McGuinness - Arthur MacIver's Diary

Brian McGuinness, Siena
Arthur MacIver’s Diary: Cambridge (October

1929 – March 1930)
Abstract: This article consists of extracts from a young Oxford philosopher’s dia-
ries recounting his visit to Cambridge in his first postgraduate years and some
subsequent revivals of contact. These extracts shed fascinating light on the so-
cial and academic situation in Cambridge shortly after Wittgenstein’s return
there in the Lent Term 1929 and permit readers to see him from a fresh perspec-
tive. An introduction helps to view these extracts in their proper context.
Fig. 1: Arthur MacIver (1905 – 1972)
Introduction
Arthur MacIver was born in 1905 into a ship-owning family, and was, like Glad-
stone, a Merseyside Scot. His mother’s family had ecclesiastical connexions and
it was probably their traditions that led to his being sent to Winchester, from
which it was natural to proceed to New College, Oxford. These two intellectual
nurseries profoundly affected his habits of thought and gave him acquaintance
with a surprisingly large proportion of the academic and professional elite then
starting or already launched on their careers. His first Oxford degree was in
“Greats”, where alongside Classical Literature and Ancient History he learnt to
see philosophy also through historical eyes. He was particularly well equipped
for this by having acquired, no doubt at Winchester, a good reading knowledge
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202 Brian McGuinness
of German as well as the Greek and Latin presupposed for his degree course. The
present extracts from his diary recount his visit to Cambridge in his first post-
graduate years and some subsequent revivals of contact.
The two ancient universities were, and to a large extent still are, astounding-
ly similar in their arrangements but a closer view reveals important differences,
perhaps particularly where philosophy is concerned. For one thing it was read in
Cambridge by a smaller number than the Oxford system of joint schools (on the
model of Greats) allowed. This led to a greater degree of informality, even of ec-
centricity, on the part of lecturers, and to ready participation from the audience.
Broad’s lecture style, well described by MacIver, was an exception consisting as it
did of dictation. In lectures, but particularly in seminars or informal discussions
there was an insistence on having a speaker’s own opinion and not an account
of what some philosopher of the past had thought on the subject. MacIver is led
to exclaim (inwardly at least) “He (Wittgenstein was in question) could have
learnt that from Aristotle!” This difference, including the exceptional nature of
Broad’s “lectures”, the present writer felt when he made a similar visit to Cam-
bridge in the 1950’s, when the overpowering presence of Wittgenstein was still a
recent memory.
Another difference MacIver’s account brings home to a reader is the more
varied background of the contemporaries, the graduate students and younger
fellows, that he was surrounded by, particularly in circles close to Wittgenstein.
To be sure there were always Wykehamists enough to make him feel at home –
notably the two mathematicians Ramsey and A. G. D. Watson – but a classicist
like Lee was a rare exception and there were even those who came from neither
Oxford nor Cambridge, like the Marxist Maurice Cornforth, whose London Uni-
versity formation in philosophy (and whose clever future wife, a Jewess to
boot) MacIver had to allow for. The bright Cambridge undergraduates or recent
undergraduates, often connected with his Bloomsbury friends, with whom Witt-
genstein at first associated – “all those Julian Bells” he called them – had com-
monly been sent to Reformschulen, progressive schools. This was part of the re-
bellious or Roundhead tradition alive still in pre-(First) War Cambridge, which
led them to call their club the Heretics (it was originally founded to oppose com-
pulsory college chapel). These bright sparks were to fall away, mostly victims to
Marxism. We here find them replaced by earnest young men like Drury from mid-
dle-rank schools and the occasional mathematician from that exceptional nurs-
ery, St.Paul’s, Ursell for example: Skinner and Goldstein were over the horizon.
Later disciples came from assorted public schools and were marked by serious-
ness rather than brilliance. Finally Wittgenstein made friends with a grammar
school scholarship boy, like a character from a novel by C. P. Snow (by coinci-
dence his tutor at Christ’s). This candid figure was to die in Spain alongside

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Arthur MacIver’s Diary 203
three of the bright young sparks mentioned above, Cambridge’s sacrifice on that
sad altar. Wittgenstein’s later friends (“a rum crew” according to his bluff neph-
ew) were more intense and driven. It is interesting that Wittgenstein’s last close
friend was a member of the same cousinage (Vetternwirtschaft almost) that had
long ago first welcomed him to Cambridge.
These things lay in the future but the Heretics meeting was the culmination
– in fireworks, as it were – of Wittgenstein’s engagement with the bright young
things. Another contemporary diarist describes how aesthetes and intelligentsia
and the young marrieds flocked to the meeting and were correspondingly dis-
mayed when they found they had nothing to say. MacIver was in a position to
see it as an exposition of ideas implicit in the Tractatus. A short month later Ju-
lian Bell’s Epistle, a lampoon or even Schmähschrift, appeared (WiC, pp. 173 ff.),
which effectively put an end to any notion of ideals held in common.
MacIver after he returned to Oxford became a convinced Wittgensteinian (or
was convinced that he had become one). He taught at a number of provincial
universities, as they were then called, and was instrumental, with his friend
Duncan-Jones (met during this Cambridge visit) in establishing Analysis as the
periodical voice of the logico-linguistic philosophy of those years, which was
not exclusively centred in Oxford or Cambridge. MacIver ended up as professor
at Southampton. There it was almost inevitable for a professor of philosophy to
seem eccentric. His somewhat black-avised Sottish appearance, perhaps even
some air of the ship-owner that still hung about him, caused him to be nick-
named Captain Ahab. If he did have a white whale, an obsession that he fol-
lowed, it was his diary, faithfully rehearsed and planned before it was filled
in. He was even heard polishing his version of some domestic incident in the
common washroom.
It covers most of his life and is a valuable social document. His daughter
Thamar faithfully transcribed the passages here used and provided much family
information. We have omitted details of purely personal or social interest, cor-
rected, where we could, the very few oversights in the original and tried to iden-
tify the main characters mentioned. Joachim Schulte did the final editing and
provided the notes. I am profoundly grateful to both of them.
Brian McGuinness, Siena, December 2015

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Arthur MacIver’s diary

20th. [August 1929] … In the last week of last term (the whole of which has gone
unrecorded) I happened to be talking one evening with Cox,¹ told him how bored
I was with Oxford and said that I had it in mind, when I had finished my two
years’ residence, to spend a year in Cambridge, though I had to admit that I
was proposing in that year to write my dissertation and really did not want
new experiences to digest so late. He asked me why I should not go to Cambridge
for a term at once. I replied that I had now more or less bound myself to Miss
Fry,² to take Miss Jewill Hill and Miss Smith through to Greats³ and Miss Miskin
[or Mishin] at least to the end of next year, but he induced me not to be so scru-
pulous and on the same night I decided that I was going to do it. I saw Price⁴ and
Joseph⁵ about it; Joseph took it very nicely and said he would try and get me
leave off from the Committee for Advanced Studies; and then I wrote to Ted
Raven, the Canon’s brother⁶, to see whether he could give me any information.
I got no answer to my letter and finally went over to Cambridge, to find the Uni-
versity dead and everyone away. But when I got home and saw the Canon, he
promised to write to his brother and even suggested that I might obtain through
him High Table dining rights In St John’s; at least he would see to it that there
was a room for me if I went to Cambridge during the Long Vac. term. So I went to
Cambridge again on my return from Sondershausen⁷, stayed two nights with Ted
Raven at St Johns, saw Price, who was staying as usual in Trinity, and Broad,⁸
who will make all my academic arrangements, and took a set of rooms with
the Misses Granger of 16 Bateman Street. The High Table privileges were only
a dream of the Canon’s, as I suspected, but the waves have smoothed before
me wonderfully, so here I am going to Cambridge next term. It is more than likely
 Christopher Cox ( – , later Sir C. W. M. Cox), at the time Fellow of New College,
teaching ancient Greek history.
 Margery Fry ( – ), Principal of Somerville College, Oxford.
 MacIver had been tutoring these Somerville students in philosophy.
 H. H. Price (OW [for the meaning of this abbreviation, see n. ],  – ), then at Trinity
College, Oxford, from  Wykeham Professor of Logic.
 H. W. B. Joseph (OW,  – ), MacIver’s tutor at New College, Oxford.
 Canon Raven was a family friend.
 MacIver had spent a fortnight holidaying in Sondershausen, leaving on th July to start a lei-
surely journey home via Weimar.
 C. D. Broad ( – ), at the time University Lecturer, later Knightbridge Professor of
Moral Philosophy at Cambridge.

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that I shall stay there for a second term, simply because I shall not feel like look-
ing for digs in Oxford in the cold of winter.
10th. At ten o’clock this morning I went to my first Cambridge lecture. After some
hesitation I took my gown – wisely, as it turned out, for otherwise I should have
had to go into explanations with the porter at Trinity, who anyhow told me rather
rudely to put it on and not carry it over my shoulder. My first lecturer was F. R.
Tennant⁹ and I found him more than worth while going to: he treats Theology as
θεολογία in the Aristotelian sense, as the keystone of metaphysics, and it looks
to me as though his lectures will be more philosophical than C. C. J. Webb’s,¹⁰
although Webb calls his subject the ‘Philosophy of Religion’. At the end of the
hour I had to find my way to the Arts School, which is in Bene’t Street, where
Moore was lecturing on ‘Metaphysics’. He reminds me in some unaccountable
way of G. H. Hardy,¹¹ although he has a round plump face more like Lindsay’s¹²
and very short silky white hair: I found myself wondering whether he might not
suffer from blood-pressure like Mrs Moon¹³, for he has a flushed face like her and
pale, dithering fingers. There were about half-a-dozen people at the lecture, in-
cluding two women, one of them Indian. He lectures exactly as he writes, labour-
ing to make perfectly clear the simplest points, so that among all the clarification
one often misses the drift of the argument. He began by discussing questions of
epistemology and in particular Russell’s distinction of ‘knowledge by acquaint-
ance’ and ‘knowledge by description’, but hardly got further than saying that nei-
ther of them was really knowledge. At the end of that hour I came back to Trinity
for Broad’s course on the ‘Elements of Philosophy’. A crowd had gathered in Lec-
ture-room No. 4 which complet[ely] overflowed it, to Broad’s obvious delight,
though he said himself that it was most unusual and would not last long. We
had to move into Lecture-room No. 9, where Tennant had lectured. Broad is
not a good lecturer; his method is to read a sentence out and then to repeat it
word for word, and I found that for the first time in the day I was waiting for
the end of the hour to come before it came; but perhaps the reason of that partly
was that the lecture was very elementary and indeed simply a repetition of the
Introduction to his ‘Scientific Thought’. After the lecture I stayed outside the
 F. R. Tennant ( – ), theologian.

 C. C. J. Webb ( – ), theologian and philosopher of religion.
 G. H. Hardy (OW,  – ), well-known mathematician; at this time at Oxford, from
 at Cambridge. Acquainted with Wittgenstein, who referred to him both in his manuscripts
and in his lectures.
 A. D. Lindsay ( – ), at the time Master of Balliol College, Oxford.
 Mother of MacIver’s friend from Winchester College, Penderel Moon.

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Great Gate talking to two men, Trinity men by their gowns, one of them an Amer-
ican, who had come from the University of London and were taking the second
part of the Moral Sciences Tripos. Doubtless I shall meet them again at the Moral
Science Club,¹⁴ if Broad remembers to put me up for membership of it.
12th. Now I have had my second day of Cambridge lectures. Tennant was not so
interesting to me to-day as on Thursday, because to-day he was concerned chief-
ly to convince the ordinary dogmatic theologian of the value and necessity of
philosophy in the study of theology. Moore, on the other hand, seems to improve
as he goes on, and to-day he was bringing out some very important distinctions;
the point to which he is leading up is that all ‘knowledge’ properly so called ei-
ther is or involves knowledge of what he calls ‘facts’ – what Russell calls ‘truths’
– in other words that knowledge is always discursive, though it is never the same
as any kind of opinion. On Saturdays Moore has a ‘conversation-class’ after his
lecture, so to-day I did not go to hear Broad. A ‘conversation-class’ is more or
less the same thing as an Oxford ‘informal’, except that you are not allowed
to smoke. The conversation started on the lecture and drifted off, misled by a
Trinity man named Drury,¹⁵ onto animal intelligence, at which point I discoursed
at length on the subject of wasps. At the end of the hour Moore asked me my
name and college, having already forgotten that I had spoken to him after the
lecture on Thursday.
15th. Tennant’s lecture was not very exciting; he takes rather a long time to come
to the point, for he has till [now] hardly done [more] than tell the theologians
that they ought to study philosophy, though there are signs that he is moving
on to something more constructive. Moore, on the other hand, grows better
and better, though I am afraid that in one point in which he thinks himself orig-
inal he has been forestalled by Aristotle. I went back again to Broad to-day and
found that he said one or two things that were worth taking down: I ran after
him after the lecture and asked him about the Moral Science Club, and he
said that, if I had put down my name and address on the paper which he had
passed round, I should receive a fixture-card. For the rest of the day I have
done practically nothing.
 For Wittgenstein’s attitude towards the Club, see various entries in WiC. See also P&PO.
 Maurice O’Connor Drury ( – ), a close friend of Wittgenstein’s. See his accounts of
conversations with Wittgenstein in RoW. For his attendance at Wittgenstein’s lectures, see
P&PO,  – .

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16th. At about twelve o’clock I somehow found myself in Peas Hill, just when peo-
ple were coming out of lectures in the Arts School, and there I met A. G. D.
Watson,¹⁶ who is apparently still at King’s, I fancy as a Fellow; I said that I
would go and look him up one of these days. Then I went to Bowes and
Bowes, where I bought both Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus Logico-philosophicus’
and Evelyn Underhill’s ‘Mysticism’. The Wittgenstein I shall have to read if I
am to understand the philosophy of Cambridge; but I must concede that I regard
Evelyn Underhill’s as the more important, though not perhaps the clearer
thought out, book.
17th. At his lecture this morning Moore provoked me exceedingly: he said that
there were no such things as ‘mental dispositions’, what was meant by saying
that anyone ‘has a mental disposition’ being that a certain kind of hypothetical
proposition was true of him; what he seemed entirely to fail to recognise was that
every hypothetical proposition must be grounded in the categorical and this par-
ticular hypothetical in the categorical assertion of the mental disposition. On this
point I had a terrible argument with the London man, whose name I think is
Cornforth,¹⁷ on our way to Broad’s lecture, and during the lecture I saw him writ-
ing out a proof, in which I saw the words ‘the King of France’, which he told me
demonstrated conclusively that I was wrong, but he did not show me the proof,
though I think I see the fallacy that must be in it. From the conversation of Drury
with Bose,¹⁸ the Indian from Magdalene, before Moore’s lecture, I learnt that
there would be no meeting of the Moral Science Club to-morrow evening.
After that I decided that I would go and look up Watson in King’s, but I did
not leave the house until about half past six. I found him correcting papers:
he is not a Fellow but has a studentship and is writing a thesis for a Fellowship,
and meanwhile is correcting papers for one of the lecturers in the college – I sus-
pect Ramsey, though I failed to ask. He is obviously very intelligent; is a friend of
Wittgenstein’s; and can discuss philosophy with much more competence than
such professional philosophers as Cornforth. He has invited me to have tea
with him on Saturday, which I must not forget.
18th. This afternoon the fixture-card of the Moral Science Club arrived, together
with a request for a terminal subscription of one shilling; there are to be six
 A. G. D. Watson (OW,  – ), mathematician (see WiC, letter no. ).
 Maurice Cornforth ( – ), Marxist philosopher. For his attendance at Wittgenstein’s
lectures, see P&PO, . Married Kitty Klugmann, see below, n. .
 S. K. Bose, for his attendance at Wittgenstein’s lectures, see P&PO,  – .

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meetings, the first on October 25th – a week to-day. Ryle is reading a paper on
‘The Programme of Phenomenology’ on the last Friday of term, November 29th.
19th. At half past ten I walked into Cambridge, posted my letter to Miss Willink at
the G[eneral] P[ost] O[ffice], bought myself a new pipe at Baker’s, and went to the
Arts School for Moore’s lecture at eleven. Moore’s lecture continued on much the
same lines as the previous lectures and there was nothing very exciting in it: but
when the time came for the conversation-class, in came a man, thin and with a
long neck, wearing a pale blue shirt without collar or tie, a grey flannel suit and
an M. A. gown, whom I took to be Wittgenstein and it turned out that I was right.
The conversation-class began rather slowly with a discussion between Moore
and Drury as to whether the capacity for perception was a dispositional relation:
that however faded out and I cannot now remember whether it was I who started
the next discussion or, if not, how I got onto my favourite point of hypothetical
propositions being always grounded in categorical; at any rate the point was
taken up by Drury and then by Wittgenstein and soon we had got on to the mo-
lecular structure of magnets, from which it became very difficult to get away; the
discussion was carried on mainly by Wittgenstein, Drury, myself and a man
whose name I discovered to be James,¹⁹ while Moore for the most part listened
without breaking in. Really we were all arguing on different things, and for
my own part I could not understand what Wittgenstein was driving at, though
I have been looking at his book since then and think that there may have
been more in what he was saying than I thought at the time. After the class I
walked a certain distance with James, who invited me to lunch with him after
the lecture on Tuesday.
Did very little during the afternoon and set out soon after half past three to
walk down to King’s, to have tea with Watson. We talked about all sorts of things
– largely about Old Wykehamists²⁰ – and divided at about half past six. I did lit-
tle during the evening but read a little Wittgenstein, and now it seems to be al-
ready five minutes to eleven.
22nd. For some time now I have failed to turn up at Tennant’s lecture until after it
had begun but this morning I made an effort and was in time for it. He spoke to
 D. G. James: for his attendance at Wittgenstein’s lectures, see P&PO, . Possibly Drury’s
‘friend James’ (mentioned in his account of a conversation with Wittgenstein, RoW, ).
 People who had been educated at Winchester College, one of the most important and influ-
ential public schools in Britain (established in ). There is a very close connection between
this school and New College, Oxford. MacIver attended both, and many of his friends were Old
Wykehamists (abbreviated as OW).

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me before the lecture, so he remembers who I am. I cannot say that I seem to
have missed much by cutting the last lecture, because he has not yet nearly fin-
ished his preliminaries and begun his argument. Moore, on the other hand, sur-
passed himself to-day, giving an account at the same time of perception and of
change. He seemed to be lecturing all the time at me, but this may have been
pure delusion. Everything that he said seems to have some bearing on the
work that I am doing at present. After the lecture I did not go on to Broad but
walked with James in the Backs instead, talking. He is a Welshman, from the
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a friend of Ivor Thomas²¹, though
he has rather got out of touch with Thomas since he became an Anglo-Catholic,
himself remaining a Congregationalist.
24th. I was in time for Tennant’s lecture again this morning, but it was not really
worth being in time for: I have never before met with anyone who began so well
and then took so long to come to the point; he is the first theologian whom I have
ever met whose ‘Theology’ is Theology and not Biblical Criticism, Church History
or Christian Apologetics, but I wish he could get beyond discussing the empirical
and a priori methods in Philosophy. Moore was continuing his argument of the
day before yesterday but did not quite rise again to the same heights: his theory
of Change is really not quite sufficiently worked out – I mean to tackle him on it
at the conversation-class on Saturday. Before the lecture an undergraduate came
in and asked me whether Moore’s lectures were very advanced, he not being a
philosopher: I gave him my notes to look at and he beat a retreat before
Moore came in. I went on to hear Broad, having shirked his last two lectures,
but really it is almost a waste of time: to-day he finished at last what has
been only a prolonged recapitulation of the Introduction to ‘Scientific Thought’
and begun an account of epistemology with what was simply a dogmatic state-
ment of the correspondence-theory of Truth.
25th. After tea, not feeling like anything in the form of work, I began to read Tche-
hov’s [sic] ‘Three Sisters’ but had only just finished the third act when it was time
for an early supper, and then I had to go to the Moral Science Club, which was
meeting in Drury’s rooms in Trinity. There was a large company, mostly men but
including four women – one Indian woman in a sari, who also attends Moore’s
lectures. The paper was insufferably bad, but I understand that it does not rep-
resent the ordinary standard of the Club. The reader was a psychologist of the
 Later Ivor Bulmer-Thomas, M.P. ( – ), journalist, scholar, church preserver, newspaper
editor, and Government minister.

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name of Bailey and his subject ‘Marriage’, but the paper was so badly arranged
that one could not discover what his opinions were or what he was driving at,
except that on the whole he wanted the marriage laws left as they are. I was sit-
ting next to the fire, opposite Cornforth, and I got very hot. When the paper was
over, a discussion wandered round the room and round and round the subject,
but nothing ever came out of it because some people would discuss neuroses
and some prostitution and then Drury would assert that it was no use discussing
the question at all because Ethics could only discuss purely abstract questions.
When the meeting ended, a few of us were invited by Drury to stay behind and
then we had a more reasonable discussion, though it was hardly on the subject
of the paper but on things in general, such as Melanesian customs. Drury is a
very nice man and his philosophical library is a marvel: I was proud of the num-
ber of my philosophical books but Drury has collected almost twice the number
in only three years, and he says that he has read practically all of them.
26th. Tennant did not seem to get much forrarder, but Moore finished the question
of perception and came back to knowledge. Wittgenstein came again to the con-
versation-class, but I was able to raise the two questions which I wanted to dis-
cuss, and the second of them, which concerned the nature of change, took up the
whole of the rest of the hour. Only Moore seemed to grasp my point properly and
he disagreed with it, though it seemed to me self-evident enough – namely that
only the permanent can change and that its change must be a succession of dif-
ferent attributes inhering in the one substance. Wittgenstein talked at prodigious
length about logical formulae. When I got home, I found a letter waiting for me
from Joseph: he says that I have to send five pounds to the Secretary of Faculties
but does not tell me whether or not he has succeeded in getting me leave of ab-
sence from the Committee for Advanced Studies. He says: ‘Wittgenstein was at a
meeting of the Aristotelian and the Mind Association which I attended at Not-
tingham in July; he reminded me of the Ancient Mariner; he held the audience
with his glittering eye, and discoursed excitedly on a discovery about the contin-
uous being only potentially divisible and not actually divided ad infinitum: all of
which might be found in the Physics of Aristotle. I believe that in conversation I
appeared to him quite mad.’²²
 See Wittgenstein, Some Remarks on Logical Form (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
Supplementary Volume  [],  – , reprinted in Klagge & Nordmann  [eds.],
 – ). This is the paper written for the meeting at Nottingham. As implied by Joseph, Wittgen-
stein gave a completely different paper, which is probably identical with no.  (“The infinite”,
pp.  – ) in Ramsey .

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27th. (Sunday) in the afternoon I went out for a walk along the Trumpington road,
where half Cambridge seemed to be taking the air in its Sunday clothes. I had to
come back in time to change to go out to tea with the Willinks. Again there were
two other men there, but much more congenial to me than last time. One of them
was Austin Duncan Jones,²³ son of the new Dean of Chichester, whose mother is
a cousin of Mrs. Raven’s; the other was a very unclerical young cleric, who is at
present working as a chartered accountant. Duncan Jones is of Caius, of which
his father was Dean and his maternal grandfather Master, is doing the second
part of the Moral Sciences Tripos, having previously read classics, and is an in-
telligent young man, though not (I should have judged) a born philosopher. He
had to write an essay for Braithwaite,²⁴ though he was allowed to choose the
subject for himself, and, wanting to write on a subject of which Braithwaite
knew nothing, had chosen the categories of Aristotle compared with those of
modern philosophy. I suggested that he should read Joseph’s chapter on the sub-
ject, and he came back here with me and borrowed the book, together with
Macleane’s ‘Reason, Thought and Language’.²⁵
29th. Tennant is now in full career on the subject of consciousness and I am afraid
that, in order to understand his position properly, I may have to read his volume
on ‘The Soul and its Faculties’. At Moore’s lecture there was an enormous crowd
for some reason or other and he had to pass the paper round again for everyone
to sign his name. I am coming to admire Moore very much: he is able to criticise
the foundations of the school of thought which he himself founded. To-day he
made a distinction between sense-data and sensible qualities and also said
that he was not sure that there were any such things as irreducible multiple re-
lations. I went on to Broad’s lecture with Cornforth, who, having at first disliked
me strongly, has softened towards me since the meeting of the Moral Science
Club last Friday. Broad was going on to-day with the theory of truth, and, having
finished his exposition of the correspondence theory, began to criticise other the-
ories. His criticism of the coherence seemed to be, for Broad, very fair, but Corn-
forth thought it unsatisfactory, which interested me. I stayed talking to Cornforth
 A. E. Duncan-Jones ( – ), later professor of philosophy at Birmingham. He was the

first editor of the journal Analysis – a journal to which MacIver contributed a number of articles,
responses, etc. See the article by Braithwaite (‘Austin Duncan-Jones’ Philosophical Writings’)
and the bibliography of his work in volume , number  () of Analysis.
 R. B. Braithwaite ( – ), Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, later holder of the Knight-
bridge Chair of Moral Philosophy.
 Douglas Macleane, Reason, Thought and Language, or The Many and The One ().

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for a while after the lecture, and he invited me to come to tea with him on Sun-
day, which is a day on which he apparently gets very bored.
31st. Tennant was still on the subject of sensation and perception, expounding
the doctrines of James Ward,²⁶ while Moore – as if by inspiration ever assisting
my thought – came to consider the question how we all know facts about the
same piece of chalk, which is not a sensible object to any of us, and so to a criti-
cism of Russell’s theory of ‘descriptions’, which promises to keep us occupied
some little time. Before the lecture, I asked Drury whether he could come and
have tea with me and he looked up in his pocket diary and offered Wednesday
next, which I must not forget. We went on to Broad, Cornforth and I discussing
the logisticians, rather irreverently, I think, for Drury’s taste. Broad was criticis-
ing Pragmatism, and that so unfairly that even I, who do not love the Pragma-
tists, was offended, and Cornforth, who does not ordinarily take notes of lec-
tures, filled his note-book with swear-words. After the lecture I joined in a
meeting of protest with Cornforth and the American, whose name I do not yet
know, outside the Great Gate.
After tea I read the chapter in Russell’s ‘Introduction to Mathematical Philos-
ophy’ which Moore proposes to discuss in his lectures, and after supper that part
of Joseph’s ‘Introduction to Logic’ which deals with general terms – really the
same subject[.]
November 1st. Broad was reading a paper to the Moral Science Club in his own
room and there was an enormous crowd collected there. An enormous man
like a cross between a light-house and a balloon – like a Zeppelin set up on
end – who came in with Wittgenstein, I did not at first recognise, but it was Ram-
sey. Braithwaite was in the chair and is also a large man, but not as large as
Ramsey. The paper, it turned out, was one which I had heard Broad read to
the Oxford Philosophical Society last term. Then the discussion was led by
Prichard²⁷ and attacked the conception of relations as universals; this time it
was entirely dominated by Wittgenstein and Ramsey and, so far as I could follow
it, attempted to show that analysis was annihilation of the thing analysed, which
impressed Broad and led him to recant but seemed to me manifestly false. Corn-
forth had with him a frightened little man from Corpus, Oxford, who had been at
 James Ward ( – ), Cambridge psychologist and philosopher, from  Professor of
Mental philosophy and Logic. Mentioned by Wittgenstein (MS , b; cf. Biesenbach ,
).
 H. A. Prichard ( – ), Oxford philosopher. From  White’s Professor of Moral
Philosophy.

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the last meeting of the Jowett²⁸ of last term and is now doing psychology in Cam-
bridge. Duncan Jones was also there and very bored. Afterwards I introduced my-
self to Ramsey and walked home with him as far as the R[oman] C[atholic]
church; he is now married, with two small children, and lives in Mortimer
Road, overlooking Parker’s Piece; he is still a very nice man and we discussed
philosophical fundamentals, but we could never agree however long we argued;
he belongs, with Wittgenstein, to the Cambridge ‘Left Wing’ and considers phi-
losophy to be merely a matter of the right use of language, as also mathematics,
all else being empirical science and such things as aesthetics merely complicat-
ed branches of psychology.
2nd. Tennant was still expounding the psychology of Ward, and when he is going
to reach the proper subject of theology God alone knows, for it seems that he is
just working through his own book and the whole of its first volume is entitled
‘The Soul and its Faculties’. Moore continued with Russell’s theory of descrip-
tions, but he has not yet reached the point which will interest me – namely
the construction after he has finished demolishing; for I suspect that Moore’s
construction will be less purely mathematical than Russell’s, especially since,
somehow or other, he is going to apply it to the theory of perception. Having mo-
nopolised the conversation-class for the last two weeks, I meant to keep myself
in the background to-day, so came with no problem or arguments prepared, but,
when no-one seemed to have anything to say, I propounded the question, which
has been troubling me so long, whether what Cambridge calls ‘sense-data’ are
not just sensible qualities, which must inhere in something perceptible but not
sensible. The result was confusion, as I had no arguments thought out and
could only assert my opinion dogmatically, Moore saw what I was after but
saw no reason for agreeing with it, Wittgenstein had no idea what I was after,
and no-one else spoke a word. The end of it all was that the class came to an
end, no-one having anything more to say, at a quarter to one, and I was home
long before Miss Granger had my dinner ready.
I greatly shocked Drury and Cornforth this morning by asserting that what
Ramsey and Wittgenstein said last night was quite certainly false: I think they
regarded such a saying as blasphemy. I find it very difficult to attack the presup-
positions of Cambridge philosophy without offending Cambridge susceptibili-
ties.
 Jowett Society – discussion society at Oxford, open to all members of the [Sub‐]Faculty of
Philosophy, named after Benjamin Jowett, a former Master of Balliol College.

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3rd. I had no difficulty in finding Cornforth’s rooms, at 4 Montagu Road; he has

quite a nice room, though small, and we had a very pleasant tea and talk. Of
course he is no more a pure Cambridge philosopher than James, coming as he
does from the University of London, and he is provoked to violent opposition
by Broad’s dogmatic methods. He seems to know Greek, which I had not real-
ised, and has quite a decent knowledge of Aristotle, having read most of the Or-
ganon, the Metaphysics and the De Anima and proposing to devote some time to
the Parva Naturalia. When he had to go to Hall, we walked in together as far as
the corner of Sidney Street and St John’s Street, discussing Positivism and
Meyerson.²⁹
5th. I was rather later than usual in getting out of bed and thought of cutting Ten-
nant’s lecture when I found that, going back into the house to fill my fountain
pen, I had missed two buses, and I would not have got to the lecture in time
if I had not caught a third bus at the Roman Catholic church. I doubt whether
the lecture was worth being in time for: he discussed nothing in it that I
might not find in his book, and that was only concerned with the psychology
of what he calls ‘ideation’. Moore continued with Russell’s ‘theory of indefinite
descriptions’ and it looks to me as though his criticism is going to be one with
which I shall find myself in sympathy: at the end of the hour he seemed to be
summing up the theory of indefinite descriptions and preparing to advance to
‘definite descriptions’. I walked from the Arts School to the Great Gate of Trinity
with James, discussing Friday night’s meeting and the meekness with which
Broad lay down to Ramsey and Wittgenstein: the result was that I was a little
late in arriving at Broad’s lecture, where he continued his dogmatic exposition
of his own philosophy.
7th. I think that I only go to Tennant now because I shall have to pay two guineas
to the University for them and I do not like to give money away for nothing; to-
day he was attempting to establish the substantiality of the self, but he never got
to grips with the subject or proved or disproved anything. There was a man at
Moore’s lecture who, from the visiting card which he laid on the desk in front
of him, seemed to be a Professor from the University of Barcelona. Moore contin-
ued with Russell’s ‘indefinite descriptions’ but we have still to wait for the inclu-
sive and decisive criticism – we have [not? – word omitted] done with exposition.
So on with Cornforth to Broad. I am not surprised that Drury tells me that these
lectures make such an impression on the beginner that for a long time many
 Émile Meyerson ( – ), scientist and philosopher of science.

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people can only think in Broad’s terminology; to-day he tabulated all the possi-
ble kinds of judgment, and he seems to have quite a Wolffian power of system-
atising. Half way through the lecture, in comes the Catalan professor, with an un-
dergraduate guide, and apparently he had been at Sorley’s³⁰ lecture before he
came to Moore’s. At a quarter past four in the afternoon, having finished the
third section of the fourth chapter of Rickert,³¹ by bus to Trinity, where I found
that Drury had two other guests – a classical research student and a little Scotch
philosopher, whom I had already met twice before; I did not catch either of their
names, but the Scotsman has some funny name like ‘Shillingdore’.³² The classi-
cist went away soon after tea, and then we talked philosophy. Drury is far too
loyal to his pastors and masters for it to be possible to discuss things in a really
sympathetic fashion, but I was interested to hear him confess that he expected a
reaction against this Broadian analysis of concepts, which failed to explain what
it was that made one feel, when reading Hegel for example, that he was getting
at something, although he had no ‘clear and distinct ideas’.
8th. Home again for tea and read more Rickert, then my Friday evening’s early
supper and to Moran’s³³ rooms in Clare, where Moran was reading to the
Moral Science Club a paper on ‘Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds accord-
ing to Berkeley’. Moran is an American ‘hearty’: his mantelpiece is covered with
dinner menus and athletic club fixture-cards; at the end of it hangs a police-
man’s truncheon, showing that he was one of the rowdies of Tuesday night;
and on the picture-rail all round the room were bases for beer-glasses, all but
one of them German and each an advertisement of a different brewery. Although
it was a ‘supplementary meeting’, to which no-one not in statu pupillari is sup-
posed to come, Wittgenstein was there and said that Moore would have come if
he had not had a bad cold and the Catalan professor was also there, with a com-
patriot. The paper was not a bad paper, although he might have understood Ber-
keley better, but it was iniquitously read, without any sense of punctuation, and
so by no means as easy to follow as it might have been. But this mattered very
little, for the discussion was not allowed to continue on the subject of the paper
for long: Wittgenstein, who has no interest for anything historical, insisted on
knowing what was Moran’s own opinion and so started an argument which last-
ed all the rest of the evening. Wittgenstein holds that no statement has any
meaning unless there is a logically possible test of its truth and that to share any-
 W. R. Sorley ( – ), at the time Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy.

 Heinrich Rickert ( – ), well-known neo-Kantian philosopher.
 A. T. Shillinglaw, cf. below. For his attendance at Wittgenstein’s lectures, see P&PO, .
 B. Moran, see P&PO, .

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one else’s feelings is logically impossible, because they would then cease to be
the other person’s feelings, so that he was forced to hold that statements about
other people’s feelings only have meaning as statements about their behaviour,
and on this he argued with Drury for the whole evening. I had to sit on the floor
and had a sofa between me and the protagonists, so that I could never join in the
argument, and as the evening wore on and my position became more and more
uncomfortable I grew more and more impatient and took to making faces at
Cornforth, who sat in the window and occasionally tried to join in. At last the
meeting was adjourned at eleven o’clock, but some of us stayed behind and
the argument continued. Wittgenstein now saw that in some sense we can
make statements about other people’s feelings and mean something and he ad-
vanced a doctrine of a primitive experience which is no-one’s experience, in
which all individual experients somehow participate. At a quarter to twelve we
at last divided; Drury, tired out, had gone to bed some time before; I walked
along as far as Corpus with Wittgenstein, Lee³⁴ (the Corpus man with whom I
walked home after my first Moral Science Club meeting on October 25th.) and
Webster, the little man from Corpus, Oxford, who is now a member of Corpus,
Cambridge, and was in bed at half past twelve.
9th. Having gone to bed so late last night, I thought of cutting Tennant’s lecture
but decided in the end that that would be setting a bad precedent, since I was
rather late about getting up yesterday morning, so I overcame my indolence,
dressed and breakfasted and went to hear further praise of James Ward. Since
Moore had had a bad cold last night, there was some doubt as to whether he
would turn up for the lecture to-day, but he arrived at ten minutes past the
hour and was superlatively good, making it quite clear at last what Russell
meant by a ‘propositional function’ – namely, what would better be called a ‘fac-
tual form’. Wittgenstein came in for the conversation-class, for which I purposely
produced no questions, but for a long while it went very slowly, until about half
or three-quarters of the way through Drury raised again the question which was
discussed last night, that took them on till one o’clock and after, and the last
thing that I heard as we came away was Drury and Wittgenstein arranging a
meeting-place in which to continue the argument.
10th. (Sunday) I have now finished the fourth chapter of Rickert and for a while
have stopped reading the book, because I think that the fifth and last chapter
 H. D. P. (later Sir Desmond) Lee ( – ). Lee went to see Wittgenstein on the Hochreit in
 (cf. WiC, no. ). He edited Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge  –  in Lee .

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deals only with subsidiary questions and there are thoughts which the earlier
chapters have suggested, which I want to let take form; but for the present my
mind is too much a-whirl with thoughts of every kind, many of them suggested
by Moore’s conversation-class and Wittgenstein, for me to be able yet to settle
down to any subject or to produce anything definite.
12th. Tennant this morning displayed what I can only call rank philosophical su-
perficiality in his account of the category of substance as applied to the ‘pure
ego’ and in his criticism of Bosanquet³⁵: and so once again I am confirmed in
my belief that theology must be a very easy subject if theologians are so easily
satisfied, unless perhaps it is the fact that theologians are clergymen and there-
fore generally preachers which tempts them to use rhetorical arguments where
demonstrations are required. There were two foreigners, a man and a woman,
at Moore’s lecture, whom I discovered afterwards to be Poles – the man a philos-
opher from the University of Cracow and the woman a mathematical logician
from Warsaw. Apparently Wittgenstein is not yet content on the subject of
other minds and there is to be a meeting, probably on Thursday evening,
when we will continue to discuss the question. Moore finished at last with indef-
inite descriptions and began on definite descriptions: what I shall be interested
to see is how he will connect all this up again with the subject of perception.
After the lecture I invited James to come and take tea with me sometime soon,
and he suggested some day at the beginning of next week. Cornforth and I
went on to Broad and afterwards talked as usual outside the Great Gate and
he invited me to come to tea with him again next Sunday, when he was having
Drury to tea.
14th. This evening we were to have met in Drury’s rooms to continue that long-
protracted argument with Wittgenstein but it appears that Wittgenstein had
some other engagement so it is put off until some evening next week. Drury
let me know this at Moore’s lecture this morning. Moore has not yet finished
with Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, but I think that I have grasped
now what Russell means (or at least ought to mean) by the ‘primitive notion’
which he symbolises (∃x).øx – namely, the existence of a universal, or, since a
universal can exist only in its instances, its having instances; which implies,
of course, that ‘Socrates exists’ cannot be represented in this symbolism.
Drury was very reserved to-day, so that Cornforth commented on it; I think
that I or someone must have offended him. Broad to-day was discussing Empiri-
 Bernard Bosanquet ( – ), well-known British idealist.

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cism. After the lecture he came up to me and said that he wanted to speak to me
about something connected with Sorley; apparently someone on the Council of
the Senate has been asking Sorley, as head of the Faculty of Moral Science, who
and what I am, but I gave Broad as much information as he seemed to think nec-
essary; I suspect the source of the trouble is that the theologians want to know
on what scale to charge me for attending Tennant’s lectures. Cornforth told me
to-day that when he mentioned to Johnson³⁶ Joseph’s article ‘What does Mr. W. E.
Johnson mean by a proposition’, the poor old man nearly burst into tears and
had to be soothed by being told that of course the article was all nonsense.
15th. I had my supper early and went in to the Moral Science Club in A. R. M. Mur-
ray’s rooms in Trinity. Murray took a star first in the Tripos and is now preparing
his dissertation for a Fellowship: he is a Scotsman with woolly hair like a negro’s
and rather an irritating manner – a high-pitched voice, a certain amount of not
unnatural vanity and a highly involved literary style: he was reading a paper on
‘Substance and Quality’. I arrived rather early and found the room empty and in
darkness, but it gradually filled up. Murray’s paper, for all that it professed to be
original and to represent the theories of Stout³⁷ in more accurate language,
seemed to be no more than a defence of the now familiar Cambridge thesis
that the distinction between substance and its attributes should be replaced
by the distinction between an ‘object’ and its components. It was interesting, be-
cause he admitted the particularity of qualities, or, as he called them, compo-
nents, and only asserted the universality of relations. Unfortunately I could
not get him to see that relations too must be individual, because Shillinglaw
then began to talk portentously about Stout’s theory of the universal, both mis-
understanding me and, I hope for Stout’s good name as a philosopher, misun-
derstanding Stout. Shillinglaw dominated the argument for the rest of the eve-
ning, while I, sitting far away from the fire and growing cold, grew also
impatient. I had hoped to be able to make the matter clear by talking to Murray
afterwards, but Shillinglaw is a friend of Murray’s and also stayed behind and
 W. E. Johnson ( – ), Fellow of King’s College and Lecturer in the University of Cam-
bridge. Author of three volumes on Logic. See WiC, no. , and F. R. Leavis, ‘Memories of Witt-
genstein’ (RoW,  – ). Joseph’s article appeared in two instalments in Mind ( – ). In
this article, Joseph distinguished almost twenty senses in which Johnson had used the word
’proposition’ – that is why it was regarded as devastating.
 G. F. Stout ( – ), influential editor of Mind ( – ), teacher of both Moore
and Russell. From , first Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford until, in , he
was elected Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at St. Andrews.

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continued to create misunderstandings and besides Cornforth had a point of his

own to raise and was also there, so I came away home.
16th. Moore has now at last finished with Russell’s theory of descriptions and has
indicated how the discussion of it is connected with the theory of perception
from which he started, and I must admit it seems to me that the connection is
very slight. At the conversation-class I raised rather a number of disconnected
points, with most of which Moore either agreed or disagreed and there was an
end of it. The Polish woman was there and raised a lot of points of detail
about Russell, but her knowledge of English was so slight that it was very
hard to discover what she meant and generally she did not seem to mean
much. The last point which I raised concerned our knowledge of persons real
and fictitious and the consequences which its existence has for theories of the
existential judgment, which created a certain amount of surprise but nothing
more. Wynne Willson, the secretary of the Moral Science Club, has complained
to Broad about Wittgenstein’s presence at the ‘supplementary meeting’ a fort-
night ago and Broad has passed this on to Moore and Moore to Wittgenstein,
with the result that Wittgenstein is now holding little meetings of protest with
everyone he meets. We are to gather for further discussion in Drury’s rooms on
Thursday evening. James is coming to tea with me on Monday. During this after-
noon and evening I have been occupied with the question, partly suggested by
last night’s discussion and partly of long-standing concern to me, of the plurality
of qualities in the nature of an individual substance.
17th. (Sunday) it was time to set out to catch the bus which was to take me to tea
with Cornforth. Drury and Lee were to have been there besides myself but Drury
once again had some other engagement. Lee I find to be rather a nice man and
not a moral scientist as I had supposed but a classic, who is, as it were, doing
Greats at Cambridge – taking the ancient philosophy section of the second
part of the Classical Tripos and meanwhile attending the Moral Science lectures.
This afternoon he and I rather tended to talk ancient philosophy to the complete
neglect of the unfortunate Cornforth, who, though he knows a good deal about
Aristotle, who was a set philosopher in his schools in London, knows no Greek
and is not much interested in such people as Plotinus. I was intending as usual
to spend my Sunday evening at home, even though Wittgenstein was addressing
the Heretics on ‘Ethics’,³⁸ but when Lee proposed that I should dine with him in
 See Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics (first edited by Rush Rhees and published in Philosoph-
ical Review [],  – ; various reprints and editions).

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Corpus hall and go on to hear Wittgenstein I decided to accept, only just going
back to Bateman Street to inform Miss Granger – or at least Mr Granger, the mar-
ket-gardener brother, who was left alone in the kitchen when they went to
church. A Cambridge college hall seems much more formal than an Oxford
one – everyone standing up for the dons to come in and no-one sitting down
until the Dean has said grace. The Heretics were an enormous crowd meeting
in the Conservative Clubs with a terracotta bust of Disraeli on the mantelpiece.
Wittgenstein made a magnificent speech – though there was little in it that was
not in the ‘Tractatus’ – though it was wasted on the Heretics, who cannot appre-
ciate religious feeling or argue except sophistically. After the meeting Cornforth
thought we could get hold of Wittgenstein and have a discussion with him in the
Corner House, but the Corner House was reserved for the committee of the Her-
etics, who carried Wittgenstein in with them. So a strange company consisting of
Lee, Cornforth and myself, a Canadian, an American, some nondescripts and
two women from Girton, Miss Klugmann, known as Kitty,³⁹ a very able Jewess
who has taken a first in Moral Science and now took charge of our whole
party, and her friend Miss Thompson, known as Tom, wandered around Cam-
bridge looking for an open pub, drank coffee at the coffee-stall in Market Hill
and only broke up when it became quite apparent that no pubs are open to un-
dergraduates after ten o’clock on Sunday nights in Cambridge.
19th. What Tennant said to-day was more like philosophy or theology and less
purely slipshod psychology than what he has so far been dealing out, for he
was discussing the relations of time and eternity, but it is all very lax and he
never gets to the heart of the matter. Moore to-day was rather harder to follow
than usual for, though he has got away from mere exposition of Russell, he is
still trying to define exactly what he means by one fact ‘describing’⁴⁰ another,
and this involves him in a terrible amount of symbolism. Cornforth was not at
the lecture, so I had to go on all by myself to Broad, who was criticising Kant.
It was not until half way through the afternoon that I remembered that I was
going out to tea with Irving. Feeling hopelessly stuffy indoors, I put on my hat
and coat and went for a walk along Trumpington Road until it was time to
turn and walk towards Trinity. I found Miss Thomas (‘Tom’) in Irving’s room;
he was reading her a paper on the novel; she stayed for tea but went away im-
mediately afterwards, Miss Klugmann having a cold or something and wanting
 She later married Maurice Cornforth, see n. .

 MacIver originally wrote “defining” but crossed it out and replaced it. This is unusual – he
appears to have tried hard to avoid any corrections and if he had to correct, usually wrote the
amendment over the original word – i. e. also on the line, not above it.

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company. Irving is a funny creature – very much of a psychologist and interested

in the theory of language, attacking philosophers for using language improperly
– though he is not a disciple of Wittgenstein. He proposed to do philosophico-
literary research at Oxford and had actually been accepted as an advanced stu-
dent and allotted to Collingwood⁴¹ as supervisor, when he decided to come to
Cambridge and read psychology for the second part of the Tripos.
20th.
21st. Tennant was still discussing the relations of Time and Eternity and still in a
very unconvincing fashion, for he never seems quite to understand either the
views which he attacks or even the views which he himself maintains. Moore de-
cided to-day to discuss a point which he said that he had shirked earlier in the
term – namely, what exactly he means by a ‘proposition’, which it will be very
interesting to know, for there is a terrible confusion about the word, as Joseph
has pointed out; Johnson, whatever he means, does not mean the same as Witt-
genstein, whose ‘Satz’ should really be translated ‘sentence’, with the sense ex-
tended in the same way in which he extends the sense of ‘language’. After the
lecture Cornforth invited me to come on Wednesday evening to a meeting in Irv-
ing’s [corrected from “Cornforth’s” by crossing-out] rooms at which he (Corn-
forth) was reading on ‘Transcendental Idealism’ – having come to the conclu-
sion, as I have, that Wittgenstein is a Kantian and been provoked to thought
by Wittgenstein’s utterances. We went on to hear Broad, who to-day was nomi-
nally discussing Scepticism but in practice criticising Bradley,⁴² unfairly of
course but not so unfairly as I could have expected; for such a ‘fine flower of
eighteenth-century enlightenment’ he has a surprisingly just appreciation of
mysticism. On such an afternoon as this one could [not? – word omitted] stay
indoors and I walked out along the Barton road, where I met Drury on his bicy-
cle, taking the air and considering what he should say to Wittgenstein this eve-
ning. Some time during the day, and I think after tea, I succeeded in getting
down on paper a longish note which summed up what I have been thinking
out for some time on the subject of relations. The meeting of the ‘Wittgenstein
Society’ was taking place at eight o’clock, so I had to have my meal at seven,
in order to be in Drury’s rooms in time. The company consisted of Drury, Wittgen-
stein, Lee, James, Cornforth, Bose and myself, joined afterwards by Shillinglaw,
 R. G. Collingwood ( – ), Oxford philosopher, known for his work on aesthetics and
the philosophy of history.
 F. H. Bradley ( – ), famous British idealist. The two parts of his magnum opus (Ap-
pearance and Reality, ) are mentioned in MacIver’s entry for  January .

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Prizer and a physicist who was at Murray’s meeting on Friday last and again at
the Heretics on Sunday. The discussion, as I had foreseen, was for the most part a
duologue between Wittgenstein and Drury and it did not seem to me to clear up
the original problem, namely how we know the feelings of other persons, but
Drury declared himself at last convinced of the truth of Wittgenstein’s main doc-
trine and in particular of what – though Drury failed to recognise it – was in fact
the coherence-theory of truth: I was very careful not to point this out to Drury
himself, for it is a dogma with Drury that the coherence-theory is false, because
Broad says it is false, but I pointed it out to Cornforth and he agreed with me. I
walked home with Wittgenstein, Lee and the physicist, dropping Lee at Corpus;
with the other two I went as far as the Roman Catholic church, which was really
out of my way. Wittgenstein did not seem to have realised before that I came from
Oxford; he asked me whether I knew Ryle and Joseph and Mabbott;⁴³ Joseph he
described as ‘very nice but rather crude’. Before we broke up, we decided to form
a group which should meet regularly, at least next term.
22nd. In the evening I had the Moral Science Club, which was meeting again in
Broad’s room, where Miss [E. M.] Whetnall, a Girton don, was reading a paper.
Thanks to my watch being more than usually fast, I arrived at Trinity at ten
past eight, twenty minutes too soon, so walked up and down in the Great
Court in the dark with all the lights round – very pleasant. Miss Whetnall’s sub-
ject was announced as being ‘Specific and non-Specific Characteristics’, but
what she really discussed was what she called ‘most specific colour-properties’
– that is to say, infimae species of colour. It was a bad paper and I did not take
much trouble to attend to it; but I had Shillinglaw sitting next to me on the floor
and had some difficulty in suppressing his irrelevant conversation. The chair was
taken by Moore and the discussion carried on mainly by Wittgenstein with ques-
tions and comments from Moore and Broad. After the meeting I walked about in
Midsummer Common with Cornforth, bringing him to his digs in Montagu Road
just at midnight. He invited me to come with him on Sunday to tea with the John-
sons. We talked about all sorts of things: about Jews, he being half a Jew, which
explains at once his nose and his pushfulness; about Drury, whom we both of us
think a very nice man but philosophically a sponge; about the colleges of this
University, and about the University of London.
 John Mabbott ( – ), influential Oxford philosopher; eventually became President of
St. John’s College, Oxford.

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23rd. I cut Tennant’s lecture, though I could have got there if I had taken five mi-
nutes less on my breakfast. To Moore’s therefore at eleven, who continued to dis-
cuss Wittgenstein’s theory of propositions, with illustrations from Ramsey’s re-
view of the ‘Tractatus’ in the ‘Mind’ of 1923. Wittgenstein himself came in for
the conversation-class, and I asked why a propositional symbol should be a
fact and not a non-fact; with the result that for the whole hour Wittgenstein di-
rected his exposition at my head, until I was quite bewildered and did not know
whether I understood what he meant or not.
24th. (Sunday) Another day passed without anything to show for it. Had a hot
bath and breakfasted in consequence rather late. Spent the rest of the morning
Heaven knows how – largely in reading the ‘Observer’. It was a fine day and I
never went out until it was time to go and meet Cornforth, which I had arranged
to do at twenty minutes to four outside the Great Gate of Trinity. I gave myself
time to walk in, having had no other exercise, and we arrived at the same mo-
ment and went straight on through Trinity and the Backs to Newnham, where
Johnson lives in a house on the Barton road. He is a dear old man and lives
with a rather intelligent sister. It seems that he likes company and philosophical
argument – as he never stirs from the house, he only sees people who drop in –
and, starting from the Oxford conception of Logic, we soon came on to the nature
and definition of Philosophy, the question whether there is any progress in Phi-
losophy, whether History is simply a science, whether there is an apprehension of
the Real which is not knowledge but more fundamental than knowledge, and so
forth. At that point in came Lowes Dickinson⁴⁴ and talked a good deal about
Schiller⁴⁵ and McTaggart,⁴⁶ having a story that the latter was in the habit of hav-
ing mystical experiences, though he refused to make any use of them in his phi-
losophy. Lowes Dickinson looks like a schoolmaster or solicitor in advanced mid-
dle age but he can talk in a very interesting fashion; however, soon after he came
Cornforth had to go away to his Hall and I came away with him.
 Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson ( – ), political thinker and philosopher, fellow of
King’s College, Cambridge, and influential promoter of the idea of a League of Nations.
 F. C. S. Schiller ( – ), Oxford pragmatist (tutorial fellow at Corpus Christi College).
In  he became professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California.
 John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart ( – ), Hegelian philosopher, greatly influenced
Moore and Russell.

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25th. Last night, as I was going to bed, Croce⁴⁷ came into my mind as the antith-
esis of Wittgenstein, which has thrown my thought out of gear, for what I was
thinking of before was the primary qualities and in particular number and struc-
ture (what Boyle and Locke call ‘texture’) with which the new line of thought has
no very close connection. After tea I got the primary qualities off my mind and
into the form of a couple of notes and now I can get on to the rival theories of
Croce and Wittgenstein on the nature of language and expression.
26th. I cut Tennant’s lecture again, being once again just about five minutes too
late in getting up to be able to get to Trinity in time with comfort – that is, with-
out bolting my breakfast. Moore seemed to be talking something perilously like
nonsense this morning, when he said that we distinguish ‘type-words’, amongst
other things, by their spelling – ‘daw’ and ‘door’, which in cockney fashion he
maintained to be pronounced the same, being different words but ‘bore’ and
‘bore’ in all senses the same word; if he gets as far as that, he should take ety-
mology into account – the Pocket Oxford Dictionary reckons three words ‘bore’.
Broad talked some indubitable nonsense; he has now come to ontology and to-
day gave us a complete inventory of the universe, which caused Shillinglaw, who
was sitting on my right, to write ‘Rot!’ in capital letters in his note-books and
Cornforth, who was on my left, to express the same sentiment in his face. In
the afternoon I went into town again to the bank, to cash myself a cheque,
which I have done only once before this term, showing how little I spend now
that I have all my meals at home. Went on from the bank to Bowes and Bowes
and there fell in with Lee, to whom I happened to make some comment on a
poem of Empson’s⁴⁸ which was on sale there and he told me that Empson was
in Cambridge, in a house in K[ing’s] P[arade], but leaving by bus at about four
o’clock. So we went round to see if we could catch him there – it was in the
rooms of the editor of the ‘Cambridge Review’ – but when four o’clock passed
and no Empson came we were just going away when we met him on the stairs.
He now wears tortoiseshell spectacles and a thatch of poetic black hair and
looks rather like Tite MacIver⁴⁹; he seems to me degenerate, but he was obvious-
ly rather ashamed of himself and inclined to pose as a stage villain, letting a cig-
arette loll in the extreme corner of his mouth. He told me of Meredith (whom in-
 Benedetto Croce ( – ), well-known Italian idealist philosopher. An English transla-
tion of his work on aesthetics appeared as early as  and was much discussed by British
philosophers, e. g. by Bosanquet ().
 William Empson ( – ), distinguished poet and literary critic, author of Seven Types of
Ambiguity ().
 MacIver’s cousin David.

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cidentally Cornforth also knows) who apparently now keeps a dumpy mistress
with whom he lives in extreme domesticity, teaching at King’s College, London,
in order to pay for being psychoanalysed. Empson had to catch his bus back to
London at half past four, Lee went back to Corpus to work and I to my tea. In the
evening I began to read again the early chapters of Croce’s ‘Estetica’ and am be-
ginning to feel that by rubbing him against Wittgenstein something may really be
achieved.
27th. I had expected that the result of the John Locke⁵⁰ would be in this morning’s
‘Times’, but all the University News concerned the conferring of an honorary
D. C. L.⁵¹ on Mr. Kellogg. It was a fine-ish day again: I read some more Croce dur-
ing the morning, and in the afternoon went for a walk out by the footpath to
Newnham, when whom should I meet at the foot-bridge over the river but
Miss Cole, out walking with her mother, with whom she is staying. I had started
out too late to make any definite round, so just plodded steadily out along the
Barton road until it was past four o’clock and time to turn and plod home
again. Had to have my evening meal early in order to be in time for the meeting
of the Oddbodies at half past eight; but when I got to Loring’s rooms I found no-
one there but Cornforth and it was some time before anyone else came. There
were only two members of the Society present at the meeting – namely
Black,⁵² the president, and Irving, the host; the remainder of the company was
the ‘old gang’ of the Moral Science Club, minus Drury – Cornforth, Wittgenstein,
Lee, Shillinglaw, Miss Klugmann, Miss Thomas and myself. Cornforth’s paper
disappointed me: throughout it you could see under what various influences it
had been composed – a groundwork of Dawes Hicks⁵³ with a superstructure bor-
rowed from Moore and Wittgenstein – but it was very heterogeneous and he had
very often misunderstood his sources – particularly Wittgenstein, whose views
he knew only from what he has heard by word of mouth this term, never having
read the ‘Tractatus’. After all, it was a very good thing that Wittgenstein was
there, for he alone could prevent Shillinglaw from talking nonsense all the
time; and even Wittgenstein had some difficulty in keeping Shillinglaw quiet.
 John Locke Prize, cf. entries for  November and  December.

 Doctor of Civil Law.
 Max Black ( – ), took his BA in mathematics in , worked as a schoolmaster,
became a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois in  and at Cornell in .
Here, he saw Wittgenstein again when the latter came to stay there with Norman Malcolm in
.
 George Dawes Hicks ( – ), Cambridge-based Professor of Moral Philosophy at Uni-
versity College, London.

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It fell to me to back up Cornforth occasionally, for at bottom he was maintaining

my pet thesis of the all-importance of the category of substance. The discussion
did not come to an end before half past eleven. Afterwards Black asked me to
write a paper for next term on ‘Substance’, so that the whole question could
be thrashed out still further; but I told him that it was not likely that I should
be able to do it, and the more I consider it the more enormous the work involved
seems to be. I walked along Trumpington Street about as far as Pemmer⁵⁴ with
Wittgenstein and Lee, and Wittgenstein gave me some fatherly advice, telling me
that I seemed too set in my views, which it was very funny to hear coming from
Wittgenstein’s mouth. Perhaps it is true, but [Penderel] Moon, who knows me
better, thinks that I am too much influenced by what I have just heard or read
and they can hardly both be right.
28th. Cut Tennant’s lecture once again – which reminds me that I have received
the bill for the course and not yet paid it; I meant to go to the lecture this morn-
ing and only failed because it was half past nine before I properly woke up. I
asked Moore before his lecture whether he would be lecturing on the last Thurs-
day of term and he said ‘yes’, so that I must either miss that lecture or not go to
Oxford until after it; I shall really have to decide soon what I am going to do, for I
must find rooms in Oxford if I am going there.
29th. Dined early, as usual on Fridays, and so in to Braithwaite’s rooms in King’s,

where Ryle was reading a paper on ‘The Programme of Phenomenology’. Was
caught up by Drury just inside the porter’s lodge and so arrived among the
first. The room is one that I could not live in, with painted panels from ceiling
to floor – huge nudes – looking like decorations for a café by an imitator of
Marie Laurencin.⁵⁵ Ryle tells me that the Jowett has only had two meetings
this term, Braithwaite having been down there on Wednesday and wound up
the term. Wittgenstein thinks that Hardy has some letters which he wrote before
the war to Russell and wants to recover them and Ryle suggested that he should
accompany him back to Oxford in his car on Sunday; if he does and dines with
Hardy in New College, I should give a good deal to be there. Ryle’s paper was
long and in the main a historical sketch of the Phenomenological school; it
was only at the very end that he put forward views of his own and that was
much the weakest part of his paper. The discussion at first wandered; I attacked
a theory of memory which he had incidentally propounded; then Wittgenstein
 Pembroke College.
 Marie Laurencin ( – ), French poetess; a close friend of Guillaume Apollinaire.

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got going and more or less changed the subject, delivering what was practically a
monologue on the old question which started at Moore’s meeting, of the privacy
of psychological phenomena and the existence of other minds. The room grad-
ually emptied but the meeting went on for a very long time. As I came away,
when we were all waiting for the porter to open the gate, I heard the voice of
Dawes Hicks, in conversation with Cornforth, uplifted in complaint against
Ryle’s heretical use of the word ‘Erlebnis’.
30th. This morning I resolved to break my habits of indolence and go to Tennant’s

lecture again but even so I was about ten minutes late; if I had not gone to-day, I
might have been punished if I tried to go later, for this was the last lecture of the
term, as Tennant himself very kindly told me afterwards, having I suppose an-
nounced it before I arrived; he asked me if I had been ill, and I told him that
I had only been oversleeping. Ryle came to Moore’s lecture, as I had half expect-
ed that he would, and I am now very much annoyed that I forgot to ask him
whether the John Locke result has come out yet or not. Moore was rather difficult
to follow to-day and did not seem quite to know what he was lecturing on, but
he came at last onto the relations of knowledge and true belief. Wittgenstein
came in as usual for the conversation-class: the Polish woman began, having
a difficulty which was very tedious to everyone, for she speaks English so
badly that no-one could understand what her difficulty was; then for a short
while we discussed the nature of ‘a word’; and finally Wittgenstein took stage
and expounded his theory of propositions, I acting as interlocutor at first, after-
wards Ryle.
2nd. [December] During the evening I did a little work on the subject of expres-
sion, synthesising Wittgenstein and Croce.
3rd. To Moore’s lecture, Tennant’s course having closed; he talked about knowl-
edge and true opinion and seemed to regard as original discoveries of Russell’s
the arguments used by Plato in the second half of the ‘Theaetetus’. On with Corn-
forth to Broad, who was discussing universals and wound up for the term, saying
that he was sure we should enjoy our Christmas holidays the more knowing that
relations were safe.
5th. Mighty winds this morning, which seem to be getting up again now, having
died down during the day. Slates blown off the house-tops and a tree blown
down in Trumpington Road, according to the baker’s boy, though I failed to
find it this afternoon; but certainly a big tree was blown down in the grounds
of Trinity, for there was a picture of it in this evening’s ‘Cambridge Daily

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News’; the same paper said that the wind had reached ninety-four m. p. h. at Fal-
mouth and that both Oxford and Liverpool had suffered severely, the eastern
counties having come off exceptionally lightly. If Wittgenstein is, as I am told,
crossing to the Continent to-night, I feel for him. It was in this morning’s
‘Times’ that the examiners have not awarded the John Locke this year, which sur-
prises me, for Radice⁵⁶ at least should have been a pretty good candidate. I went
to my last lecture of the term this morning, when Moore talked about ‘possibility’
in relation to knowledge. Afterwards I accompanied Cornforth to return books to
the Psychological Library he is also not going down until Saturday and felt that
he was going to be very bored to-morrow, so I am going to have lunch with him.
7th. In New College I found that I had been given the rooms directly above Jo-
seph; but Joseph was not in college and, as soon as I had put down my things,
I went to call on Cox, with whom I found Hart⁵⁷ and O’Connor. Hart is the incom-
ing President of the Jowett. I stayed talking to Cox for a while after the others
went – he declares that this term a higher appreciation of Smith⁵⁸ as a philoso-
pher has become fashionable among the undergraduates – but at seven o’clock
Joseph came in, to talk business connected with the Winchester examination. We
met again for Hall at a quarter past; I sat between Joseph and Radcliffe, who was
at the foot of the table; in Common Room I was next to Smith but began grad-
ually to talk philosophy with Joseph and continued to do so, in an empty room,
when everyone else had gone away, having gone to my room to fetch my note-
book, which Joseph looked through. Whether or not I got much out of him I
feel very uncertain.
1930 January 16th. Tennant’s lecture was just as his lectures were last term and I
hope that Wittgenstein will arrange to lecture at ten o’clock on Tuesdays, Thurs-
days and Saturdays, so that I may have an excuse for going to Tennant no longer.
Going on to Moore, Cornforth shouted after me and upstairs we found Drury
waited outside a closed door, where he might have waited for ever if I had not
opened the door for there was no-one in the room. Moore this morning was
chiefly recapitulating but he introduced and began to discuss a real and intrigu-
ing distinction between the use of the verb ‘know’ in the first person present and
its use in other persons and tenses, though I am a little doubtful how far he can
carry it. From this lecture went on with Cornforth to Broad, who to-day was re-
 E. A. Radice (OW,  – ), economist and public servant.

 H. L. A. Hart ( – ), later Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford.
 A. H. Smith (OW,  – ), fellow of New College, tutor in philosophy, then warden of
the college ( – ).

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futing Bradley on relations but in a very superficial manner, though I know that
he knows this for he said when I was in his rooms with Price last Long Vac that
what Bradley said on the subject of relations in ‘Reality’ seemed to him much
more important and much more difficult to refute than what he said in ‘Appear-
ance’, which was all he touched on to-day. After the lecture I joined the usual
protest meeting outside the Great Gate with Cornforth and Shillinglaw.
17th. Back to Bateman Street for tea, which I had to have early, because all who
were to attend Wittgenstein’s lectures were told to meet in Braithwaite’s rooms to
arrange the time at five o’clock to-day. I was a little late and found a crowd there,
who had already almost decided on the times from five to six o’clock on Mondays
and from five to seven o’clock on Thursdays, and so, after a little protest from
Cornforth on behalf of Irving, it was decided. Home and did nothing more in
the evening.
18th. Was able to make a comfortable start to Tennant’s lecture, though in the end
I arrived at it late, having just missed the proper bus. The lecture was on Immor-
tality and was as all his lectures are. So on to Moore, who to-day merely devel-
oped further his theory about ‘I know’ as opposed to ‘to know’ and ‘I knew’, in
which I doubt not that there is some important fact about knowledge concealed
but it did not seem to me that Moore succeeded in bringing it out and I took very
few notes of this lecture. Wittgenstein came in for the conversation-class, which I
thought was never going to begin, as I had nothing to say, my mind being still
unused to thought, nor apparently had Drury and Cornforth was unwilling to
open his mouth, but the Polish woman at last somehow got things started,
though she herself did not seem to understand the thing at all, and then Wittgen-
stein began to talk and talked for the rest of the hour, bringing the discussion
back to the old question of tooth-ache which ate up so much time last term,
but I was not interested and hardly listened.
20th. Reading ‘The Times’ at breakfast this morning I found an obituary notice for
F. P. Ramsey, who died yesterday at a London nursing-home after an operation. I
only heard yesterday from Cornforth that he was ill. He was only 26, which I was
surprised to find, for, though I was at school with him, I always thought of him
as more than two years older than myself: I doubt whether many men have at
that age earned an obituary notice by academic work.
Wittgenstein had already begun to lecture when I got to the room in the Arts
School, but I took no notes to-day and found it rather distressing to listen, for the
poor man was terribly nervous and I thought at first that he would not spin out
the hour; how he will conduct a discussion I cannot imagine, for the audience

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fills the room but consists, I should think, very largely of the curious, who will
have nothing to say for themselves. The whole subject-matter of the lecture I
had heard before, though perhaps not as complete an exposition, for Moore
and Braithwaite, who have heard Wittgenstein much more often than I have,
seemed to find some points worth putting down in their note-books.
21st. Caught my bus for once and was in time for Tennant’s lecture this morning;
he lectured on theories of truth and knowledge in his usual slipshod manner.
After the lecture I caught up Drury in K[ing’s] P[arade] and went on with him
to Moore, but he is a strange, reserved creature and seemed to distrust me
even for saying that Wittgenstein was nervous yesterday. Moore did not seem
to be saying very much to-day but it must have been interesting enough, for
the hour passed without my noticing the time. Came away with Drury and Corn-
forth, and Drury was shamed into asking me to come and have tea with him and
Wittgenstein and others before the discussion on Thursday, but he disappeared
down Senate House Passage when I recounted Wittgenstein’s story of the Adel-
phi Hotel, Liverpool, how the only night he was there the manager came and
searched his room for a woman, and Cornforth tells me Drury always disappears
when women are mentioned. Broad was even more Broad-ian than usual to-day,
talking of monism, dualism and pluralism and tabulating everything in the proc-
ess; Cornforth occupied the lecture writing a poem and a letter.
23rd. Tennant I thought rather better than usual to-day, perhaps because, dealing
as he now is with pragmatism, he seemed to me rather fairer to the pragmatists
than the Cambridge philosophers usually are. Moore has come on to discuss a
theory of Russell’s, that the proposition ‘I know nothing’ is nonsensical, and
he must have done it well, for once again the hour was over before I noticed
how the time was going. Cornforth had decided he could not go to Broad this
time, so I decided to shirk the lecture with him and went home with him to 62
Jesus Lane, where we called on the young German who lodges in the next
room: he is a large fair-haired creature of the name of König from the neighbour-
hood of Cologne, full of German manners, bowing and clicking his heels, very
annoyed with the University of Cambridge because it is so long about giving
him permission to attend lectures and unable to realise that he can attend the
lectures and get the permission afterwards.
At four o’clock took a bus into the town, having to be in Drury’s rooms by a
quarter past. Found only Drury and Cornforth there, and perhaps I misunder-
stood Drury when he said he had invited Wittgenstein, who at any rate certainly
did not come. We talked no philosophy or almost none, only alluding to Tennant,
the second volume of whose ‘Philosophical Theology’ has just come out and for

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whom Drury has an admiration almost as great as he has for Broad. He gave us
some ‘Edgeworth’ tobacco, which we were smoking when Irving came in, being
able to go to Wittgenstein for once this week, as Bartlett⁵⁹ is not holding his psy-
chological seminar, and we all went on together to the Arts School. Drury has to
teach Logic this term to three women from Newnham, one of whom is a Miss Da-
vies, whom Cornforth and Irving, to Drury’s great trouble of mind, declare to be a
vamp. Drury began the discussion with Wittgenstein but it soon passed into the
hands of Wittgenstein Moore and Braithwaite, though for the greater part of the
two hours Wittgenstein held forth by himself, unfolding some remarkable theo-
ries, particularly on the nature of Time and its relation to Memory. There were
some very odd people there, one of whom talked exceedingly loud, not to say
shouted, while another, though he did not look very bright in the brain, tried
to help Wittgenstein out of supposed difficulties. At five past seven the discus-
sion ended, people having been drifting away ever since six o’clock, and I
came home by bus to my supper, after which I finished the eighth book of ‘Dich-
tung und Wahrheit’ and made one or two quite considerable notes on significa-
tion and expression, suggested by Wittgenstein’s harangue, and I believe that I
am at last on the way to recovering the lost art of working.
25th. It was only by very good fortune, catching a No 6 bus by running to it when
it was already in motion, when the No. 1 bus had already gone, that I was not
much later for Tennant’s lecture than I was. He was discussing neo-Realism,
in a way that was interesting at least on the personal and historical side as con-
cerns the relations of McTaggart, Moore and Russell, and is going on, it seems,
next week to discuss a real theological question, which will be very interesting
indeed if it does not fall flat. So on to Moore’s lecture, where a familiar figure
was absent, namely Drury, who had gone to London to see the Italian pictures.
Moore did exactly as Cornforth had prophesied he would and assured us that he
was absolutely certain he was not a woman, showing therefore that it is a faulty
syllogism which argues that, because human beings may be female and he is a
human being, therefore he may be female. In the conversation-class I tried to
take Drury’s place and start things going but failed, my point leading to nothing,
and it was the Polish woman who did it, bringing the discussion onto Russell
and his conception of ‘knowledge by acquaintance’, upon which Wittgenstein
became very interesting, saying that on many points he had given up the
 F. C. Bartlett ( – ), experimental psychologist, from  Director of the Psycholog-
ical Laboratory at Cambridge. In  he was elected the first Professor of Experimental Psy-
chology at Cambridge.

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views expounded in the ‘Tractatus’. He delighted me by saying that he thought

there was very little difference between such a word as the relative ‘who’ and
words which pass for names of things, both being alike only cogs in the machi-
nery of the proposition, for this agrees entirely with the doctrine which I am my-
self at present developing. Home to my dinner and found the fixture-card of the
Moral Science Club waiting for me: Wittgenstein is reading a paper next Friday
on ‘Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds’, in which the hallowed question
of tooth-ache will be still further discussed, and we shall also hear Braithwaite
on ‘Time’, Shillinglaw on ‘Stout’s Theory of Knowing’ and Miss Klugmann on
‘Analysis of Propositions’, not to mention Professor A. E. Heath⁶⁰ on ‘Philosoph-
ical Systems as Protective Myths’.
27th. I was perhaps later in arriving at Wittgenstein’s lecture than I was last week.
He was very much more sure of himself to-day than he was then, though he lost
his thread once or twice and seemed to have no real plan but to be going over the
same ground as a week ago, making the various points clearer. I was sitting in
the outermost seat of the front row and Wittgenstein kept taking me as an exam-
ple, as he had done with James last week. I was able to take some notes to-day,
which I had failed to do before, but they can only be memoranda for private re-
flection – of a course of lectures so planless as this one can make no genuine
record.
28th. It was very cold this morning, when I went in by bus to my lectures, though
it seems to have grown warmer as the day wore on. As usual I started just too late
to catch the No 1 bus, which passed the end of Bateman Street as I was walking
up it, but I caught a No 6, so was not very late for Tennant. He was not so theo-
logical as I had hoped that he would be, still discussing neo-Realism and intend-
ing to come on to teleology next week, but I think he was better than he has
been, though he once again expressed a wonder why James Ward’s conception
of ‘universal experience’ is so little mentioned by philosophers, which I feel
he could dissipate by a little conversation with his colleague, Dr Broad. On to
Moore, who must have been very good, for the whole hour passed before I
had noticed it, though he [h]as only distinguished various kinds of solipsism
without as yet really discussing them. On to Broad without Cornforth, who
was preoccupied with the Lorentz translation and wanted Prizer to help him
out with it. Broad was discussing Materialism, Mentalism and Neutralism; I
 Probably A. E. Heath, professor of philosophy at Swansea.

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sat next to Shillinglaw and we gasped in chorus when Broad said that only men-
tal events could be true or false.
30th. I am becoming reconciled to Tennant, accepting the fact that he is a wretch-

ed lecturer and thinking that perhaps he may have something to say for himself,
loosely expressed and ill-informed though what he says may be; not only Drury
but also Cornforth seem to have a high opinion of his work, of which, as I have
never read it, I cannot speak, though still I hae my doots; but I am growing rec-
onciled to him and listened to his lecture this morning without impatience,
though I did not carry much of it away with me. Moore to-day was quite at
the top of his form, still discussing Russell’s ‘epistemological solipsism’ in the
‘Outline of Philosophy’; very amusing about Russell’s belief that this theory is
good for our morals, saving us from cocksureness; also seemed to me to say
something important when he referred to the origin of the term ‘specious pres-
ent’ in William James and the fact that the name was given because this ‘spe-
cious present’ was held to be really past. I seemed to take a lot more down in
my note-book than I have done at previous lectures and never noticed the
time. I did not go on to Broad but went with Cornforth and Drury to the latter’s
rooms, to diagnose a disease of his favourite pipe, which will not draw, but we
could find nothing the matter with it; Cornforth went away to see his tutor and
Drury sat down to a type-writer to type out what he remembered of Moore’s lec-
ture and I came away home by way of Bowes and Bowes, having first invited
Drury to come and have tea with me, which he says he will do on Wednesday
next. Wittgenstein was holding his discussion this evening in Clare new build-
ings and in the afternoon I walked down there by way of Trumpington Road
and Silver Street, wanting to see whether that might not be quicker than going
by bus and walking from the post office, but it took me twenty minutes, so I de-
cided I would ride this evening[.]
Met Cornforth in Queens Road and, going in, found no-one but Priestley,⁶¹
the owner of the rooms, secretary to the Board of Research Studies, who then
went away, having provided a blackboard and chalks. Moore arrived next and
at once pulled out his pipe, which meant that we were all able to smoke. We
were a smaller company than usual, at which Wittgenstein was inclined to com-
plain, saying that the discussions were quite as important as the lectures and
that it was useless if people did not come regularly; Braithwaite was one of
the absentees. The discussion was good, though it only left a very general impres-
sion upon me; it was initiated by Drury but conducted mainly by Moore and had
 R. E. Priestley ( – ), see WiC, no. .

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to do very largely with the question whether thought is just expression and with
Wittgenstein’s peculiar theory that to understand a proposition is to understand
the mode of its verification.
I had an omelette (à l’anglaise) for my supper and had some ideas after-
wards on personal understanding within the conception of knowledge as expres-
sion. But I am beginning to feel that this analogy with language and grammar,
which I have caught from Wittgenstein, can be carried too far and if really lead-
ing me off the road on which I want to travel.
31st. I had to have my supper early, to be at the Moral Science Club at half past
eight. The meeting was in Broad’s rooms and Wittgenstein was down on the card
to read a paper on ‘Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds’, but of course he
never does read papers – he talks until he dries up and then, when someone has
set him going again, goes on talking. As usual at these crowded meetings in
Broad’s rooms, most of us had to sit on the floor; I got a comparatively uncon-
gested position by the table, under which I was able to stretch myself at full
length if I wanted. I opened the discussion when Wittgenstein dried up for the
first time but kept quiet after that, while the discussion went over the old familiar
ground of tooth-ache and perhaps made the matter clearer than it has been be-
fore, though for my part I am now hardened and it goes past me and leaves me
untouched. The meeting broke up at five minutes past eleven, people having
begun to go away before that time, and I was at home by half past eleven and
in bed at five minutes past twelve.
February 1st. I was so slow about getting up this morning that, although I went to
Tennant’s lecture, I was a quarter of an hour late for it. He pleased me this morn-
ing much better than he has done hitherto, because he at last began to approach
the subject historically, discussing Clement of Alexandria and S[t]. Augustine,
but I was troubled when he came up to me after the lecture and asked whether
I would like to come and discuss anything with him, though luckily the time
which he suggested was the time of Moore’s lectures, so I had an excuse for de-
clining. On from him to Moore, who was better than ever, still criticising Russell’s
‘epistemological solipsism[’]. Wittgenstein came in as usual for the conversation-
class and the discussion ran upon Descartes’ malicious demon and Russell’s
suggestion that the universe might have come into being five minutes ago with
a complete stock of memories and records, Wittgenstein of course maintaining
that this was exactly equivalent to saying that it did not come into being five mi-
nutes ago – saying the same thing in different language. Afterwards I invited
Cornforth to come and have tea with me, which he will do on Tuesday, Drury

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coming on Wednesday; I must also invite Lee to have tea with me some time this
term.
3rd. There was a letter from Miss Willink waiting for me, inviting me to go to tea
with them on Thursday next, which is the day of Wittgenstein’s discussion-class,
but still I will go, for I do not like to put them off.
Down to the Arts School by bus, Wittgenstein having already begun to lec-
ture, but I was by no means the last person to arrive. I thought him very
much better than he has been in the past – very much more sure of himself
and of the thread of his argument – and I was able to take quite a lot of notes.
4th. Tennant was good this morning – still on the historical line, considering pat-
ristic and scholastic thought, on which he proposes to continue in his next lec-
ture, for which I am thankful, though of course he has not Webb’s knowledge of
the subject. I was very late for this lecture, starting late and missing the last pos-
sible bus, so that I had walked all the way to the post office before another one
came along. Moore was also very good to-day, discussing the question whether
we have any certain knowledge of the future, which a week ago he thought we
quite certainly had not but, after reflection, is not so certain now. On with
Drury and Cornforth to Trinity, Drury inviting me to come this evening to hear
Wittgenstein explain what he means by the distinction of ‘propositions’ and ‘hy-
potheses’, and so with Cornforth to Broad. Just as we came into the Great Gate,
just as Cornforth’s voice was raised high in complaint against ‘the nonsense
Broad talks at these lectures’, Broad himself went by, causing great embarrass-
ment. To-day Broad talked quite an unusual amount of nonsense, on the relation
of mind and body. I was amus[ed] by looking at the notes which Cornforth took –
‘The Instrumental Theory: the soul keeps the body in pickle. The Silly Theory: —’
This last being the theory of the ‘psychogenic factor’, which Drury admiringly
calls ‘Broad’s only original contribution to metaphysical thought’.
Tea, and read Kemp Smith’s commentary on the first-edition subjective
deduction;⁶² and then had to have my supper early and go in to Drury’s
rooms. There I found Drury, Lee, Prizer and a foolish-looking creature who
would seem to be a mathematician or a physicist, named Guest.⁶³ Wittgenstein
arrived a little later: he had a cold and, as smoke troubled him, we all had to put
away our pipes and throw away our cigarettes and resign ourselves to philosophy
 Norman Kemp Smith ( – ), A Commentary on Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (Lon-
don ).
 David Guest ( – ), mathematician and philosopher, Communist activist, critical of
Wittgenstein (cf. WiC, no. ). Was killed in the Spanish Civil War.

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without tobacco. I think he succeeded in explaining to us what he meant by

‘propositions’ and ‘hypotheses’, but it did not seem to me very new and to a
great extent reminded me of Kant, though he has a pragmatist theory of science,
which is of course un-Kantian. Whether it was the result of his cold or what, he
seemed to me much more human than he often is and, when I walked home af-
terwards with him and Lee and Guest, he seemed to feel flattered that I had ad-
vised Hart to invite him to speak to the Jowett, though he had declined the invi-
tation.
5th. Drury was in fact very punctual, bicycling up to the door at half past four,
and we had tea at once and talked afterwards until he had to go off to play
chess with old Johnson at six o’clock. He became quite thawed and friendly
and we discussed nothing really controversial but a lot of things that were inter-
esting enough, both philosophical and non-philosophical.
6th. Again to-day as late for Tennant’s lecture as the day before yesterday and for
the same reason – that I let the proper bus go without attempting to catch it and
then missed the last possible bus, so had to walk all the way and did not arrive
until a quarter past the hour. I did not find him so good as he has been the last
two or three times; he began talking about ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism’ once again,
in a way which shows that he does not understand the use and distinction of the
words ‘intellectus’ and ‘ratio’ in scholastic thought, and I was rather impatient
with him. He finished rather early and, when I went on to the Arts School, I
found only the Catalan professor and the Polish woman there, chattering away
together in French. Moore was better again to-day than ever before, still discus-
sing Russell and his ‘epistemological solipsism of the present moment’, until the
end of the hour, when he began to lecture to me, defending the sense-datum
theory, so that I shall have to furbish up my wits in order to be partly ready
for the conversation-class on Saturday.
At half past five came away and walked to Clare New Buildings, having
warned Wittgenstein on Tuesday evening that I would be late to-day. I found
the room much fuller than last week and a number of strange faces and not a
few very vocal mouths, so that at times several people were talking at once.
There was a man named Duval who always shouted whatever he had to say.
The discussion was not very illuminating, being concerned entirely with ‘lan-
guage’ and ‘grammar’. I walked home part of the way with Lee and Black,
whom I had always taken to be a Trinity man but he belongs to Queens’.
7th. Had my supper early, there being a meeting of the Moral Science Club in
Braithwaite’s rooms, where Braithwaite himself was reading a paper on ‘Time’.

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As I reached the bottom of the staircase I was met by Cornforth, Shillinglaw and
Drury, coming out to look for lats [?]. Before the meeting began I talked with Lee
and Shillinglaw on Anaxagoras and Anaximander and other early Greek philos-
ophers, Shillinglaw laying down the law, though his knowledge of the subject
was most superficial and Lee is an expert on it. Braithwaite’s paper was one
which he had read to the Jowett last term and was a muddled affair, though I
liked it because he showed some understanding of the nature of Change,
which is more than most Cambridge philosophers do: at one point he quoted po-
etry – Francis Thompson and Ronsard – and I am told that Wittgenstein mopped
his brow in anguish, for he cannot abide the quoting of poetry in philosophical
contexts – personally I was seated on the floor just under him and could not see
his face. I started the discussion, asking Braithwaite whether he minded abolish-
ing causation from nature; as a matter of fact he had not explicitly done this and
I could not have shown that he had done it implicitly without going further into
the nature of causation than was possible in that company; but luckily
Braithwaite he had [sic], so I was saved. The discussion was very soon led off
in a direction which did not please me much by Moore and Wittgenstein, who
seemed to misunderstand Braithwaite while Braithwaite failed to understand
his own position. Murray, who does not commonly come to meetings, was
there to-night and seemed to talk utter nonsense, saying that a balloon would
be changing even if it was not changing. When the discussion ended, most peo-
ple seemed to think it had been very good, but Lee, with whom I walked home as
far as Corpus, seemed to think it had been very mediocre.
8th. Not being dressed before half past nine, I had decided before even I began
my breakfast that I could not go to Tennant’s lecture this morning; so I waited in
a leisurely fashion, smoking a pipe and doing the cross-word puzzle in ‘The
Times’, until it was time to catch my bus to go in to hear Moore. He lectured
for the whole hour on sense-data, passionately eager to convince, and I listened
intently, taking no notes so that I could give my whole mind to the argument, but
he did not seem to me to prove that there are any such things as sense-data and I
badly wanted to argue the whole question in the conversation-class; but of
course Wittgenstein came in then and one knew in advance exactly what Witt-
genstein would say on the subject – namely that it is all a question of language
– and Moore is paralysed in Wittgenstein’s presence, so that the real question
could not be brought up and we had to go away dissatisfied, though the discus-
sion lasted until after five minutes past one.
I had to be home again by a quarter past four, because I had Cornforth com-
ing to tea and did not know when he would arrive. As a matter of fact he did not
come until ten minutes to five, having remembered that I commonly have tea at

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five o’clock. We talked about all sorts of things, mainly philosophical; he too is
growing rather tired of Wittgenstein, though he is under strong Wittgensteinian
influence; I feel no doubt that he is an exceedingly able man.
10th. I went out walking in the afternoon but Wittgenstein so dislikes people
being late for his lectures that, having been so very late on Thursday I wanted
to make a point of being on time to-day, so only walked up Hills Road as far
as Red Cross Farm and was back and had begun my tea before a quarter past
four and caught a bus which brought me to the post-office by ten minutes to
five. And then, when I got to the lecture-room, I found a notice pinned to the
blackboard saying that Wittgenstein could not lecture to-day but would lecture
on Thursday in Mr Priestley’s rooms. Coming down, I found Cornforth and Black
and Lee in the courtyard and there we waited, wondering what had happened
and warning people as they came along. Moore came and had heard nothing
but there was a message for him and he came back and told us that Wittgenstein
was ill, said he hoped it was not measles, of which it seems there is a lot about in
Cambridge now, and went off straight to see the invalid. Our company had by
now increased and we still hung about, no-one knowing how he was now
going to spend this hour, but at last James was strong-minded enough to give
the signal and we broke up, I going first to Heffer’s, where I poked about the
shelves but found nothing of much interest[.]
11th. Had to cut Tennant’s lecture again and for the same reason – that I was so
late getting out of bed that I was not ready for my breakfast until after half past
nine; so I spent the hour upon the ‘Times’ cross-word puzzle and became so en-
grossed in it that I was actually late for Moore, not getting to the lecture-room
until a quarter past ten, when he had been lecturing for five minutes. He was
splendid to-day – grows better and better – there seem to be infinite possibilities
in him. He was still on the subject of sense-data and said that he used the word
‘sense-datum’ in a way different from that in which Broad uses the word ‘sen-
sum’, in that he does not exclude the possibility of the sense-datum being
part of the surface of a physical object. He considered double images for some
time and then went on to discuss Ramsey’s theory that a sense-datum is a
‘fact’ – the [this word is overwritten with the word ‘that’] fact e. g. that this colour
is in this place now[.] After the lecture he told us, in answer to Cornforth’s ques-
tion, that Wittgenstein has influenza, or thinks he has, and in Moore’s own opin-
ion will very probably not be able to lecture on Thursday but is very desirous that
people should come then, in case he can. I did not go on to Broad but went to
Heffer’s instead, where however I did nothing and was very annoyed afterwards
that I had not gone to the Union, where I have long meant to look up Ritschl in

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the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’. These lectures of Moore’s and last Saturday’s

conversation-class have started my mind working vehemently in criticism of
the sensum-theory and the Positivist theory of science in general and, when in
the afternoon I went out for a walk, my mind was working all the time.
13th. I made a great point of being up at a respectable hour this morning, but still
I was late again for Tennant’s lecture[.] Tennant is still continuing his historical
account of the conceptions of Faith and Reason and, while I have been away, has
got as far as Locke; he did not seem to have much to say to-day, on Locke, Ber-
keley and Hume, but next time he is going to discuss Kant and this may be more
interesting. Moore came on to-day to Russell’s theory that we have no certain
knowledge about ourselves and I did not find him so interesting as he has
been hitherto, for he was mainly quoting and making criticisms on minor points
of expression; but the question itself is an important one and I am sure he will
have said something worth hearing before he leaves it. Drury had with him one
of the first copies of Broad’s new book, ‘Five Types of Ethical Theory’, published
to-day; whatever its philosophical value, it seems to have some very amusing
things in it, for example a reference to Wynne-Willson, the secretary of the
Moral Science Club, in the preface, where he is said ‘to owe his knowledge of
Right and Wrong (under Providence) to his Director of Studies’. I did not go
on to Broad’s lecture but, it being delightful weather, went with Cornforth and
Drury through King’s and along the Backs and so into Trinity over the bridge.
[C]ame in in very good time to have my tea before going to Clare for Wittgen-
stein’s lecture. But still I was late for the lecture, and I had to stand for a long
time, until Duval, the loud-voiced mathematician, offered me his chair and in
the resulting disturbance a chair was brought for me out of Priestley’s bed-
room. Wittgenstein looked ill but he lectured for more than an hour and a
half, and better than usual too, before he began to get confused and stopped
to let people ask him questions. I came away with Cornforth, Black, Guest and
Lee, dropping Cornforth and Guest in Trinity Lane, Black at the corner of
King’s Lane and Lee outside Corpus, not before I had invited him to have tea
with me, which he can do on Friday next.
14th. Then I went on down to Heffer’s, to buy myself Russell’s book on ‘Our
Knowledge of the External World’, which I need as an extreme example of the
Positivist theory of science. I find that they have moved their philosophical
books to a bookcase near the door, ‘thinking they should be near the theological
books’.
After tea I read Russell but had to have my supper early in order to be in Dru-
ry’s rooms at half past eight, where Shillinglaw was reading a paper on ‘Stout’s

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Theory of Knowing’. Wittgenstein was not there nor any of the bigwigs except
‘the divine Murray’, who arrived late. The paper pleased me by being written
on sound speculative lines but it was horribly muddled and unsure and tried
to cover far too much ground – namely everything from the theory of perceptions
to the bounds of human knowledge. I began the discussion, which was after-
wards taken up by Cornforth, but I got in several times with my favourite
point about the mythical character of ‘sensa’. The paper was too amorphous
for it to be possible really to get hold of anything in it to discuss and Shillinglaw
knew the doctrine which he had received from Stout better than he knew the ar-
guments in support of it and was inclined therefore rather to assure us that
things must be so than to give the reasons why. The meeting ended abruptly
by a lot of people getting up and going away while Cornforth and Shillinglaw
were in the middle of an argument, but a lot of us remained behind, namely
Cornforth, Shillinglaw, Prizer, two Emmanuel men whose names I do not
know and perhaps some others, not to mention Drury, in whose rooms we
were, and the Polish woman, who would not go, though no-one paid any atten-
tion to her. Cornforth vanished into the bed-room and was found there by Drury
lying on the bed, having been overcome by the heat of the fire, by which he had
been sitting, but he came back, looking very white, and began to argue in a very
loud voice with Shillinglaw and Drury, losing his temper, so that Shillinglaw and
Drury began to lose theirs, and so I left them, feeling that nothing more would be
got out of them to-night.
15th. The cross-word in ‘The Times’ this morning was rather more difficult than
usual and I was not tempted to do much of it after breakfast – indeed I never
finished it all day – but still I was late again for Tennant’s lecture, this time be-
cause I was late again in getting up. He was not exciting on Kant, nor was Moore
very exciting, though he discussed the interesting question to what extent state-
ments about ourselves involve reference to our bodies, but without coming to
any very definite conclusion. The conversation-class was rather disjointed; dis-
cussion never failed, because the Polish woman was always ready to bring up
questions, though they generally rested on misunderstanding and were them-
selves very difficult to understand; Wittgenstein was there, his neck well wrap-
ped up and looking rather ill when he came in, though the discussion seemed
to make him feel better, and he asked some questions about Russell’s theory
of memory, which started a discussion on his own theory which distinguishes
‘memory-time’ from ‘physical time’, which I found even more difficult than the
distinction of ‘visual space’ from ‘physical space’, but of course he would not
see my difficulties.

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17th. In the afternoon I walked to Grantchester and back, but had not much time
to spare for I had Wittgenstein’s lecture to go to, so had to have my tea at a quar-
ter past four, and when I was at Grantchester I thought I would not be back in
time, walked double quick all the way home and was just in at a quarter past.
I was very anxious to be in time for the lecture to-day and over-shot the mark
so far that in the end I was ten minutes too soon and had to wait with Cooley,
the Polish woman and the Catalan professor in an empty lecture-room. The
road is now up outside Christ’s, as it was before outside Emmanuel, and the
buses are not allowed to stop at the post office, but luckily I was on a Newnham
bus which took me down Petty Cury and not out of my way at all. Wittgenstein
was speaking to-day of the illegitimacy of calling anything a ‘thing’ or a ‘number’
or speaking of the number of things or numbers[.] I was pleased to see him in
conflict with the mathematicians over transfinite numbers, but for the rest all
this argument from a symbolic logic which I cannot accept leaves me cold.
18th. Being late for Tennant’s lectures has now simply become a bad habit with
me, for this morning I was up quite early enough but still was a quarter of an
hour late in getting to Trinity, simply because I wasted time after breakfast.
What he lectured on this morning I just cannot remember but I know it seemed
to me that he only said over again things that he has said before, except that he
quoted Coleridge and I asked him afterwards what he quoted from and he said
the ‘Aids to Reflection’. It may be mere vanity but it seems to me nowadays that
Moore lectures a great deal to me personally, and to-day he seemed to be going
out of his way to answer the points which I raised in the conversation-class a
week ago last Saturday with regard to Prichard’s theory of sensible appearance
– what Broad calls ‘the multiple-relation theory’. The only conclusion he came to
was that the theory could not be refuted, but I should like to discuss the whole
matter further with him, if only Wittgenstein was not there. Not having been
charged for Broad’s lectures, I have decided now not to go to them any more
but went to Heffer’s with the idea of looking up the date of the Nyâya-Vaiçesika
school in Radhakrishnan’s ‘Indian Philosophy’ but found that they only have the
first volume[.]
20th. I have not yet taught myself to get up in the morning when I mean to. This
morning I was fully awake at a quarter to nine and meant to get up in five mi-
nutes time, but it was ten minutes past before I did get up, so that I had to
cut Tennant’s lecture once again. I spent the hour on the ‘Times’ cross-word
and then went in to hear Moore. This time it cannot be that he is lecturing inten-
tionally for my benefit, but what he has come on to discuss has an immense im-
portance for what I am now thinking about, for he is considering the relation of

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knowledge about physical objects to knowledge about other people’s conscious-

ness. He has not yet got very far with this, for he spent the beginning of the hour
this morning finishing off what he had to say on the ‘multiple relation theory of
sensible appearance’, but he has got far enough to point out the muddle in
which Russell finds himself on this point. Afterwards I reminded Lee that he
is coming to tea with me to-morrow and he invited me, with all the other mem-
bers of the regular gang, to come to his rooms on Tuesday evening, as Wittgen-
stein wants to have another conversation.
Had of course to have my tea early on account of Wittgenstein’s discussion-
class, so could only walk to Grantchester and back, it being a bright, sunny day
and much less cold than it has been during the last few days, so that I had no
need to take any coat with me. I was back in good time for my tea and was lucky
enough to catch a bus at once, so that I was at Clare in very good time, would
have been the first person in the room if I had not waited on Queens’ Road
for Cornforth and Guest, and as it was only Braithwaite had arrived before
me. Wittgenstein still regarded his cold as bad enough to request us not to
smoke. The discussion looked at the beginning as if it was going to be run en-
tirely by the mathematicians, Braithwaite and Du Val and Guest and Black talk-
ing a lot about prime numbers and various people’s theorems, but at last Moore
got the conversation onto colours, which Wittgenstein had mentioned in his last
lecture, and on this it continued for the rest of the two hours, I taking some part
by making Wittgenstein explain what he meant by a ‘primary colour’. I walked
home with Drury as far as Trinity Lane and then with Lee and Du Val as far
as Corpus.
21st. Lee arrived, in point of fact, on the stroke of half past four, while I was wash-
ing my hands in my bed-room. I rang for the tea and we sat down at once. We
talked at first mostly about the classics, but afterwards about philosophy a
good deal – Russell and Wittgenstein, knowledge of individuals, the theory of
truth and so forth. Of course he is not really a professional philosopher but
his views are really all the more interesting for that, for he is intelligent and
has a decent knowledge – can go about with Wittgenstein without being wholly
overcome by the Wittgensteinian philosophy. He left me about a quarter past six,
having to go to Trinity Hall for a supervision at half past. I had my supper at a
quarter past seven and went to Trinity, to Irving’s rooms, for half past eight. Miss
Klugmann was reading a paper on ‘The Analysis of Propositions’, in which she
asked in effect what it was that these Cambridge ‘critical philosophers’ thought
they were doing when they ‘analysed’ e. g. a proposition about a penny into a
much more complicated proposition about sense-data. It was a very good
paper, but Moore and Wittgenstein were there and Wittgenstein, who had

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come in late, would not see what the paper was about but talked about the anal-
ysis of propositions in some sense which interested himself and monopolised the
discussion more and more and got further and further from the point, until he
was arguing with Black entirely about mathematics. Moore should have inter-
vened, because he continually talks about the ‘analysis of propositions’ in
Miss Klugmann’s sense, but he preferred to remain almost silent. Cornforth
had a friend with him from London, and after the meeting I stayed behind talk-
ing with Irving, Miss Klugmann and Miss Thomas and Cornforth and his friend,
drinking coffee.
22nd. I was late in getting to sleep last night because of the coffee that I had
drunk, but still I should have been able to go to Tennant’s lecture, if I had not
found at the last moment that my shoes had not been cleaned. It is true that I
have another pair of shoes, but there is a nail sticking up inside the heel of
one of them which tears my socks, so I preferred to cut the lecture. I went to
Moore, who started by saying that he had brought the wrong manuscript, but
it made very little difference to his lecture, which shows how well he must pre-
pare them, for he had this morning to make several references to Russell and al-
ways found the passages at once. His argument did not seem to advance at all to-
day – so little that I took no notes at all. Cornforth had brought his friend with
him, but neither of them said anything in the discussion which followed. I start-
ed it by taking it back to the old question of sensible appearance, but we only
had the same arguments over again from Wittgenstein. Then the Polish
woman, who also had a friend with her, an Englishwoman, started the question
of the reference to the body involved in statements about the self, which took up
the rest of the hour, I finding myself again in controversy with Wittgenstein. After
the lecture James invited me to come to tea with him on Monday.
24th. Looked at the plan of Cambridge to see exactly where Thompson’s Lane is,
and went off there. He gave me ‘Cut Golden Bar’ to smoke and we talked philos-
ophy and ate crumpets and cakes. We talked about Whitehead and about Dawes
Hicks and about Bosanquet, but we had not very much time for anything, for we
had to be at the Arts School at five o’clock. James is probably going next year to
be the first warden of a newly founded Welsh University settlement at Merthyr
Tydfil. Wittgenstein was very confused in this lecture to-day, just as he was on
Friday night, and things were made worse when he came again onto the octahe-
dron of colours and people began to interrupt from the body of the room – first a
strange man who sat in the front row and then Guest and Du Val. Cornforth still
has that man Middleton with him.

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25th. Found waiting for me when I got up this morning a note from Tennant in-
viting me to come and have tea with him on Friday, saying that he hoped to be
able to present me than with ‘the gratifying sight of another Oxford counte-
nance’. This was disconcerting, as I had got up rather late and proposed to
cut his lecture again this morning, but I made haste with my breakfast and ar-
rived in Trinity about a quarter past the hour. He is now properly on his subject
at last and was discussing the nature of religion and religious experience,
though rather superficially, as I thought. After the lecture he came up to me
and said that he would have to postpone the invitation until Friday next but
hoped I would come then without another note. I went on to Moore, whom I
found rather dull to-day and cannot remember at all definitely what he said:
he was still criticising Russell and was concerned for some time with the
point that the truth of such statements about the present moment as ‘That is a
blackboard’ does not depend upon the truth of any statements or expectations
about the future. James gave me back the two pamphlets of Joseph’s which I
lent him last term – but he had never read either of them[.]
I started out at eight o’clock, though it brought me to Lee’s rooms in Corpus
at a quarter past, a quarter of an hour before we were due to meet and when I
found not even Lee at home. The whole party, when it assembled, consisted of
Lee, Wittgenstein, Du Val, Cornforth, Drury, Prizer and myself. There seemed
to be no agreement as to what we were to discuss, but Drury raised the question,
suggested by Moore’s lecture to-day, how on Wittgenstein’s principles it has sig-
nificance to say that an orange has pips in it if we do not cut the orange at the
moment when we make the statement, and this led Wittgenstein to talk again
about hypotheses, which brought him onto the conception of a line as an infinite
set of points and so into controversy with Du Val, for he dislikes the Cantorian
mathematics on which Du Val has of course been brought up. They discussed the
infinity of space and time, on which Drury’s honest unoriginality was very funny
to see, and then Wittgenstein got into horrible confusion, trying to make out that
there was a sense in which time could be said to be finite. At one point he grew
very indignant at the ‘sensational’ utterances of Dirac,⁶⁴ who is fond of saying
e. g. that there are numbers which do not obey the commutative law of multipli-
cation, when really either his ‘numbers’ are not numbers or his ‘multiplication’ is
not multiplication. At the end of meeting, Lee saying that he would not be at the
discussion on Thursday because he was going to see the Italian pictures and Du
Val that he was doing the same and going to the Albert Hall to hear Bach’s B
 Paul Dirac ( – ), theoretical physicist, from  Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
at Cambridge; in the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize (jointly with Schrödinger).

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minor Mass in the evening, Wittgenstein said he envied him and went away
through the courts of Corpus humming passages from the Mass. He took Corn-
forth home with him to his digs and I went with them as far as the corner of Sil-
ver Street and so home and to bed.
27th. I was not up early enough to be in any better time for Tennant’s lecture but
got there at a quarter past ten: he was talking about a Frenchman named Hauter,
who has written a book called ‘L’Objet religieux’,⁶⁵ which sounded interesting
and I asked Tennant about it after the lecture and I believe he is going to
offer to lend it to me, if he has not parted with his copy, having received it for
review. Moore seemed to me to-day to have got back to his old level and I
took quite a mass of notes, though what he was talking about did not seem to
me very important – probably by contrast with his discussions of the theory of
perception, which were of vital interest to me: he was still talking of our knowl-
edge about physical objects and said that we might know, seeing a scarecrow
where from a distance we had thought we saw a man, that we had been
wrong in so thinking, though the proposition that there was a man there earlier
was not logically incompatible with the proposition that there was a scarecrow
there now.
For all my early tea I missed the bus I meant to catch and had to wait for one
which just brought me to the Post Office at five o’clock. The same bus was board-
ed by Bose, with whom I had few words and really he seems to be a very nice
man: he was not going to Wittgenstein but going to do some work on Lotze,
though he was thinking of coming to the Moral Science Club to-morrow evening
to hear Professor A. E. Heath on ‘Philosophical Systems as Protective Myths’. It
was a very much smaller company than usual gathered in Clare to hear Wittgen-
stein: Drury had brought a volume of Johnson with him and read passages out of
it, asking Wittgenstein where Johnson was wrong, but Wittgenstein was very con-
fused in the head to-day and everyone was trying to help him out of difficulties;
much of the discussion was carried on by Moore and Braithwaite, but no conclu-
sions seemed to be reached. I came away from the meeting with Drury and home
by bus.
28th. After tea I read some more Rickert and could not decide whether or not I
was going to the Moral Science Club to hear Professor Heath on ‘Protective
Myths’ and in the end asked Miss Granger to give me my supper at half past
seven so that I could decide afterwards. In the end I went and am glad that I
 Charles Hauter ( – ), Essai sur l’objet religieux (), cf. below entry for  March.

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did. The meeting was in Bartlett’s rooms – magnificent old rooms in the second
court of Johns, with the most extraordinary jumble of literature on the shelves –
detective stories and works of psychology and novels in French, Italian and Ger-
man. I got no seat at the meeting but had to stand, in the company of a rather
nice Emmanuel man whose name I do not know. Heath was a funny little man,
who comes, it seems, from Swansea and is editor or assistant-editor of ‘The Mon-
ist’. His paper was not good but it was not so unutterably silly as I had feared it
might be: he wished to show not that philosophical systems must be protective
myths but only that they are liable to become so if the philosopher lets himself
be influenced by his own wishes or the general wishes of his time. The paper was
unusual for Cambridge in being full of literary quotations and allusions and
when it was over no-one seemed to have anything to say, except that Broad ob-
jected to the description of Martin Tupper⁶⁶ as the perfect manifestation of Ben-
thamism, adding that he was probably the only person present who had read
Martin Tupper. No one seeming to want to say anything else, I then asked
Heath whether or not he meant that our philosophical thought was so dependent
on the spirit of the time that we could not know whether a theory was true or
false until the time in which it arose was past: he said this was more or less
what he meant, which roused Wittgenstein, who began to talk on the question
whether the truth or falsehood of any opinion could be in any way affected by
the origin of the opinion. He seemed to enjoy himself thoroughly but by ten
o’clock he had dried up; if I had had anyone to support me, I might have raised
the question whether philosophy really can be studied except historically, but
alone I did not dare, so Moore had to declare the meeting at an end. I was
home by half past ten, but I got some ideas on the subject of Imagination and
sat down to work, so in the end did not go to bed till a quarter after midnight.
March 1st. I was very late for Tennant’s lecture this morning – half an hour late in
fact – but I had to go to it, for I knew that he might be bringing that book of
Hauter’s to lend to me, and so in fact he did. It is a fat book called ‘Essai sur
l’object religieux’, costing thirty-five francs and published by Félix Alcan for
the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Strasbourg. It looks so in-
teresting that I shall probably have to buy it for myself, though its get-up is un-
pleasant and it is probably not so thorough as German works on the same sort of
subject. Moore to-day finished all that he had to say on the subject of solipsism:
on our knowledge of other people’s consciousness he disappointed me, for he
 Martin Tupper ( – ), popular writer. His Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts
and Arguments () was a lasting success.

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had almost nothing to say. Now he is going to discuss McTaggart’s theory of the
unreality of Time, but he did not begin on this to-day. In the conversation-class,
before Wittgenstein came in, I asked Moore about this question about the con-
ceptions of other persons being presupposed in the distinction of sensible ap-
pearance and reality, but, though he grasped my point, he could see no reason
for believing that what I said was true. Then Drury raised a question which,
though of less interest to me, had more real relevance to what Moore has been
saying: Moore had said that you might have certain knowledge which was
based upon other knowledge and yet not be logically implied by it – for exam-
ple, I might say ‘That is a man’ and then draw nearer and know for certain that I
was wrong because I see the thing to be a scarecrow, although it is not logically
impossible that the man should have turned into a scarecrow while I was ap-
proaching: what Drury wanted to know was what this ‘based upon’ meant.
But Wittgenstein had meanwhile come in and Moore began to hedge, so that
nothing could be got out of him, although I did my best, by quoting things
that he had said in his lectures at various times, to defeat his subterfuges. Witt-
genstein then talked at enormous length upon the hypothesis that the man
called Drury might actually be a Mr Smith, and so the time passed until five mi-
nutes past one.
3rd. I was in good time for the lecture, finding only Cornforth already at the Arts
School. Wittgenstein was still talking about grammar and about the four primary
colours, but he made some interesting points about the difference between the
rules of grammar and the rules of a game, and I was annoyed to find I had
no ink left in my fountain-pen, so that I had to take my notes in pencil.
4th. The spring was in the air this morning, making me very impatient as I [was]
waiting in the sunshine for my bus. I was nearly half an hour late for Tennant’s
lecture and found him discussing mysticism so unsympathetically as to make me
annoyed. Moore lectured, as he had said he would, on McTaggart’s doctrine of
the unreality of Time, but what he criticised was the detail of McTaggart’s argu-
ment rather than the basis of his doctrine, and so that annoyed me too. I then
walked towards Trinity with Cornforth and Drury, Cornforth complaining that
Wittgenstein had been saying to Irving (of all people) that he (Cornforth) was
too flippant and went about too much with women; Drury then disappeared
down Senate House Passage, and we met Irving himself with Miss Klugmann,

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with whom Cornforth went off, and I went to the Union, to see if the ‘Idea of the
Holy’⁶⁷ was in the library, but it was lost three years ago[.]
It had to be an early supper, because the ‘Toothache Society’ was meeting in
Drury’s rooms at half past eight. I got there about five minutes too early and
found a man there typing on Drury’s typewriter and maintaining that Drury
had gone out to a meeting somewhere else. However, when Cooley⁶⁸ arrived
and confirmed my view of the matter, the other man gave in and went away.
Drury arrived soon after, having been eating pancakes, and then Cornforth,
Townsend – one of the two Emmanuel philosophers, but not the nice one –
Lee and Wittgenstein. This evening Wittgenstein expounded to us his theory of
tautologies, drawing for our benefit all the pretty diagrams of the ‘Tractatus’.
When he grew tired, I asked him about the Jowett and he said he thought
now it would be futile for him to read them a paper, but he would like to
open a discussion, if for instance Ryle or Price could read the paper. He also
told stories about two old aunts of his, about Holland and about how he came
to Cambridge and was most interesting.
6th. This morning I was actually in time for Tennant’s lecture – in the lecture-
room before Tennant himself arrived. He continued to discuss mysticism in the
same unsympathetic manner and so still annoyed me, though the conclusion
to which he came was true enough – namely, that mystical experience can justify
no particular religious dogma. After the lecture I confirmed the fact that I was
invited to tea to-morrow and found out that Lady Margaret Road lies between
the Madingley and Huntingdon roads and then went on to Moore with Lee,
who had been listening to Cornforth on the Tractatus. Someone had left his
diary behind him in the lecture-room and it was one of those little ‘Cambridge
University’ diaries, which give the train-service to Oxford, and I found from it
that the only decent train for me on Saturday leaves here at 1.58, so that I
have attended my last Moore conversation-class, for I cannot get home and
pack and have a meal within the hour. What Moore was saying to-day about
McTaggart seemed still a little captious but some of the things which he said
about Time were very important – especially when he objected to the assump-
tion that there were things called ‘events’, of which ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’
are attributes.
 Translation () of Rudolf Otto’s book Das Heilige ().

 John Cooley, a visiting student at Cambridge who later taught philosophy at Columbia Uni-
versity (see WiC, no. ).

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In the afternoon I went for a brief walk towards Grantchester, where in the
meadows I was surprised to see Miss Ames, a Newnhamite of prim and pre-Ra-
phaelite appearance who goes to Broad’s lectures, laughing and playing the fool
with two young men; but I had to be back for an early tea, to be at Wittgenstein’s
discussion-class at five o’clock. The discussion to-day was almost exclusively
mathematical, the question of ‘formal certification’,⁶⁹ which Drury again raised
with many quotations from Johnson, leading to a discussion of mathematical
proof, in which only Braithwaite and Du Val took part, while Wittgenstein
wrote up on the blackboard ((1) +1) + 1 = 1 + ((1) + 1) and so forth and got into
some difficulty, not seeing his way to showing that the associative law of addi-
tion was proved by mathematical induction, though he seemed to succeed in the
end.
7th. Not up this morning until half past ten or a quarter to eleven, and then spent
the rest of the morning reading Hauter, as I was taking the book back to Tennant
in the afternoon. I was invited for tea at four o’clock, which gave me no proper
time for a walk in the afternoon, so I waited a while, then changed into my
brown plus four suit and walked across Cambridge to Tennant’s house, which
I had no difficulty in finding. He seems to be a widower – lives with a sister-
in-law, who seems a rather tedious elderly lady. There was a student from West-
minster College there and a man who came from Pemmy at Oxford – a pupil of
Collingwood’s – whom I found afterwards to be a schoolmaster at Sedbergh who
is [in? – word omitted] Cambridge reading for orders. They went away rather
soon after tea, but I stayed, hoping to have a talk with Tennant – unwisely,
for there was no chance of a talk with the sister-in-law there and I found it rather
difficult to get away. So home at last and had an early supper and then to Drury’s
rooms to hear more about Tennant, as, for the last Moral Science Club meeting of
the term, Drury was reading a paper called ‘Dr Tennant on the Data and Methods
of Philosophy’. Cooley told me, when I got there, that Lee had a message for me
from Wittgenstein, and the message was that I should ask Hardy whether he
would put Wittgenstein up next Friday night, and if Hardy could not, the[n]
Ryle. When the paper came to be read I found the doctrine much more sympa-
thetic than ever I expected to hear from the mouth of Drury: most of what he
said I agreed with whole-heartedly, and he seemed to put it very much better
than Tennant ever did, at least in his lectures. The discussion was not quite so
 Johnson, in his Logic, speaks of formally certified propositions as those ‘whose truth is cer-
tified by pure thought or reason’. According to Moore’s original lecture notes, the topic was dis-
cussed in Wittgenstein’s lecture of  March.

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good, because Drury would always refer to the books and read out long passages
of Tennant. This discussion got onto theology too, Drury having kept quite strict-
ly to philosophy, and then Drury must needs reprove Cornforth for joking about
the Trinity, which I don’t think he was doing and anyhow it is usually the virtue
of Anglo-Catholics that they can and do joke about their religion. I came back
with Lee and Cornforth, dropping Lee at Corpus but bringing Cornforth home
with me, where we stayed talking until about a quarter to midnight when he
left me and I went to bed.
8th. To Tennant’s lecture – the last of the term, as he does not lecture on Monday
or Thursday: he was still discussing mysticism in the same unsympathetic man-
ner, and I did not pay much heed to what he said, thinking more of my journey.
Moore was still discussing McTaggart, now putting all his arguments into Russel-
lian symbolism. At the end of the hour, when Wittgenstein came in for the con-
versation-class, I got up and went out and home.
10th. I went out for a short walk towards Newnham but had to turn back very
soon, as I had to have an early tea in order to be at Wittgenstein’s lecture in
time. This evening he was discussing infinite divisibility again, which is a subject
on which one knows his opinion in advance. After the lecture I gave him Hardy’s
note and message and he said that he was tied to the Friday and would tele-
phone Hardy to that effect, so when I got home I wrote a note and posted it,
Hardy having asked me to do so as Wittgenstein is notoriously unreliable.
11th. Tennant not lecturing to-day, I had only Moore, and he told us that he can-
not lecture on Thursday, so I have now attended my last Cambridge lecture, un-
less we count Wittgenstein’s discussion-class on Thursday evening. Before the
lecture Cornforth, who maintains that I ought not to leave Cambridge without
tasting Trinity audit, invited me to lunch with him to-morrow. Moore was rather
dull to-day, prolonging his argument against McTaggart in symbolic dress, but it
seemed to impress Drury, who complained as we went down the stairs ‘To think
that I gave two pounds for McTaggart!’ and, when I suggested that the book still
had some value, said, ‘As a collection of fallacies, perhaps!’ At the same time he
invited me to come to his rooms this evening for another discussion with Witt-
genstein.
So in the evening, after an early supper, to Drury’s rooms. Besides the usual
company (Wittgenstein, Drury, Lee, Prizer – Cornforth was absent) there was a
Scotch experimental physicist named Watson, who is said to be reconstructing
physics. The discussion was not very exciting, because Watson, though he
does not seem much of a philosopher, did most of the talking and we tended

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to hear over again what we knew already – namely, Wittgenstein’s theory of

proposition and hypotheses. Du Val came in in the middle, in evening dress
and gown, having been to the theatre, not knowing that there was a meeting
but only intending to ask Drury whether Wittgenstein was holding his discus-
sion-class on Thursday, but having come he stayed. After the meeting I walked
home in company with Lee as far as the gates of Corpus and with Wittgenstein
and Watson so far as the corner of Silver Street.
13th. I had to come back to Bateman Street for an early tea, having Wittgenstein’s
discussion-class at five o’clock. This last discussion was really mathematical, Du
Val raising the question of ‘transfinite induction’ and Braithwaite then involving
himself in an argument in which he tried to maintain that (∃x).øx implied an in-
finite disjunction øa ∨ øb ∨ øc … – a doctrine which he had learnt from Ramsey,
who thought that he had derived it from Wittgenstein; but Braithwaite talked a
terrible amount of nonsense, though in the end he professed himself convinced.
Afterwards I said good-bye to Wittgenstein, who said that he would ‘certainly’ be
coming to Oxford next term, and would like to have said good-bye to Moore but
he is a man with whom it is difficult to be so familiar. I came away with Corn-
forth and Black and, when I got home, pulled out my trunk and began my pack-
ing.
14th. Left Cambridge with much regret. I had a much more pleasant time than I
had any right to expect, for I doubt whether Oxford would receive a Cambridge
man in the same way and I am sure that I would never be so kind to a man who
made rude remarks about the school of thought in which I was brought up as
Drury, for example, has been to me.
When I had taken my seat, looking out of the window I saw Wittgenstein
walking up the platform, so shouted after him and he came and joined me in
my compartment. So from Cambridge to Bletchley we talked, not seriously
about philosophy but lightly around it – about Moore, for instance, (who, he
told me incidentally, was almost run over by a car yesterday, not looking
round but judging its distance by the sound of the horn and so being knocked
down by it) whom he praises because, though he has not a tenth of the ability
of Russell, he is completely honest. Wittgenstein declared that such works as
‘Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellung[en]’ or ‘Contemporary British
Philosophy’ are prostitution and, when I told him that Moore had written in
the latter, could only reply that that was Moore’s innocence and to the pure
all things were pure. The last I saw of him was on Bletchley platform, where
he had just found that he had to wait forty minutes for the Oxford train and
was going to the refreshment room to get something to eat.

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11th. [October] Wrote to [H. B.] Acton, the president of the Jowett, offering him my
paper and reminding him about Wittgenstein …
13th. … Had a note from Acton, in which he misunderstood me and proposed to

set Wittgenstein to open the discussion on my paper, so I had to write to him
again …
15th. … Acton was coming to tea. He came and we talked Jowett matters … He pro-
posed to ask either Ryle or Price to write a paper for Wittgenstein, and as for his
own plans – he being rather sick of Oxford, thanks to J. A.⁷⁰ [whom Acton be-
lieved to have opposed his getting the Magdalen prize-fellowship] – I advised
him to follow my example and go to Cambridge …
18th. … I had a note this morning from Acton, saying that Ryle and Price both de-
clined to write papers for Wittgenstein to rend but both proposed that he (Acton)
should do so himself, and he invited me to come to tea with him on Monday to
discuss the matter. …
20th. … I went to my tea with Acton … He seemed to have made up his mind to
write the paper for Wittgenstein himself …
26th. … the Philosophical Society, meeting in Ryle’s rooms … I stayed and talked
with Ryle and Lindemann⁷¹ about Wittengenstein …
… The Jowett meeting at which Wittgenstein should have spoken was last
Wednesday [written c. 28 November], but Wittgenstein was down with ‘flu and
did not turn up: Ryle answered in his place and it was quite the best meeting
of the term.
17th [May 1938, Univ. of Leeds] … Then at Staff House I talked to Ursell⁷² … and
found that I was right in thinking that he had been a Fellow of Trinity, and
was also a personal friend of Wittgenstein; he takes the Wittgensteinian attitude
that it is ‘so difficult to write anything that is not rubbish’ …
 J. A. Smith ( – ), Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy

( – ) and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
 F. A. Lindemann ( – ), Professor of Experimental Philosophy (that is to say, phys-
ics) at Oxford.
 H. D. Ursell ( – ), mathematician, friend of Wittgenstein’s (see WiC, no. ).

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19th. … I was interested to hear that Townsend,⁷³ the New Zealander from Emma-
nuel who was doing Part I of the Moral Science Tripos when I was at Cambridge
and afterwards got a rather unexpected first in Part II, has ended up as a master
at Cooke’s school⁷⁴ (wherever that may be) and is one of the people with whom
Wittgenstein corresponds, though he has entirely given up philosophy and con-
centrates on French …
June 12th (Sunday) We⁷⁵ spent most of what remained of the morning talking phi-
losophy: the more I see of George Paul,⁷⁶ the more I am impressed by his ability.
They gave me to read Wittgenstein’s ‘blue books’⁷⁷ which they happened to have
in the house; as I had never thought I would have the opportunity, and am un-
likely to have it again, I seized it and spent most of my spare moments after-
wards reading them. Of course I could only skim them rapidly, whereas one
wants to study them slowly, but the doctrine doesn’t seem to be very different
from that which I heard from Wittgenstein when I was in Cambridge in 1929 –
30. (They tell me that he is back in Cambridge again now and lecturing and
may put in as a candidate for the succession to Moore who retires at the end
of next year.)
10th [July]⁷⁸ … went into Christ Church meadows … I was pleased to find that Mar-
garet MacDonald,⁷⁹ after a year of Oxford, seems to be losing her Cambridge in-
 Raymond Townsend (-c. ). His notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures ( – ) were
used by Desmond Lee for his edition of Wittgenstein’s Lectures (). See WiC, no. , as
well as various letters to Townsend published there.
 Cooke was a pupil of MacIver’s at Leeds.
 MacIver was spending a long weekend in Cambridge with George Paul and his new wife Mar-
garet, both – but particularly Margaret – friends of his. The diary entries relating to the weekend
contain quite a lot about their social life.
 It seems that George Paul as well as his wife Margaret (Ramsey’s sister and biographer) at-
tended Wittgenstein’s lectures in . He also attended lectures given in the academic year
 –  (cf. P&PO,  and ).
 The unusual plural form (‘blue books’) may be explained by the fact that originally there
were two volumes of the Blue Book (see WiC, no. ).
 MacIver is in Oxford for a joint session.
 Margaret Macdonald ( – ): in Cambridge, she was working as a Research Fellow at-
tached to Girton College. Later, she taught philosophy at Oxford and London. She responded
to an article by MacIver on ‘Types, Tokens, and Meaning’ in Analysis (vol. , no. , and
vol. , no. ). Her notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures in the academic year  –  were used
by Alice Ambrose (Ambrose ).

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tensity, laughing at the serious way in which Lewy⁸⁰ and Max Black kept up their
philosophical conversation without attending to anything else … … Kneale’s⁸¹
drawing room … … conversation became general. It began on the subject of Aca-
demic Assistance, Stebbing⁸² being very much concerned with the placing of ref-
ugees, but then it somehow passed on to Wittgenstein, who, according to
Braithwaite, had become a great deal more tolerant since the Anschluss (his fam-
ily having been closely connected with the Schuschnigg regime) and has even
been heard to admit that Broad is a philosopher. Kneale produced a copy of
W. H. Watson’s ‘On Understanding Physics’,⁸³ which has apparently just come
out and is a Wittgensteinian work based on the ‘Tractatus’ and the ‘blue books’.
12th. [February 1939] (Sunday) … Mummy had already woken me up by bringing

me the news (contained in the ‘Observer’) that Wittgenstein has been elected to
succeed Moore in the chair at Cambridge. I am wondering how Broad will take
that, because he was so definitive when he was in Leeds a year ago⁸⁴, that Witt-
genstein, though the only possible choice on purely intellectual grounds, would
be quite impossible administratively. But Braithwaite did say at Oxford in the
summer that Wittgenstein had changed since the German annexation of Austria,
and perhaps he has now mellowed enough to be willing to deliver public lec-
tures and write testimonials even for students who don’t actually agree with
him …
13th. [April] … I spent the morning reading those articles which I hadn’t yet read
in the ‘Mind’ which came last Thursday. None of them are of any real interest: it
interests me very much to see how far my philosophical views have crystallised
in the last few years, so that, where previously I was prepared to see possibilities
of all sorts of different schools, I am now almost as impatient as George Paul
with those whose thought is still pre-Wittgensteinian …
 Casimir Lewy ( – ), attended many of Wittgenstein’s lectures between the late s
and . In  he became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
 The historian of logic William Kneale ( – ). He taught at Oxford from , first as a
tutorial fellow of Exeter College, later as White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy ( – ).
 Susan Stebbing ( – ), a Cambridge-trained philosopher. She chiefly taught at Lon-
don, and in  she became the first woman to hold a philosophy chair in Britain.
 W. H. Watson ( – ), a physicist who attended some of Wittgenstein’s lectures in
 and . See WiC, no. , and several letters from and to Wittgenstein. Cf. entry for
 March , above.
 No diary survives for this period.

Authenticated
Bibliography
Ambrose, Alice (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge 1932 – 1935, Oxford 1979.
Biesenbach, Hans: Anspielungen und Zitate im Werk Ludwig Wittgensteins, erweiterte
Neuausgabe Sofia 2014.
Klagge, James C. & Nordmann, Alfred: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions,
Lanham, MD 2003 [= P&PO].
–: Philosophical Occasions 1912 – 1951, Indianapolis 1993.
Lee, Desmond (ed.): Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge 1930 – 1932 (from the notes of John
King and Desmond Lee), Oxford 1980.
McGuinness, Brian (ed.): Wittgenstein in Cambridge, Oxford 2008, revised edition 2012 [=
WiC].
Ramsey, F. P.: Notes on Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics, ed. by Maria-Carla
Galavotti, Napoli 1991.
Rhees, Rush (ed.): Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford 1984 [= RoW].

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Brian McGuinness, Siena

Arthur MacIver’s Diary: Cambridge (October

Fig. 1: Arthur MacIver (1905 – 1972)

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Brian McGuinness, Siena, December 2015

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Arthur MacIver’s diary

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 F. R. Tennant ( – ), theologian.

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 A. E. Duncan-Jones ( – ), later professor of philosophy at Birmingham. He was the

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3rd. I had no difficulty in finding Cornforth’s rooms, at 4 Montagu Road; he has

 Émile Meyerson ( – ), scientist and philosopher of science.

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 W. R. Sorley ( – ), at the time Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy.

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 Bernard Bosanquet ( – ), well-known British idealist.

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continued to create misunderstandings and besides Cornforth had a point of his

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 She later married Maurice Cornforth, see n. .

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company. Irving is a funny creature – very much of a psychologist and interested

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 John Locke Prize, cf. entries for  November and  December.

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It fell to me to back up Cornforth occasionally, for at bottom he was maintaining

29th. Dined early, as usual on Fridays, and so in to Braithwaite’s rooms in King’s,

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30th. This morning I resolved to break my habits of indolence and go to Tennant’s

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 E. A. Radice (OW,  – ), economist and public servant.

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views expounded in the ‘Tractatus’. He delighted me by saying that he thought

 Probably A. E. Heath, professor of philosophy at Swansea.

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30th. I am becoming reconciled to Tennant, accepting the fact that he is a wretch-

 R. E. Priestley ( – ), see WiC, no. .

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without tobacco. I think he succeeded in explaining to us what he meant by

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the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica’. These lectures of Moore’s and last Saturday’s

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McGuinness - Arthur MacIver's Diary

McGuinness - Arthur MacIver's Diary