Item 35 - William Whewell to Julius Charles Hare

WW is relieved that JCH has successfully settled into his parish duties. WW hopes his friendship with Connop Thirlwall has not diminished. However there were two passages in WW's second letter which vexed Thirlwall ['Additional Remarks on...Mr Thirlwall', 1834]: I found a long and very keen though sorrowful remonstrance respecting what I had said'. WW explained to Thirlwall that his difficulties came not from his opinions, but from the impropriety of his expressing them while holding his official situation; and with this he appeared somewhat more satisfied'. WW is upset by the disunity among the Trinity establishment: 'I am much struck and grieved with the bitter feeling all our Whigs (I use the word for distinctness only) bear to the Master; which indeed goes so far that it is not only unfit for members of the same household, but altogether illiberal and unchristian'. JCH's scheme for a Coleridge prize is unsuitable: 'A subject so vast, so important, and so unsettled as the philosophy of Christianity should not be tossed over to a few ardent and very likely, fearless young men, to make their theories on for the sake of a prize'. The 'next step which our public can take in abstract speculation must depend on the steps they have taken already. The meanings which words and modes of expression have acquired, the convictions and generalisations which it is possible to call up in men's minds must depend on the past progress of literature and speculation among them; and truth is not truth if you alter the discipline which this progress exercises. Coleridge appears to me to assume and require, for the understanding of his religious speculations an intellectual discipline different from that which the English have hitherto had; Schleiermacher [Friedrich Schleiermacher] and the best of the Germans undoubtedly do so. I conceive therefore that the truths which may be found in the writings of these men must be taken up in the mind of some genuine Englishman and given out in a suitable form, before they will take a national hold upon us'. If JCH can do this he will be 'an immense benefactor to England'. WW 'had the pleasure of seeing Coleridge a few months before his death...He talked wonderfully well; among other things expressed the deepest sorrow at Thirlwall's letters. I spent a day with Wordsworth with great satisfaction; sailing on Windermere and wandering on its banks all day with him'.