Item 164 - Letter from George Airy

Flamsteed House, Greenwich - GA 'like many other people, am occasionally picking up a crumb from your Plato'. He 'is beginning to see the merit of Socrates, not in what he taught, but in what he led some men to think on...it was very valuable that men should be led to think of mental and verbal philosophy instead of constant materialism. If yankees could so be stirred up, to forget dollars for a moment and think (rightly or wrongly) on mental subjects, they would rise in character'. GA is just preparing to publish a little tract on the errors of observation: 'It is a very pretty subject, very little known in England, and which I actually want for the reference of my own Assistants'.