Item 146 - Letter from Philip Kelland

4 pp

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''.