Item 84 - James David Forbes to William Whewell

Edinburgh - Thanks WW for his second round of comments on JDF's paper ['The Danger of Superficial Knowledge; an Introductory Lecture to the Course of Natural Philosophy in the University of Education', delivered on November 1 and 2, 1848: See JDF to WW, 19 Oct. 1848]. He is particularly grateful for WW exposing the obscurity of some of his arguments. However, 'whilst you justly convict me in one instance of using Macaulay's terms of profundity and shallowness as applied to the attainments of great men in different ages, my thesis is exactly that which you so well state that 'the knowledge of later times is more advanced, more extended: but not more profound, necessarily, except in more profound minds'. You add that you doubt whether I shall easily allow this; but it indeed expresses my very meaning'. 'Lord Brougham is a perfect index to the grand distinction between knowledge and wisdom' and personifies 'the very beau-ideal of Macaulay's 19th Century man'.