1954 letter signed (“A. Einstein”), typed on a single sheet of his blind-embossed Princeton letterhead, 8.5 x 11 inches, dated March 24, 1954, to Alton R. F. Chapple, an Australian pathologist and Quaker. One page, integral blank. Fine condition; trivial creasing consistent with mailing. Not examined out of frame.
A philosophically dense letter in which Einstein responds to Chapple’s follow-up inquiry regarding the tension between a “moral elite” and the broader public. Building directly upon his celebrated February 23, 1954 letter to Chapple—in which Einstein praised the Society of Friends as the religious community with “the highest moral standards” and noted that “the rules applying to a pioneering moral elite can not be expected to be followed by the rank and file”—Einstein here addresses the inherent danger of elite separation from humanity.