158 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VI. 



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 New- 

 market for those that put their trust in horses, and Calen- 

 dristic lore for the votaries of the Senate-house. Man 

 requires more. He finds x and y innutritions, 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 Eight in 

 Whewell's Morality ? Must Nature as well as Eevelation 

 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 com- 

 munication, 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 pre- 

 decessors 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 pro- 

 gressively 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 in- 

 creasing Power and Knowledge. That the translation from 

 the one course to the other is essentially miraculous, while 



