Item 2 - William Whewell to Julius Charles Hare

3 pp.

WW thinks it 'is no doubt a circumstance calculated to make one distrust one's feelings and opinions very much to find that character depends so much upon situation. There seems to be scarcely any alternative between seeing objects tinged with false colours by viewing them through the medium of professional habits or favorite pursuits, and seeing them perfectly colourless and uninviting by establishing yourself in a vacuum of prejudices. Your profession has a greater tendency than others to efface the simplicity and energy of the [word] because it is generally cultivated more exclusively. The quantity of reading and attention which it requires and still more the quantity of trifling and common place which are necessary, operate as a very heavy window tax upon the intellect; and in that case of course it is the sky lights which are first shut up'. JCH's 'principles of poetry are incompatible with the mental habits of men existing in a state of society like ours'. JCH 'must allow that science is a much more satisfactory study; your knowledge there is undeniable and its accumulation eternal and imperishable you know what truth is'. Conversely the spiritual nature of man is so mysterious and unaccountable: 'I can make nothing of it and could almost find in my heart to forswear speculating about it and to be content to feel and love the beautiful and what seems to me without knowing why or caring wherefor'.