FJ will be setting out for Scotland before mid-May and does not think he will be able to take up WW's invitation to stay at Trinity College Lodge. 'Strange times, these we live in! - and visibly pregnant with great changes'.
The new editor of the Christian Remembrancer is very keen to have a review of [Brock's - William Brock?] 'Christian Morals', and would like WW to do it.
Guernsey, Channel Islands - JAJ is having trouble explaining extracts from Sanderson [Robert Sanderson?] and needs to consult works which he has not got access to where he is. He hopes to be in Cambridge in a few days.
Charlton on Madlock, Manchester - Thanks WW for his answer to AJ's note criticising WW's philosophy. He still thinks WW's explanation is not sufficient: 'Since matter cannot exist without form, form is as well as matter a condition of our sensations'. Numbers are a simple quality of matter. AJ presents a Lockean argument in opposition to WW's notion of fundamental ideas. AJ has formulated his view of Kant into two pages, which if WW is interested he will send him.
There are two notes attached to this letter of an earlier date: The first is an attempt to show WW the difference between his view of the mind (Lockean) and WW's (Kantian) - 'Our senses form the natural link between two opposite realities, viz: our mind and the external world'. The second note declares that he is to add his argument against WW in his book, which is part of a larger project opposing the views of Kant. WW's view on gold does not impugn AJ's argument 'that gold cannot exist without form , and that therefore I cannot have the sensation of the matter gold without having in the same time the sensation of a form of gold'.
Charlton on Medlock, Manchester - AJ has sent WW the passage in his book where he opposes him over the form of gold. WW claims that the substance of gold itself is ''collected, not from the evidence of the sense, but from the operations of our ideas' in other words the substance or the matter of gold is a necessary and universal truth an idea which cannot be acquired by experience!'
JH sends a certificate in favour of Ritchie who wants to become a fellow of the Royal Society. Would WW also sign it and if [Adam] Sedgwick is around get him to add his name.
6 Bridge Rd., St. John's Wood - It is now over a year since WW saw some of JJ's work at the Architectural Museum. He had sought 'to invite attention, to the 'source' of true scientific forms and proportions, applicable to art'. He wrote to Lord Stanley on the value and extent to which he had 'determined simple and practical geometrical facts, systematically, and connectedly, far beyond what is taught at schools'. JJ does not know if any mathematician such as WW, 'has been desired by, or given to, the Board of Trade' an account of what he as done. JJ describes the defective teaching of geometry to architects and artisans: 'the theory of the schools in reference to truth, and character of curved lines, however it may expand the mind of the mathematician, is not sufficient practically for instructing either the mind or the eye of architects and artists'.
6 Bridge Rd., St. John's Wood - Further to WW's lecture at St. Martin's Hall in which he gave an example of the geometry of a sheet of paper: JJ encloses an example of the generation of three curved lines aided by two strips of paper, a ruler, a fixed point and a T square. A mould is taken of the first curve and the T Square is then used instead of the straight ruler: The same process is then repeated for the third curve. Any other straight line can now be drawn across the three curves. JJ's example 'shows how all the three curves may be generated at the same time by three T squares linked together'. He concludes: 'Many other results can be obtained by such simple repeated movements, and their relations to curved solids made manifest by simple geometrical laws'.
Liverpool - Thanks WW for his letter and the 'frankness' with which he expressed himself over a problem SJ had sent to him over equations applied to a pulley: The 'inferences from which I deduced the absurdities were made without reflecting that the force, which sustains P, acts on the opposite side of the tangent plane on which P may be supposed to rest, and consequently has a tendency to increase the pressure'. SJ is aware that not only the demonstration of Taylor's theorem but also those of the Binomial are mainly considered defective. These objections 'are much like those which Geometers make to the doctrine of Parallel lines'- both objections get in the way of investigation.
London - An anonymous correspondent advising WW to get his work on Gothic architecture reprinted [Architectural Notes on German Churches, with Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture 1830]: 'The circulation of the work would advance the interests of science by the collection and generalization of facts in support of a highly interesting theory; and it may serve to stimulate the curiosity of many to take up a study, which in common with others , can only tend to advance civilisation'.
Hyde Park Gate, Kensington Gore - JK regrets WW found his 'Latin so very defective', and will take care that his second letter 'may give you entire satisfaction'. He hopes to send WW his first English Report on Primary Education in Europe, in part as a thank you for WW recommending him to the Senate and the promises he had made to WW.
Kensington Gore - JK is sorry that his Report ['First English Report on Primary Education in Europe', see JK to WW, 3 March 1846] should have given WW cause for displeasure. JK was under the impression that in addition to the three Latin letters which the trust required him to forward to the Vice-Chancellor, he would be expected to publish a report of his researches - which he has done.
Edinburgh - Thanks WW for his paper ['On the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy', Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 7, pt. 2, 1845?]: 'The question at issue [between WW and John Herschel] appears to me to be not about the [fact] of the [indifferent] action of the mind, but about its extent. Everyone admits, I presume, the suggestive agency of experience...The question is, does experience act as a directive power at all, and if so to what extent? The exact limitation which is to be assigned to it, is the real difficulty in the question to my mind'. PK cannot clearly reconcile WW's differences with John Herschel's or indeed WW's earlier views from his later ones. PK believes that the mind possesses an innate faculty of cognition, which is brought into action by the ''sense to produce perfect Conceptions''.
PK would like to read his paper 'On the Elasticity of the Ether in Crystals' next Monday. However, since his paper differs with Augustine Fresnel over a certain point and WW does not approve of any differences with Fresnel's Memoir, he would be happy to discuss it with WW first.
Edinburgh - Thanks WW for his 'work which you have so kindly sent me' [probably Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay, 1853].
JH has felt obliged to burn Mr Ritchie's certificate: as Secretary of the Royal Society he ought not 'exercise the privilege of a member in that respect' [see JH to WW, 20 Jan. 1827].
Swaffham, Bulbeck, Cambs. - LJ sends WW numbers one and three of Thompson's Zoological Researches [John Vaughan Thompson, 'Zoological Researches and Illustrations', a series of five pamphlets, Cork, 1828-1834].
Lincoln's Inn - Ker has always been very proud of having brought Jones [Richard Jones?] and Lord Brougham together, particularly since the latter did not really want to. Nevertheless, after meeting Brougham admitted that Jones 'was one of the most remarkable men he had met'.
Written from Yarm, Yorkshire.
Written from Yarm, Yorkshire.
Written from Bampton School, Westmoreland.
JH is to be married on the 3rd of next month and would like WW to attend.
Written from Bampton School, Westmoreland.
Lowick-bridge - Thanks WW for his 'valuable and much esteemed present' [his poem on Boadicea for which he won the Chancellor's Medal for the best English poem].