Abstract
IT is neither upon his popular lectures nor upon his crude essays in metaphysics that Clifford's permanent reputation is based. But it is not surprising that they still find numerous readers; they are so free from pedantry, so engagingly frank, so evidently the work of a man who sought truth with a really passionate desire. We may smile at Clifford's theory of “brain-stuff,” which is easily demolished by the very same kind of criticism which he himself applied to “The Unseen Universe” we may feel justly astonished that a mind so penetrating in many ways should believe that consciousness is a complex of elementary feelings, which can separately exist as things in themselves; we may regret the occasional bitterness of his invectives, even while we remember that they were inspired by a hatred of priestcraft and superstition. But with all this, when we turn again to these fresh and stimulating pages, and when we read once more Sir Frederick Pollock's graceful and generous introduction, we can understand how Clifford charmed and impressed his contemporaries, and how keen was their sorrow at his premature death. It is, perhaps, not altogether fanciful to compare Clifford's fate with that of Robert Louis Stevenson; in each case a reaction has followed the too partial praise of admiring friends, and this disparagement is again being corrected by a more dispassionate criticism.
Leslie StephenSir Frederick Pollock
Lectures and Essays by the late William Kingdon Cliford, F.R.S.
Edited by. 2 vols. Pp. 410, 342. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1901.) Price 10s.
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Lectures and Essays by the late William Kingdon Cliford, F.R.S. . Nature 65, 584 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/065584a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/065584a0