"But even the distant reader must allow that Clifford's mental personality belonged to the highest possible type to say no more. The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal. And if in these modern days we are to look for any prophet or saviour who shall influence our feelings towards the universe as the founders and renewers of past religions have influenced the minds of our fathers, that prophet, if he ever come, must, like Clifford, be no mere sentimental worshipper of science, but an expert in her ways. And he must have what Clifford had in so extraordinary a degree—that lavishly generous confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the few but a cold riddle to the many."
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Atheists from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge alumniPhilosophers from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge facultyMathematicians from England
Original Language: English
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William James, 'Clifford's "Lectures and Essays"' (1879) in Collected Essays and Reviews (1920) pp. 138-139. Review of Lectures and Essays and Seeing and Thinking by W. K. Clifford, London and New York (1879). Reprinted from Nation (1879) 29, pp. 312-313.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford
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William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford (May 4, 1845 – March 3, 1879) was an English mathematician and philosopher.
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