Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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not a poet. His friends were more receptive, of course. Sidgwick wrote
to Noel: “Symonds’s Many Moods. I should like to talk to you about
them. Some of the newer things gave me unexpected delight – some of
the sonnets of death; and especially some Dream-pieces.” (M ) And
Symonds wrote to Dakyns: “I was born Dipsychic. I dont get my poems
much reviewed, & I like to hear what friends have to say about them. They
differ very much. Noel e.g. likes all the celebrations of young men & the
tales: Henry cares for “Dream Pictures” most: and here are Mozley &
Brown pitching on the little Lyrics.”
Symonds was in fact now also spending more time with Horatio Brown,
whose “Aesthetical Sybaritism” – learned from the very decadent William
Frederick Howlett – he had noted long before, when teaching him at
Clifton. But he was also seeing a good deal of Sidgwick, now married,
who in fact visited him at Davos in the summer of , when Many Moods
first appeared. The visit went well, with Symonds informing Dakyns that
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Sidgwick is “as always: herrlich wie am ersten Tag, shall we say? – He
counts his future by years, by decades – giving so many to this title page
& so many to that.” But Symonds worries that his friend has “too many
irons in the fire” and that he “has become too analytical of Kleinigkeiten
in his own sensations: he makes one hear too much of them.” Still, “why
find spots on the sun?”
Noel is very much on the scene at this time, and in a singularly illu-
minating letter, from September, Sidgwick writes to him, in connection
with some new verse:
As for the great question of Immortality, there was one line of thought I wanted
to suggest, in which, from time to time, I find a kind of repose – which, curiously
enough, I find is that in which Browning’s poem on the subject (“La Saisiaz”)
concludes. It is that on moral ground, hope rather [than] certainty is fit for us in this earthly existence. For if we had certainty there would be no room for the sublimest
effort of our mental life – self-sacrifice and the moral choice of Good as Good,
though not perhaps good for us here and now. From this point of view I feel that
on the one hand I could not endure an unjust universe, in which Good Absolute
was not also good for each; and on the other hand that the certain knowledge that Justice ruled the universe would preclude the unselfish choice of Good as Good.
What weakens and obscures this argument is that from time to time I feel so
very doubtful about “Good Absolute,” what it is and how it is to be attained.
(M –)
The book in question was one of Noel’s most popular – and least
homoerotic – productions, A Little Child’s Monument, inspired by the
tragic death of his five-year-old son Eric. This particular letter drew from
Noel another remarkable Apostolic flow of soul, one almost supernaturally
designed to speak to the author of the Methods. Dated September , ,
it reads:
I used to think that argument good, as to hope being better for us than certainty
as making for disinterestedness in virtue. But I own I feel now that if the whole
thing is likely to be a sell, there is no sense at all in being good for the sake of being good – you may if you like, but it is a matter of fancy – there is no obligation – there is no good – it must in such a case be all illusion together – virtue and summum bonum no less than existence, life. There cannot be good at all unless there be life, existence, identical with, or wrapped up in it as its condition. I often used (when
I did not believe in a future for the individual) to try and realize self-sacrifice that should look on alien good alone as its end, realizing at the same time its own utter
and absolute annihilation, and I could never really conceive that, the ground felt
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shaky, it seemed the acme of lofty and sublime virtue, and yet it seemed, – well
nonsense, too – absurdly unreasonable and vain, and this especially so when I
further saw that, if the individual is absolutely impermanent, a kind of illusion,
a flash in the pan, (what are a few years measured absolutely more than a few
seconds? we are not at all if we are not now and for ever; we are ourselves mere
illusions!) so is the race, so is the world, and finally (as some of our scientific men expressly teach us) so is the universe, for after all individuals make up the whole.
I am to sacrifice myself – for what – a vast illusion, an impermanent flash in the
pan, a mere congeries of phenomena, transitory, vain, non-substantial, unreal, like
myself!!! Is it not absurd to talk of absolute good and evil on this supposition?
Can there be any such thing? Nay, but if I am not real, permanent, eternal, true and absolute, and if you are not, how can there be any such thing at all? I conceive it, I look out of myself to it, I worship and try to live up to it, seek it and find it, and would conform to it more and more; yet I have no part nor lot in it, neither
has any individual spirit that conceives seeks and talks of it. Where and what then
is it? The Absolute must be in all that is, yet nothing that we know, not even we
ourselves, are – are real, permanent, abiding, but transitory phenomena only! Yet how can a chain be stronger than its weakest link? And in this case all the links are alike weak! But an absolute which we can think and aspire after and yet in which
we have no part is absurd. Sum. I am. And in that certain assurance alone to my
mind is the pledge and proof ever and certainly of our immortality. Then to seek
the Higher life, the Summum Bonum, then to seek the good of others, as real,
as permanent as ourselves, we in them and they in us, all in God, in the Divine
Humanity, not an abstraction, but the Spirit of spirits – then such a life seems
reasonable. Virtue, as Tennyson has expressed it, seeks its own continuance, its
own permanence. And Kant justly points to the desire of happiness as co-existing
with the categorical imperative. There is nothing in the world but spirit – spirits,
and the thoughts of spirits – all in God, and yet with their own distinction and
identity; but not necessarily narrow and limited as now and here, but with a sense
of the Divine universality and communion, intuitive, rather than ratiocination.
As to “matter,” I am sure that is spirits in communion with us: that was Hinton’s
thought, a modification of Berkeley’s. Hegel is right, all is ideal, but the ultimate and only substance is Spirit, personal, without the present illusive limitations of
personality, and we in Him. I believe all is ideal – but our understanding is not
ultimate. There is higher consciousness than ours, and this supports, involves,
explains ours. Christianity in its highest teaching seems to me therefore on the<
br />
whole the least one-sided and the most human spiritual teaching we have had.
Apart from the last, more Idealistic lines, the bulk of this letter surely
captures much of Sidgwick’s own conviction about the “wages of carrying
on,” the moralized mix of egoism and universal benevolence that defined
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the reconciliation project in response to the dualism of practical reason.
The sheer, desperate angst at an unjust universe in which death is the end
provides, in effect, the missing pages from the Methods. And it represents
precisely the perspective that Sidgwick would be increasingly pressed to
defend against Symonds, of all people.
Sidgwick’s thoughts were very much on the “great question” at this
time, since his mother’s condition was steadily worsening (she would die
the following January). And this was a fairly characteristic way he had of
consoling himself when the reconciliation project seemed hopeless; echoes
of it would reverberate through Moore and Bloomsbury. With Sidgwick,
the issue was also cast as a matter of being able to free oneself from any
lingering doubt about the altruism of one’s actions. The problem, as always,
was one of being able to penetrate one’s innermost self, to smoke out the
trickster egoist within.
It is somewhat perverse that Symonds found in Sidgwick such a glorious
Apollonian robustness, even if the latter was at this point addicted to lawn
tennis, walking, and even jogging (this last representing his more econom-
ical alternative to the horseback riding recommended by his physician).
Symonds seems to have found it very difficult to understand or sympathize
with Sidgwick’s more depressive moments – what did Sidgwick know of
real suffering? In a revealing letter to Noel, from May of , he wrote:
I wished much to be at Cambridge when you were there & Sidgwick wrote to
urge me to come. But it is no use trying to do what one cannot; & as long as the
Eastwinds lasted I was an invalid.
There is something very gloomy about Sidgwick’s letters of late – more than
usual, it seems to me. Does he feel his vie manquée do you think? And yet how is
it more manquée than that of most people? I think there is a sort of duty to oneself
to be sanguine & careless & young in spite of all things & to live in Eternity’s sunrise if even by some desperate effort at self-delusion.
Clearly, Sidgwick’s friends did not always recognize just how much they
affected him or how much he needed them. Sidgwick was of course feeling
all the strains of the unsatisfactory conclusion of the Methods during this
period, but Symonds was not inclined to indulge any of his self-pity,
especially given the appreciative critical reception of Sidgwick’s work:
My first impression after running through the Saturday on you was: well here is another instance of an author who wants all, and who is not satisfied with language of respect and the patient homage paid to his work by an able man who
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does not wholly take his point of view. I would give much for such testimony to
my acknowledged ability. It is in fact what I wanted and have never got.
How are you to expect your seniors (if this is Mark) to stoop lower to crown you?
How can you seek that they should exactly apprehend the originality they discern
and conscientiously point out. It will remain for younger minds to fill the void up
by learning from you, getting you by heart, and taking, like new wax, the mould of
your thought. I have so much more passion in me than you, and am so habitually
moved by passionate impulses, that I dare say I do not really comprehend your
attitude about writing and study. I cannot quite picture to myself a man who has
done this, and will not, for the love of the thing, con amore, do more – moved by Erôs, only son of Penia and Poros. Perhaps you are right in thinking yourself a
successful imposter; and perhaps this is the first sign of your being found out.
Je n’en sais rien.
I think it is dangerous to attach importance to the opinion of people in print
or otherwise (except in matters of personal prudence, good taste and so forth).
The real thing is to discover if you enjoy literary work. You will not cumber the
world with books more than you do already with your body, and oblivion covers
both quickly as far as both are perishable. For a man to do what he likes best is the right course, since his liking is the surest sign of his capacity – far surer than the estimate of critics or of friends. Love is the only law. This is the one Great Gospel that is true.
This advice, apparently referring to Sidgwick’s complaining about the
review of the Methods in the Saturday Review, was clearly heartfelt. As Symonds put it to him in November of :
Who, dearest Henry, is to be happy about the Universe, if you are not? It is a
bad business for everybody if you feel as you say you do. I, for my part, try to
live without asking many questions. I do not want to be indifferent to the great
problems of morals, immortality and the soul; but I want to learn to be as happy
as my health and passions will allow me, without raising questions I am convinced
no one will ever answer from our human standpoint. You, however, have made it
your business to inquire, and it is aggravating to arrive at bewilderment; only I feel you will do the world good service if you stoutly proclaim this bewilderment, and
attack the false idols of knowledge. If we cannot build, we can dissipate illusions.
Difficult as it may be to emerge from these exchanges without thinking
that Symonds did Sidgwick a world of good by being less than impressed by
his Cosmic Pessimism, surely Symonds was being slightly disingenuous,
given the way he so often profoundly engaged with the themes of “Love,
Friendship, Death, and Sleep.” Sidgwick plainly found him absolutely
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entrancing as a life with the Divine as a felt element – a raiser of the dead.
However distanced Symonds may have been from enthusiasm for ghosts,
he was a walking case history for the SPR, given its larger interests in
abnormal states of consciousness. As remarked, his sexual dipsychia was
part of a larger constellation of trance states and dissociative psychological
experiences.
When William James addressed the question of mysticism, including
Symonds’s experiences, he was utterly persuaded that
our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one
special
type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go
through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus,
and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality
which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.
To illustrate the point, James quotes the section of Brown’s biography
that recounts Symonds’s experiences during a visit to the dentist. In fact,
the bit James quotes is taken from a letter to Sidgwick dated February ,
, which prefaces the account thusly:
I have a strange, deep, inexplicable power of suffering that belongs not to natures
more finely strung than the average, I think, but to those which require for their
mere existence some frequent tasting of the âpres jouissances of mere nature –
savage and bitter to the taste. All the sweet refined fruits, the grapes and the
peaches, of poetry and art, are mine: and I care not for them one jot, if I may not
press from time to time against my lips the sharp, rough husk of the wild drupe.
As I must not pluck and taste these wilding berries, I pine with a distempered
appetite, and am cloyed with over suavity.
I am going to write out for you the account of a curious psychological experience
I had the other day. On Tuesday I was put under the influence of chloroform and
laughing gas together. I felt no pain; but my consciousness seemed complete, and
I was occupied with the strange thoughts which you shall read. Tell me what you
think about it. If this had happened to a man in an uncritical age, would it not have carried conviction, like that of Saul of Tarsus, to his soul? A violent deepening of
despair – a sense of being mocked and cheated – remains with me.
After this, the following account is given:
After the choking and stifling of the chloroform had passed away, I seemed at first
in a state of utter blankness: then came flashes of intense light, alternating with
blackness, and with a keen vision of what was going on in the room round me, but
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