The World as I Found It Read Online Free PDF

élan and bonhomie, which fizzed up like a fatal heartburn in the person slighted. In Wittgenstein’s case, the old fox knew better than to show himself as a bitter old man nursing a grudge against a now famous associate. His tone was not angry. Rather, it implied a wistful what if as he shook his hoary head with the thought of all Wittgenstein might have been. Ah, it was a tragic loss. Yes, he opined, it must have been the First War — why, it would have been enough to unhinge anyone, let alone so finely tuned a mind. And then there was the long absence from philosophy, the deliberate isolation from his colleagues. Sad, very sad.
    Yet without fail there came the but , and then the blow. Tragic, Wittgenstein’s influence. Incalculable, the damage he had done. Russell — and now most emphatically Lord Russell — was now penning his memoirs. Yes, Lord Gadabout Russell was talking more freely than ever. I’m an old goat but I don’t butt or bite, he would playfully tell students and reporters. Ask , I say! That’s all. You have only to ask.
    Aristocratic and elegant, wearing a rumpled chalk-striped suit, Russell was persuasive and charming, even seductive. A mist of dry white hair swept back over his oblong skull. The face was long and drawn, and the nobbed upper-class chin, though receding, was still hard, rearing back like a ball-peen hammer when he laughed. Then there was the pipe with its gurgling and popping. Thumbing the pipe, then knocking it against the wide heel of his palm. Locking it back between his discolored molars where it seemed a slot had formed. Grinning. Just grinning.
    His voice was Whig-BBC, a little shrill when excited. Yes, he said, Wittgenstein had brought chaos, beguiling many naive young men, not to mention many older philosophers who ought to have known better. Worse, added Russell, betraying a little testiness, there were Wittgenstein’s beliefs. Take his disingenuous, Tolstoyan fantasy that philosophy can be conducted solely with ordinary language. Russell threw up his arms. As if an ordinary person would bother to read — let alone comprehend — a word Wittgenstein has written! Yet Wittgenstein acts as if employing a more precise, technical vocabulary is a sin against democracy!
    Russell sighed. For the life of me, I can’t fathom his concerns. Really now, who cares what silly people mean when they say silly things? If I were to say, I see the table, Wittgenstein would ask, But in what sense of the word “see”? Oh, I can just see him, biting the word like a piece of bad money. Well, life is simply too short for that sort of nonsense, don’t you agree?
    Realizing he was getting nigh into a rant, Russell reined himself in. Look at me, he said, dropping his shoulders with a smile. Here I am going on about Wittgenstein and the poor fellow hasn’t published a word in twenty years — why, twenty-five years at least. But of course, conceded Russell, grinning out the side of his mouth, a humble man like Wittgenstein can hardly be concerned with mere publishing. Jesus never published, after all …
    People were only too happy to carry and embellish Russell’s words — or invent them. One way or another, though, the words always returned to Wittgenstein, harsher and more stinging. Wittgenstein wasn’t one for mudslinging, but he made an exception in Russell’s case. In response to Russell’s barb likening him to Jesus, Wittgenstein retorted that Russell, like the old Tolstoy, had fallen victim to his own insane celebrity. Celebrity had driven him to the point that he could hear only his own voice. Why, said Wittgenstein, you could hardly turn on a radio broadcast without hearing Lord-Help-Us Russell spouting nonsense on the revolting BBC Brain Trust program. What a life! Publicly whining about the atom bomb while popping around the world collecting fat lecture fees, having his picture taken and eating lavish suppers!