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 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. 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 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. 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 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.
The love of truth and the sense of duty guided his life as well as his
pen. Though always warmly interested in politics, he was of all the
persons I have known the least disposed to be warped by partisanship,
for he examined each political issue as it arose on its own merits,
apart from predilections for either party or for the views of his
nearest friends. We used to wonder how such splendid impartiality
would have stood a practical test such as that of the House of
Commons. His loyalty to civic duty was so strong as on one occasion to
bring him, in the middle of his vacation, all the way from Davos, in
the easternmost corner of Switzerland, to Cambridge, solely that he
might record his vote at a parliamentary election, although the result
of the election was already virtually certain.
Sidgwick's attitude toward the Benthamite system of Utilitarianism
illustrates the cautiously discriminative habit of mind I have sought
to describe. If he had been required to call himself by any name, he
would not have refused that of Utilitarian, just as in mental
philosophy he leaned to the type of thought represented by the two
Mills rather than to the Kantian idealism of his friend and school
contemporary, the Oxford professor T. H. Green. But the system of
Utility takes in his hands a form so much more refined and delicate
than was given to it by Bentham and James Mill, and is expounded with
so many qualifications unknown to them, that it has become a very
different thing, and is scarcely, if at all, assailable by the
arguments which moralists of the idealistic type have brought against
the older doctrine. Something similar may be said of his treatment of
bimetallism in his book on political economy. While assenting to some
of the general propositions on which the bimetallic theory rests, he
points out so many difficulties in the application of that theory to
the actual conditions of currency that his assent cannot be cited as a
deliverance in favour of trying to turn theory into practice. He told
me in 1896 that he held the political and other practical objections
to an attempt to establish a bimetallic system to be virtually
insuperable. When he treats of free trade, he is no less guarded and
discriminating. He points out various circumstances or conditions
under which a protective tariff may become, at least for a time,
justifiable, but never abandons the free trade principle as being
generally true and sound, a principle not to be departed from save for
strong reasons of a local or temporary kind. His general economic
position is equally removed from the "high and dry" school of Ricardo
on the one hand, and from the "Katheder-Sozialisten" and the modern
"sentimental" school on the other. In all his books one notes a
tendency to discover what can be said for the view which is in popular
disfavour, even often for that which he does not himself adopt, and to
set forth all the objections to the view which is to receive his
ultimate adhesion. There is a danger with such a method of losing
breadth and force of effect. One is ready to cry, "Do lapse for a
moment into dogmatism." Yet it ought to be added that Sidgwick's
subtlety is always restrained by practical good sense, as well as by
the desire to reconcile opposite views. His arguments, though they
often turn on minute distinctions, are not bits of fine-drawn
ingenuity, but have weight and substance in them.[52]
One book of his which has not yet (December 1902) been published, but
which I have had the privilege of reading in proof, displays his
constructive power in another light. It is a course of lectures on the
development of political institutions in Europe from early times down
to our own. Here, as he is dealing with concrete matter, the treatment
is more broad, and the line of exposition and argument more easy to
follow, than in the treatises already referred to. It is a masterly
piece of work, and reveals a wider range of historical knowledge and a
more complete mastery of historical method than had been shown in his
earlier books, or indeed than some of his friends had known him to
possess.
The tendency to analysis rather than to construction, the abstention
from the deliverance of doctrines easy to comprehend and repeat, which
belong to his writings on ethics and economics, do not impair the
worth of his literary criticisms. In this field his fine perception
and discriminative taste had full scope. He was an incessant reader,
especially of poetry and novels, with a retentive memory for poetry,
as well as a finely modulated and expressive voice in reciting it. His
literary judgments had less of a creative quality, if the expression
be permissible, than Matthew Arnold's, but are not otherwise inferior
to those of that brilliant though sometimes slightly prejudiced
critic. No one of his contemporaries has surpassed Sidgwick in
catholicity and reasonableness, in the power of delicate appreciation,
or in an exquisite precision of expression. His essay on Arthur Hugh
Clough, prefixed to the latest edition of Clough's collected poems, is
a good specimen of this side of his talent. Clough was one of his
favourites, and has indeed been called the pet poet of University men.
Sidgwick's literary essays, which appeared occasionally in magazines,
were few, but they well deserve to be collected and republished, for
this age of ours, though largely occupied in talking about literature,
has produced comparatively little criticism of the first order.
Sidgwick did not write swiftly or easily, because he weighed carefully
everything he wrote. But his mind was alert and nimble in the highest
degree. Thus he was an admirable talker, seeing in a moment the point
of an argument, seizing on distinctions which others had failed to
perceive, suggesting new aspects from which a question might be
regarded, and enlivening every topic by a keen yet sweet and kindly
wit. Wit, seldom allowed to have play in his books, was one of the
characteristics which made his company charming. Its effect was
heightened by a hesitation in his speech which often forced him to
pause before the critical word or phrase of the sentence had been
reached. When that word or phrase came, it was sure to be the right
one. Though fond of arguing, he was so candid and fair, admitting all
that there was in his opponent's case, and obviously trying to see the
point from his opponent's side, that nobody felt annoyed at having
come off second best, while everybody who cared for good talk went
away feeling not only that he knew more about the matter than he did
before, but that he had enjoyed an intellectual pleasure of a rare and
high kind. The keenness of his penetration was not formidable, because
it was joined to an indulgent judgment: the ceaseless activity of his
intellect was softened rather than reduced by the gaiety of his
manner. His talk was conversation, not discourse, for though he
naturally became the centre of nearly every company in which he found
himself, he took no more than his share. It was like the sparkling of
a brook whose ripples seem to give out sunshine.
Though Sidgwick's writings are a mine of careful and suggestive
thinking, he was even more remarkable than his books. Though his
conversation was delightful, the impression of its fertility and its
wit was the least part of the impression which his personality
produced. An eminent man is known to the world at large by what he
gives them in the way of instruction or of pleasure. A man is prized
and remembered by his friends for what he was in the intercourse of
life. Few men of our time have influenced so wide or so devoted a
circle of friends as did Henry Sidgwick; few could respond to the
calls of friendship with a like sympathy or wisdom. His advice was
frequently asked in delicate questions of conduct, and he was
humorously reminded that, by his own capacity as well as by the title
of his chair, he was a professor of casuistry. His stores of knowledge
and helpful criticism were always at the service of his pupils or his
fellow-workers.
From his earliest college days he had been just, well-balanced,
conscientious alike in the pursuit of truth and in the regulation of
his own life, appearing to have neither prejudices nor enmities, and
when he had to convey censure, choosing the least cutting words in
which to convey it. Yet in earlier years there had been in him a touch
of austerity, a certain remoteness or air of detachment, which
confined to a very few persons the knowledge of his highest qualities.
As he grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness of
discernment mellowed into a sweet and persuasive wisdom. A life
excellently conducted, a life which is the expression of fine
qualities, and in which the acts done are in harmony with the thoughts
and words of the man, is itself a beautiful product, whether of
untutored nature or of thought and experience turning every faculty to
the best account. In the modern world the two types of excellence
which we are chiefly bidden to admire are that of the active
philanthropist and that of the saint. The ancient world produced and
admired another type, to which some of its noblest characters
conformed, and which, in its softer and more benignant aspect,
Sidgwick presented. In his indifference to wealth and fame and the
other familiar objects of human desire, in the almost ascetic
simplicity of his daily life, in his pursuit of none but the purest
pleasures, in his habit of subjecting all impulses to the law of
reason, the will braced to patience, the soul brought into harmony
with the divinely appointed order, he seemed to reproduce one of those
philosophers of antiquity who formed a lofty conception of Nature and
sought to live in conformity with her precepts. But the gravity of a
Stoic was relieved by the humour and vivacity which belonged to his
nature, and the severity of a Stoic was softened by the tenderness and
sympathy which seemed to grow and expand with every year. In
Cambridge, where, though the society is a large one, all the teachers
become personally known to one another, and the students have
opportunities of familiar intercourse with the teachers, affection as
well as admiration gathered round him. His thoughts quickened and his
example inspired generation after generation of young men passing
through the University out into the life of England, as a light set
high upon the bank beams on the waves of a river gliding swiftly to
the sea.
It was a life of single-minded devotion to truth and friendship, a
life serene and gentle, free alike from vanity and from ambition,
bearing without complaint the ill-health which sometimes checked his
labours, viewing with calm fortitude those problems of man's life on
which his mind was always fixed, untroubled in the presence of death.
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.
When his friends heard of his departure there rose to mind the words
in which the closing scene of the life of Socrates is described by the
greatest of his disciples, and we thought that among all those we had
known there was none of whom we could more truly say that in him the
spirit of philosophy had its perfect work in justice, in goodness, and
in wisdom.
-----
[51] It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection
from his letters, may before long be published.
[52] It was his aim to avoid as much as possible technical terms or
phrases whose meaning was not plain to the average reader. An
anecdote was current that once when, in conducting a
university examination, he was perusing the papers of a
candidate who had darkened the subject by the use of extreme
Hegelian phraseology, he turned to his co-examiner and said, "I
can see that this is nonsense, but is it the right kind of
nonsense?"
EDWARD ERNEST BOWEN[53]
Ever since the publication of Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold that
eminent headmaster has been taken as the model of a great teacher and
ruler of boys, the man who, while stimulating the intelligence of his
pupils, was even more concerned to discipline and mould their moral
natures. Arnold has become the type of what Carlyle might have called
"The Hero as Schoolmaster." Though there have been many able men at
the head of large schools since his time, including three who
afterwards rose to be Archbishops of Canterbury, as well as a good
many who have become bishops, his fame remains unrivalled, and the
type created by his career, or rather perhaps by his biographer's
account of it, still holds the field. Moreover, during the sixty years
that have passed since Arnold's death scarcely a word has been said
regarding any other masters than the head. During those years the
English universities have sent into the great schools a large
proportion of their most capable graduates as assistant teachers; and
some of the strongest men among these graduates have never, from
various causes, and often because they preferred to remain laymen,
been raised to the headships of the schools. Every one knows that a
school depends for its wellbeing and success more largely on the
assistants taken together than it does on the headmaster. Most people
also know that individual assistant masters are not unfrequently
better scholars, better teachers, and more influential with the boys
than is their official superior. Yet the assistant masters have
remained unhonoured and unsung in the general chorus of praise of the
great schools which has been resounding over England for nearly two
generations.
Edward Bowen was all his life an assistant master, and never cared to
be anything else. As he had determined not to take orders in the
Church of England, he was virtually debarred from many of the chief
headmasterships, which are, some few of them by law, many more by
custom, confined to Anglican clergymen. But even when other headships
to which this condition was not attached were known to be practically
open to his acceptance, were, indeed, in one or two instances almost
tendered to him, he refused to become a candidate, preferring his own
simple and easy way of life to the pomp and circumstance which
convention requires a headmaster to maintain. This abstention,
however, did not prevent his eminence from becoming known to those who
had opportunities of judging. In his later years he would, I think,
have been generally recognised by the teaching profession as the most
brilliant, and in his own peculiar line the most successful, man among
the schoolmasters of Britain.
He was born on 30th March 1836, of an Irish family (originally from
Wales) holding property in the county of Mayo. His father was a
clergyman of the Church of England; his mother, who survived him a
few months (dying at the age of ninety-four) and whom he tended with
watchful care during her years of widowhood, was partly of Irish,
partly of French extraction. Like his more famous but perhaps not
more remarkable elder brother, Charles Bowen, who became Lord Bowen,
and is remembered as one of the most acute and subtle judges as well
as one of the most winning personalities of our time, he had a gaiety,
wit, and versatility which suggested the presence of Celtic blood. He
was educated at Blackheath School, and afterwards at King's College
in London, whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. In
1860, after a career at the University, distinguished both in the
way of honours and in respect of the reputation he won among his
contemporaries, he became a master at Harrow, and thenceforth
remained there, leading an uneventful and externally a monotonous
life, but one full of unceasing and untiring activity in play and
work. He died on Easter Monday 1901.
Nothing could be less like the traditional Arnoldine methods of
teaching and ruling boys than Bowen's method was. The note of those
methods was what used to be called moral earnestness. Arnold was grave
and serious, distant and awe-inspiring, except perhaps to a few
specially favoured pupils. Bowen was light, cheerful, vivacious,
humorous, familiar, and, above all things, ingenious and full of
variety. His leading principles were two--that the boy must at all
hazards be interested in the lessons and that he should be at ease
with the teacher.