Item 273 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

4 pp.

Trinity Lodge - WW has read RJ's lectures and is ready to discuss them with him: 'They appear to me to be full of the most valuable matters, delivered in most places with great force. But I think they may and ought to be made a little more symmetrical and methodical'. RJ should draw up an analytical table like the one WW suggested for the first five lectures [see WW to RJ, 28 March 1852]. There is a review of WW's lectures on morality in the Westminster Review ['Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England', 1852, and 'Elements of Morality, including Polity', 1845, Westminster Review, October 1852]: 'It is plainly John Mill and I am rather amused to hear what is the amount of what can now be said of the best of Bentham's [Jeremy Bentham] school in favour of their master'. Mill wants to put the result of their controversy on the following issue: 'Whether the pleasures of animals - pigs, geese, lions for instance - are of the same moral value as those of man. He says yes, I say no. As to other matters he accuses me, as I accuse Bentham of reasoning in a circle'.