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6 September 1921
The Plat, Elsted
Dear Professor,
The erratic Brill sent me a telegram from Innsbruck asking me to meet him in Zurich, although I had sent an account of my movements to New York, Plymouth and Paris. I suppose he thinks we are as mobile in Europe as they are in America. We return to London on the 9th, leave for Nürnberg via Brussels on the 12th, arriving on the 14th (address there p/a Merck,
Freytagstr. 1.) and staying there till Hildesheim on the 21st. Hiller is coming to Nürnberg, which will have many advantages in organising the Journal further.
I have just finished going through Strachey's translation of the Massenpsychologie, which is excellently done. As I have also corrected seven chapters of the Vorlesungen there has been little time left of my three weeks here to consider writing an article for Edinburgh.1 But I regret this the less because you give so much food for thought in the Massenpsychologie that it will need much digesting before fresh ideas flow. You seem to have written it very easily and confidently, I suppose as a reaction to the difficulty of the Jenseits. You could have expanded and illustrated every paragraph of it, but you are rightly leaving such Hosenarbeit [dog work] more and more to others. What a library of books that little one will give rise to in time.
It may interest you to know that Bernard Shaw has just written an epic play in which he attempts to deal with the origin of death, and also uses Plato's idea of the origin of sex in connection with Lilith.2 I will bring the book with me for you. I have just refused an American article for the Journal, in which the attempt is made to identify your Anschauung [outlook] with that of Bergson.3 I remarked that it needed to be completed by an indication of the gulf between you. In general I fear that your Life Instinct in the Jenseits will lead to your being claimed an adherent of self-creative evolution and vitalism; it will be said that you have found out the error of materi