Thursday
My dear Tom
If the weather be at all decent Francis and myself will take a run down to you on Saturday.1 With regard to your absence on Saturday night, I can only say that you will be present where I should best like to see you – and where I shall undoubtedly be present myself if I go. Instead therefore of finding your attendance at the mutual improvement Society2 a cause of interference with our plans, I for my part shall enjoy the meeting all the more by finding myself at your side. The little meeting is one of Queenwood’s greatest attractions to me. We shall sup with you afterwards if Mr Edmondson has sufficient hospitality to give us a supper – If he has not I know that Mrs Edmondson has, and I shall therefore calculate upon a supper at Queenwood for both of us. You may, if you like, shew this to Mr Edmondson. We will, if necessary, leave you to your counsels afterwards and adjourn to Debus’s room until you are ready to accompany us to Broughton – By the way you may not be able to afford lodging to two of us. So if you cannot the Dog3 will be a pis aller4 for one of us – I am glad that you are turning your thoughts to the subject of the magnetic field, but learn from your last letter5 that you have now for the first time apparently experienced a feeling which I thought was known to you long ago – You are no mathematician I am bold to tell you – you know nothing of the sweets which your science can yield as long as you merely confine yourself to what others have done before you. The profit & intellectual strength derivable from learning what others have found is nothing in comparison with that which results from our own personal achievement – In the one case we look through a glass darkly,6 in the other we see nature face to face. For this high privilege we have to pay the bounty of hard and perseverant thought, and the laziness & incapacity which induce men to shirk this sufficiently explain[s] the prevalence of intellectual mediocrity.
Ever your John
RI MS JT/1/T/895
If the weather … on Saturday: This letter appears to have been written on Thursday, 1 March, as (despite the poor weather) Tyndall and Francis went to Queenwood on Saturday, 3 March, and they were ‘In time for the end of the Mutual Improvement Society’s meeting’ (Journal: RI MS JT/2/13c/321).
the mutual improvement Society: The Mutual Improvement Society at Queenwood College, which met on Saturday evenings, was a discussion group consisting of the more advanced students and some of the teachers.
the Dog: an inn, possibly the Greyhound at Broughton (Post Office Directory of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorsetshire (London: Kelly, 1855), p. 29).
pis aller: the less or least desirable alternative (OED).
your last letter: letter missing.
through a glass darkly: This phrase, which is taken from 1 Corinthians 13:12, means to fail to possess a firm grasp on reality.
Please cite as “Tyndall1050,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on