Fancy sometimes indulges herself in imagining what part the eminent men one has known would have played had their lot been cast in some other age. So I have fancied that Archbishop Tait (described in an earlier chapter) ought to have been Primate of England under Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth. He would have guided the course of reform more prudently and more firmly than Cranmer did; he would have shown a broader spirit than did Parker or Whitgift. So Cardinal Manning, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might haply have become General of the Jesuit Order, and enjoyed the secret control of the politics of the Catholic world. So Robertson Smith, had he been born in the great age of the mediæval universities, might, like the bold dialectician of whom Dante speaks, have “syllogised invidious truths”[50] in the University of Paris; or had Fortune placed him two centuries later among the scholars of the Italian Renaissance in its glorious prime, the fame of his learning might have filled half Europe.
HENRY SIDGWICK
Henry Sidgwick was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire, where his father was headmaster of the ancient grammar school of the town, on 31st May 1838.[51] The family belonged to Yorkshire. He was a precocious boy, and used to delight his brothers and sister by the fertility of his imagination in inventing games and stories. Educated at Rugby School under Goulburn (afterwards Dean of Norwich), he was sent at an unusually early age to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brilliant University career was crowned by the first place in the classical tripos and by a first class in the mathematical tripos, and he was speedily elected a Fellow of Trinity. Intellectual curiosity and an interest in the problems of theology presently drew him to Germany, where he worked at Hebrew and Arabic under Ewald at Göttingen, as well as with other eminent teachers. After hesitating for a time whether to devote himself to Oriental studies or to classical scholarship, he was drawn back to 328 philosophy by his desire to investigate questions bearing on natural theology, and finally settled down to the pursuit of what are called in Cambridge the moral sciences—metaphysics, ethics, and psychology; becoming first a College Lecturer and then (in 1875) a University Prælector in these subjects. In 1869 he resigned his fellowship, feeling that he could no longer consider himself a “bona fide member of the Church of England,” that being the condition then attached by law to the holding of fellowships in the Colleges at Cambridge. This step caused surprise, for the test was deemed a very vague and light one, having been recently substituted for a more stringent requirement, and there had been many holders of fellowships who were at least as little entitled to call themselves bona fide members of the Established Church as he was. But, as was afterwards said of him by Mrs. Cross (George Eliot), Sidgwick was expected by his intimate friends to conform to standards higher than average men prescribe for their own conduct. Taken in conjunction with the fact that several English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians had won the distinction of a Senior Wranglership and been debarred from fellowships, though they were in theological opinion more orthodox than some nominal members of the Established Church who were holding fellowships, Sidgwick’s conscientious act made a great impression 329 in Cambridge and did much to hasten that total abolition of tests in the Universities which was effected by statute in 1871; for in England concrete instances of hardship and injustice are more powerful incitements to reform than the strongest abstract arguments, and Sidgwick was already so eminent and so respected a figure that all Cambridge felt the absurdity of excluding such a man from its honours and emoluments. In 1883 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy, and continued to hold that post till three months before his death in 1900, when failing health determined him to resign it.
His life was the still and tranquil life of the thinker, teacher, and writer, varied by no events more exciting than those controversies over reforms in the studies and organisation of the University in which his sense of public duty frequently led him to bear a part.
These I pass over, but there is one branch of his active work to which special reference ought to be made, viz. the part he took in promoting the University education of women. In or about the year 1868 he joined with the late Miss Anne Jane Clough (sister of the poet Arthur Clough) and a few other friends in establishing a course of lectures and a hall of residence for women at Cambridge, which grew into the institution called Newnham College. It and Girton College, founded by other friends of the same cause 330 about the same time, were the first two institutions in England which provided for women, together with residential accommodation, a complete University training equivalent and similar to that provided by the two ancient English universities for men. The teaching was mainly given by the University professors and lecturers, the curriculum was the same as the University prescribed, and the women students, though not legally admitted to the University, were examined by the University examiners at the same time as the other students. Henry Sidgwick was, from the foundation of Newnham onwards, the moving spirit and the guiding hand among its University friends, the spirit which inspired the policy and the hand which piloted the fortunes of the College. Its growth to its present dimensions, and its usefulness, not only directly, but through the example it has set, have been largely due to his assiduous care and temperate wisdom. He had married (in 1876) Miss Eleanor Mildred Balfour, and when she accepted the principalship of Newnham after Miss Clough’s death, in 1889, he and she transferred their residence to the College, and lived thenceforward at it. The England of our time has seen no movement of opinion more remarkable or more beneficial than that which has recognised the claims of women to the highest kind of education, and secured a substantial, if still incomplete, provision therefor. 331 The change has come so quietly and unobtrusively that few people realise how great it is. Few, indeed, remember what things were forty years ago, as few realise when waste lands have been stubbed and drained and tilled what they were like in their former state. No one did more than Sidgwick to bring about this change. Besides his work for Newnham, he took a lead in all the movements that have been made to obtain for women a fuller admission to University privileges, and well deserved the gratitude of Englishwomen for his unceasing efforts on their behalf.
The obscure problems of psychology had a great attraction for him, and he spent much time in investigating them, being one of the founders, and remaining all through his later life a leading and guiding member, of the Society for Psychical Research, which has for the last twenty years cultivated this field with an industry and ability which have deserved larger harvests than have yet been reaped. Two remarkable men, both devoted friends of his, worked with him, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers the poet, the latter of whom survived him a few months only. It was characteristic of Sidgwick that he never committed himself to any of the bold and possibly over-sanguine anticipations formed by some of the other members of the Society, while yet he never was deterred by failure, or by the discovery 332 of deceptions, sometimes elaborate and long sustained, from pursuing inquiries which seemed to him to have an ultimate promise of valuable results. The phenomena, he would say, may be true or false; anyhow they deserve investigation. The mere fact that so many persons believe them to be genuine is a problem fit to be investigated. If they are false, it will be a service to have proved them so. If they contain some truth, it is truth of a kind so absolutely new as to be worth much effort and long effort to reach it. In any case, science ought to take the subject out of the hands of charlatans.
The main business of his life, however, was teaching and writing. Three books stand out as those by which he will be best remembered—his Methods of Ethics, his Principles of Political Economy, and his Elements of Politics. All three have won the admiration of those who are experts in the subjects to which they respectively relate, and they continue to be widely read in universities both in Britain and in America. All three bear alike the peculiar impress of his mind.
It was a mind of singular subtlety, fertility, and ingenuity, which applied to every topic an extremely minute and patient analysis. Never satisfied with the obvious view of a question, it seemed unable to acquiesce in any broad and sweeping statement. It discovered objections to every accepted doctrine, exceptions to every rule. 333 It perceived minute distinctions and qualifications which had escaped the notice of previous writers. These qualities made Sidgwick’s books somewhat difficult reading for a beginner, who was apt to ask what, after all, was the conclusion to which he had been led by an author who showed him the subject in various lights, and added not a few minor propositions to that which had seemed to be the governing one. But the student who had already some knowledge of the topic, who, though he apprehended its main principles, had not followed them out in detail or perceived the difficulties in applying them, gained immensely by having so many fresh points presented to him, so many fallacies lurking in currently accepted notions detected, so many conditions indicated which might qualify the amplitude of a general proposition. The method of discussion was stimulating. Sometimes it reminded one of the Socratic method as it appears in Plato, but more frequently it was the method of Aristotle, who discusses a subject first from one side, then from another, throws out a number of remarks, not always reconcilable, but always suggestive, regarding it, and finally arrives at a view which he delivers as being probably the best, but one which must be taken subject to the remarks previously made. The reader often feels in Sidgwick’s treatment of a subject as he often feels in Aristotle’s, that he would like to be left 334 with something more definite and positive, something that can be easily delivered to learners as an established truth. He desires a bolder and broader sweep of the brush. But he also feels how much he is benefited by the process of sifting and analysing to which every conception or dogma is subjected, and he perceives that he is more able to handle it afterwards in his own way when his attention has been called to all these distinctions and qualifications or antinomies which would have escaped any vision less keen than his author’s. For those who, in an age prone to hasty reading and careless thinking, are disposed to underrate the difficulties of economic and political questions, and to walk in a vain conceit of knowledge because they have picked up some large generalisations, no better discipline can be prescribed than to follow patiently such a treatment as Sidgwick gives; nor can any reader fail to profit from the candour and the love of truth which illumine his discussion of a subject.