essays of bertrandp.pdf

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rospe tus of the editionby ohn G. Slater and enneth lackwell

Brief deslfiption of the editionThe Collected Essays of Bertrand Russell will includenearly a ll of hi s published and unpublished essays, reviews,

scholarly papers, and popular articles as well as those lettershe intended fo r publication. In a writing life spanning 80 yearsRussell wrote about 2,000 such i tems, so the Edi tion is likely torun to some 25 volumes. In order to achieve an accurate anddefinitive text rigorous editing standards will be .employed; butas a prime intention of the Edition is t o p re se nt a clear readabletext the scholarly apparatus will be kept as completely as provespossible in th e background.2 Need for the edition

Russell himself collected only a small fraction of hi sessays into books. Several of these collections ar e well-known:Mysticism and Logic, Sceptical Essays, Unpopular Essays whichproved very popular and Portraits from Memory. None has evergone out o f p ri nt . n examination of Lester E. Denonn sbibliography in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited byPaul Arthur Schilpp, conveys some idea of the variety and numberof th e essays that have never been reprinted. In the last decade,extensive bibliographical research has turned up many hundreds more.Occasionally a fresh one is discovered, though rarely.now from theearly years of R ussell s career as an author. The Russell Archives,which has nearly a complete collection of the 2,000 essays in oneform or other including many unpublished ones, is regularly askedto supply photocopies of essays which lie inaccessible to mostbut not forgotten by all in ou t of print books, newspapers andperiodicals such as the Jewish Daily FOl101ard The Journal of th eLouise Pettibone Smith Society, and even Mind During th e firstfive months of 1972-73, to take an example, th e Archives supplied10,000 photocopies, most of which represent pages of his essays.

As fo r essays which have never been published, Russellmay have had good reasons fo r not publishing them at the time hewrote them. They may soon have beensuperseded by furtherdevelopments in hi s thinking or in public events. Some may havebeen rejected by the magazine e di to rs o r literary agencies whocOlTUllissioned them. Some were clearly intended only fo r theenjoyment of a small group, such as th e Cambridge Apostles, or

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serve as evidence for the editors choices and also provide a historyof the text from the manuscript through proofs to the last versionprinted during Russell s l ifetime. Revisions within the manuscriptsthemselves might also be noted; a lthough they do not p resent aproblem in determining Russell s linguistic intentions, they do formpart of the history of the text. I t is extremely doubtful, however,~ h e t h e r readers of the Edition will desire such lists, since mostcf the emendations that could be noted are of a very minor nature.lh e editors will, of course, have to discover all alterations in thetext to determine the definitive text, but they do not believe thatl is ts of the alterations need to be printed. They are persuadedthat would be more consonant both with Russell s own attitudeto textual matters and with the needs of Russell scholars to maketheir emendations silently and to deposit their working materialsin the Russell Archives where they would be available to allstudents of textual history.

There is, however, one kind of emendation which couldusefully be printed with the definitive text, namely, emendationswhich significantly alter the meaning of Russell s text. Sincethere is no mechanical way of distinguishing between meaningfulall terations and mere verbal changes, a certain amount of trust willhave to be accorded the editors. The alternative of printing allemendations is a mark of pedantry which Russell would have abhorred.ocamples of emendations which the editors have already decided areworth printing include omissions of passages of one or more sentencesand any changes in technical or phi losophical vocabulary. InThe Free Man s Worship, to give an example of the firs t sort, atthe end of the paragraph beginning But passive renunciation, thel ~ l l o w i n g passage was omitted in Philosophical Essays (1910) and allsubsequent printings of the essay: At times of such inspiration

seem to hear the s trange , deep music of an invisible sea, beatingceaselessly upon an unknown shore. Could we but stand on that shore,

feel, another vision of life might be ours, wider, freer, thanthe narrow valley in which our private life is prisoned. et theTIlanuscript and the first two printed versions include the passage.1be f ac t t ha t was omitted might possibly interest the student ofRussell s development. .

o fa r we have been discussing the treatment ofsubstantive variants, alterations which demonstrablychange meaning. There is another class of variants , of very minorimportance, but whose treatment presents vexing problems. Theseaccidental variants concern punctuation. spelling, capitalization,paragraphing and italicization -- all matters which do not affect

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Russell s Collected Essays -continued ro p 1meaning bu t as to which most authors have habitual and decidedapproaches. Russell was no exception. is desirable to dealwith problems of accidentals both conventionally and consistently,so that th e reader s attention is not distracted from th e meaningof what he is reading. R ussell s practice with regard toaccidentals was almost always consistent and in terms of Britishpractice) usually conventional. Since some style must be adoptedf or t he E di ti on , no harm will be done by adopting Russell s ownstyle. Indeed in so fa r as accidentals contribute an intangibleflavour to verbal expression some additional note of authenticitymay thereby be gained.

In practice this policy means that l t t l alteration canbe done to texts of which only published versions exist. Al l wecan do is compile lists of words Russell normally hyphenated andcapitalized, and of words that he spelled tn1conventionally andusing these lists, change p ri nt ed t ex t s back to th e way he likelywrote them. Paragraphing and ptn1ctuation ar e less objective, andprobably l t t l change should be ventured here. In cases in whichRussell s manuscripts o r t yp e sc ri pt s exist, respe ct f or t he bestevidence of th e author s intentions would require that th e originaltexts be followed though authorized changes in proofs must alwaysbe kept in mind as possibilities. Only rarely would alterations ofaccidentals, at any stage, be noted in t he Edi ti on .

The only period in Russell s life during which hi spractice with regard to accidentals was noticeably different isthe per iod around the turn o f th e century . His capitalizationsat that time were much more frequent than later. In this he wasfollowing th e convention of th e time. The policy to be adoptedfor the Edition will be to retain these frequent capitalizations.In a ll other r espects , such as quoting footnoting and italicization,a single style will be applied throughout the Edition.

th e matter of essays which were published in otherlanguages only English translations will appear in th e Edition.In the case of certain early philosophical essays published inFrench t seems that Russell himself made th e translation from aninitial draft in English. This was certainly th e case with TheLogic o f Relations 1901) o f which manuscripts in both English andFrench exist; and English manuscripts of s ever al other essays ar eextant. Such manuscripts will be consulted in preparing a definitiveEnglish text, with th e published version taking precedence whereconflict occurs.


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