Item 46 - Letter from R. H. Hutton to Henry Sidgwick

Thanks him for his 'able and thoughtful criticism' of him in the Academy [1 July 1871]. Remarks that Sidgwick 'can hardly have read as much of the Goethe correspondence as [he has]'. Asks him if he knows the Stein letters. Is surprised to see how many people think he does not 'enter into the [charm] of Goethe's poetry'. Suggests that Sidgwick does not quite understand his meaning in relation to another point in the article, which, he maintains, 'rests on the assumption...that there is real and direct [ ] between God and man, and that the divine suggestion of [meteors] by him to the [ ] is no more a [breach] of [law], than the [ ] suggestion of [meteors]...by [their] most intimate friends.'