Gottingen, May 24th/69
My Dear Father,
Your letter was waiting for me when I got back here on Saturday evg. I shall write soon to Puckett. As to Bain his letter[2] is to my mind intended to be a crusher — it is as severe as he could possibly make it without incivility but he has wholly mistaken my position and I can answer every sentence he has written if need be. My strictures on Mill[3] have no affinity whatever with De Morgan’s strictures on Euclid & it is simply not true that Mill has followed Euclid. Mill’s error is wholly his own. It is clear to me that Bain regards my paper as a deliberate insult to his School. I don’t agree with you that there is some truth in his conclusion. I stand wholly on mathematical ground which is of course unassailable and shall be happy to fight the question out against all the empirical logicians in England.
Now I want to tell you something about Tait’s letter but first perhaps I shd say that the rest of our journey came off on the main very well tho’ we were rather disturbed by rain.
At Bonn I had some very pleasant talk with Schaarschmidt being at his house both evenings. The house was however in some confusion as he had only newly moved into it. Mrs S. seems not at all well & has her sister to help her. On the second evening Black was with me and also he and I went a walk with Sch[aarschmidt] on Wednesday forenoon. We went to the Physical Laboratory at Poppelsdorf & got in with some difficulty in the absence of the Professor. There was nothing very remarkable and the apparatus was decidedly inferior to ours. S. came to the station on Thursday morning to see us off & gave me a letter to Ritschl. We also saw a good deal of Machenhauer, having a good long walk with him — Kamphausen I only saw for a few minutes as he was just going off for Cöln. He is looking more prosperous now that he is ordinary Professor & moreover married.
On Thursday we visited Cöln & saw some new sights and a good many old ones. We also paid a visit into the old Cöln Secondhand booksellers where we secured one or two useful books that are not very easily got. I got one or two small things costing only a few groschen & a copy of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae which in England is scarce & dear. I bid up to 15/- for a copy in Scotland last winter. In Cöln I got a copy bound very handsomely but complete for 9/- [?] in a huge folio.
I think it probable that as we shall certainly have to send some of our books by Hamburg and as I can get books here cheaper than in Edinburgh at second hand, I shall buy a good many books this summer. Herzog I am to get bound for £15. I have also got Fürst Heb Lex[4]. here for 10/-. Now after my journey I have still as much cash in hand as will carry me over my ordinary expenses for a long time as so large a portion of these has been already paid but if I am to get books the case is different. On the whole I think it mt be well to have one of my deposit receipts and send out an order for the amount soon after the month is out so that I may get the monthly interest. This will make me more at ease than I can be just now as to any book purchases that may seem desirable.
To return from this digression — on Thursday afternoon we went from Cöln to Dortmund the seat of the Vehmgericht,[5] passing thro’ the coal and iron country of Germany. Next day from Dortmund we went by train to Höxter on the Weser and after dining walked up the stream to Carlshafen.[6] At Carlshafen we slept and on Saturday walked on to Münden[7] (not Minden[8] ) where we were within an hour’s run of Göttingen. The gain of our trip thro’ Westphalia to the Weser and up that river was that we got into a wholly unfrequented part of Germany. We passed in fact very near Lippe and Detmold & were quite in the sort of region described in the Sacristan’s household.[9] The farmhouses for example are built in the style there described, the rooms entering off the barn and so on. There too the old towns once very important are picturesque and interesting & the Weser scenery is to my taste very fine, with magnificent forests overhanging the stream. Carlshafen is one of the finest sites I ever saw for a small town — quite equal to that of Heidelberg.
A curious thing was that we found on the Weser one of the villages where the French refugees settled after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There was a French inscription over the church door & all the names over the doors — the names of the man and wife who first occupied the house – were French. On Friday we were successively in Westphalia, in Brunswick, in Hannover and in Hessen[10]. The last is undoubtedly the most wretched. All the people seem miserably poor and there was not for many miles a solitary Wirtschaft[11] to be seen. In fact we were nearly famished on Saturday forenoon.
As exercise for Nell & Bella, I subjoin two specimens of the rhymes inscribed over the great double door which in these old German villages enters into the barn & thro’ that into the house of course: the date & names of the owner & his wife are added:
Wer Gott getraut Hat wohl gebaut[12] |
Unter Gottes Schirme Schaden keine Stürme[13] |
Well I won’t say more of our trip except that I feel tremendously strengthened by it and have a voracious appetite. It has been a most excellent thing too to see so much of thoroughly out of the way German life — and I may say we have found the people everywhere very kind and obliging. For example one man accompanied us at least a quarter of a mile out of his way to show us the road — and more than that we were set right without our having asked information by people who guessed that we were taking the wrong road.
Now for Tait — the main thing was Thomson’s letter[14] with which I called on Weber today and not finding him in left the letter and my cards. Probably I shall call again tomorrow. Certly[15] Tait’s letters are very pleasant and friendly of course, telling how they had been getting on in the laboratory and so forth but above all that Tait has got lagged into the Atlantic bed & Gulfstream [sic] expedition and is to start about the middle of July for a month or six weeks’ cruize [sic] on a warship between Faroe and Greenland. Moreover he evidently will be disappointed if I don’t go to Heidelberg & see Helmholtz[16] & Kirchoff[17] [sic] and pick up additional wrinkles. This will involve the expenditure of some £s or so I suppose but I conceive the thing must be done. Crum Brown[18] is to be over here in a week or two which will be very pleasant.
So much then for Tait. Let me now come back to Göttingen. I think I mentioned that on Bertheau’s advice we have taken to getting up Hebrew Psalms. We learned six before returning from our tour, but of course don’t mean to go on too fast here, where we have other work. I have begun to read Müller[19] on Sin. In German the book is by no means hard to read if one has some acquaintance with German Philosophy. I hope to find in it all or almost all that is necessary for my exam in November. A more difficult thing will be to get up Inspiration satisfactorily.
Yesterday I called on Weber again and was very kindly received. He does not conduct the laboratory himself but gave me a card to Prof. Dr Kohlrausch[20] who does. At the same time he gave me a plan of Göttingen to aid me in finding Dr K’s house! Weber is a small man with a lively somewhat humorous expression of countenance — I hope to see more of him.
I also called on Ritschl with Schaarschmidt’s letter & consulted him about some points of my board work. Thus the trains at least seem to be laid for a very satisfactory acquaintance in Göttingen.
Did I tell you about Ritschl? He was a pupil of Baur’s but too acute to remain in the Tübingen School & was accordingly renounced by Baur both scientifically and personally. He now takes a very independent course, freely criticising the established positions; but cherishing much greater respect for the reformers than for the present dogmatic. In fact the old reformation Dogmatic seems to be what he values most highly.
His course on Ethics is very interesting both historically and practically. He has been treating of Conversion of Good Works and is now on the subject of assurance of Grace on which he has given us the Lutheran & Reformed doctrine and is now proceeding to explain the nature of Pietism & Methodism as grounded on a desire to obtain Assurance by being able to assign a distinct point as the point of conversion. Ritschl of course objects to this, urging that conversion is almost never a sudden thing except in the case of very vicious men — that in men who have been under good influences the process of conversion is generally gradual.[21] At the same time R. of course agrees with all protestants against Romanists in regarding Assurance as very necessary. He has not yet given his own positive views on the subject but seems to lean most to the Calvinistic doctrine.
I have never heard anything so interesting on a theological subject as Ritschl’s lectures. He has evidently such thorough clearness in his own views & such complete acquaintance with the views of others as make his lectures exceedingly instructive.
I wish by the way to mention a remark about the addressing of my letters. To write Hannover, Prussia is a contradictio in adjecto.[22] So far as Hannover has become Prussian, it has ceased to be Hannover. I conceive that the proper address is simply Göttingen, North Germany. Even Germany is quite sufficient.
I have got so much room left that I see I might have dilated more upon our tour but it is not a very easy matter to think back and pick out special points for detail treatment. So perhaps on the whole I had better close here.
With love to all
I am
Your affectionate son
Wm Robertson Smith
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C116 MS.
[2] Bain’s letter (1869-04-17b).
[3] See J.S. Mill’s letter (1869-04-06)
[4] Fürst, Julius (1805–1873): Jewish scholar and professor at Leipzig University from 1864. The book referred to is probably his Hebraisches und Chaldäisches Handwörtierbuch (1851). Cf. the EB(9) entry, vol. ix, pp.850f., which is probably by WRS.
[5] Vehmgericht (Fehmegericht): the dreaded medieval courts of summary justice, first centred in Westphalia but later extended throughout the old German Empire.
[6] Now Bad Karlshafen.
[7] Hannoversch Münden, a small town where the rivers Werra and Fulda join to become the Weser.
[8] Another small town on the Weser.
[9] The Sacristan’s Household was a novel by Frances Eleanor Trollope published in 1870 by Virtue & Co., London, but serialised in 1868/69 in The Saint Paul’s Magazine, edited by Anthony Trollope. A pre-publication review of the book may be found in The Athenaeum for May 15, 1869: “Under the modest title of ‘a story of Lippe Detmold’ we have here a complete picture of the ways and doings of the people of that small principality just before the Seven Weeks War broke out, and put an end to Lilliputian governments …”. It is most unlikely that WRS had read the serialisation but both he and the family would have read the Athenaeum review.
[10] A small village south of Braunschweig
[11] An inn or eating-place.
[12] Who trusted in God / has built well
[13] Through God’s shelter / no storms will do harm
[14] A letter of introduction from Sir William Thomson (1824–1907) to Wilhelm Weber. Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, the distinguished physicist, was educated at home before entering Glasgow University at the age of eleven and subsequently pursuing his studies at Peterhouse College and Paris University. A close friend of Joule, Helmholtz and P.G. Tait, Thomson established the first physics laboratory in Britain and gained immense prestige for his work on the transatlantic telegraph.
[15] Probable reading: certie and certy are variants of the now little-used Scots word certes meaning assuredly.
[16] von Helmholtz, Herman Ludwig Ferdinand (1821–1894): was probably the most celebrated German physicist of his day and possibly the only German scientist held in genuine esteem by Tait.
[17] Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert (1824–1887): an eminent German physicist and collaborator of Bunsen in respect of electromagnetic radiation and spectral analysis. (here, as often, WRS misspells the name Kirchhoff).
[18] Brown, Alexander Crum (1838 — 1922): was a half-brother of Dr John Brown (the highly popular essayist and author of Rab and His Friends). He took a medical degree at Edinburgh and then studied chemistry in Germany, first under Robert Bunsen at Heidelberg and then under Kolbe at Marburg before becoming professor of chemistry at Edinburgh from 1869 to 1908.
[19] Müller, Julius (1801–1878): a protestant theologian bitterly opposed to Hegel’s philosophy. The reference here is to Müller’s Die christliche Lehre von der Sünde (1844).
[20] Kohlrausch, Friedrich W. G. (1840–1910): professor of physics at Göttingen from 1866 to 1870 and a pioneer of experimental techniques in relation to accurate measurement and method in physics.
[21] A view later expressed frequently by both WRS and his father.
[22] Lit. contradiction by addition or duplication. WRS presumably implies that the addition of “Prussia” would be judged a solecism.