Part 1 — CHAPTER XII. CAMBRIDGE—1871 TO 1879. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Dalrymple, I find from Poggendorff, was hydrographer to the H.E.I.C. If Cavendish apportioned his instructions according to the capacity of the recipients, then their capacities would be in descending order, Dalrymple, Pickersgill, Bayley. Were any of these F.R.S.?
Also, was John Walsh, F.R.S., also M.P.?
Do not answer any of these questions which would involve trouble, but I have not here any means of answering them except by the aid of those who are among the records of the past. None of the questions are of vital importance, because I can leave out any statements I have made which are doubtful.—Yours very truly,
J. Clerk Maxwell.
Professor Maxwell was frequently invited to join the Victoria Institute, and in March 1875 he received a letter from the secretary conveying the special invitation of the President and Council to join the Society, “among whose members are his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other prelates and leading ministers, several professors of Oxford and Cambridge and other universities, and many literary and scientific men.” The following is all that has been found of a rough draft of his reply:—
Sir—I do not think it my duty to become a candidate for admission into the Victoria Institute. Among the objects of the Society are some of which I think very highly. I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society. For it is of the nature of science, especially of those branches of science which are spreading into unknown regions to be continually——[here the MS. ends].