By JERRY GILL
In my early years as a professor, I tried to publish articles in very prestigious journals. One was “Mind” and it was edited by Professor Gilbert Ryle at Oxford University.
My first submission was about some of the ideas of Professor Quine at Harvard. In his brief rejection letter, Professor Ryle wrote:
“Dear Gill: This is a very astute essay on Quine. However, all of your criticisms are couched in the form of rhetorical questions. This is a very invertebrate way of raising criticisms. Yours, Ryle.”
A while later, undaunted, I submitted another essay to “Mind” where I attempted to solve the complex issue of the meaning of religious language. I put together a long essay covering all the possible views that scholars had offered in trying to deal with this subject. After a couple of months, Ryle wrote back:
“Dear Gill: This is pretty well done, but you seem to think one can get by with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. One cannot. Yours, Ryle.”
A few years later, when I had the great good fortune to be able to spend a term at Oxford, I participated in one of Ryle’s seminars. I bit the bullet by a writing a presentation which focused on a specific aspect of Ryle’s own views about the relation between the mind and the body. He was famous for his book “The Concept of Mind” where he characterized the traditional dualistic view by calling it “the ghost in the machine” theory. My presentation went well, especially considering I had had the insolence to criticize Ryle’s account of the issue.
On several occasions, during my time at Oxford I visited Ryle in his “rooms,” which was the informal way of referring to the professor’s office. Often, when the professors were single, they actually lived in their “rooms.” These combined offices and living quarters always involved a bedroom and bath in addition to the large study with a desk, several comfortable chairs and many bookcases. These professors took their meals “in college.”
On one of my visits, Ryle pointed to a stack of papers about 3 feet high and explained that these were the manuscripts which had been submitted to “Mind” recently. He dug out one of mine, the third I had submitted to him, and handed it to me with no comment. He had said that I should come around on Tuesday because that was when his secretary and he went through the stack. I am sure that few if any other important journals were handled in such an informal fashion.
Before my departure from Oxford, I pushed the envelope by asking Ryle if he might be willing to publish my paper in “Mind.” Much to my surprise and delight, he said he would. As it turned out, this was at that time undoubtedly my most important scholarly achievement. Over the ensuing years, several colleagues remarked, only half in jest, that they were “honored” to know someone who had published in “Mind.”
Upon returning to the states, I waited eagerly for my article to appear. Issue after issue came and went without any including my essay, which was to be entitled, simply, “On I.” Finally, confused and frustrated, I wrote to Ryle asking when my article might appear. It had now been two years since he had said he would publish it. After a few weeks, Ryle’s reply arrived. It said, simply:
“Dear Gill. How you fuss. Your article is on the escalator like everyone else’s. Yours. Ryle.”
Well, after another year my article was published. By then, it seemed rather anticlimactic. What I value most is my encounter with one of the Oxford “greats,” as peculiar as he was.