Those who recollect Whewell, or even those who know him only by his portraits, will smile incredulously at an assertion we are about to make. But it is true, no matter how severely it may be criticised. Whewell was, in reality, an extremely humble-minded man, diffident of himself, and sure of his position only when he had the approval of his conscience for what he was doing. Then he went forward, regardless of what might bar his passage, and too often regardless also of those who chanced to differ from him. The few who were admitted to the inner circle of his friendship alone knew that he really was what his enemies called him in sarcastic mockery, modest and retiring. If he appeared to be, as one virulent pamphlet said he was, an ‘imperious bully[8],’ the manner which justified such a designation was manner only, and due not to arrogance but to nervousness. He disliked praise, even from his best friends, if he thought that it was not exactly merited. For instance, when Archdeacon Hare spoke enthusiastically of his condemnation of ‘Utilitarian Ethics’ in the _Sermons on the Foundation of Morals_, and exclaimed: ‘May the mind which has compast the whole circle of physical science find a lasting home, and erect a still nobler edifice, in this higher region! May he be enabled to let his light shine before the students of our University, that they may see the truth he utters[9],’ Whewell requested that the passage might be altered in a new edition. He wrote (26 February, 1841): ‘You have mentioned me in a manner which I am obliged to say is so extremely erroneous that it distresses me. The character which you have given of me is as far as possible from that which I deserve. You know, I think, that I am very ignorant in all the matters with which you are best acquainted, and the case is much the same in all others. I was always very ignorant, and am now more and more oppressed by the consciousness of being so. To know much about many things is what I never aspired at, and certainly have not succeeded in. If you had called me a persevering framer of systems, or had said that in architecture, as in some other matters, by trying to catch the principle of the system, I had sometimes been able to judge right of details, I should have recognised some likeness to myself; but what you have said only makes me ashamed. You will perhaps laugh at my earnestness about this matter, for I am in earnest; but consider how you would like praise which you felt to be the opposite of what you were, and not even like what you had tried to be[10].’