TO LEWIS CAMPBELL, ESQ.

8 King's Parade, 9th Nov. 1851.

I began a letter last week, but stopped short for  want of matter. I will not send you the abortion. Facts are   very scarce here. There are little stories of great men for minute philosophers. Sound intelligence from Newmarket   for those that put their trust in horses, and Calendristic lore for the votaries of the Senate-house. Man requires    more. He finds x and y innutritious, Greek and Latin indigestible, and undergrads. nauseous. He starves while
being crammed. He wants man's meat, not college pudding. Is truth nowhere but in Mathematics? Is Beauty   developed only in men's elegant words, or Right in Whewell's Morality? Must Nature as well as Revelation be   examined through canonical spectacles by the dark-lantern of Tradition, and measured out by the learned to the    unlearned, all second-hand. I might go on thus. Now do not rashly say that I am disgusted with Cambridge and  meditating a retreat. On the contrary, I am so engrossed with shoppy things that I have no time to write to you. I   am also persuaded that the study of x and y is to men an essential preparation for the intelligent study of the    material universe. That the idea of Beauty is propagated by communication, and that in order thereto human   language must be studied, and that Whewell's Morality is worth reading? if only to see that there may be such a   thing as a system of Ethics.

That few will grind up these subjects without the help of rules, the awe of authority, and a continued abstinence   from unripe realities, etc.

I believe, with the Westminster Divines and their predecessors ad Infinitum that "Man's chief end is to glorify   God and to enjoy him for ever."  That for this end to every man has been given a progressively increasing power of communication with other   creatures. That with his powers his susceptibilities increase.

That happiness is indissolubly connected with the full exercise of these powers in their intended direction. That   Happiness and Misery must inevitably increase with increasing Power and Knowledge. That the translation from  the one course to the other is essentially miraculous, while  the progress is natural. But the subject is too  high. I will not, however, stop short, but proceed to Intellectual Pursuits.

It is natural to suppose that the soul, if not clothed with a body, and so put in relation with the creatures, would run   on in an unprogressive circle of barren meditation. In order to advance, the soul must converse with things external  to itself.

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore   to the facility of obtaining data. In the Mathematics this is easy. Do you want a quantity? Take x; there it is!—got  without trouble, and as good a quantity as one would wish to have. And so in other sciences,—the more abstract  the subject, the better it is known. Space, time, and force come first in certainty. These are the subjects in   Mechanics.

Then the active powers, Light, Heat, Electricity, etc.=Physics.

Then the differences and relations of Matter=Chemistry, and so on.

Here the order of advancement is just that of abstractedness and inapplicability to the actual. What poor blind   things we Maths. think ourselves! But see the Chemists! Chemistry is a pack of cards, which the labour of    hundreds is slowly arranging; and one or two tricks,—faint imitations of Nature,—have been played. Yet  Chemistry is far before all the Natural History sciences; all these before Medicine; Medicine before Metaphysics,   Law, and Ethics; and these I think before Pneumatology and Theology.

Now each of these makes up in interest what it wants in advancement.

There is no doubt that of all earthly creatures Man is the most important to us, yet we know less of him than any    other. His history is more interesting than natural history; but nat. history, though obscure, is much more intelligible   than man's history, which is a tale half told, and which, even when this world's course -is run, and when, as some   think, man may compare notes with other rational  beings, will still be a great mystery, of which the beginning  and the end are all that can be known to us while the intermediate parts are perpetually filled up.

So now pray excuse me if I think that the more grovelling and materialistic sciences of matter are not to be  despised in comparison with the lofty studies of Minds and Spirits.Our own and our neighbours' minds are known  but very imperfectly, and no new facts will be found till we come in contact with some minds other than human to elicit them by counterposition. But of this more anon.