DOCS.
531,
532 MAY 1918
549
flight
into the
realm of academia and into
the
society
of
the
few believers
is
not
possible
for
me,
because
I
am
too
much
concerned,
after
all,
with
the
outcome
of
the
matter
for
our
real existence.
I
would therefore
necessarily produce
an
unequivocal
and
yet
two-sided
declaration,
and
the
question
is
whether
it
would
then
not be
better
that
I
abstained.
Should
your
idea be
realized,
I could
participate
under the
said
condition,
but
would have to
leave
it to
your
discretion
whether
you
can
make
use
of such
a
thing.
With
many
thanks
for
your confidence, yours very truly,
E. Troeltsch.
532. From
Gustav
Mie
Halle-on-S[aale],
47
I
Magdeburger
St., 6
May
1918
Dear
Colleague,
It
has been
a
long
time since
I
wrote
you,
even
though
I
have been
thinking
a
great
deal
about
our
conversation
in
Berlin in
the
meantime.[1]
My long
silence
is
explained
in
that
I
have
a very strong suspicion
that
our
written
exchange
of
ideas in
fact
consists
mostly
of
a mere squabble over
words,
from which
we can
probably
emerge only
after
repeated
occasional discussion in
person, although
we
may
not be
completely
of
one
mind. In
any event,
I
wish from
my
heart
to have
the
pleasure
of
seeing
and
talking
to
you many
more
times in
my
life.
You
may
possibly
have
misunderstood
my
parting
comment when
you spoke
of
wanting
to
return
my
visit. You could
give me no
greater pleasure
than
to
want
to
meet
me
here
once,
but
your traveling
here in
your ailing
condition seemed
so
impossible
to
me
that
I did
not
want
any promises
from
you.
You
yourself
will
have
felt,
I
hope,
how much
I
would otherwise have liked to
accept your promise
to visit
me.
In
any case,
I
may surely always
look
you up
when
I
come
to
Berlin
again.
Meanwhile,
I
would
like
to
try
once again
to
explain
myself
in
writing.[2]
I
ask,
though,
that
you
permit
me
to
talk
only
about the
“pseudo-Euclidean”
theory.[3]
I
still cannot
acquire
a
taste
for
your
gravitation
theory
with
curved
space.[4]
The
more
time
goes by,
the
sharper
my
old
objections
become for
me,
which
through
our
conversation in Berlin
had
perhaps
been dulled
a
bit
for half
an
hour,
but
the
legitimacy
of
which
I
believe
to
have
recognized very quickly
again.[5]
The
questions
I
would
like
to address
in this letter
are
of
such
a general
nature
that
it
is
maybe
not
even
of
importance
whether
we
wish to
think
in
a
“pseudo-Euclidean”
manner
or
in
a
“nonpseudo-Euclidean”
one.
Still,
I would like to
speak
from
a
firm basis.