Letter from Kazimierz Twardowski written 11.08.1923

In Lviv, 11 August 1923.

                       Honoured Doctor!

            I’ve received your letter of the 5th of this month, as well as the paper. First and foremost, I send my cordial congratulations on the arrival of your third son. I wish him continued health, and, for his parents, may he be the cause of the greatest possible satisfaction and the least possible unpleasantness. I hope that his mother’s well and that the little one, too, leaves nothing to be desired.

            Additional congratulations on the completion of your habilitation thesis. True, I haven’t read it yet, but I can imagine how glad you must be to have brought the thing to an end. I have to reserve all judgment concerning it, of course, until I’ve read it. Therefore, I’m not responding at present to your remarks on the lack of due consideration of the literature on the subject, the terminological aspect, the concept of the idea, etc. Of course I’ll write you immediately after I’ve read the paper and tell you what I think of it and whether it meets the requirements that, in my opinion, should be set for a habilitation thesis. Today, only one comment, technical in nature, pertaining to the future: namely, you write that, in the event of bringing your paper to press, you would first need to smooth it out somewhat in substantive and stylistic terms, ‘which ultimately could also be done in the second round of proofs’. Well, that’s out of the question. Today, a printer’s price list sets such high prices for changes in proofs, i.e. for so-called super-corrections, that any corrections must be limited to essential corrections, i.e. to removing pure printing errors. Any changes from the manuscript from which the typesetter works are necessarily excluded. I point this out today, so that you’ll remember this when you finally prepare the thing for printing and then give me a manuscript that is, in essence, completely finished.

            And one more thing, please: If I approve the thing for printing, I’ll have to submit to the historical and philosophical Department of the academic Society (to which, as I mentioned, I intend to present the item to be printed), in addition to its evaluation, an autobiographical sketch, including guiding thoughts[O1] , of about 1‒2 pages in the format of the academic Society’s Report format. There’s nothing urgent about this; it’ll suffice if I receive the autobiographical sketch at the beginning of October, since I doubt that the Faculty will gather for the meeting any earlier than that.

            So far, the Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Education hasn’t returned your diploma to the University. The Dean’s office has demanded [O2] its return, and what’s more, I’m writing directly to Dr Czeżowski, who from the 15th to the 31st of this month will still be officiating in Department IV, after which he’s moving to Vilnius.

            Of course, I immediately shared the news about the addition to your family with Kazik.

            I send cordial regards

                                                                                         K. Twardowski

[O1]Nie wiem w jakim sensie jest zamierzone – może też key concepts [?]
[O2]oryg: urgował – nie znaleziono takiego słowa, tłumaczenie na bazie kontekstu, może requested