The author describes the first five of these as "entirely popular" and these include some well-known titles: Mysticism and Logic, The Place of Science in a Liberal Education, A Free Man's Worship, The Study of Mathematics, Mathematics and the Metaphysicians. The essays that follow are, he says, "somewhat more tech- nical": On Scientific Method in Philosophy, The Ultimate Constituents of Matter, The Relation of Sense- Data to Physics, On the Notion of Cause, Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description.
ELEVENTH IMPRESSION
Mysticism & Logic
B. Russell
George Allen & Unwin
R
NY PUBLIC
3 33
: LIBRARY THE BR/
33 0593
iNCH LIBRAF
B 872
IES
4
-.4'
THE NW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY MM MID-MANHATTAN LIBRARY HSS 455 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK, MEW YORK 10016
NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM THE ROOM
MYSTICISM AND LOGIC AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY BERTRAND RUSSELL
The ABC of Relativity
The A nalysis 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 A nalysis 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 Ordei
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
BERTRAND RUSSELL
MYSTICISM AND
LOGIC
AND OTHER ESSAYS
LONDON GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET
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 ts copyright under the Berne Con- vention. 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 Watford, Herts.
PREFACE
following essays have been written and pub- A lished 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 maga- zine, The International Monthly, under the title " Recent Work in the Philosophy of Mathematics." Some points
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vi MYSTICISM AND LOGIC
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