THE TIGER AND THE MACHINE - LAWRENCE,D.H. AND RUSSELL,BERTRAND

This article contains a detailed discussion of the friendship and the intellectual collaboration between D. H. Lawrence and Bertrand Russell during the spring and summer of 1915. The questions it seeks to answe r are why Russell initially was inclined to treat Lawrence's philosoph ical thought with respect, even to the extent of becoming an evangelis t on its behalf; why he subsequently rejected Lawrence's outlook and d istanced himself from Lawrence's political program; and what similarit ies and dissimilarities exist in Russell's thought and Lawrence's as r epresented by Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction and Lawren ce's essays ''Study of Thomas Hardy'' and ''The Crown.'' Both writers, it is suggested, were centrally concerned with the possibility of tra nscending the ''prison'' of the self, but the ideas each developed as to how this should be done were radically divergent, so much so that e ach could, in the end, regard the other as the very personification of the kind of egoism they sought to transcend.