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Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays · Bertrand Russell

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."

Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.

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