by Bart Schultz
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Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
and patient care the Morality of Common Sense. I referred to the moral
judgements – and especially the spontaneous unreflected judgments on
particular cases, which are sometimes called moral intuitions – of those
persons, to be found in all walks and stations of life, whose earnest and
predominant aim is to do their duty.” These are the persons of whom the
verse rang that “though they slip and fall, / They do not blind their souls
with clay,” and they are such that “after each lapse and failure recover and
renew their rectitude of purpose and their sense of the supreme value of
goodness.” Sidgwick has in mind here not the denizens of “hermitages
and retreats,” but persons
in the thick and heat of the struggle of active life, in all stations and ranks, in the churches and outside the churches. It is to them we have appealed for aid and
sympathy in the great task that we have undertaken; and it is to their judgments
on the duties of their station, in whatever station they may be found, that the
moral philosopher should, as I have said, give reverent attention, in order that he
may be aided and controlled by them in his theoretical construction of the Science
of Right. (PE –)
But again, the study of common sense, the normal man of the
Benthamites now become a medical classification, was in Sidgwick’s hands
a very worried affair, the piercing of the veil to get at the true self that was
rapidly becoming the study of abnormal psychology. Knowing what made
people tick ethically remained for him an inquiry of the utmost urgency,
and consequently theism was, as always, very much on the agenda during
this gathering up of the “fragments that remain.”
II. Reasonable Persons
For Sidgwick’s part, as his letters to Ward and Balfour demonstrate, he was
still under no illusions about the difference between hoping that theism
was true and actually showing that it was. As he unmistakably put it in
Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations – by his own account one of the most
finished of his unpublished works and one that he thought might suitably
be published – although many thoughtful persons have been persuaded
of the truth of theism,
I myself regard Theism as a belief which, though borne in upon the living mind
through life, and essential to normal life, is not self-evident or capable of being
cogently demonstrated. It belongs, therefore, to a class of beliefs which I do not
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dispute the general reasonableness of accepting, but which I think have to be
considered carefully and apart in estimating the grounds of their acceptance –
assumptions for which we cannot but demand further proof, though we may see
no means of obtaining it. (PSR )
All his old views about the spirit of the age being theistic, but with Chris-
tianity still playing a valuable social role, emerge again in this context. He
has some sympathetic feeling for those who turn to external authority in
search of faith, but he cannot follow them. What he still feels so acutely is
the emotional unsatisfactoriness of his views:
[I]n opposing your argument [Ward’s on the role of saints], I intended to limit
myself to the sociological point of view: from which morality does not seem to me
to lead us to Theism. But I did not mean to say that I could be satisfied to regard morality exclusively from this point of view: quite the reverse: I hold strongly that sociological inquiry cannot answer the deepest questions which the individual,
reflecting on his moral judgments and impulses, is inevitably led to ask. And
where Sociology fails, the need of Theism – or at least some doctrine establishing
the moral order of the world – seems to me clear.
As to the definition of Theism – I should think a provisional definition would
not be difficult to agree on, if any one wants it. But I should have thought we might wait till any serious divergence in our conceptions disclosed itself. (CWC)
Of course, various deep differences did appear. One crisis came when
early on Myers wanted to give a paper “to discuss what he conceives
to be the limitations of Christianity from the point of view of a wider
religious outlook,” which Sidgwick did not think a bad subject, though
“it had better come later.” When it came, the “wider religious outlook”
clearly had a lot of Whitmanian Cosmic Enthusiasm in it, and caused
Father Tyrrell no little pain. Myers had apparently been “quite unaware
of ‘thunder in the air’ ” and claimed to have expressed himself “in simple
confidence in the general good humour that he thought prevailed.” And
Sidgwick urged that “I feel very strongly that anything like ‘crowing’ over
‘adhesion’ as Tyrrell calls it is a great mistake: it must tend to repress
the perfect frankness on which both the pleasure and the profit of such
debates depends.” (CWC)
“Adhesiveness” was of course Whitman’s term of art for spiritualized
but sensual male comradeship, and Myers may well have sounded a good
deal like Symonds, though it may also be that Father Tyrrell was thinking
of adhesion in the narrower sense of religious conformity.
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To be sure, Sidgwick had not given up exploring the various possibilities
for harmonizing duty and interest. “On the Nature of the Evidence for
Theism” in fact reads like a continuation of the conclusion of the Methods,
especially after the third edition. The entire problematic is set out in just
the same fashion:
Theism is a philosophical doctrine: it is the primary aim of philosophy to unify
completely, bring into clear coherence, all departments of rational thought; and
this aim cannot be realised by any philosophy that leaves out of its view the
important body of judgments and reasoning which form the subject matter of
Ethics. And it seems especially impossible, in attempting the construction of a
Theistic Philosophy, to leave Ethics on one side. No view of Theism – as X
[presumably Ward] says – “is of much importance to mankind which does not
include the conception of a Sovereign Will that orders all things”; and if – as
he goes on to say – “the only form of dogmatic religion worth arguing about is
Christianity,” I think we may agree to add one word to the statement previously
quoted, and say “A Sovereign Will that orders all things rightly.” For this reason I cannot agree to discard from our discussions – even provisionally – “arguments
drawn from the indications of ethical experience.”
But here again I should like to go as far as I can to meet X’s views. I quite admit
that when we contemplate human morality from the point of view from which the
historian or sociologist naturally contemplates it – regarding it as a body of rules
of conduct supported by social sentiments of approval and disapproval, which
a normal member of society shares, and through sympathy with others applies
reflectively to his own conduct as well as to the conduct of others – it certainly
does not seem “easy to prove that the Theistic hypothesis is necessary to account
for its existence.” Especially when we direct our attention to the variations in
prevalent moral opinion and sentiment, which are observable as we pass in our
contemplative survey from age to age, and from one contemporary society to
another; the fluid and changing results that impartial observation thus seems to
yield hardly even suggest the hypothesis of “super human institution”; they are
more naturally viewed as a part of the complex adaptation of social man to the
varying conditions of gregarious existence, civilised and uncivilised. Nor would
the fact that saints generally have found themselves irresistibly led to regard
moral rules as the dictates of a Divine Ruler weigh with me much on the other
side; unless I were assured that the saints in question had made a systematic
attempt to contemplate the variations in positive morality from a sociological
point of view – which is not, so far as I know the case. But all such sociological
observation of morality ignores the question which, from the point of view of
the reflective individual, is the fundamental question of ethics, ‘Why should I,
always and in all circumstances, do what is most conducive to the well-being of
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my society, or of humanity at large?’ To answer this question satisfactorily, we have to find a solution of the primâ facie conflict between an individual’s interest and his social duty, which the actual conditions of human life from time to time present.
Optimistic moralists of the last century attempted to obtain the required solution
by establishing a perfect coincidence of interest and duty on a strictly empirical
basis; but such attempts are now, I think, abandoned by serious thinkers; and yet
some solution must be found, if the normal judgments of our practical reason are
to be reduced to a coherent system. It is this consideration which led Kant to
affirm with so much emphasis the indispensability of Theism in the construction
of an ethical system: “Without a God and without a world, not visible to us now
but hoped for, the glorious ideas of morality are indeed objects of applause and
admiration, but not springs of purpose and action, because they fail to fulfil all the aims which are natural to every rational being.” This language is too sweeping to
express my own convictions: still, the importance of the conception of the moral
government of the world, in giving the required systematic coherence to Ethics,
seems to me so great that I cannot consent to discard this consideration – even
provisonally – in seeking a ‘working philosophy’ of Theism. (M –)
This is a nice appropriation of Jamesian language and, as usual, a shrewd
assessment of Kant’s deeper concerns, but as Sidgwick realizes, the
natural objection is that this establishes only the convenience of believing
in theism, not the evidence of its truth. Again, he sounds much the same
note as that struck in the Methods: “To this I should reply by asking whether any philosophical theory can ever be established, if we are not to accept as
evidence of its truth the fact that it introduces unity, harmony, systematic
coherence into our thought, and removes the conflict and contradiction
which would otherwise exist in the whole or some department of it?”
(M )
The main difference is that Sidgwick goes on to explore this possibility
at greater length, addressing in more detail the matter of “the analogy
between hypotheses that are verifiable and those that are not verifiable
by human experience.” He readily admits that “those sciences which can
point to exact particular predictions, made before the event and realised
by the event, acquire thereby a claim to our confidence, which must be
wanting to any philosophy of Theism, based on the data which we at
present possess.” Theism ought to predict “the complete realisation of
Divine Justice in the ordering of the world of humanity and the individual
lives of men: and it admittedly cannot show the realisation of this predic-
tion in past experience.” Still, Sidgwick confesses that he is not willing to
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admit “that verification by particular experiences and cogent demonstra-
tion from incontrovertible premises are the only modes of attaining the
kind and degree of certitude which we require for a ‘working philosophy.’ ”
And here Sidgwick adds some very interesting (and personal) insights and
examples, arguing against a too-narrow construction of “verification by
experience.”
The criterion that we find really decisive, in case after case, is not any particular new sense-perception, or group of new sense-perceptions, but consistency with
an elaborate and complex system of beliefs, in which the results of an indefinite
number of perceptions and inferences are combined. Let me take a case of some
current interest. Many of the vulgar and a few educated persons still believe
that there are such things as ‘ghosts’ moving about in space. The vulgar naively
consider that this general statement is ‘verified’ by the numerous experiences
of ‘seeing ghosts,’ which undoubtedly do occur to some persons from time to
time. But no educated person thinks that the mere fact of A’s ‘seeing’ a ghost
is any evidence at all for the above generalisation: he unhesitatingly concludes
that the apparent vision of an external object is in this case merely apparent, an
‘hallucination.’ And why? Surely because the existence of something so material as
to produce through the organ of vision the apparent perception of a human figure,
and yet so immaterial as to pass through the wall of a room, is incompatible with
his general conception of the physical world. Suppose this general conception
different, and the “verification” might be accepted by a mind far from credulous.
Indeed, the history of thought shows this. Epicurus was not in his age regarded
as prone to superstition, but rather as the great deliverer from the terrors of
superstition; yet Epicurus held it to be an important argument for the existence
of Gods that phantasms of them appear to men in dreams and visions.
It seems to me, then, that if we are led to accept Theism as being, more than
any other view of the Universe, consistent with, and calculated to impart
a clear
consistency to, the whole body of what we commonly agree to take for knowledge –
including knowledge of right and wrong – we accept it on grounds analogous to
those on which important scientific conclusions have been accepted; and that,
even though we are unable to add the increase of certitude derivable from verified
predictions, we may still attain a sufficient strength of reasoned conviction to
justify us in calling our conclusions a “working philosophy.” (M –)
But this is a very big “if.” Although this may appear to be a rather
more holistic, coherentist sentiment than that expressed in the Methods,
the notion of a “working philosophy” may not be all that different from
the “provisional” postulate that had kept Sidgwick going until his crisis
in the eighties. He was, after the fashion of Mill on theism, in that region of
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legitimate hope that had not been foreclosed by the evidence. It was still, as
he argued in Philosophy, Its Scope and Relations, not possible to give theism a completely “cogent” demonstration, however reasonable it might seem.
Interestingly, when Ward reviewed Henry Sidgwick, A Memoir, Eleanor
Sidgwick would write in response: “I am glad you dwell on the optimism.
Some have said that the life gives them a sad impression. Of course there
was an element of disappointment that he had not been able to find the
truth he sought, but his life was certainly a happy and a hopeful one in
spite of occasional depression.” This should be read as an affirmation
that Sidgwick remained less than fully convinced by and content with the
coherentist argument. As Maitland observed, if Sidgwick had not been
Sidgwick, “he might, as others often do, have forgotten the exact point
where proof ended and only hope remained.” But he never did.
Plausibly, Sidgwick’s final position did lend some support to the nascent
pragmatist movement. Had he been able to embrace mere reasonableness
as what the human world offers and to shake off the feeling that he was
provisionally settling for a second-best, functional view, he might deserve