Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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seem to get only a compromised political economy and a dismissive account
of how laughably speculative sociology was – small wonder that Sidgwick
was regarded as a hostile critic by the early sociologists eager to establish
their disciplinary credentials.
Yet for all of his worries about the “illimitable cloudland” of utopian
speculation, Sidgwick was nonetheless warmly sympathetic to semiso-
cialistic views derived from a more nuanced and historical approach to
political economy. About the only point in Bentham’s political economy
that he adopts without qualification is the principle of declining marginal
utility, such that there is a prima facie case for equality, given how much
more utility a poor person gets out of a dollar than a rich one. What is
more, in the Elements of Politics he would argue that “most of us would
readily accept, as a moral ideal, what I may call ethical as contrasted with political socialism; that is, the doctrine that the services which men have
to render to others should be rendered, as far as possible, with a genuine
regard to the interests of others” (EP ). Here again he expresses his ad-
miration for Mill, for the view that “every person who lives by any useful
work should be habituated to regard himself, not as an individual working
for his private benefit, but as a public functionary” – that is, as someone
working for the benefit of society.
What this sketch might suggest is that Sidgwick’s destructive, critical
analysis also worked to open up various possibilities, possibilities for the
future that, while not underwritten by any laws of historical progress, were
at least not constrained by the narrowness of Benthamite political economy.
Reformers could actively create a better future by cultural improvement;
the responsibility for doing so fell on them, not on “history” or “human
nature.” This is, of course, not exactly Whitmania, or even that society of
“ideal” utilitarians with perfect information and motivation, and no one
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has ever charged Sidgwick’s Principles of Political Economy and Elements of Politics with being utopian. But then, their critical potential has never been fully appreciated either.
III. Methods and Principles
In a great many ways, Sidgwick’s treatises on the Principles of Political
Economy and the Elements of Politics, as well as his posthumous The Development of European Polity, were companion works. He had been laboring
on these topics ever since his Apostolic days and his first exposure to Mill’s
Logic, Principles of Political Economy, and Considerations on Representative Government. “Mill’s influence,” it should be recalled, led him “as a matter
of duty” to “study political economy throughly, and give no little thought
to practical questions, social and political” (M ). In , he wrote to
Dakyns, “I live a lotus-eating life, unmingled with introspection (just at
present), but not free from many anxieties as to the future; and tempered
with political economy, which I am studying just as a ballast to my nec-
essarily busy selfishness, which would otherwise be intolerable to my real
self ” (M ).
And this study was more or less constantly taking place alongside various
relevant practical activities in politics and university reform. In an exu-
berant letter of , he explains to C. H. Pearson how “we had separated
History from Law and ballasted it with Political Philosophy and Econ-
omy and Intenational Law in order to make the course a better training
for the reasoning Faculties – in fact, to some extent carried out Seeley’s
idea of identifying History and Politics.” His colleague Seeley’s idea of
“inductive” political science was based on the twofold conviction that
“the right method of studying political science is an essentially historical
method, and . . . the right method of studying political history is to study it as material for political science.” Sidgwick observed that this training
for statesmen was objected to by some historical “fanatics.” (M )
But the Millian optimism of the mid-Victorian era was to undergo
increasing strain during the seventies and eighties, thanks in no small part
to the economic reversals and agricultural depression that would make it
evident to figures such as Sidgwick that free trade was not the cure-all
that had been advertised. As E. J. Feuchtwanger describes it, in a chapter
entitled “The s: Victorian Confidence Falters,” the year “ marked
the end of one of the most frantic booms of the nineteenth century both
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in the international and the British economy.” There was no spectacular
crash, but only a
slackening of business activity and profits accompanied by a prolonged drop in
prices, and unemployment – although the word itself was hardly yet established
in the vocabulary and there were no reliable statistics for it. All this was not a new phenomenon, but it seemed more prolonged than in previous slumps, for by the
end of the s there were only slight signs of recovery. A renewed down-turn
in the middle s reinforced the feeling that the Golden Age was a thing of the
past.
Agriculture, now threatened by cheap grain imports from North America,
was no longer protected in the event of bad harvests and low prices, and
it led the slump. After the long interlude, the eighties would mark the
resurgence of labor unrest and demands for democracy. Thus, Sidgwick’s
personal depression was a microcosm of the larger national depression as
well.
At any rate, at this earlier point, during the latter half of the s,
Sidgwick is understandably increasingly concerned with political econ-
omy, writing and lecturing on it. And in a still more practical vein, he
finds himself “drawn more and more into some local quasi-philanthropic
work at Cambridge. . . . it is the business of reconstructing the old
‘Mendicity’ Society on the principles of the London Charity Organisation
Society.”
Sidgwick finds this practical philanthropy singularly instructive:
Though we have not yet much to do, the work is very interesting, not less that
the positive part of it is very perplexing. The negative part, the elimination of impostors, is in the main very easy; the profesional mendicants either do not come
to our office to be inquired into or their case soon breaks down for the most part.
But the positive work, the helping of people who ought to be helped, presents great
difficulties; for the people we have to deal with are so often just trembling morally on the verge of helpless pauperism, and it is very hard to say in any case whether
the help we give will cheer and stimulate a man to help himself, or whether it will
not just push him gently into the passive condition of letting society take him in
hand and do what it will with him. (M )
Apparently, this work also kept Sidgwick tossing and turning at night,
wrestling with his conscience about his casuistry.
Sidgwick had in fact been involved with the old Mendicity Society
since , and he would continue to be very actively involved with the
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new version, the Cambridge Charity Organisation Society, which he did
as much as anyone to found. He chaired its executive committee in ,
, and , and from to , during the years when he was also
active in the Political Economy Club and served as president of section
F of the British Association. Thus, in this case, as with the Methods,
his academic work was developed in conjunction with various personal
practical involvements that were masked by his abstract, neutral style.
The topic of charity, in particular, would serve him as a conduit for many
of his ethical and political investigations, posing difficult problems for
the effort to render people more sympathetic. And this is not to mention
how much he influenced such figures as his troublesome colleague Alfred
Marshall, H. S. Foxwell, and F. Y. Edgeworth, whose pathbreaking Old and
New Methods of Ethics and Mathematical Physics were friendly gestures toward Sidgwick’s work.
In short, Sidgwick was, like Mill, an ethicist completely versed in the
economic science of his day, and a theorist with a practical bent as well.
There was, it would seem, nothing he relished more than putting to-
gether some minutely detailed scheme for finance or taxation, as is evi-
dent from his correspondence with Arthur Balfour and from such works
as his “Memorandum to the Royal Commission on Local Taxation.”
He appears even to have been involved with the Cabinet Makers Coop-
erative in Cambridge, and to have done a considerable amount of eco-
nomic counseling for the university during its times of financial trouble.
But Mill had died just before England had entered its long downturn
and the imperialistic reaction that was to follow it. Sidgwick would
be forced to reconsider political economy in this more trying historical
context.
Sidgwick’s Principles was widely regarded as important mainly for the
care with which it set out conceptual clarifications of such notions as
wealth and value, and for its lengthy systematizing of the exceptions to
the individualistic principle. Indeed, the book is organized in much the
same way as the various essays discussed earlier, an organization that
would also feature in the Elements, with which it is very closely linked.
It was part of Sidgwick’s characteristic approach to political economy
to insist on being absolutely clear about the difference between eco-
nomic science, with its empirical claims about how people do behave in
certain contexts, and the art of public economic policy, with its judg-
ments about how people, or society, ought to behave and the best public
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policies for government. He insists that the divisions of the study be
respected:
Political Economy, as commonly studied, has included a theoretical and a prac-
tical branch, which it is important to distinguish clearly, since there is a popular
disposition to confound their respective premisses and conclusions. For brevity, it
seems convenient to refer to them as the Science and the Art of Political Economy;
the latter being historically the subject to which the term was mainly applied in
its earlier use, whereas among English political economists from the beginning of
the nineteenth century there has been a tendency to restrict it to the former. The
science of Political Economy deals with a certain class of social activities having
an economic aspect, as well as more or less influence on the activities with which
Political Economy is more specially concerned. . . . the Art of Political Economy, which deals with a special department of governmental interference, designed to
improve either the social production of wealth or its distribution, may be partially, but only partially, separated from the general art of legislation or government. . . .
(PPE )
And the volume is thus divided into three books, the first on produc-
tion, the second on distribution and exchange, and the third on the art
of political economy. There are also several rather famous introductory
chapters dealing with the “present state of economic controversies,” the
scope of political economy, and its method – chapters that also served as
the material for Sidgwick’s contributions to Palgrave’s Dictionary of Po-
litical Economy – but these were added only for the third and final edition,
which appeared posthumously.
In all editions, however, the work is presented as affording a reconcilia-
tion between the conflicting doctrines of recent days, which have done so
much to set back the hopeful progress of the discipline as it had existed in
Mill’s day. Thus, he explains:
My primary aim, then, has been to eliminate unnecessary controversy, by stating
these results in a more guarded manner, and with due attention to the criticisms
and suggestions of recent writers. Several valuable contributions to abstract eco-
nomic theory have been made by Cairnes, Jevons, and others, who have written
since Mill; but in my opinion they generally admit of being stated in a form less
hostile to the older doctrines than their authors suppose. In the same way the
opposition between the Inductive and Deductive Methods appears to have been
urged by writers on both sides in needlessly sharp and uncompromising terms.
An endeavour will be made to shew that there is an important part of the sub-
ject to which economists are generally agreed in applying a mainly inductive or
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‘realistic’ treatment. On the other hand, there are probably few who would deny
the utility and even indispensability of deductive reasoning in the Theory of Dis-
tribution and Exchange; provided only the assumptions on which such reasoning
proceeds are duly stated, and their partially hypothetical character continually
borne in mind. I fully admit the importance of this latter proviso; accordingly in
those parts of this work in which I have used ch
iefly deductive reasoning, I have
made it my special aim to state explicitly and keep clearly in view the limited and
conditioned applicability of the conclusions attained by it. (PPE )
The tone is not unlike that of the Methods, with its sustained attempt
to get beyond present controversies in the search for common ground.
And as in the Methods, this involves a great deal of reworking of the old
Benthamite position. Clearly, given how receptive he is to the inductive,
or historical, form of analysis, Sidgwick is not about to reprise the role of
Bentham or James Mill in the controversy with Macaulay, extending the
a priori or deductive form of rational-actor analysis to economics, politics,
and everything else. Indeed, he would seem to be especially concerned to
insinuate a good deal more historical analysis into the very heart of eco-
nomic theory. His approach to the social sciences generally would seem
especially indebted to Macaulay and the various neo-Romantic forces that
Mill had partially assimilated. Custom and habit, very much matters of
historical variation, are for Sidgwick, as for Mill, prominent features of hu-
man action that no student of human society can afford to ignore. Sidgwick
even goes quite beyond Mill in highlighting at least the potential impor-
tance of “national character” in connection with such things as “habitual
energy,” and this in some very questionable, possibly racialist ways.
At any rate, Sidgwick explains,
[I]n declaring that the method of Political Economy, regarded as a concrete science,
is necessarily to a great extent inductive, we also declare that it is necessarily
historical, in a wide sense of the term; for the facts of which it seeks to ascertain the empirical laws, in order to penetrate their causal connexions, are facts that
belong to the history of human societies. The question can only be how far the
history to be studied is recent or remote.
And on this question, he has a very characteristic point to make against
the historical approach:
[I]t may be worth while to point out to the more aggressive ‘historicists’ that the
more the historian establishes the independence of his own study, by bringing into
clear view the great differences between the economic conditions with which we
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