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2 November 1911, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I am glad you are home again and no longer playing soldiers, which is after all a silly occupation. Let this letter welcome you home. I feel sure that the sigla you invented in your army camp, S. ΨA, will come into universal use.
There isn't much to say, except that I should like you to appear in the Zentralblatt with announcements from the President's office, that Riklin should send the membership lists to Bergmann, who needs them for his mailing, and that I support Stekel's request that we subsidize a paper by Silberer, which is rather long and has been lying about for some time. It is entitled: On Categories of Symbols,1 and ought, like everything he writes, to be valuable.
Four publishers have now turned down the new journal (Deuticke, Bergmann, J. A. Barth, Urban & Schwarzenberg). I am hoping to make arrangements next week with H. Heller, the art publisher, who is a member of our group. But it's not so good; this and various other things make a pitiful impression that leaves me depressed. In addition, I have not been fully employed this month; the nestlings are opening hungry mouths, the ones outside my house at least; those at home are still getting enough to eat. My psychology of religion is giving me a good deal of trouble; I have little pleasure in working and constant douleurs d'enfantement;2 in short, I feel rather gloomy and I am not quite well physically either. Old age is not an empty delusion.3 A morose senex deserves to be shot without remorse.
Magnus Hirschfeld has left our ranks in Berlin. No great loss, he is a flabby, unappetizing fellow, absolutely incapable of learning anything.