Letter to Lion Philips, April 14, 1864

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 14 April 1864


First published in the language of the original (German) in the magazine International Review of Social History, Vol. I, Part 1, Assen, 1956
First published in English in full in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979
Printed according to the original in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
Keywords : Letter, Lion Philips


MARX TO LION PHILIPS

IN ZALT-BOMMEL

London, 14 April 1864
1 Modena Villas, Haverstock Hill, N.W.

Dear Uncle,

I hope that the cough has gone the way of all flesh. As for myself, there hasn't been a sign of a FURUNCLE for a few days, and my doctor Allen thinks that I am now rid of the things for good. And high time, too. The sun seems to be breaking through at last. But there's still a nasty wind blowing from the East. Eleanor's cough has gone. However, her sister Jenny has a very persistent COUCH, [which][1] will disappear [only] with a change of wind.

Conradi had already written to me before I got your letter, and I had replied, saying he could send the money here direct.[2]

At the Museum[3] I have been taking a look at Boethius's De arithmetica (he wrote at the time of the Völkerwanderung) on Roman division (he didn't, of course, know any other sort). From this and a number of other works with which I have compared it, I see that moderately simple calculations, such as household and commercial accounts, were never done with [figures] but with pebbles and similar tokens on an abacus. On this abacus several parallel lines were drawn and whatever was used, whether pebbles or other visual signs, denoted units on the first line, tens on the second, hundreds on the third, thousands on the fourth, etc. Such abacuses were in use throughout almost the whole of the Middle Ages and are still employed by the Chinese today. As for more complex mathematical calculations, at the time when these are found among the Romans, the latter already had the multiplica- tion table—Pythagoras's—which, however, was still very awkward and cumbersome, for that table consisted partly of its own characters, partly of letters of the [Gre]ek (later Roman) alphabet. But [since] division merely boils down to the analysis of the dividend into factors and the tables in question were taken to fairly high figures, this must have sufficed for the reduction of expressions such as MDXL, etc. Every number, e.g. M, was separately reduced to the factors which it formed with the divisor, after which the quotients were added together. Thus, for example, M divided [by] two=D (500), D divided by 2 = 250 e[tc]. That the ancient method placed insuperable difficulties in the way of very complex calculations is evident from the artifices to which that outstanding mathematician Archimedes had recourse.

As regards the 'darkness of outer space', this necessarily follows from the theory of light. Since colours only appear when light-waves are reflected by solids and since, in the intervals between the heavenly bodies, there is neither atmosphere nor any other kind of solid, these intervals must be pitch black. They allow the whole light-ray to pass through, which is simply another way of saying that they are dark. Moreover, space outside the atmosphere of the planets, etc., is fated to be damnably koud en kil[4] since the rays generate warmth only when they strike a solid, which is also why, summer or winter, it is icy cold in the higher air strata of our atmosphere—that is, owing to the thinness, hence the relative insubstantiality, of these layers. But

Ought this affliction to afflict us
Since it but adds to our delight?[5]

And what good are light and warmth WHERE THERE IS NO EYE TO SEE THE ONE, AND NO ORGANIC MATTER TO KEEL THE OTHER? Long ago the worthy Epicurus had the sensible idea of banishing the gods to the intermundia (i.e. the empty spaces of the universe)[6] and, indeed, R.'s[7] 'perfect curs' are fit denizens for those cold, cool, pitch dark, stoffelooze wereldruimte.[8]

You can see what a good Dutchman I've become from the fact that little Jenny has already read half the Camera obscura[9] and Laura, me docente,[10] a large part OF THE FIRST von ME OF THE Aardrijks- kunde,[11] while even Eleanor knows Dans Nonneken dans and Klompertjen en zijn wijfjen[12] by heart. Best compliments from THE WHOLE FAMILY to you, and Karl, not forgetting madame la générale.[13] With the weather being so fine, you surely won't have overlong to wait for your own beau jour![14]

Your affectionate nephew,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ Manuscript damaged.
  2. ↑ See this volume, p. 501.
  3. ↑ the British Museum Library
  4. ↑ icy cold
  5. ↑ From Goethe's Westöstlicher Diwan ('An Suleika').
  6. ↑ According to Epicurus, there is an endless multitude of worlds whose origin and existence is governed by their own natural laws. Gods exist too, but outside those worlds, in the spaces between them, and exert no influence whatever on the evolution of the universe or on human life.
  7. ↑ Probably Roodhujzen's.
  8. ↑ spaces devoid of matter
  9. ↑ by Hildebrand
  10. ↑ with me as tutor
  11. ↑ Geography
  12. ↑ 'Dance, little nun, dance' and 'The shoe and his wife' (Dutch nursery rhymes)
  13. ↑ Probably the wife of Karl Philips' father in law, a general.
  14. ↑ fine day
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