Item 6 - Letter from W. K. Clifford to Frederick Pollock

1 folded sheet

26 Colville Road (Bayswater).—Discusses a paper on rectilinear motion. Huxley is preparing to lecture on Spinoza. Suggests that legal measures should be taken against mediums.

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Transcript

26 Colville Road
Oct 4/75

My dear Fred

My letters disappeared for a week because the servant was let in to light a fire and chose to make the study “tidy.” I see I shall never be allowed to become a correspondent.

The marked passages are all right, but the case is even stronger. Tchebichef thought he had proved rectilinear motion impossible with five bars, and was on his way to prove it impossible with any number. Peaucellier accomplished it with seven, but Hart has since done it with five. Magnis componere parva {1}, I am on the point of finishing the enumeration of types of compound statement with four terms (the premises of a syllogism make one type with 3 terms) which Jevons said would employ thousands of men many lifetimes or something to that effect {2}.

The passage of Spinoza is Ethic. part iii prop 2. I find that Huxley (we went to see them last night) is preparing to hold forth on Spinoza with special reference to this doctrine. I told him to read your article & he said Morley had already put him up to it. There is to be a bicentenary in ’77, and the Dutch have taken Holland to hold it in.

Is not a contract to find treasure by magic punishable as [an] attempt to obtain money on false pretences? If this clearly applied to the fee of a medium and all such matters, the moral effect would be splendid. Thine W.K.C.

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{1} 'To compare great things with little things.'

{2} See Clifford's paper on the subject, 1877.