Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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especially the smaller “Sidgwick Group” that worked as an intimate co-
hort within the larger organization. The characteristic tone was caught
in a letter from Sidgwick to Myers in the late seventies: “My dear Fred,
My brother William is not coming to me, so that I could probably pursue
Truth before Christmas, rd or th.”
For Sidgwick, the aim of the Ghost Society, and then the SPR, was not
dramatically different from that of the Apostles or of other philosophical
groups. If anything, it was even more directly addressed to the “deepest
problems of human life.” Here was the rare opportunity to employ free,
open scientific inquiry to reenchant the world, rather than to deprive
it of significance. As Eleanor later recounted, in the “Autobiographical
Fragment,” the “whole subject” of psychical research “connected itself
with his philosophical and theological studies. . . . comparative thaumatol-
ogy required its investigation; and, further, the possibility of direct proof
of continued individual existence after death could not be neglected either
from a theological or an ethical point of view.” (M ) Later retrospect
also confirmed what he had feared all along, namely, that this was not a
path likely to lead him back to his childhood faith:
It is now a long time since I could even imagine myself believing in Christianity
after the orthodox fashion; not that I have any abstract objection to miracles, but
because I cannot see any rational ground for treating the marvellous stories of the
Gospels differently from the many other marvellous narratives which we meet
with in history and biography, ancient and modern. While, if I were to believe all
these marvellous narratives, I should have to suppose a continual communication
between an “unseen universe” and our planet; and this would prevent the Gospel
story from having anything like the unique character that it has for Christians.
I do not make this latter supposition merely for the sake of argument; I am not
inclined to oppose to this series of marvellous narratives (outside the Gospels)
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the sort of unhesitating { dis } belief that most of my orthodox friends do. In fact, I have spent a good deal of my leisure for some years in investigating ghost stories,
spiritualistic phenomena, etc., etc., and I have not yet abandoned the hope of
finding some residuum of truth in them. . . . Meanwhile the dilemma is clear and
certain to me. Either one must believe in ghosts, modern miracles, etc., or there can be no ground for giving credence to the Gospel story: and as I have not yet
decided to do the former, I am provisionally incredulous as to the latter – and in
fact for many years I have not thought of Christianity except as the creed of my
friends and fellow-countrymen, etc. (M )
In other words, the progress of genuine science, free and open inquiry,
might just usher in the religion of the future, even if it worked rather
destructively on the religions of the past. At any rate, what was the al-
ternative, if one insisted on giving an account of the built-in features
of human credulity and human hope? Both theology and biblical crit-
icism needed fresh facts. Indeed, the peculiarities of parapsychology –
“psychical research” – with its focus on unseen worlds, unconscious voices,
telepathic communication, the communications of mediums, and so forth,
proved extremely conducive to the Apostolic mission of bearing witness
to one’s inner life. Was it not a thoroughly Socratic question, to inquire to
what extent this inner life was in fact more than inner? Or was it, possibly,
something akin to that impulse that had led Plato to press beyond Socrates,
seeking the final proof that the soul exists and is eternal, but doing so now
with the methods furnished by Bacon, Mill, and Darwin?
Sidgwick’s psychical research was, therefore, a continuation of his theo-
logical and philosophical search and anything but a gullible diversion from
his “real” work – though to be sure, reconciling his claims about the im-
portance of the world unseen with the particulars of his arguments about
ethics, politics, epistemology, and intuition will prove to be an intricate and
demanding task. His search for a meaningful but not mystical, progressive
but not presumptuous, perennial philosophy was more or less bound to
touch all other parts of his life, even if different parts were differently
affected. His search for sympathetic understanding and unity may have
been common to his Millian and Apostolic tendencies, and in part symp-
tomatic of the pervasive fear of social conflict and otherness at home and
abroad in the empire. For the discussions of such psychological evolution
could not help but be entangled, at one level or another, in discussions of
race and rule, democracy and decadence. But to carry such matters into
parapsychology (often inaugurating the discourse, as it were) was a risky
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business, hinting at a form of scientific esotericism very different from
philology or Comtism.
Myers, an early student of Sidgwick’s, who would become one of the
stalwarts of the Sidgwick Group and one of Sidgwick’s closest friends,
would often recall how in , when they had taken “a star-light walk,”
he asked Sidgwick
almost with trembling, whether he thought that when Tradition, Intuition, Meta-
physic, had failed to solve the riddle of the Universe, there was still a chance that from any actual observable phenomena – ghosts, spirits, whatsoever there might
be – some valid knowledge might be drawn as to a World Unseen. Already, it
seemed, he had thought that this was possible; steadily, though in no sanguine
fashion, he indicated some last grounds of hope; and from that night onwards I
resolved to pursue this quest, if it might be, at his side.
Myers did, of course, along with such luminaries as Edmund Gurney,
Walter Leaf, Lord Rayleigh, William James, Arthur and Gerald Balfour,
and Sidgwick’s future wife, Eleanor Mildred Balfour.
It should be observed that in some ways, Sidgwick’s commitment to
psychical research represented a continuation of his Apostolic efforts that
would also put him at odds with the later Apostles. And his friendship with
Myers had a good deal to do with this. As Richard Deacon has explained,
when the SPR was formally founded, Sidgwick
was by then an ‘Angel’ and no longer the dominant figure in the Apostles. His inter-
est in psychic phenomena only attracted a very few of the younger Apostles. When
one of them proposed the question ‘Can we commun
icate with the departed?’ as
a subject for debate, he was almost unanimously rejected. Alfred Whitehead . . . is said to have caustically commented on this proposal that ‘such matters are best
left to Myers, or his paramour, Eusapia Palladino.’
Antagonism to Myers rather than disloyalty to Sidgwick would seem to be one
reason why discussions on psychic matters were avoided by the Society. Myers was
not very popular in some circles at Cambridge, and the Apostolic grapevine did
not miss much gossip about outsiders. Members of the Society had learned that
Myers was reputed to have stolen the work of another Cambridge man and claimed
the product as his own. But, apart from such tittle-tattle, Myers was suspected
of all manner of sexual quirks and it was alleged that he looked upon psychical
research as giving him opportunities for voyeurism. However, this was probably
an unjust accusation for a man who, until he became absorbed by his studies of
spiritualism and mesmerism, was best known as a poet and essayist. Whether he
actually knew Eusapia Palladino is irrelevant; she had acquired a reputation as a
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medium, but was also notorious for introducing eroticism into séances. Myers was
sufficiently odd in his behaviour, nonetheless, to insist on accompanying young
Edmund Gurney and his bride on their honeymoon to Switzerland, even against
the most vehement protests from the bride.
What Virginia Woolf would later say of the Apostles – that they were a
“society of equals enjoying each other’s foibles” – would no doubt strike
many as more aptly said of the Sidgwick Group. But for Sidgwick, at least,
it represented the most serious side of his quest, the continuation of his
earlier Apostolic interests and religious struggles, albeit one that he did
not wish to impose on his more unreceptive friends.
Chapter will explore these matters more fully, including Sidgwick’s
controversial friendship with Myers. The point to stress here, as a prelude
to the following chapter on The Methods of Ethics, is simply that Sidgwick
and Myers were in deep accord on the most fundamental issues. For
Myers, the deepest question of human life was the theistic one: “Is the
Universe friendly?” Sidgwick’s intellect and philosophical analyses were
infinitely subtler than Myers’s, but in the end he devoted himself to much
the same question. Throughout his adult life, he would always keep a bit
of scripture before his mind, as a sort of working motto. Of all the lines
that served in this capacity, none was more revealing than that for the years
–: “After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my
fathers.”
V. Fire and Light
Perhaps you would like to hear the present phase of the “Apostolic” Succes-
sion. We are: Brandreth, Sidgwick, Tawney, Browning, Cowell, Trevelyn, Jebb . . .
Trevelyan you may know by report, a Harrow man and the nephew of Macaulay.
He will be my chief friend when this last wave shall have burst, sweeping off
Tawney, Browning, Cowell. The vicissitudes of human things affect even The
Society slightly: at least I think our discussions are less vigorous now than usual;
but the great Idea, which sits invisible among us, has I trust, as potent a magic as
ever to elevate and unite. . . .
Sidgwick to Noel, February , (M –)
Cowell maintained “The end justifies the means” I assent assuming the words used
in a popular sense – Brandreth judging acts morally by their consequences alone
denied that bad means could lead to a good end. This is practically useless – All our rules are imperfect, we express our perception of this by principles like the
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above – As to “Great Happ” theory I am softened to it: it is perhaps only a
philosophico-logico-practical representation of “Love is the fulfilling of the law” –
But () we must take care to consider the soul’s happiness and () we must not
discard the props which we have in our conceptions, imperfect tho’ they be of
Truth, Justice &c. (Purity, Rectitude &c are parts of the ideal which Love will teach us to mold others to) –
Jebb rigid & moral, Tawney? but earnest. What is the duty of Religious Faith?
Am I to Let the clouds come and pass trusting to be ultimately brighter for the
tempest & only praying for Truth – Alas! I do not love her enough.
Sidgwick’s diary from
Sidgwick’s diary from the spring of gives a vivid impression of his
interaction with his fellow Apostles, and of the nascent utilitarianism that
would eventually blossom into The Methods of Ethics. The compelling
thought that all our moral rules are imperfect, coupled with the question
concerning the duty of religious faith and the fear of not loving truth quite
enough, were natural companions to the progressive, rationalistic theism
that he would fight so hard to vindicate. It was no simple matter to keep
apart the two aspects of his Apostolic conversion – the social, on the one
side, and the philosophical or theological, on the other. The prospects
for the “complete revision of human relations” in the “light of science
directed by comprehensive and impartial sympathy” would depend on,
among other things, the outcome of the “psychological experiments in
ethics and intuitive Theism” carried out in conjunction with psychical
research. Perhaps parapsychology would be able to unify the Apostolic
mystics and the utilitarian skeptics, the idealists and the naturalists, labor
and capital, England and the rest of the world. The conquest of the “Other
World” carried the hope of the conquest of otherness generally, the flip
side of the quest for sympathetic unity. It would be a brilliant synthesis,
and a rather literally Platonic one at that, the coronation of capital “P”
Philosophy.
What Sidgwick increasingly came to realize, however, over the course
of the sixties, was that cracking the “secret of the Universe” was going
to be a rather time-consuming business, and that he had better cultivate
the patience of a Darwin when it came to accumulating evidence. Thus,
in , he confessed to Dakyns: “I think a hundred times of what the
British public are ripe for, for once that I think of what I believe. Perhaps
the conviction is growing on me that the Truth about the studies I’ve
set my heart on (Theology & Moral Philosophy) will not be found out
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for a generation or two.” (M ) The exact nature of his experiments in
automatic writing and telepathy will be considered in a later chapter; for
the present, it is sufficient to note that he was quite early on convinced that
at least some of the evidence for paranormal phenomena must be sound.
But the world of parapsychology loomed before him with all the vastness
of an unexplored continent, even universe, and he was no more inclined
to make hasty speculations about this than about any other department of
thought.
But of course, the world did go on, and his practical commitments pre-
vented any complete retreat into the deepest problems. As always, he was
reading political economy “as a ballast to my necessarily busy selfishness
which would otherwise be intolerable to my real self ” (M ). He hated the
thought of growing too introspective and self-absorbed, and had a “golden
rule” never to think about himself for more than half an hour a day. He
would not allow any such thing, being firmly opposed to the tendency, en-
couraged by speculative thinking, to grow “antipractical.” Interestingly, at
the end of his life he would be urging that people – particularly the younger
generation of Apostles – needed to be more introspective, even prayerful.
But that was not his concern during the sixties, when painful introspective
meditation came all too easily. Admittedly, however, he would have had
some difficulty going all the way with any such tendency, at his particular
time and place, for he was swept up in currents of history both great and
small, always, it seemed, moving rapidly.
Cambridge proved a congenial headquarters, at least in the midst of his
storm and stress. In , he was invited to examine for the Moral Sciences
Tripos, which was also to be agreeably revamped in , at which time
the College also arranged for him to exchange his classical lectureship for
a more suitable one in moral sciences. Sidgwick did not hesitate, and the
change allowed him a greater concentration of his energies: “I took the
post offered me, determined to throw myself into the work of making, if