Volume 1

William Whewell, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge : an account of his writings with selections from his literary and scientific correspondence / by I. Todhunter.

  • Isaac Todhunter
Date:
1876
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: William Whewell, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge : an account of his writings with selections from his literary and scientific correspondence / by I. Todhunter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    401/456 (page 365)
    3G5 regard the material world, and the pursuits of science acquire a dignity and an importance which almost invests them with a reli- gious awe. The pride of discovery, the elevation of spirit which wre feel when a new principle dawns upon us, the triumph with which it fills our mind and the energy with which it impels our enquiries, all these feelings are as it were hallowed and sanctified because they arise from that tendency which draws us towards the Divine mind, and makes us seek the perfection of our nature in Him. And it must be thought to add no small dignity to our intellectual nature that it thus appears that it so far resembles His —so far that something of what He does we can understand when done; that the laws by which He delights to act we delight to con- template; that we can consider nature till the material shell and frame-work falls away and we see the Divine ideas, almost we might say before they are embodied in matter. This is not so far applicable to the moral world, because the laws which we discover are of much more limited generality and more numerous, and in no instance reach an elementary simplicity and extent. Indeed there seems to be no example in which we can go even far in this process, much less near the end of it. The speculations concerning final causes in the moral world are the best specimens, and these are not of the certainty and extent of the others. Hence it would seem that we were not intended to speculate upon the phenomena of the moral world by means of our reason alone. The examples are however enough for the argument, and these therefore lead us demonstrably to the moral qualities of God. March 19, 182G. Shakespeare’s description [of Cleopatra’s passage up the Cydnus] contains an allusion to the fug a vacui: Antony...did sit alone, Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in nature. Sept. 30, 1828. Edinburgh Review. On History (I suppose by Macaulay). Extremely brilliant and elegant Essay writing like his preceding reviews, but not very profound. Perhaps this is an advantage and tends to the effect. His thoughts are a little