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10 January 1933
Dear Professor,
I waited to read your book before writing to thank you for your kindness in sending me a copy. It was a very great pleasure to enjoy again your rich personal style—one could hear you talking—as well as the always interesting content. You will not be surprised to hear that my skin is too tough to be much affected by your plea for telepathy.1 I have had of course many similar examples to the one you quote, and a large number of striking ones were sent in by correspondents after my radio talks. It is really curious that no one ever gets the opportunity of investigating these phenomena at the time, so that one is always driven back on to speculative probabilities where of course free play is left to the subjective. I wish you had added some analytical considerations on the nature of the tendency to believe or disbelieve in such matters: there is much to say there that is interesting. The chapter I enjoyed most was the final one and this I feel sure will belong to the classics. The whole chapter is truly magnificent, and I don't think I have in my life read a page with which I was in more complete accord than S.222.2 I wonder if you remember a talk we had some time ago whether the greatest danger to psycho-analysis came from the materialistic, anti-psychological tendencies in science, particularly in medicine, or from the anti-natural tendencies of religion and its later derivatives. I remember taking strongly the ground that the latter was the only serious enemy, but you were more doubtful.3
I am happy to tell you we have secured a very good translator for the book,4 and both Mr. Strachey and myself will see to the revision.
You cannot, I am sure, be content with the progress made in regard to the Verlag, but I think that everything possible is being done. Certainly no one else could have achieved half so much as Martin has done.
We are expecting to present our little girl with a playmate next May. That is the chief personal news, and there