Item 181 - Letter from Connop Thirlwall

Thanks WW for his work on Induction and the second Memoir: 'The former brought back to my mind several passages by which I had been much perplexed and dissatisfied in the midst of the pleasure and admiration with which I had gone through Mill's [John S. Mill] book some three years ago ['A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation', 1843, second edition (1846)]. It is not for me to pronounce between two such thinkers, at least until I have seen a rejoinder to the reply: but I certainly have a very strong impression that your main position cannot be shaken'. As to WW's'Additional Note to the two Memoirs' CT thinks it certainly puts Hegel's place in the history of German philosophy: 'The master thought of his philosophy is Schelling, all that is his own is the rashness and violence with which he has carried it out into detail, by a perpetual perversion of facts and juggle of words'. CT finds it 'an inestimable blessing to live in an an intellectual atmosphere in which such monstrosities either could never come to light or most instantly die, even though it may not be quite so genial as that in which they flourish'.