Item 91 - Richard Jones to William Whewell

The note accompanying this letter was written while RJ was in Brighton [see RJ to WW, 25 April 1844]: 'Ld. Jeffrey [Francis Jeffrey] is here and likes such subjects [presumably WW's 'On the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy', Trans. of the Cambridge Phil. Soc., 1844] - Bethune [John Drinkwater Bethune] and Ellis [Thomas F. Ellis] your old foes will read and object. Penrose [Charles T. Penrose] understands the points and beyond these I hardly know anyone who will try to understand them'. RJ gives his views: 'You and others speak of our ideas of space[,] time and number as of the same class and order. I demur as to number - putting time out of the question for the present our ideas of space are spontaneous and simultaneous with our conviction of a world without us - we can trace no process by which the mind works to or arrives at the idea. But in the case of number the idea does not appear to me to come spontaneously we work to it - we perceive individual things - unlike - we can abstract from the perceptions thus get all but individuality - by this power and effort of the mind we get at abstract and equal units and of such can predicate many things which are true to us because they spring necessarily from our own conventional abstraction. For in abstracting the mind forms a sort of convention with itself to use a strange phrase for want of a better and all things inconsistent with that convention must be untrue and all things consistent with it true much in the same manner as we get at logical truths in arguing with others by means of conventional definitions'. RJ thinks therefore that 'we get at our idea of number in a different manner from that in which we acquire instinctively the idea of space - animals have the last clearly - I doubt their having that of abstract number which it is a sort of prerogative of the human intellect to create for itself. In treating widely of the fundamental laws of human belief the logical force and necessity if we must have the phrase derived from the process of these internal abstractions or conventions which the mind makes to assist its otherwise imperfect process of keeping individual units in view appear to me and always have appeared to constitute a force and necessity very different from the force and necessity which impress on us a belief in the existence of space and if I was writing a book on logic I could shew I think that the distinction and the whole view of abstractions is of primary importance not only in cases where number is concerned but in very many others - but I am not going to write a book. I by no means regret the time I have spent in logical and metaphysical speculation but I have other vocations and I have done with them and so vent upon you what might otherwise have profited the world - I am afraid you will not think that they profit you'. Does WW 'think the house of commons can go any further in stultifying themselves only think of Ben Disraeli turning shewman to the Punchinellos and making the mob laugh at them'.