DOC.
337 MAY 1917
327
337. From Walther Rathenau
[Berlin,]
10-11
May
1917
Dear
and
esteemed Mr.
Einstein,
I have been immersed in
your
ideas for
weeks;
I
had
barely
finished
the
evan-
gelist
Schlick
when
the
verba
magistri arrived,
which
are now
before
me
and
for
which I
thank
you wholeheartedly.[1]
First
a
preliminary remark,
which
is
not
meant
to be
a
platitude:
the
prophet
is
clearer
than the
evangelist.
I
would not have
thought
it
possible
to
force
such
a
radical
rearrangement
of ideas
through,
the
way
you do,
with such
simple
means
and
using
such classical
architectonics-I
underscore
the
word
classical,
in
contrast to
your
“bumpy."[2]
I
have read to
p.
39[3]
and do not
say
that
it
comes easily
to
me,
but
certainly
relatively
easily-as
everything
that
you
touch becomes relative.
Perhaps I
am
complicating
the
matter for
myself
because all sorts
of rudimentary
ideas from
various
sources
have led
me
within the
proximity
of
your
force
field,
and because
now
I must
take in the
radiating effects
and assimilate
them
within
the
existing
chains of
reasoning.
Shall
I
tell
you
a
bit about
such
rudimentary
thoughts?
Within the
light
of
your
halo
they will
appear
as
pitiful
unmasked ghosts-but
maybe
I
can
extend
my
bizarre thanks
to
you
for
my joy
and
admiration
by making you
smile for
a
minute
or
two. Will
the
things
still
occur
to
me
now,
around
midnight?
Let
us
enumerate,
then
it
will
work.
1. Gyroscopes always
seemed senseless
to
me.
When
built
with
precision,
how does
it
know
that it
is rotating? How
does
it
distinguish
the
direction
in
space
in which it does not want
to
let itself
be
tilted? Even if
I put
it in
a
box
and make it
blind,
it knows where
the
polestar is. I
have
always
had the
secret
feeling
that it
rotates
only
when
it
has
a
spectator.
But
if
so-it would
then
have
to protect itself with counterforces
against
the
approach
of
such
spectators
from
infinity.
Are
there
such forces?
2.
Ever since
the
arrival of vestibule
trains,
I
have found
walking
in
the
cor-
ridors
not
only
an
ordeal
but
also
a
problem,
hence
a
pleasure.
Often I
imagined
a
vestibule
train
that
extended from Berlin not
quite
all
the
way
to Paris
but
only
to St.
Quentin,
and within
it
a
smaller
one
to
Verviers,
etc.
Then
one
would
arrive
quite
quickly
in
Paris.[4]
Well,
there
is
an
end to this
anyway-so
I
do
not
have much to
lose.
3.
The
smaller insects
are,
the
faster
they
move.
It
is
customary
to
feel
sorry
for
dayflies.
I
told
myself
sometimes:
Maybe
it
is
not
so
bad;
in
the
end,
time
diminishes
with mass.-Or
is
it
only
the
sense
of
time?-If
one
had
to
play
the
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