Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/97

 not as a power of exciting the feelings of mankind and providing remedies for social evils."

In the interval between the publication of the History and the Philosophy Whewell took a step which may appear erratic, but which in reality was a step toward the accomplishment of his great plan. He accepted the Chair of Moral Philosophy. In a letter he explained that this was done so that he might ultimately extend his inductive principles to some of the metaphysical sciences. He proposed to resign his position as a mathematical tutor and to take a college living in the country. In 1841 he was 47 years old and engaged to be married. But finally, instead of retiring to the country, he bought a house in Cambridge. Shortly after he was married, and within a week he was appointed Master of his college—the foremost scientific college in England. He never occupied the house which he had bought; henceforth his home was Trinity College.

While Master of Trinity he published anonymously the book Plurality of Worlds, to which I referred in the lecture on H. J. S. Smith. Fontenall and Chalmers had maintained the affirmative—that there is a plurality of worlds. Whewell maintained the negative and his book went rapidly through five editions. Brewster in More Worlds than One then took the affirmative side, this title being said to give "the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian." In more recent times Proctor wrote Other Worlds than Ours setting forth the results of scientific researches. Only a few months ago Whewell's old position was maintained in the Fortnightly Review by Mr. Wallace, but in a matter of astronomical reasoning Proctor is a much safer guide than Wallace. Whewell was Master of Trinity College for 25 years; much of his time was taken up by the duties of administration, especially on account of the reform of the college which the Government carried out. His writing during this period was mainly on moral science, but he also brought out the second and third editions of his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. One of his acts was to present a statue of Bacon to Trinity College.