March 26th 1842.
‘My dear Tyndall’
There is something so picturesque, so sublime, so poetic in your varied mode of letter writing that the reader must exclaim: these productions are emanations of a person whose mind is stored with an inexhaustable treasure of historical and natural abilities. I am often wrapped up in silent admiration at the vivacity displayed in your multifarious correspondences. You comment very largely on the socialists;1 really I think them queer fellows so let them tug away at their oars.
You seem to think little in some degree of the writings of Rousseau, Hume and Payne,2 but at the same time say give you the bold Infidel3 who never crouches to servility. Well, though I am no advocate for infidelity, I firmly believe the works of those men tend greatly to expand the mind. I have my own opinion, you have yours about the matter. We will not quarrel, as, comparatively speaking, I know nothing when brought into competition with any individual possessing one particle of brains.
I am now convinced that you have received an answer to your query about what I said in my last letter4 about myself knowing nothing comparatively speaking. Nor do I. What am I in the scientific world when compared to Newton, Simpson, Lagrange, Laplace, Landon, Bonnycastle &c.5 – nothing – nothing – nothing. In fact I deem myself below zero when compared with many of my contemporaries in a literary point of view. Pardon this hasty scrawl. Spare your old teacher who would burn the candlestick and all to relieve you out of difficulties about natural Sines.6 – Do not burn his whiskers with your cutting sarcasms – for Heaven’s sake spare him.
Your faithful teacher | J. Conwill.
RI MS JT 1/11/3524
LT Transcript Only
the socialists: Thinkers who were identified as socialists in the early 1840s generally expounded views of the ideal arrangements for social harmony and equity. The most notable of these utopian socialists were Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and, in Britain, Robert Owen.
Rousseau, Hume and Payne: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French philosopher who stressed the importance of sentiment and subjectivity, and whose political writings, especially The Social Contract (1762), helped inspire the French Revolution; David Hume (1711–76), Scottish Enlightenment philosopher who advocated empiricism and took a notably sceptical approach to religion; Thomas Paine (1737–1809), English political theorist who, after emigrating to America in 1774, participated in the country’s struggle for independence from Britain, before moving to Paris and publishing The Rights of Man (1791), which defended the French Revolution. In The Age of Reason (1793–4), Paine rejected Christianity in favour of deism.
the bold Infidel: possibly Robert Owen (1771–1858), Welsh social reformer and advocate of utopian socialism whose A New View Of Society (1813) insisted on the importance of education for the cultivation of individual morality and the alleviation of social problems. Three years before Conwill’s letter, Owen, who rejected conventional Christianity, had complained ‘I have been called–an atheist, an infidel, an unbeliever’ (Report of the Discussion between Robert Owen, Esq., and the Rev. Wm. Legg (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1839), p. 20). According to Elbert Hubbard, Tyndall went to Dublin in 1847 to hear Owen lecture, and ‘sought Owen out at his hotel, and they talked, talked till three o’clock in the morning’ (Little Journeys to Homes of Great Scientists, 2 vols (East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1905), vol. 2, p. 67). Later in the same year, Tyndall joined Queenwood College, which had been founded by Owen in 1841 as Harmony Hall, although by this time his opinion of Owen’s socialism had become more sceptical.
an answer to your query about what I said in my last letter: see letters 0123 and 0124.
Simpson, Lagrange, Laplace, Landon, Bonnycastle &c.: Thomas Simpson (1710–61), English mathematician and Regius Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews; Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), Italian-born mathematician and astronomer who spent most of his career in Prussia and France, becoming Professor of Analysis at the École Polytechnique in Paris following the French Revolution; Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), French mathematician whose Celestial Mechanics (1799–1825) was central to the development of mathematical astronomy and statistics. Revered as the French Newton, Laplace had considerable political influence during the regimes of Napoleon and the restored Bourbon monarchy; John Landen (1719–90), English mathematician elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766; on Bonnycastle, see letter 0123, n. 4.
natural Sines: see letter 0124, n. 11.
Please cite as “Tyndall0135,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0135