The consequence was that those, who had crammed up the earlier text-books and could reproduce them, had an enormous advantage. This old fogey moreover is strongly anti-Spencerian. Indeed I heard that he had objected to my answers because “there was too much of Spencer and myself!” So that instead of criticism and originality, he avowedly preferred mere reproduction, a good example of the slavishness of that method of examination predominant mostly, which, as Spencer wrote to me some time ago, is devised for testing a man’s “power of acquisition instead of using that which has been acquired.”
Richard Hodgson (1855-1905) (Letter, Dec., 1881).
This letter was written to me from Cambridge, when Hodgson ([see Preface]) had found his immediate prospects blasted by the results of the Moral Science Tripos. No one was placed in the First Class and he (although at the head of the Tripos) only in the Second Class. This meant that he had no hope of a Fellowship, which would have enabled him to go on with original work in philosophy, and he would have to employ his time in earning a livelihood. Added to this was the cruel disappointment to his family and friends.
Hodgson was one of the most gifted men that Australia has produced. He had completed his M.A. and LL.D. courses in Melbourne by 1877, when he was twenty-two years of age, and then, discarding the profession of the law, left for Cambridge to read Mental and Moral Science. While still an undergraduate there he had written an article in reply to T. H. Green, and submitted it to Herbert Spencer, who highly approved of it, and sent it to the Contemporary. However, as stated above, Hodgson’s immediate future depended on the result of the examination. (He was at the time preparing one of the articles he contributed to Mind, and had in view further original work.)
When the result of the Tripos appeared, Henry Sidgwick and Venn who were then Lecturers and by far the best Moral Science men in Cambridge, came to sympathize with Hodgson, on the unfair result. They urged him to go to Germany so that he might acquire that perfect command of the German language which was necessary for his philosophic work. On learning that he was not in a position to do this, Sidgwick insisted—as he said, “in the interests of philosophy”—on defraying the whole of the expenses of Hodgson’s residence in Germany. As he insisted strongly, Hodgson accepted the offer, and went to Jena, armed with a very flattering letter of introduction from Herbert Spencer to Haeckel.
Almost immediately after his return from Germany the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and Hodgson joined it. He came to the conclusion that the work of this Society was more important than any other study, while probably it would also be of fundamental assistance to philosophy. He went out to India in 1884, and thoroughly exposed Madame Blavatsky and her “Theosophy,” and, from about 1886, devoted the rest of his life to Psychical Research. Although maintaining his reading and his intimacy with Henry Sidgwick, William James, and others, his services practically became lost to philosophy. This, however, does not affect the important fact illustrated by the Tripos incident. We learn what ineptitude can exist in a great university, and what grave results must necessarily follow therefrom.
Although Hodgson was writing under stress of a grievous calamity (yet with a dauntless heart—see verse on Dedication page), his remarks on Ancient Ethics are not, in my opinion, exaggerated.
Herbert Spencer’s remark to Hodgson about examinations may also be noted.
Prometheus. And thou, O Mother Earth!