Item 126 - Letter from Augustus De Morgan

4 pp

7 Camden Street, Camden - When he first received Whewell's Of the Plurality of Worlds (1853) he thought it was an 'anonymous attempt to prove what everyone believed' and was in no hurry to read it. Then he heard it was written by Whewell and realised it should have been called 'on the singularity of the world'. He admits the argument from time to space: the human world is only dt out of t of the whole of time existence, and ds out of s of the whole of space existence, and all stars and planets progressing from negative infinity to positive infinity: every one at a different part of it, there is the chance of two given ones being in proximity. All this on the supposition of one kind of progression, it is likely that this progression is infinitely varied. WW has made a 'system of triple entry - time - space - law of progression'. ADM laughs at 'the clergy for not seeing that infidel geology - as they call it - is in truth the most unanswerable proof of supernaturalism that ever was propounded. Between an unintelligibly self-existent Creator - and an unintelligibly self existent order of things - self-reproductive natura verum'. He claims 'the straightforward impossibility of human existence at some calculable time brings us to the alternative of all absolute creation, as the growth of some lizards or fishes into men - through various stages'. He has not heard this argument although he does not read controversies concerning the book of Genesis.

De Morgan, Sophia Elizabeth, Memoir of Augustus De Morgan. London, 1882.