Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
Page 135
. Maurice, Towards Unity, pp. –.
. Owen Chadwick, Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
. The section of this letter marked by ellipses is torn in the original, with a piece missing; see CWC.
. The Greek line is from Corinthians, :: “Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.”
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. Althoughitmayseemarathercommonplacepsychologicalobservation,onecannot
help but think that Sidgwick was, at some level, understandably obsessed with
father figures, and perhaps more shaped (and depressed) by the early loss of his
actual father than has commonly been recognized. Such losses are determining
factors in increasing the likelihood of clinical depression.
. The Greek expression means “theological and moral truths.”
. See Charles Gore, Belief in Christ (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, ), p. , note).
. Sidgwick to Dakyns, December (CWC); this letter is inaccurately transcribed
in the Memoir (M ).
. Henry Sidgwick, “Review: Letters, Lectures, and Reviews,” The Academy (July ,
), p. .
. Henry Sidgwick, “Review: Essays Theological and Literary,” The Academy (July ,
), p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Noel to Sidgwick, July , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Collections,
Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//, p. .
. In “Is Philosophy the Germ or the Crown of Science?” he had stated that
“psychology is as it were the vestibule and entrance chamber of philosophy,” which
made somewhat more forgivable the tendency of some schools of philosophy to
reduce it to the study of the human mind (CWC).
. Sidgwick to Dakyns, June , (CWC, M –); the Greek term means
“enthusiasm.”
. See Chapter .
. The original is in the Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge
University, Add.Ms.c...
. One might well think that some of Sidgwick’s most cheerful letters come when he
seems ready to fall back into some form of egoistic perfectionism. See, for example,
his letter to Dakyns from December : “I have worked away vigorously at the
selfish morality, but I cannot persuade myself, except by trusting intuition, that
Christian self-sacrifice is really a happier life than classical insouciance.” And
“The effort to attain the Christian ideal may be a life-long painful struggle; and
therefore, though I may believe this ideal when realised productive of greater
happiness, yet individually (if it is not a question of life or death) my laziness
would induce me to prefer a lower, more attainable Goethean ideal. Intuitions
turn the scale” (M –). Such lines contain the seeds of much of Sidgwick’s
later struggle with the dualism of practical reason, which for him was often cast as a struggle with the lower “Goethean” ideal, against the self-sacrifice demanded by
utilitarian universal benevolence, which was for the future. See Chapters and ,
especially.
. Though not entirely; he was certainly intimately familiar with the emphasis on
associationist psychology in the utilitarian tradition, and with the developments
in physiological psychology – indeed, he contributed financially as well as intellec-
tually to the growth of physiological studies at Cambridge. But on his psychology,
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see Chapters and , which show how far he went in opening up the newer regions
of depth psychology.
. Sidgwick to Mary Sidgwick, circa , Dep. Benson /, Bodleian Library,
Oxford University.
. J. Oppenheim, The Other World (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
. Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University,
Add.Ms.c...
. See the sketch of Sidgwick in Myers, Fragments of Prose and Poetry, ed. E. Myers (London: Longmans, Green, ).
. Deacon, The Cambridge Apostles, pp. –. Deacon notes, interestingly, that
“Lowes Dickinson, another Apostle, attended meetings of the SPR for a time and
studied esoteric Buddhism,” though he apparently “soon lost interest” (p. ).
Dickinson would be a crucial figure in the transformation of the Apostles into a
more openly and aggressively “gay” organization, and he was in many ways deeply
influenced by Sidgwick, who was in spirit green (versus black) tie.
. Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University,
Add.Ms.d.; Sidgwick’s (locked) diary is reproduced in CWC.
. See the many letters to Dakyns from the late spring and summer of , repro-
duced in CWC.
. The next lines read “Mill is an exception. He will have to be destroyed, as he is becoming as intolerable as Aristeides, but when he is destroyed, we shall build him
a mausoleum as big as his present temple of fame – of that I am convinced.”
. Gibbins,“John Grote and Modern Cambridge Philosophy,” p. . Gibbins, I
think, rather overstates the case for Grote’s importance as a formative philosoph-
ical force, but he provides a useful corrective to the rather extraordinary neglect
that this “Cambridge Moralist” has suffered. Of course, one of the great mer-
its of Schneewind’s Sidgwick’s Ethics is the way in which it calls attention to the importance of Grote and Maurice. John was George’s younger brother, but
philosophically quite different.
. Lubenow, Cambridge Apostles, p. . The letter, as Lubenow notes, is to be found in the Sidgwick Papers, which suggests that it was indeed circulated, though
Cowell and Sidgwick were such singularly close friends that they would surely
have discussed the matter in any event.
. Rothblatt, Revolution, p. .
. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, – (New York: Pantheon Books, ),
p. .
. Quoted in W. A. Speck, A Concise History of Britain, – (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), p. .
. In , Sidgwick wrote to Dakyns: “I read through Mill’s Representative
Government in one morning. It is extremely good, I think, though I cannot get over my scepticism as to the elaborate Hare-ian scheme.” He goes on to write,
however, “As to population . . . colonisation is unanswerable, I think; if not, please answer it.” In a slightly earlier letter, he had said,
about Mill’s population theory, that “the way he blinks the practical morality of the question is the coolest thing I
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know. And I know many cool things on the part of your thorough-going theorists.
I believe in ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ I think the most crying need now is a better organised colonisation. To think of the latent world-civilisation in our swarms
of fertile Anglo-Saxon pauperism” (M –). This issue, all too suggestive of
Sidgwick’s debt to Renan, is discussed at length in Chapters and .
. The Greek expression means “families of ancient wealth.” See also the extensive
correspondence with Browning reproduced in CWC.
. Sidgwick to Dakyns, May (CWC).
. Ryan, Liberal Anxieties, pp. –.
. Dickens’s Hard Times has perhaps done more damage to the reputation of utilitarianism than Marx and Foucault combined.
. Ryan, Liberal Anxieties, pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
. Plainly, Mill as much as Maurice found his religion in sympathetic unity – these
passages are from the conclusion of the brilliant third chapter of “Utilitarianism.”
See Roger Crisp, ed., Utilitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ) and his Routledge Guide to this essay (London: Routledge, ).
. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. S. Collini (New York: Cambridge
University Press, ), p. .
. J. S. Mill, Three Essays on Religion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, ), pp. –.
. It should be noted that, for all Sidgwick’s misgivings about spreading views that would be appropriate only for an educated public, he certainly fell in with the
burst of enthusiasm for the semipopular periodical press, at least during the sixties and seventies. His work for Macmillan’s Magazine, the Spectator, the Contemporary Review, and the Academy reached a very wide public. As Alan Brown has observed: “No development since the invention of printing itself has had a more
important influence on public opinion and cultural history than the astonishing
growth of periodical journalism in the nineteenth century. Between and
more than one thousand new magazines of various kinds were started in London
alone, catering to every kind of person, every kind of mind, and every pocketbook.
This development was of course made possible by the application of steam power
to the printing press – an event which bore its first fruit in the rapid expansion
of daily newspaper journalism. The cheap and rapid production of schoolbooks
which also resulted, in its turn encouraged an increase of literacy and an exten-
sion of the habit of reading which provided an audience for all kinds of periodical
literature. . . . These reviews soon became even more influential than the anonymous roar of the mighty Edinburgh and Quarterly.” Alan Brown, The Metaphysical Society (New York: Octagon Books, ), pp. –.
. Henry Sidgwick, “The Pursuit of Culture,” University College of Wales Magazine (October ), p. , pp. –, pp. –. This essay was chopped into two pieces, with
one part, that on Arnold, appearing in Practical Ethics and the other in Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses. This was an unfortunate division, however, since the longer piece forms a wonderfully coherent whole that provides perhaps Sidgwick’s best,
most considered thoughts on Arnold and the meaning of “culture.” My own
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conception of Sidgwick’s educational reformism refects the arguments of this
piece at every turn.
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., pp. –.
. Ibid., pp. –.
. Ibid., pp. –. Interestingly, Mill’s very similar attitude owed something to Plato.
See Geraint Williams, “The Greek Origins of J. S. Mill’s Happiness,” Utilitas , no. (March ), p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Sidgwick to Symonds, June ; the letter is reproduced in full in Chapter .
. Noel to Sidgwick, May , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Collections,
Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//, pp. –.
. Noel to Sidgwick, October , , ibid., p. .
. SeeLynnZastoupil, JohnStuartMillandIndia(Stanford,CA:StanfordUniversity
Press, ) for an excellent discussion, especially on p. , p. , and p. . Neither the Mills nor Macaulay nor Sidgwick entertained much doubt as to just who was to
play the role of educator when it came to teaching other “races,” as later chapters
will detail.
. To this list one might add “the worth of honest investigations into human gender
and sexuality,” as we shall see in later chapters.
. Consider, too, the often rather Millian sympathies of Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: Norton, ),
which is suggestive of how, in some respects, actual elite rule is even more morally
disgraceful today than it was during the Victorian era.
. Michael Maurice, quoted in Maurice, Life, vol. , p. .
. Maurice, Life, vol. , pp. –.
. Quoted in Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part II: – (London: SCM Press, ), p. ; I am deeply indebted to Chadwick’s exceedingly erudite
and comprehensive work.
. Sidgwick to Dakyns, June , ; the letter is reproduced in part in M .
. As Jim McCue put it, in his fine introduction to Arthur Hugh Clough: Selected Poems (London: Penguin, ).
. Maurice was also a warm admirer of Clough’s poetry and, along with others, tried
to draw the poet into the Christian socialist movement, though without success.
See David Young’s fine study, F. D. Maurice and Unitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ).
. Quoted in Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), p. . There is also much useful background material
in Annan’s The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses (London: HarperCollins,
), and in Keynes, Essays.
. The original is in the Hutzler Collection, Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins
University. I am grateful to J. B. Schneewind for confirming the discovery of this
letter and for help with the transcription.
. See the discussion in Schneewind, Sidgwick’s Ethics, pp. –.
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. Noel to Sidgwick, July , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Collections,
Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//.
. Chapter will show how Sidgwick and John Addington Symonds were both in
effect struggling with the problem of how to take the public into their confidence
in some fashion, however much they may have differed over just what the English
public was “ripe” for.
. It is perhaps worth noting that Sidgwick’s views here again illustrate how the actual utilitarians were not happily representative of supposedly “utilitarian” accounts of
science as thinly instrumental, a stock piece of early Frankfurt School mythology.
For a better critical theoretical perspective, one should read Sidgwick generally as
part of the Millian struggle with the communicative ethics of the public sphere –
a continuation of, or another moment in, the tensions between the growth of
democracy and the quality of public debate. See the classic work by J. Habermas,
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
), and his more recent Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse
Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ).
As the latter notes, “After Kant it was above all John Stuart Mill and John Dewey
who analyzed the principle of publicity and the role an informed public opinion
should have in feeding and monitoring parliament” (p. ). Sidgwick, one might
say, forms a missing but very important link.
. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ), p. .
. As the final chapter will show, Sidgwick’s attitude toward authority was another
remarkably consistent element in his overall vision; it emerges again at the end of
his life, especially in his work with the Synthetic Society and his correspondence
with Wilfrid Ward (reproduced in CWC).
. In Schultz, ed., Essays, p. .
. A point noted by Brad Hooker in “Sidgwick and Common-Sense Morality,” in
“Sidgwick ,” Utilitas , no. (November ), p. note .