Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 1 Many thanks to Thomas Baldwin, Nicholas GriUn, and Gary Ostertag for critical discussion of the work of G.yE. Moore. I am grateful to the Editor for assistance. I am grateful to the American Philosophical Society for the award of a Franklin Grant (2007) for research in Cambridge that led to this paper. My thanks to Juliet Moore for permission to quote from G.yE. Moore's unpublished papers. russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 28 (winter 2008–09): 101–26 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 rticles "HE WAS IN THOSE DAYS BEAUTIFUL AND SLIM": BERTRAND RUSSELL AND G.yE. MOORE, 1894z–1901 Consuelo Preti1 Philosophy / The College of New Jersey Ewing, nj 08628, usa preti@tcnj.edu Moore and Russell's philosophical and personal paths through the early years of the twentieth century make a fascinating chronicle. Some of this story is familiar; but material from the unpublished Moore papers adds new and forceful detail to the account. It is a commonplace by now that Russell and Moore were not friends, although they maintained a long professional association. Their most intellectually intimate phase came early on, reaching a peak in 1897–99. But I show that during this period Moore developed an indisputable antagonism toward Russell, which I argue was motivated by a form of intellectual self-preservation from the Russellian juggernaut. This paper examines aspects of the development of their views and their relationship between 1894 and 1901. 1.wintroduction The 1903 publication of Bertrand Russell's The Principles of Math-ematicsz and G.yE. Moore's Principia Ethicaz was the culminationof an important early phase in their respective philosophical development. The years just prior to publication of these seminal works were years in which notable and transformational advances in their indiJa n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 102 consuelo preti 2 See, for instance, Russell, Auto. 1: 134–5; MPD, p. 54; and PoM, p. xviii. These acknowledgments, I believe, have distorted the historical record to some degree. It is, for example, widely believed that Russell and Moore worked closely together, exchanging drafts of their work for comment, etc. I argue below that there is little evidence of this. 3 Moore, "An Autobiography", in The Philosophy of G.yE. Moore, ed. P.yA. Schilpp (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern U. P., 1942), pp. 3–39. 4 See Nicholas GriUn, Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1991), and SLBRz 1 for an account of Russell and Moore's mutual inXuence, especially during the period 1897–99. See also Thomas Baldwin, G.yE. Moorez (London: Routledge, 1990), and Peter Hylton, Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1990). Some of the material I discuss below (letters from Russell to Moore, for instance) has been examined previously by scholars. The additional perspective contributed by the material from the Moore papers requires revisiting some of it here. 5 Most of Moore's papers are preserved in Cambridge U. Library. Some material is in Trinity College Library. For a catalogue of the former, see Kathleen Cann, "The Papers of George Edward Moore (1873–1958), Philosopher", Wittgenstein Studies, disk 1 (1995). vidual thinking rose to the surface. Accounts of Russell's and of Moore's evolution from undergraduate Idealists to founders of analytic philosophy, however, have linked their work more substantively than is strictly the case. This is probably due to an uncritical acceptance of Russell's early fulsome published acknowledgments to Moore, where he does not stint in crediting to Moore the forward action that led the charge against Idealism at the turn of the century, a key inXuence on Russell's own early work.2 Moore's own report of the early connection between his work and Russell's, on the other hand, is mindful of the details, modest, and professionally respectful; but it is not eTusive, and it cannot be said that Moore describes their early relationship as particularly close.3 In fact, Russell and Moore had a complex and ultimately uneasy bond. Any account of it-even the partial one I will oTer here-requires an analysis of a variety of sources.4 Russell's letters (SLBRz vol. 1), and chronologies of Russell's life and writings in his Collected Papers, volumes 2 and 3 (among other sources), give a clear picture of Russell's movements, the development of his work during the period, and his relations with Moore. Further details, which help to reconstruct Moore's parallel early philosophical development and Wll in the story of their relationship, are taken from material in Moore's unpublished papers, which I examine in what follows.5 Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 103 6 These mostly record events from his arrival in Cambridge in 1892 up to about 1913. The ones that survive (Cambridge U. Library, Add. MSS 8330 1/1/1–1/1/9) are titled, respectively, "Chronological Table of my Life"; "People I See"; "Books and Music"; "Work"; "Play, Exercise, Health"; "Visits" and "Visitors"; "Chronological List of my Philosophical Writings"; "Summer Holidays"; and "Reading Parties". Moore did keep diaries, but he obviously destroyed some of them. Those that survive record events in 1908, 1909–16, and 1924. There are some supplementary diaries/notebooks of 1909–28 and diary extracts of 1929–39. 7 Add. 1/1/2. Paul Levy, G.yE. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles (New York: Holt, 2.wrussell and moore: 1894–97 Moore arrived at Trinity to study classics in 1892, but shifted to moral sciences after his Part i Classics tripos in 1896. Moore had been tapped by one of his teachers (a former Apostle) at Dulwich College as a notable possibility for membership in that secret society, and was duly elected in February 1894. Russell was jubilant about Moore in these early days-he had himself identiWed Moore as an able candidate for the Society-and welcomed him joyously to the fold. A comparison of Russell's autobiographical descriptions of the eTect Moore had on him when they Wrst met, with his contemporary letters to Alys about Moore, show a remarkable consistency. Russell writes: In my third year ... I met G.yE. Moore, who was then a freshman, and for some years he fulWlled my ideal of genius. He was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost of inspiration, and with an intellect as deeply passionate as Spinoza's. He had a kind of exquisite purity. (Auto. 1: 64) To Alys, on 18 February 1894, Russell wrote, We all felt electriWed by him, as if we had slumbered hitherto and never realized what fearless intellect pure and unadulterated really means. If he does not die or go mad I cannot doubt that he will somehow mark himself out as a man of stupendous genius. (Quoted in Monk 1: 69) No similar enthusiasm, however, is evident toward Russell in what there is of Moore's descriptions of his years at Cambridge-and Moore was warmly devoted to those he considered his close friends. Moore kept a number of chronologies and lists, particularly early on,6 and in one of them he notes that in the long vacation, "Get to know Russell, Crompton, Mayor, Wedgwood; V[aughan]-W[illiams]; Dakyns very well."7 Yet Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 104 consuelo preti Rinehart and Winston, 1979) contains descriptions of the young men with whom Moore forged friendships. 8 6 August 1893; 30 June 1897; 12 December 1898; 18 March 1899; 20 June 1899. 9 Although they were not intimates, there was a professional bond, and there were many activities which sustained it over many years: overlap at Trinity before the Wrst War; meetings of the Aristotelian Society; Apostolic dinners; reviews of each other's work; Moore's editorship of Mindz; the Strong fellowship fund; Wittgenstein, etc. But there was also a series of sticky episodes between them (the 1903 reading-party imbroglio [see note 50]; Moore's evasiveness about his 1914 notes on Wittgenstein's Logic). More of the story has yet to be told. Moore never mentions meeting Russell to his parents, to whom he wrote very regularly after going up. The Wrst mention of Russell that Moore makes to his parents in letters is 6 August 1893 (that he will lunch with Russell that day), and further references to Russell are sparse in the letters he writes them during his time at Cambridge.8 It is possible to argue that Russell had a great deal of aTection for Moore at the start, and retained it throughout much of their early association. But it cannot be claimed that Moore ever felt the same way about Russell. Although we must believe that Moore did garner signiWcant intellectual stimulation from Russell at an important time in his early philosophical development, he seems mostly to have enduredz him. Moore was never at ease with Russell and, over time, grew increasingly distressed by him. We might begin to explain this by noting a remark of Russell's in his autobiography (Auto. 1: 68). Russell recounts that he entered Cambridge a "shy prig" but that by his fourth year he had become "gay and Xippant" and that "philosophy altogether seemed to me great fun". If true, even to some extent, this could partly explain why Moore found Russell so diUcult. Moore was a bit of a shy prig all his life, it might be said, and while he could be lighthearted, there is little reason to think he was at any time Xippant. Nor can it be said that he ever thought philosophy was "great fun". Moore took philosophy very seriously and worked very hard at it-and Russell is probably right that Moore, though ferocious in philosophical argument (among trusted friends), was, at least early on, "colossally ignorant" and a "child" in "the everyday world". They really were tuned very diTerently, so to speak; but the depth of the antagonism Moore developed for Russell, as revealed below, makes their decades-long association the more surprising, overall.9 The problem was not simply their mismatched personalities, though Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 105 10 Add. 8330 8R/33/1–43. 11 Russell says so himself, of course (Auto. 1: 64). It is even more diUcult to ascertain the exact nature of Russelly's inXuence on Moore-Moore's 1942 acknowledgment to Russell to one side. Moore acknowledges no one, for instance, in the Preface to Principia Ethicaz; and in his dissertations he restricts acknowledgments to the work of Bradley and Sidgwick in a general theoretical way. 12 I don't think GriUn would disagree (ibid., pp. 55–60). 13 Add. 8330 8S/44/1. I would add to this Wittgenstein's Werce loyalty to Moore (in spite of episodes like the one that led to their estrangement between 1914 and 1929), and it is true that they were quite diTerent; and there is no grievous personal betrayal that would explain Moore's relatively sudden rupture with Russell at about 1899–1900. Instead there is evidence that part of what featured in Moore's developing vexation with Russell was a kind of professional self-preservation, made necessary by Russell's relentless (perhaps unwitting) pressure to mould Moore's work in directions that Moore found undesirable. I think that, especially early on, Russell was always a bit puzzled by Moore's aloofness and wished for more openness from him. In what survives of the correspondence from Russell to Moore (43 letters in all10), Russell asks to see Moore for "philosophical talk", or to come for a visit, seventeen times, but Moore rebuTs him often-and we can be sure that Russell would have asked to see him more times than what is recorded. Russell may not have fully grasped that Moore's reserve was more fundamental than Russell wished it were, or even thought it should be. 3.w1897–98 Between 1897 and 1898 both Moore and Russell experienced a key period of transformative philosophical development. GriUn, in Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship, circumspectly analyzes the evidence for what Russell might have owed to Moore at this period, which he maintains would have come mostly through conversation.11 I think he is right about this; but it may be that this inXuence was not inconsiderable. The diUculty is making that latter claim plausible in the absence of evidence we can examine. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give this issue the attention it deserves, but I would emphasize the evidence of Moore's eTect on his contemporaries and near-contemporaries that bolsters the case for his capacity to inXuence people, far beyond what the surviving record discloses.12 Strachey,13 Keynes and Woolf, as we know, recorded their Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 106 consuelo preti the intimacy and warmth that come through in Desmond MacCarthy's letters to Moore. MacCarthy (1877–1952) very often writes that Moore's letters were "a great comfort to him". 14 J.yM. Keynes, Two Memoirs (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949); Leonard Woolf, Sowing: an Autobiography of the Years 1850–1904 (London: Hogarth P., 1960). 15 For discussion of the inXuences on Moore's work, see C. Preti, "On the Origins of the Contemporary Notion of Propositional Content: Anti-Psychologism in Nineteenth Century Psychology and G.yE. Moore's Early Theory of Judgment", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part a, 39 (zJune 2008): 176–85. devotion to Moore and his ideas in superlative terms.14 We might dismiss these as excessive or even embarrassingly self-indulgent, but seen in the context of their paeans to their friend and mentor, Russell's are no less genuinely keen in their expression of gratitude. There is no doubt that it was during the relatively brief period of 1897–99 that Moore and Russell had the most mutually productive of their intellectual interactions. At some point toward the end of this time, however, Moore backed oT somewhat abruptly, but permanently. Such intellectual intimacy between Moore and Russell that grew between 1897 and 1899 was never regained thereafter. In the summer of 1897 Moore began to work on his Prize Fellowship dissertation, a study of Kant's moral theory with an emphasis on the nature of practical reason and freedom of the will. A letter from Moore to his parents about his plans for the summer conWrms that he saw Russell at about this time: ... am back [in Cambridge] again to work hard till August 31st. I have decided not to go to Bayreuth, so as to do my best at my dissertation, which has remained hitherto very backward ... went down to Haslemere on Thursday to stay with the Russells at their Fernhurst cottage ... talked a lot of philosophy with Russell. (30 June 1897) There is no evidence, however, that whatever Russell and Moore discussed in June had anything to do with the speciWc work that Moore was doing in his 1897 dissertation-though I think it likely that Moore's adoption of a criticism of Kant's psychologism from a roughly Bradleian view, preliminarily addressed in the 1897 dissertation, was motivated by the discussions they had during the early summer of 1897.15 Part of what they discussed at this meeting is thought to have been Russell's paper "Why Do We Regard Time, But Not Space, as Necessarily a Plenum?" (Papers 2). GriUn (p. 321) describes the content of this paper as reopenJa n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 107 16 There is reason to think that Russell and Moore spent this time together discussing physics, space, and even plenal theory. Moore published a review of An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry, which appeared in Mindz n.s. 8 (1899): 397–405; according to his own notes, he worked on it the entire "May" term of 1899. Two surviving letters from the Trinity mathematician G.yH. Hardy to Moore (dated "Aug. 98" and "July 99" in Moore's hand) are technical discussions of Russell on the space-constant. The 1899 letter refers to Moore's review of the Essay. Moore and Hardy were good friends and colleagues; Moore notes in his list 1/1/1 in 1897 that during the Long Vacation he saw Hardy "once a week". Given Hardy's expertise, Moore probably consulted him on technical details of Russell's work (Moore notes in list 1/1/1 that he saw Hardy "very often" in 1898–99), to which he might have been introduced during these discussions with Russell in the summer of 1897. 17 These are preserved along with both drafts of Moore's dissertations in the Trinity College Library (Add. Ms a. 247 2 (1)). Henry Sidgwick and Edward Caird's comments on the 1897 draft survive, as do Bernard Bosanquet's comments on the 1898 draft. The other examiner of the 1898 dissertation was James Ward. ing a discussion that Russell had published, scant weeks prior, in An Essay on the Foundations of Geometryy; in the end, it presaged an important change in Russell's view about physics.16 In October 1897 Russell was travelling in Italy and wrote to Moore: I am sorry to see from "Nature"-the only English paper I get-that you did not, apparently, get your Fellowship at this shot.... The important thing for you, however, is what people say of your chances for next year, and whether they commended your dissertation. Please write and tell me all such facts as may be told concerning the examiners' opinions. From what you told me of not having nearly Wnished your work, I infer it will be longer and better next year.... Please write to me as soon as possible about your aTairs. (19 Oct. 1897, copy in ra1 710) From what Russell says here, Moore had informed him as to how the work was going (possibly in discussion: no letter survives), but Moore had not shared the news that he had failed to win a fellowship at this juncture. In any case, the news from the examiners was not very good. No letter from Moore to Russell concerning the examiners' views survives, but their comments do.17 Henry Sidgwick wrote, among other things, that "[Moore's] exposition of his own views is rather diUcult to judge, as, in the earlier part of his dissertation, he does not quite suUciently distinguish them from the views he attributes to Kant"; Caird claimed that "... partly, I think, because Mr. Moore has not suUciently studied how to be clear to those who are not looking at things at his Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 108 consuelo preti 18 In my article cited in note 15, I brieXy discuss the evidence that Lotze's metaphysics-which was not an untrammelled Absolute Idealism by any stretch-was an inXuence on Moore's anti-psychologism at this period by way of Stout and Ward; Lotze's inXuence on Moore is noted critically by Sidgwick in his comments on Moore's 1897 dissertation. 19 This material survives (Russell's in ra3 rec. acq. 385, fos. 98–121; originals at Texas). An examination and comparison, though not possible here, would supply another opportunity to Wll in the details of Moore and Russell's intellectual progress at this time. 20 As in 1895 when Moore was reading Lotze with a fellow student, Charles Percy Sanger (letter from Russell to Alys, SLBRz 1: #65); Moore, list 1/1/1. 21 Moore, list 1/1/1. 22 Moore, list 1/1/2. Bernard Berenson was Russell's brother-in-law. 23 Moore, review of J.yG. Fichte, The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of precise angle, he is extremely diUcult to understand. It has cost me much to do so, and I do not think the fault is entirely mine." Both Caird and Sidgwick, however, praised Moore's originality and ability, and, as a result, Moore spent another year revising his dissertation for another attempt at a fellowship, which was ultimately successful. In Lent Term 1898 both Moore and Russell attended McTaggart's lectures on Lotze. Rudolph Hermann Lotze, by now a shadowy Wgure in the history of philosophy, was a deeply inXuential thinker in the late nineteenth century, both on the Continent and in Cambridge, and the philosophers who taught Moore and Russell-Stout, McTaggart, and Ward-were thoroughly familiar with his work.18 Both Moore and Russell took extensive, practically verbatim notes at McTaggart's lectures19 and found opportunities to discuss Lotze's metaphysics and his logic.20 Between March and July 1898, Russell was at the Millhangar (Russell saw Moore in Cambridge for a few days in May 1898), and Moore began to think about revisions to his dissertation. Moore's lists now contain more frequent references to Russell: June. To Russells at Millhangar. July–August. Long [Vacation] at Cambridge (river party at end of July?).21 Long Russell brings Berenson July 28.22 Moore's list 1/1/7 ("Chronological List of my Philosophical Writings") contains an entry in which he notes that in 1898 "During Wrst two terms and Long till end of August, work for second Dissertation but probably write nothing till May Term. Also write review of Kroeger's Fichte,23 at Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 109 Knowledge (trans. A.yE. Kroeger, ed. W.yT. Harris), International Journal of Ethics 9 (1898): 92–7. 24 Review of M. Guyau, "Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction" (A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction), trans. from 2nd edn. by Gertrude Kapteyn, International Journal of Ethics 9 (1899): 232–6. 25 "The Nature of Judgment", Mindz n.s. 8 (1899): 176–93. See my article cited in note 15 for the evidence. 26 See GriUn, Chap. 7, for the details of the composition and of the archival material. Easter, at Wingate, I think. Also probably in Long write review of Guyau24 published next January." Moore wrote to Desmond MacCarthy on 19 June 1898 that he had written "about 6 pages dissertation and done less work than ever. I go to London tomorrow.... Then a week with the Russells...." Two months later Moore wrote to MacCarthy that: I need only say in general that I have not been very industrious. I have some 60 new pages Wnished, but it can hardly be that I shall be able to write on all the points that I intended. You may judge from the fact that all I have written so far is Metaphysics-not a word of Ethics. I have arrived at a perfectly staggering doctrine: I had never seen where my principles would lead me. An existent is nothing but a proposition: nothing is but concepts. There is my philosophy.... I am pleased to believe that this is the most Platonic system of modern times; though it is also not so far from Kant, as you might think at Wrst ... it had never occurred to me ... that reality is in fact independent of existence.... (14 Aug. 1898) In spite of what he says, Moore was fully occupied with his work in the spring and summer of 1898, and his visit to Russell at the end of June 1898 on the available evidence, marks a crucial turning-point in their work. Moore visited Russell for a week at about the time he began writing the 1898 draft of his dissertation, which consists of the 1897 draft, mostly unrevised, with Chapter ii added, and some deletions. Moore's important 1899 paper, "The Nature of Judgment", was siphoned from the new chapter.25 It was here that Moore introduced a strongly realist view of the objects of judgment, arguing further that these (which he refers to as "propositions", whose constituents are "concepts") are the mindand language-independent constituents of reality. Russell, meanwhile, was at Friday's Hill until September, deep in the eTort of producing the precursor to The Principles of Mathematics, the multiply revised and ultimately abandoned "An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning" (Papers 2).26 Russell wrote to Moore from Friday's Hill on 20 July 1898, Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 110 consuelo preti 27 It should be noted that relational theories of judgment were not exactly new at this period and featured in literature that both Moore and Russell will have been familiar with, in the work of Lotze, Bradley, and Stout. Later, in a letter to Moore dated 13 September 1898 (see p. 114), Russell was thinking hard about relations. He told Moore, "I am really discussing all relations of a certain type", the discovery of which, a few paragraphs earlier in the letter, he claimed "is the true business of Logic...." telling him: I have succeeded in Wnishing my Book i, by skating over the diUculties and leaving them to be discussed later. I am having a typed copy sent to you, but I don't expect you to read it till after your Fellowship, as it will be at least 6 months before I attack Book i again. I hope your Dissertation is growing with all speed.... (Copy in ra1 710) Although, as GriUn points out, it is not possible to tell what precisely Moore and Russell discussed in June 1898, nor which parts of "An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning" had been written (in order to establish a direction for inXuence), it is relatively safe to say that what emerged from their talk at this period was the recognition that the progress of their respective ideas would require (at least) an analysis of judgment- and not just any analysis. This needs fuller treatment than I can give it here, but the following is a compressed proposal as to the direction of an argument. The distinction between the act of judgment and the object of a judgment-the distinction between the psychological act of judging and what today we would call its propositional content-was at the heart of Chapter ii of Moore's 1898 dissertation, where he argued the object of judgment was a mindand language-independent proposition constituted by (necessary) relations between concepts. The evidence supports that Russell began to rethink his views about relations through his conversations with Moore on judgment as a complex of non-psychologistically construed concepts.27 We should emphasize that for Moore, what was ultimately at stake was the normativity of ethical propositions; for Russell, in due course, the logical form of the fundamental propositions of mathematics. Moore's dissertations both focus on what he identiWes as a key weakness in Kant-the nature of practical reason, or ethical judgment. Moore comes to argue, most forcefully in the 1898 dissertation, that a fatal psychologism infected Kant's account of ethical judgment. Kant's view that the Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 111 28 That is, Moore dismisses Kant's transcendental argument as failing to avoid outright psychologism. 29 It is possible that Russell had a version of Chapter i of Book i more or less complete, but that he redrafted it afterz his June 1898 conversation with Moore. Thus, upon completing the redraft, he noted on the Wrst page of the manuscript (Book i, Chapter i) that "this m.s. was Wnished, July 1898". GriUn (p. 307) in fact suggests that Book i of the manuscript could have been composed quite late in the process. will is both constrained (by the good and by reason) and yet free, was incoherent. Moore identiWes the problem in Kant as what today we would call the causal-role problem of content. As Moore reads Kant, the object of the will must have a causal eTect on our mental states (desires, for instance), or it could not be practical-Kant is thus forced to render it as psychologistic in nature.28 But the object of the will, on Kant's view, must also have normative properties; and Moore argues ultimately that no mentalistic or psychological entity could have any claim to genuine normativity. We must assume that Chapter ii of the 1898 dissertation at least partly included the discussion of the distinction between empirical and necessary propositions that turns up in the published "Nature of Judgment" (pp. 188–9), along with a defence of Moore's admittedly idiosyncratic view that all propositions are necessary, even the ones that are composed of existential concepts (like "existence"). Moore here battles to defend the view that Kant's criterion for the distinction between a prioriz and a posterioriz propositions (which he takes as at least coextensive with "necessary" and "empirical") fails, because "even existential propositions have the essential mark which Kant assigns to a prioriz propositions-that they are absolutely necessary." The basis for Moore's position is that there is a distinction between concepts that "exist in an actual part of time" (empirical), and those that do not (necessary). Since all propositions are composed of concepts (or arez complex concepts themselves), and all propositions are mindand language-independent in nature, no proposition (or its constituents) can exist in any part of time or space. Furthermore, all reality consists of such concepts. The available evidence shows that Russell had made greater strides, and in greater detail, on an account of the structure and elements of judgment by mid-July 1898 than Moore did (ever).29 Russell's emphasis in Book i, Chapter i ofz "An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning" ("The Manifold", "The Elements of Judgments"), in his own words, is to: Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 112 consuelo preti 30 It must be noted here that both Moore and Russell were familiar with this very Bradleian issue. 31 For an account of the inXuences on Moore which directed him toward anti-psychologism, see my article cited in note 15. Thus I would argue that Russell began to see the importance of an extra-mental metaphysics of relations (as "external" and not "internal") before he started to work on his Leibniz lectures; that is, in June of 1898, in his conversations with Moore. 32 Russell had written to Alys on 12 March 1898 that he read a paper, now lost, to the Society, "... to an audience of about 10 people.... [T]hey left most of the discussion to Moore, and he and I soon lapsed into a duologue.... No one could understand what we ... discover the peculiarities, and to lay bare the fundamental ideas, of the various classes of mathematical judgments. Judgments of number, of quantity, of order, of extensive continuity, of motion, and of causality, will be successively examined.... The foremost class of judgments, from every point of view, is the class in which a predicate is asserted of a subject. This class has been supposed to include all judgments, but we shall Wnd, as we proceed, that the vast majority of mathematical judgments, though sometimes capable of this form, are essentially of various other kinds. (Papers 2: 167) Here Russell has not abandoned the subject/predicate understanding of the logical form of a proposition-but he has begun to evince more than some dissatisfaction about it. The other emphasis in this part ofz "Analysis", as Russell notes, is the role of what he calls "existence" in the treatment of the constituents of judgment.30 Thus I think there is evidence here that Russell owes to Moore the more decided emphasis that Moore begins to make at this juncture on (1) the signiWcance of a nonpsychological account of judgment and its content-which is at the heart of Moore's analysis of Kant's moral theory in his 1897 and 1898 dissertations-and (2) the nature of the concept of existence and the upshot of those views for a new metaphysics.31 That the realist metaphysics which characterizes the nature of the objects of judgment was at the heart of the next step in Moore and Russell's intellectual development is not in doubt, and I think it is clear that it was during this phase of their work- and their relationship-that they took it on board. But a case can be made for this period as marking the beginning of serious trouble in their personal relations as well. I would explain this by noting that Russell was on the cusp of a breakthrough with respect to his own work, and that, at this time, the only person with whom he could discuss his ideas with any hope of being understood was Moore.32 Russell Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 113 were saying, and he was the only man who thought he could. Moore told me afterwards, by way of a friendly goodnight, that I too hadn't perceived what we were arguing about. All the same I got him into several nasty holes, which he was unable to get out of." The subject of the paper was existence. See SLBR 1: #74. 33 Both GriUn (p. 57 n. 84) and Levy (p. 207) remark on the oddity of a Society meeting in 1899 when Moore read a paper of Hardy's on non-Euclidean geometry to an audience of one: Russell. The vote, on the question "Is space probably Euclidean?", was split, Moore plaintively claiming yes, "but not demonstrably by me at present". might have been overenthusiastic about Moore, and, of course, he was possibly blinded by his enthusiasm with respect to Moore's actual gifts. Moore was never going to be able to keep up with Russell in the rariWed realms of philosophical logic-Russell was a mathematician who, in shifting his intellectual interests to philosophy, practically invented a subdiscipline that reXected how he shaped it to his own interests in the foundations of mathematics.33 Moore was a classicist, conservatively trained, and less than even competently trained in mathematics overall. It is diUcult to think that Moore could ever give Russell a truly profound critical run for the money in the technical areas of mathematics and logic where Russell was casting his lines. In the summer of 1898, however, most of that work was yet to come-and Russell found, or was determined to Wnd, in Moore, a kindred mind. Their work was proceeding swiftly along parallel courses, but in both paths the signiWcant advance was a philosophicalz shift-one toward a diTerent conception of metaphysics. Even if Russell did not mistake Moore's talents for anything but what they were, they were considerable, in their way, and it is not entirely surprising that both men derived signiWcant intellectual stimulation from the other. The problem for Moore may have sprung from Russell's enthusiastic grasp of both the subject matter they were discussing and the various ways it could develop, which may have led to his importuning Moore to adopt an intellectual direction that Moore did not Wnd amenable. Moore's increasing resentment toward Russell might be explained in part as Moore wanting to be left alone to pursue his own work, rather than being pressured, in eTect, to become a philosophical logician. And it is possible that Moore had begun to feel as if his intellectual energies were being consumed as mere fuel to the Russellian juggernaut. Some evidence of this can be found in the correspondence between them in this period and shortly after. Moore began to become more reserved with Russell around this time. Russell wrote to Moore on 13 September 1898, the day before Russell departed for the Continent, not reJa n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 114 consuelo preti 34 I think that Russell means to imply by his remark that nobody but he (Russell) will understand the dissertation, given the relatively unexpected departure in formulation of the nature of judgment that Moore oTers there and that grew from their discussions in the summer of 1898. I also think, given the evidence I adduce throughout this paper, that Russell meant to give genuine credit to Moore for having hit upon a "new logic" (as for instance, in notes 40 and 46 below), remarkable as that may seem to contemporary philosophers. I believe that I can explain how Moore hit upon it, but must defer the argument to another paper. turning until November. He tells Moore that he was "very glad" to get a letter from him as he "had been anxious to know what you felt about your dissertation when it Wnally went in." This suggests that Moore had not communicated much on the substance of his work from about early July or so. Russell adds: I am curious to know how a really thorough account of Kant might be written: I imagine it would be a new departure in literature! I fear Caird's hair will stand on end when he hears that an existent is a proposition.... [B]ut I imagine I agree with what you mean. I agree most emphatically with what you say about the several kinds of necessary relations among concepts, and I think their discovery is the true business of Logic (or Meta[physics] if you like).... I didn't intend you to look at my work till after your fellowship: when that time is come, you can get Bks. ii–iv from Whitehead. (Copy in ra1 710) There is little evidence that Moore availed himself of the invitation to give Russell critical comments on the manuscript of "An Analysis of Mathematical Reasoning" (though he might have beneWted from some of Russell's more precise formulations in his own account of the logical structure of judgment in the 1898 dissertation). In any case, Russell wrote to Moore a month later from Fiesole (14 Oct. 1898) to congratulate him on having won a Prize Fellowship, telling him that he had been nervous about it: "there seemed no ground for doubting it, but I felt as one does about catching a train." He then asked Moore, "if you are not busy with your School of Ethics lectures", to write and "let me know details as to your dissertation, etc.", adding, disarmingly, "I wonder whether anybody understood your dissertation."34 This letter suggests that Russell didn't know the actual details of Moore's position as they had been Wnally settled, let alone that he had read the dissertation. But he knew enough about it to know that it was, in part, a critique of Kant, and that its attack on a putative psychologism in Kant, and its defence of a realist metaphysics, were suUciently unorthodox as to cause some anxiety about the Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 115 35 See Tom Regan, ed., G.yE. Moore, The Elements of Ethicsz (Philadelphia: Temple U. P., 1991), pp. xv–xvi, for its history. The autumn lectures developed into Principia Ethica. 36 Note the "your". success of Moore's candidacy for the Prize Fellowship, especially as one of the examiners was the inXuential Oxford neo-Hegelian, Bernard Bosanquet. Bosanquet, whose examiner's comments survive, wrote that he "found himself almost wholly unable to appreciate the theoretical point of view which the author has adopted. It appears to me to lie beyond the limit of paradox which is permissible in philosophy." Bosanquet's disparagement notwithstanding, the dominance of neo-Hegelianism yielded shortly after to precisely the theoretical point of view that Moore had adopted. 4.w1899–1900 In the autumn term of 1898 (and again in early 1899) Moore presented a series of lectures on ethics at the short-lived London School of Ethics.35 Russell was at the Millhangar (Moore's list at 1/1/1 notes that he went to visit Russell there in December) and wrote to Moore on 1 December 1898 that his dissertation, which he has now read, appears to him "to be on the level of the best philosophy I know. When I see you, I should like to discuss some diUculties which occur in working out your theory of Logic."36 Russell then formulates a series of criticisms that show how deeply he was determined to see Moore's work as a critical element in the development of a philosophical logic that had begun to motivate his own rapidly evolving views-while perhaps not noticing that he himself was providing much of the logical headway: I believe that prop[osition]s are distinguished from mere concepts, not by their complexity only, but by always containing one speciWc concept, i.e. the copula "isz". That is, there must be, between the concepts of a prop[osition], one special type of relation, not merely some relation. "The wise man" is not a prop[osition], as Leibnitz says. Moreover, you need the distinction of subject and predicate: in all existential prop[osition]s, e.g., existence is a predicate, not subject. "Existence is a concept" is not existential. You will have to say that "isz" denotes an unsymmetrical relation. This will allow concepts which only have predicates and never arez predicates-i.e. things-and will make everything except the very foundation perfectly orthodox. (Copy in ra1 710) Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 116 consuelo preti 37 Moore's notes on Russell's lectures survive but are confusingly dated "Lent Term 1898". 38 Baldwin agrees (p. 312). 39 See my article cited in note 15. 40 Russell's tone in a letter to Bradley somewhat later strikes me as disappointed: "I hope some day, when the second volume of my present work is Wnished, to attempt something more on the purely philosophical side of Logic. Hitherto I have been hoping Moore would do this better than I could but I believe he contemplates going into more Russell had agreed to give a set of lectures on Leibniz in Lent Term 1899,37 and his correspondence here with Moore illustrates my supposition above, where we see how swiftly Russell was able to adapt insights generated in his conversations with Moore the summer before.38 GriUn notes (p. 308) that Moore might have been increasingly annoyed by a feeling of being trampled by Russell's far more agile mind; but also at the feeling of having his own insights-laboriously arrived at-absorbed and redistributed in record time by Russell, featuring almost immediately in publication. GriUn puts this down to a feeling Moore could have had that he'd been scooped, so to speak, and that Russell's fervent acknowledgments to Moore, especially in the Principles, are an attempt to mitigate any suggestion of having appropriated his ideas. Moore oTers very little detail about the reason for his growing antagonism to Russell (his letters to MacCarthy are the most candid and he is not forthcoming even there), and there is no evidence in the surviving Moore papers that Moore believed Russell had appropriated his work (of course, he could have destroyed any material where he recorded feelings about that). But I have been arguing that one underlying cause of Moore's irritation with Russell at this stage is Moore's beginning to resent Russell's insistence on emphasizing the more structural or logical aspects of the metaphysical views he (Moore) was trying to develop as the basis of ethics. It is safe to say that "The Nature of Judgment" is challenging, if not downright incoherent at times, and it is also safe to say that the core of that article was developed in conversation with Russell in the early summer of 1898.39 But it is, ironically, a paper that stands out from the Moorean corpus precisely because of its emphasis on the analysis of the logical form of the objects of judgment. Moore's inclinations were not toward that kind of work, judging from how the rest of it went. So Moore may have begun to believe that Russell was dismissing his (Moore's) own philosophical leanings, in an eTort to bring Moore's thinking in line with his own interests.40 Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 117 purely metaphysical questions" (11 Feb. 1904, SLBR 1: #126). 41 Moore's paper was titled "Do We Love Ourselves Best?" and is an argument against egoism; it was given on 4 February 1899 (Add. 8875 12/1/19). 42 The Apostles had their own idiom for referring to outsiders and themselves, some of which is in evidence in Russell's paper. The emissary might have been Crompton Llewelyn Davies (see my article cited in note 15). One incident around this time seems to illustrate Moore's growing impatience with Russell's teasing, if not something more. Russell, as we know, devoted a few months to learning the philosophy of Leibniz in order to prepare for the lectures on Leibniz he had agreed to give in McTaggart's place. In his list 1/1/2, Moore notes "Quarrel with Russell at beginning of Lent Term [1899]", though he adds no further detail. Levy claims (p. 114) that what Moore is referring to here is the occasion (on 10 February 1899) at which Russell gave a paper to the Apostles called "Was the World Good before the Sixth Day?". The paper refers either to views that Moore discussed at his own Apostolic paper of the week before,41 or those he was in the process of developing through his lectures on ethics. Russell's style in "Was the World Good before the Sixth Day?" is exceptionally arch and teasing, and Levy suggests that Moore might have felt more than put out by what he thought was gratuitous ridicule or misrepresentation of his position. In his paper Russell refers to an emissary, sent by the Society to report of Moore's success in rendering "these shadows42 even more foolish and wicked than they naturally are": ... beauty is good per se, and a purely material world, with no one to contemplate it, is better if it is beautiful than if it is ugly. Such is the argument which, though invented for the further perdition of shadows, has, alas! deceived our brother himself. Let us now endeavour to persuade him that this sophism, like the world of matter, can only be good as a means, and must never be taken as an end. (Papers 1: 113) Moore's notes on the vote at the end of the paper contain the comment, "The whole thing is absurd, the question has never been raised." The "question" Moore refers to could be what was ultimately put to a vote (as was the practice at Apostolic meetings), which had two parts: "Is matter beautiful?" and "Is matter good?". Moore had not discussed that question either in his lectures at the School of Ethics, or in his Apostolic paper of the week before. But the Apostles were known to vote on questions only tenuously related to the subject of the paper, so if Moore was Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 118 consuelo preti 43 The autumn lectures were titled "The Elements of Ethics", and the spring lectures "Kant's Moral Philosophy". Two typescripts of the 1898 lectures survive (Add. 8875 14/1/1 and 14/1/2), both bound in brown leather covers, now detached. 14/1/2 is a carbon of 14/1/1 except for Lecture iii (the carbon of which is bound into 14/1/1, suggesting that it was misbound). Both contain the same dedication which later appears as the dedication to Principia Ethica. Typescript 14/1/1 contains a number of handwritten marginal comments. Some of these are in Moore's hand, some are in Russell's, and I would argue that some are written by Sorley, who appears to have read the typescript for Cambridge University Press. It is not entirely clear when the typescripts were made and bound (neither is dated), nor for what purpose (the 1899 lectures, for instance, survive in manuscript, not typescript, and are unpublished). The 1898 lectures were published by Regan (see note 35). Regan makes no mention of the marginalia; his copy-text was most likely 14/1/2. We know from Russell's own notes that he read what he refers to as Moore's "Lectures on Ethics" in February 1899 ("What Shall I Read?", Papersz 1: 361). We do not know for certain that he read Moore's work in the form of typescript 14/1/1, but it seems likely. No references to the typescript survive in any of the letters between Russell and Moore. A number of the comments in Russell's hand, though brief, are fairly substantive, but Moore does not, as I mentioned above, acknowledge Russell in the preface to Principia Ethica (see note 11). Some of the comments are also reXected in a letter from Sorley to Moore dated 16 March 1902 (Add. 8330 8S/32/1). In that letter, Sorley writes to Moore "about your book which has been accepted by the Press", subject to revision, and proceeds to make a series of comments, ending by hoping that Moore "will not mind [his] making these purely critical remarks." Moore, typically, agonized over the revision but at last submitted a Wnal version to Cambridge University Press (he received the Wrst proofs on 25 March 1903). Precisely what was altered, and what was retained, is speciWed in Baldwin, ed., Principia Ethica, rev. edn. (Cambridge U. P., 1993), pp. 312–13. A number of compelling questions arise, however, with respect to Russell's role in the revision of Moore's lectures and their Wnal form as Principia Ethica. When, precisely, did Russell see the typescript? Why doesn't Moore acknowledge his comments? What is the evidence that Sorley's is the third hand on the typescript? What are the marginal comments? Are any of them reXected in Moore's Wnal draft? Are any of the comments linked to later work of Russell's? These and other questions are discussed in my paper, "Attributing the Marginal Comments in G.yE. Moore's 1898 Elements of Ethicsz Typescript" (of which a draft was read to the Department of Philosophy at McMaster in 2008). annoyed, it is unclear why. I think, however, that although Moore was not likely to be put out by criticism of his work, he might well have been deeply irritated by an idiosyncratic discussion of an important fundamental issue for his own work. Moore had been lecturing at the School of Ethics for an entire term by February 1899, and, as noted, the autumn 1898 lectures were reworked a few years later and published as Principia Ethica.43 Moore seems to have had great diUculty revising these lectures, and a main part of what ultimately became a key element in Principia Ethicaz underwent signiWcant modiWcation. That element-the nature of Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 119 44 See Russell, Auto. 2: 78, and GriUn (p. 308) on a diUculty of just this kind between Whitehead and Russell. 45 Yet those philosophical talks could have a deleterious eTect on Moore. Consider that in a letter to him on 14 January 1903 (Add. 8330 8M/3/15), MacCarthy wrote, "No news-but I want talk badly. The need of it sent me round to Russell last night. We had good talk-or rather I listened to good talk-but I want something more." Philosophical "talk" with Russell was undeniably dominated by Russell, which Moore found fatiguing and diUcult. Moore's feelings are, I think, summed up in a diary entry years later: "Russell calls ... asks me to walk with him and I Wnd him agreeable and can ask questions I want to: then to tea with him: he says 'Then you don't understand it either', about distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and by description and this hurts me: why? I can't help worrying over his points after, even when I wake at night ..." (21 Jan. 1913, Add. 8330 1/3/3). the Good, and an account of it that bears some similarity to the one Moore defends in his book-comes into focus in "Was the World Good before the Sixth Day?". Moore could have felt proprietary, sensitive, and intellectually at a bit of a loss at this time on this issue, taking Russell to have appropriated a position on it before he was ready to do so himself.44 Or it could be that Moore, while not going so far as to think Russell would pinch his ideas, began to want to reserve his ideas so he could cultivate them thoroughly his own way, before Russell had a chance to bend them to his own interests, or bleed them dry. Moore may have begun to believe that Russell would not refrain from doing just that. A mysterious entry in Moore's list 1/1/2 suggests some additional diUculty with Russell in early 1899: "Russells at Granary in Lent Term. Avoid them. Never go on Sundays". Relations seemed to be worsening between them; Moore wrote to MacCarthy in April that he had been to see the Russells: where I got on "better than I deserved", but was looking forward most ardently to coming here before the end. Certainly we got through some real good philosophical discussion: I have learnt something. (29 April 1899) Moore's allusion to wanting to leave (and to having anticipated little in the way of enjoyment from the visit) clearly expresses the apprehension that now begins to characterize his relations with Russell; but also (not inconsistently) that the philosophical substance of their discussions was still valuable to him.45 What he might have learned he doesn't say; but we know that soon afterward Moore was hard at work on his review of Russell's Essay on the Foundations ofz Geometry. Although the technicaliJa n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 120 consuelo preti 46 Of interest also is a letter that Russell wrote Couturat on 5 May 1900: "I want very much to know what is the greatest length which will be allowed for my paper at the Congress: I see that I have chosen a topic that cannot be treated brieXy, largely because my arguments depend in part upon a new logic (videz Moore, 'The Nature of Judgment', Mind, April 1899)" (SLBRz 1: #86). ties were hardly Moore's area of expertise, his criticism of Russell's psychologism there appears to have shook Russell free of any lingering attraction to neo-Hegelianism. Russell was suUciently impressed with Moore's criticisms that in a letter to Couturat he wrote that Moore is the "most subtle" Englishman in "pure logic" (SLBRz 1: #83). No contemporary understanding of Moore's philosophical ability emphasizes his expertise in pure logic. This is another piece of evidence of Russell's tendency to direct Moore's intellectual interests in ways that may have become exasperating to Moore.46 An entry in Moore's list 1/1/7 for 1899z-z"1899. May term, do nothing but write review of Russell's Foundations of Geometry. Long, do nothing at all. What was I supposed to be doing?"z-zintimates some nervous tension, and subsequent letters from Russell may not have helped matters. Russell wrote on 18 May and 21 May 1899 Wrst to ask whether the review had been done in time, and then to request that Moore return his corrected copy of the book. On 18 July 1899, by which time Russell had read the review, he wrote to Moore to say: "I am sorry you will not be able to come here [Fernhurst], as there are a multitude of topics I should like to discuss.... I had not written to you about your review, because on all important points I agreed with it". But he goes on to argue a few points about the space-constant and the inWnitesimal, all of which might have added to Moore's feeling of being unduly pressured to think carefully about topics that were not interesting to him-or, it must be said, topics that he found obscure. Russell ends this letter with "Do write and tell me what you are doing and thinking", which suggests that Moore was neglecting their communications. And shortly after, as we see below, Russell turned to Moore frequently and unapologetically for discussion and critical commentary of his work on A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz, as well as his thoughts on logic. It is diUcult to see this as anything but a genuine desire on Russell's part to communicate his thoughts and his work with a valued friend, esteemed colleague, and (in his view) like-minded philosopher. But it is hard to avoid the supposition that all this exasperated Moore, who was Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 121 47 Moore wrote twelve articles in all for the Dictionary. 48 I am not entirely convinced about this but must defer argument here. 49 Austin E.yA.yW. Smyth (1877–1949), later Librarian to the House of Commons. conscientious to a fault but who had begun to feel frequently frustrated in his own advancement, particularly with respect to producing Wnished work-and it is possible that Russell, who was beginning a period of extraordinary intellectual production, was somewhat insensitive in his keenness to share his insights with Moore. I think that Moore started to feel smothered by Russell and overwhelmed by his requests, which Moore did not consider he could refuse but which interfered with his getting on with his ideas according to his own lights. 5.w1900–01 There is archival material that supports this conclusion. Moore notes in his list 1/1/7 that he spent Lent Term of 1900 writing his paper "Necessity"; a paper for the Moral Sciences Club on Ward's GiTord Lectures; and some of the articles he had agreed to produce for Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology.47 Moore also notes that he spent the Long Vacation of 1900 "reading proofs of Russell's Leibniz" (it appears, on the evidence of Russell's letters below, that he was reading it throughout the Lent Term, too). In his list 1/1/2, Moore notes that in "1900–1: Lent Term. Russells at West Lodge again: meet R[ussell] for talk regularly one afternoon a week." But Moore was writing very slowly, and feeling less than productive, something he complained about quite regularly to his parents and to MacCarthy at this period. GriUn (in SLBR 1: re #85), like Regan, puts this down to a period of depression.48 If Moore was depressed, it could well be because he was sinking under the weight of Russell's forceful claims on him-and he began to show extreme irritation with Russell. A contretempsz reported by Russell to Alys took place in January 1900. It is another example of Russell teasing Moore, and Moore getting totally fed up with him. Russell, at tea with Moore (recovering from "Xu") and a fellow Apostle named Smyth,49 playfully secreted Moore's pipe and tobacco, so that Moore was left "without any means of smoking. Whereupon [Moore] got up silently and walked out with a very black face. I have not seen him since." But although Russell calls Moore's attitude "foolish" in his letter to Alys, I think he didn't quite understand it; and a genuine note of sheepishness and hurt seems evident Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 122 consuelo preti 50 In a journal entry in 1903 (Papers 12: 21), Russell noted his having been disinvited from a reading party Moore had organized. Russell had been asked by fellow Apostle R.yC. Trevelyan (known as "Bob Trevy"), who had not vetted the invitation Wrst with Moore. Moore, acutely mortiWed, wrote to tell Russell that he was not welcome (reported to MacCarthy, letter of 18 March 1903, Add. 8330 8R/33/23; Moore's letter to Russell is lost). In his journal entry Russell wrote that "My three weeks' holiday was reduced to a week with George Trevy in Devonshire, because Moore, to whose reading party I was going, wrote curtly to say he didn't want me. He has never forgiven me my homilies, though they produced the reformation I hoped for." It is possible that some of Russell's homilies had centred on his perception of Moore's idleness-which will have infuriated Moore, if his "idleness" was due to Russell's demands on him. 51 It's true that Moore's output was very slow at this period-but even in his autobiography Moore claims always to have been very reluctant to work. It seems clear that Moore began to feel far too exposed, scrutinized, and turned inside out, so to speak, by Russell, which had the unfortunate eTect of paralyzing him. Consider Wood's description of Russell's writing: "... his manuscripts and letters run on page and after page with ... hardly a word being crossed out or altered...." He reports that Russell once declared "I have never rewritten anything since", after being told he should rewrite and Wnding the revision worse than the original (Alan Wood, Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic [London: Allen and Unwin, 1957], pp. 50–1). Moore revised everything, painstakingly, so much so that he sometimes failed to publish a piece he had worked on at great length (e.g., a 44-page draft of an unpublished review of Russell's Principles of Mathematics survives, Add. 15/2; copy in ra). in the letter. In the same letter, Russell says that both he and Smyth were equally concerned about Moore's "idleness" and had "a long talk about him, but found no method of inducing him to reform."50 It is ironic that, if I am right, what Russell did not see was that part of the problem aTecting Moore was the weight of Russell's own demands on him.51 Moore wrote to MacCarthy on 18 February 1900, saying "I think Russell has seen that I wish to avoid him: but of course I am still very anxious about the situation", and on 2 April 1900, asking "Would it be convenient for me to stay with you for Wednesday or Thursday night this week? ... I want to avoid Russell, who writes me he is coming to the Whiteheads' on Wednesday and will lunch with me on Thursday...." Things were deteriorating, but Russell was either unaware of it or determined to ignore it, as when he sent Moore his proofs of The Philosophy of Leibniz, asking him to send "any suggestions, as you go through them". On 9 May he wrote to thank Moore: "I am grateful to you for taking so much trouble" but also to argue with him "with regard to your criticisms". On 9 June Russell wrote to Moore to ask him to vet a list of Latin quotations from Leibniz (some of which he has helpfully copied out, longhand, in the letter): "I hardly like to pass quotations in inverted Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 123 52 Russell also asked Moore to make arrangements to send him an m.a. cap and gown for a function requiring academic regalia. This could be just a friend asking a friend for a favour; on the other hand, the request might have struck Moore as a bit peremptory, to say nothing of far too clerical-though Russell seems to have had some awareness of how it might be taken. commas without your veriWcation", though telling him that "you will have to get the book out of the Varsity library, as I have the Trinity copy myself." On 27 June Russell wrote, "many thanks for returning so many proofs so soon."52 On 2 June Moore wrote a letter to MacCarthy that highlights at least part of the general source of his anxieties. After remarking that he has been "wretchedly lazy this week, not, compared with my usual standard, but considering I had 4 articles and Immortality to write", he went on: The most important news, to my feeling, is that Sidgwick has become very ill ... he has formally resigned his Professorship; and what I wanted to talk of, but have had no chance yet, is that I can't help hoping I might get it. I fear the hope is quite absurd. I must talk to McT[aggart], and if he says no, I should probably not go in. But you know both Ward and he have mentioned it as a possibility for me, a few years later. I feel perhaps I ought to regret now that I did not make more eTort to get my Lectures published. Now it's too late. I can't think of any one very distinguished who could go in: Ritchie, Sorley, Mackenzie: I don't think so well of them as myself.... Caird and Stout know something of my work. Keynes and Maitland something of me. And others might be inXuenced by testimonials ... Certainly I shan't be able to help thinking a lot of it, till it is over; and I shall be disappointed pretty badly. You mustn't talk of this, unless you are talked to, and then discreetly; for I may be perfectly mad.... P.S. Sunday evening. McT[aggart] just said he was going in for the Professorship, as better than Mackenzie. He did not seem to have thought of me, and it was not a time to raise the question. But I must. (Add. 8330 2/5/16) William Sorley (1855–1935), later named Knightbridge Professor, was elected to Wll Sidgwick's position. On 12 July Moore wrote again to MacCarthy, "You saw Sorley was elected to the Professorship? It is very satisfactory, in the sense that nobody can be disappointed or think himself wronged. But I think he must be a weak person. I've not read anything of his, except a puT of Ward." Moore exhibits here some apprehension regarding his academic future which was not, in the event, misplaced. After his fellowship was over in 1904, Moore had no academic position until 1910, when he lectured at Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 124 consuelo preti Morley College in London, and it was not until 1911 that he returned to Cambridge to take over Ward's position. In 1900 it was premature to think that he was qualiWed to take over Sidgwick's position. In the same letter to MacCarthy, Moore wrote that given his other commitments, "I shall certainly not get anything done this vac.-nothing of my future book. I only hope I may do this." By 1900 Moore had published four reviews and four articles in Mind, two of the latter being culled from his dissertations. The evidence supports the idea that Moore had always had it in mind to produce a book, but it may not have been until the lost opportunity of the Sidgwick position that the imperative of producing work that would make him a solid competitor for a future position at Cambridge (or indeed anywhere else) became clear. This realization could have added to Moore's edginess with respect to Russell, at this period. Russell was amazingly proliWc, which may have emphasized Moore's own diUculties in working, at least to Moore himself-and made Russell's claims on him more diUcult to tolerate. Moore, all the same, began to refer more often to producing a substantive piece of work in his letters to his parents throughout 1900, and by mid-1901 he began to get out from under the commitment to the Dictionaryz articles. A letter from Moore to MacCarthy at this time, however, suggests that relations with Russell had reached a new low: I heard by chance that the Russells were coming to the Whiteheads' next weekend. I found that could still make a great cloud on my horizon, and am resolved to run away. I shall oTer myself to Wedgwood, Wrst of all; there is in any case, a sort of arrangement with him. If that fails, there are 2 alternatives. Perhaps, I may take courage to stay here: there is a certainty of Mayor, and possibility of Sanger and Theo.-all fortiWcations against the enemy; and if you would come, there is one more and a stronger. Or, could I come to you? Would it be of any use? Or, if no use, at least, not inconvenient? I sleep with the Davies' the night of the dinner ... the next day I plan to carry oT Ainsworth with me to Torquay, and then abroad with my sister.... Still as far as I can see, I shall be out of the way till the middle of July.... My work has gone all to pieces. I've been trying, and have done so many hours per diem, but very little of it has been writing. (2 June 1901) What is striking about this letter is that Moore instituted evasive manoeuvres to avoid Russell if he could, and the letter expresses in no uncertain terms that Moore's attitude to Russell is now outright aversion. We cannot doubt that Moore found Russell's lively inquisitiveness and Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd "He Was in Those Days Beautiful and Slim" 125 53 The Listenerz 61 (30 April 1959): 755–60. The friends were Russell, Woolf, Morton White, and John Wisdom. appetite for philosophical discussion anathema when he himself was struggling for clarity and producing little, as he was at this time. Russell would hardly hesitate to "viva" a fellow Apostle and friend vigorously for the pure pleasure of it, and for Moore, holding his own against Russell was simply too demanding if he wasn't ready (or even if he was). It is clear that although Moore found Russell's philosophical appetite stimulating at times, he began to resent feeling like grist for the Russellian mill. In the end, Moore simply could not spend too much time in Russell's company without risk of feeling completely hampered in his own progress, and without risk of a debilitating level of what seems to be real frustration and even anger. 6.wconclusion A year after Moore's death, The Listener published an article entitled "The InXuence and Thought of G.yE. Moore: a Symposium of Reminiscence by Four of His Friends", one of whom was Russell.53 Russell's recollection includes signiWcant critical commentary of the kind of work that Moore became famous for, but it is remarkable for the emphasis Russell placed on the impression that Moore's early work had on him: Moore had, in these early years, a quality which, in spite of all his subsequent achievements, he never entirely recovered. I asked him once whether he considered me a prig and he replied, "No. A pedant." I think that in his later years, the accusation of pedantry could be brought against some of his more minute discussions. His Wrst important publication, "The Nature of Judgment" (published in 1899) retains, to my mind, more of the early quality of intellectual intensity than is to be found in his later writings. I do not mean that what is said in that article is more true than what is said later. I am thinking only of the kind of intellectual passion that it displays.... Those who are too young to remember the academic reign of German idealism in English philosophy after T.yH. Green can hardly appreciate what Moore achieved in the way of liberation from intellectual fetters. All honour and gratitude are due to him for this achievement. (Papers 11: 210, 212) I have been arguing that, to a signiWcant extent, Russell's relationship with Moore was forged in but also suTered from the intellectual passion Ja n u a ry 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 ( 8 :4 1 p m ) G:\WPData\TYPE2802\russell 28,2 048red.wpd 126 consuelo preti 54 See my paper cited in note 15. 55 GriUn notes (pp. 58–61) that Russell's enthusiasm for Moore waned signiWcantly when Moore came back to Cambridge in 1911. Among the reasons for this, I believe, is Russell's realization that Moore had in fact gone his own way intellectually-which Russell could have found just too tame. Russell may have been disenchanted by this, having projected his own voracious eagerness to establish a new philosophy onto Moore (the waxing and waning of Russell's relationship with Wittgenstein could be described similarly). Of interest here is a series of letters from Russell to Moore between 1904 and 1905 (Add. 8330/8R/33/25–31; copies in ra1 710) that highlight Moore's seeming reluctance to be drawn into a project with Russell. S.yP. Waterlow (who had been at Trinity in 1897– 1900) had proposed a book on what Russell described to Moore as what "we" think. Russell took the matter in hand with all eUciency, writing to Moore about which chapter he ought to contribute, emphasizing in one letter and then another the importance of writing for a popular market, and asking for meetings with Moore. Moore resisted; the book never appeared. 56 Their correspondence, and a relationship of sorts, continued, however, until shortly before Moore's death in 1958. On 25 October 1958, the day after Moore died, Dorothy Moore received a poignant telegram from Russell, then in Penrhyndeudraeth (Add. 9778 5/62): "Profoundly grieved by your husbands death deepest sympathy Russell." that Russell describes above-but that Russell seemed oblivious to the role his own "passion" played in an account of their relationship. Russell might well have thought that Moore's dissertation drafts (especially that of 1898), with their emphasis on a logico-metaphysical realism, were the beginning of a new metaphysics dedicated uncompromisingly to a view he could share and develop as relevant to his own work in logic and the foundations of mathematics. I have argued elsewhere that "The Nature of Judgment" itself can be read as an anticipation of a contemporary metaphysics of mind in its emphasis on the realist and logically structured nature of the proposition and its constituents.54 It is not surprising, in retrospect, that Russell found Moore's early forays into the metaphysical (for Russell, logicaly) basis of ethics far more interesting and motivating than Moore's subsequent emphasis on ethics.55 In the end Russell's own passion and dedication to his work clashed badly with Moore's, and whatever intimacy had taken root in their relationship was the casualty.