Quotes:Clifford, William Kingdon

Zirkoff, Boris

Clifford, William Kingdon. English mathematician and philosopher, b. at Exeter, May 4, 1845; d. at Madeira of pulmonary consumption, March 3, 1879. Appointed prof. of mathematics at Univ. College, London, 1871, and became F.R.S., 1874. Impressed his contemporaries as a man of great acuteness and originality, of quick thought and speech, of lucid style, full of wit and social warmth. He was especially interested in non-Euclidian geometry and elliptic functions, and ranks as mathematician of the highest order. As philosopher, he coined the expressions “mind-stuff” and “tribal self,” explaining his ethical views of conscience and moral law as the development in each individual of a “self” which prescribes the conduct conducive to the welfare of the tribe. 424 He waged a war against ecclesiastical systems in the name of humanity, and was regarded as dangerous champion of anti-spiritual tendencies rising in science. Works: Elements of Dynamics. London: Macmillan & Co., 1887.—Seeing and Thinking, ibid., 1879. —Mathematical Papers, ibid., 1882.— The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888.

Clifford’s wife earned for herself a prominent place in English literature as a novelist and a dramatist, her best-known story being Mrs. Keith’s Crime (1885).

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 8, pp. 423-424