DOCS.
164,
165
DECEMBER
1915
161
be
completely
different
as
soon
as
you
had
spent
a
couple
of
days
with
him[5] is
as
clear
to you
as
to
me.
His abrasive,
almost
impudent
manner
is
not
entirely
suggested
to
him,
but
is
probably
to
a
large
part
that
self-defense of his
heart
against
painful impressions
which
you yourself
know
only
too
well.
[...][6]
I
am
therefore
entirely
in
agreement
with
good
old
Z.
when he reiterates
to
you
that
you ought
to
come;
he would take
care
that
you
still
get
the
boy
on
the
26th
or
27th. Your
wife
instinctively
or
consciously
includes in her calculations
your
more
refined
sensitivity,
which
propels you
to
a
kind of
flight
from emotional
up-
heavals. I
should
think that the
proximity
of
dear,
good
friend
Z.,
can assure
you
the
necessary composure,
whose
natural
manner
offers
you
a
kind of
guarantee
that
you
don’t
go
too far
by impulse
either
against yourself
or
against
others.
165. To
Moritz Schlick
[Berlin,]
13
Wittelsbacher
St., Tuesday.
[14
December
1915][1]
Highly
esteemed
Colleague,[2]
Yesterday
I
received
your paper
and have studied it
thoroughly
already.[3]
It
is
among
the best that
has been
written
on
relativity to
date. From
the
philosophical
perspective,
nothing
nearly as
clear
seems
to have been
written
on
the
topic.
At
the
same
time, you
have
a complete
command
of
the
subject
material.[4]
I
have
nothing to
criticize
about
your representations.
The
relationship
of
the
theory
of
relativity
to
Lorentz’s
theory
is
presented
superbly, your
relation
to
the
teachings
of
Kant
and his
successors
is truly
mas-
terful. Confidence in
the
“apodictic certainty”
of
“synthetic
judgments
a
priori”
is
severely
shaken
by
the
acknowledgment
of
the
invalidity
of
even
only
a
single
one
of these
judgments.[5]
Your
representations
that the
theory of rel.
suggests
itself in
positivism, yet
without
requiring
it,
are
also
very
right.
In
this
also
you
saw
correctly
that
this line of
thought
had
a
great
influence
on
my
efforts,
and
more
specifically,
E.
Mach,
and
even more so
Hume,
whose Treatise
of
Human
Nature
I
had studied
avidly
and with
admiration
shortly
before
discovering
the
theory
of
relativity.[6]
It
is
very
possible
that without
these
philosophical
studies
I
would not have arrived at
the
solution.
Your comments
on
the
general theory
of
relativity
are
also
entirely correct,
as
far
as
this
theory
was
right by
then.[7]
The
new
finding
is
the
result
that
a
theory
exists
that
agrees
with
all
previous experience
whose
equations
are
covariant with
arbitrary
transformations
in the
space-time
variables. Thus time
& space
lose
the
last
vestiges
of
physical reality.
There
is
no
alternative to
conceiving
of
the
world
as a
four-dimensional
(hyperbolic)
continuum of
4
dimensions. The fact
that