Item 61 - Letter from George Airy

4 pp.

Flamsteed House, Greenwich - GA has not had much time to remark on WW's "Education" sheets for a few days' [Of a Liberal Education in General, and with Particular Reference to the Leading Studies of the University of Cambridge, 1845]: 'First of all - I am very glad that there will be a book on this subject... I have practically felt the want of an authoritative treatise of this kind for reference and for ground of discussion'. GA gives his 'assent entirely to the general spirit' of it and most of the details he has seen: 'I assent most completely to the tenor of your remarks on the mind-destroying effect of analytical process (excepting with a few persons among whom I class myself who have very severely disciplined themselves in the examination of the evidence of every individual step). - But I do not think that you give sufficient attention to the magnitude of the step made, to the vastness of the powers acquired, by the mere perception that symbols may be used for numbers - both in treating unknown numbers as if they were known - and in treating known numbers by general symbols. It is like the step in intellect from childhood to manhood. Although as regards the discipline of mental habit it is greatly inferior to geometrical progress, yet as regards the evocation of an unperceived power of the mind it is greatly inferior'. GA thinks WW 'should slightly limit the repudiating part in your laudatory mention of differential calculus page 36, because I think that it may be made an admirable exercise in severity of logic - at the same time acknowledging that it never will be made so by ordinary private tutors'.