Pièce 208 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

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Paris - Does RJ feel like joining WW on the continent in the beginning of August? WW thinks the ingenuity of the Parisians has declined during the last fifteen years. WW wanted to know how successful Cousin's [Victor Cousin] attempt to introduce a sort of Scoto-German philosophy into France had been: 'The result of his efforts appears to be a complete failure; for he has had no successors in his own peculiar path. The German element of his metaphysics seems to have flown away like the smoke of a tobacco pipe and the only residue I find is a little Scotch metaphysics among those who profess to be metaphysicians who are however, very few and little attended to. I expect that you will hold this up to me as a warning, to show the folly of engaging in a similar undertaking in our own country...But in truth it only shows, what I always supposed to be the case, that it is hardly possible to introduce foreign metaphysics in the lump, and that we must read German writers for some other purpose than that of substituting German metaphysics for English. I shall try to profit by this piece of wisdom when the time comes'.