RBR Revival, A Bonus Book: Mysticism and Logic

Two years ago today the original Reading Bertrand Russell plan was completed. Today, on Bertrand's 145th birthday, the question surfaces: why not expand the plan? (For that matter, why expand the plan?: a question not to be asked.) In any event, a bonus summentary of a Bertie book now emerges to halt the hiatus. The subject of the surprise supplemental summentary is (supposedly? suspiciously? surreptitiously?) Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, henceforth known here (And thence in Heav’n) as Mysticism and Logic.

The book Mysticism and Logic (the first essay in the book also is named “Mysticism and Logic”) apparently was originally published in 1918 – and hence is no longer in copyright in the US, rendering the text available for free on the internet. The publication history is slightly confusing at first glance because on a pre-Preface page is the claim “First published as ‘Philosophical Essays’ October 1910.” But only two of the seven essays in Russell’s 1910 book, Philosophical Essays (pdf), re-appear in Mysticism and Logic; those essays are “A Free Man’s Worship” (in Philosophical Essays, “The Free Man’s Worship”) and “The Study of Mathematics.” (Russell’s Preface to Mysticism and Logic (page v) indicates as much, too, and also notes that these two essays were composed in 1902.) The essay “Mysticism and Logic,” according to the Preface (p. v), appeared in a journal in 1914. The pre-Preface page also lists December 1917 as the publication of the second edition (of the 1910 book), this time under the title “’Mysticism and Logic.’” Blackwell and Ruja's Russell Bibliography indicates that indeed some copies were available in December 1917.

My copy of Mysticism and Logic identifies it as the eighth impression, though this seems to count Philosophical Essays as a first impression, so my copy is more likely the seventh impression of Mysticism and Logic, published in 1949; the publisher is George Allen & Unwin LTD of Museum Street in London. Russell notes in the Preface (page v) that he has somewhat changed his mind since “The Free Man’s Worship” first was published, in that “I feel less convinced than I did then of the objectivity of good and evil.” Following that brief Preface recounting the publication history of the various essays is a Contents page; the ten chapters are:

I. Mysticism and Logic
II. The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
III. A Free Man’s Worship
IV. The Study of Mathematics
V. Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
VI. On Scientific Method in Philosophy
VII. The Ultimate Constituents of Matter
VIII. The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics
IX. On the Notion of Cause
X. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description

Onwards with our bonus march, through the century-old tome Mysticism and Logic. Happy Birthday, Bertie.