HENRY SIDGWICK: EYE OF THE UNIVERSE

Henry Sidgwick is one of the great intellectual figures of nineteenth-century Britain. He was first and foremost a great moral philosopher, whose masterwork, The Methods of Ethics, is still widely studied today. But he was many other things besides, writing on religion, economics, politics, education, and literature. He was deeply involved in the founding of the first college for women at the University of Cambridge, and he was a leading figure in parapsychology. He was also much concerned with the sexual politics of his close friend John Addington Symonds, a pioneer of gay studies. Through his famous student G. E. Moore, a direct line can be traced from Sidgwick and his circle to the Bloomsbury group.

  Bart Schultz has written a magisterial overview of this great Victorian sage – the first comprehensive study, offering provocative new critical perspectives on the life and the work. Sidgwick’s ethical work is situated in the context of his theological and political commitments and is revealed as a necessarily guarded statement of his deepest philosophical convictions and doubts. All other areas of his writings are covered and presented in the context of the late Victorian culture of imperialism.

  This biography, or “Goethean reconstruction,” will be eagerly sought out by readers interested in philosophy, Victorian studies, political theory, the history of ideas, educational theory, the history of psychology, and gender and gay studies.

Bart Schultz is Fellow and Lecturer in the Division of the Humanities and Special Programs Coordinator in the Graham School of General Studies at the University of Chicago.

Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe
An Intellectual Biography

Bart Schultz
University of Chicago

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Bart Schultz 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Typeface Ehrhardt 10.5/13 pt.     System LATEX 2_e  [TB]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Schultz, Bart.
Henry Sidgwick, eye of the universe : an intellectual biography / Bart Schultz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-521-82967-4
1. Sidgwick, Henry, 1838–1900.   I. Title.
BJ604.S5S38   2004
192–dc21
[B]    2003055354

ISBN 0 521 82967 4 hardback

FOR MARTY AND MADELEINE
“We learn only from people we love.”
                      – Goethe

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

      "Remember," by Christina Rossetti,
      described by Henry Sidgwick as
      "perhaps the most perfect thing
      that any living poet has written"

 I ask for life – for life Divine
Where man's true self may move
In one harmonious cord to twine
The threads of Knowledge and of Love
                  Henry Sidgwick, circa 1859

Contents

Acknowledgments

Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe reflects a very long, very strange trip. It is quite possible that my thinking about Henry Sidgwick (and John Addington Symonds) began longer ago than I can actually recall, at some point in the 1960s when I was reading various works in which their names figured – works that, befitting the times, had to do with religion, ethics, art, psychology, and cosmic consciousness. My sixties vision of a new age resonated happily, at least on some counts, with the visions of a new age that animated the late Victorians – visions that rebelled against the limitations of a perversely hypocritical commonsense morality. What curious forces led to my intense, continuing engagement with these figures and themes into and beyond 2001 can only make for much speculation. At any rate, circa 1967, I would not have been at all likely to prophesy that this scholarly tome was the form that my artwork would take.

  I console myself with the thought that I have at least had a most unorthodox academic career and wound up marrying an art historian and adopting a beautiful little girl. It is to Marty and Madeleine that I owe everything that is good, in this book and in such life as has existed outside of it, and it is to them that I dedicate it.

  My parents, Reynolds and Marian Schultz, now deceased, and my three sisters, their husbands and children, were and are a source of loving support, whatever qualms they might have about my stubborn waywardness, on display in the material that follows.

  And who could forget dear Churchill, the world’s largest miniature Schnauzer?

  I would like to express my gratitude to the many friends who contributed to this project. Their support – and, of course, criticism – has been vital and generous. First thanks must again go to Marty, her critical reading having been so crucial to my efforts. Next thanks must go to Jerry Schneewind, the rightly acknowledged dean of Sidgwick studies, who has been a model and a marvel, showing just how open-minded a senior scholar can be, even while being absolutely unstinting in his (much-needed) critical input. Mark Singer, another friend from the Sidgwick Society, has also, for all our differences, provided much welcome help and stimulus, as has Russell Hardin, to whom I owe far more than I can convey. In more recent days, my long-distance collegial friendship and collaboration with Roger Crisp has been a source of great pleasure and intellectual value; my work with him on “Sidgwick 2000” (Utilitas 12, November 2000) did much to inspire me to complete Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe. Closer to home, I have benefited from Charles Larmore’s erudite company, our exchanges invariably proving most thought-provoking. Very importantly, both John Skorupski and Tom Hurka have been exceedingly generous with their time and input, providing me with a wealth of detailed critical commentary that is reflected in the following pages time and again. Finally, exchanges with Rob Shaver, Brad Hooker, David Weinstein, Sissela Bok, and Stephen Darwall, during the assemblage of “Sidgwick 2000,” also proved most fruitful. In fact, the journals Ethics and Utilitas ought to be included in this list, given how much they have meant to my work. Cambridge University Press and my editor, Terence Moore, belong here as well. The Press also supplied me with an excellent and congenial copy editor, Russell Hahn, whose efforts are reflected on nearly every page.

  Some old teachers – some of whom are, alas, now gone – will always have my enduring gratitude; the late Alan Donagan, the late David Greenstone, Shirley Castelnuovo, John Murphy, Jon Elster, Stephen Toulmin, and Brian Barry stand out in my memory. I owe them much, even if my interests and thinking have always remained rather apart. The late William Frankena, although never one of my formal teachers, went out of his way to help me, and my correspondence with him was a great source of inspiration. The late John Rawls was similarly generous, as was the late Edward Said.

  Of course, alongside these names, I must mention my students in the College at the University of Chicago, from whom it has been my pleasure to learn for the past fifteen years. Insofar as I have been able to “remain a boy” – that is, like Sidgwick’s friend John Grote, excited but undecided about all the great questions, including the question of whether there are any great questions – it is thanks to them. I am also truly grateful to the talented scholar-administators who make Chicago such an exciting community, including Dan Garber, Geof Stone, John Boyer, Richard Saller, Bernie Silberman, Bill Brown, Janel Mueller, Joel Snyder, Dan Shannon, and Jeff Rosen.

  I am also aware of very real debts to Barbara Donagan, David Brink, John Deigh, Donald Davidson, Dale Miller, Ian Jarvie, Peter Nicholson, Alan Gauld, Chris Stray, Robert Todd, David Tracy, Stuart Michaels, Martha Nussbaum, Phyllis Grosskurth, George Chauncey, David Phillips, Georgios Varouxakis, Dick Arneson, Monique Canto-Sperber, Louis Crompton, John Gibbins, Bill Lubenow, Chris Parsons, Richard Stern, Julian Baggini, Jennifer Welchman, Alan Ryan, Onora O’Neil, Richard Flathman, Wendy Donner, Maria Morales, Ray Monk, Stefan Collini, Ross Harrison, Evelyn Perry, Dave Coxall, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, John Pemble, Noam Chomsky, and Isabelle Richet.

  Two further scholarly projects have turned out to be quite useful for my work on this book. Assembling The Complete Works and Select Scholarly Correspondence of Henry Sidgwick (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation, 1997; 2nd ed. 1999), the first such collection of Sidgwick’s works, for the InteLex Corporation’s Past Masters series of electronic databases was a time-consuming but valuable undertaking. My thanks to Mark Rooks and Brad Lamb, who invited me to take on the project and who also devoted a great deal of time to it. It is courtesy of them that so much Sidgwickian text has been transferred to this electronic format and made readily available for scholarly work.

Work on the InteLex project brought me into collaboration with the historian Jean Wilkins, who not only did a fine job of transcribing Sidgwick’s journal, but was also instrumental in tracking down various obscure works in the Cambridge libraries and thus helped with the overall assembly of the database as well. And it was at an early stage of that project that I also recruited the aid of the historian Janet Oppenheim, who supplied valuable advice and material relating to Sidgwick’s parapsychological research. Her premature death, from cancer, was a terrible loss to the scholarly community. A friend of Janet Oppenheim’s from the British Society for Psychical Research, Eleanor O’Keeffe, was also extremely helpful, doing everything that she could to ensure that we had a complete record of Sidgwick’s publications for the Society.

  With the second edition of the Complete Works, I was brought into collaboration with Andrew Dakyns and Belinda Robinson. Andrew, the descendant of Sidgwick’s dear friend Henry Graham Dakyns, turned out to be as enjoyable and erudite a companion as his ancestor was reputed to have been, and my work with him and Belinda – first on the  Sidgwick– Dakyns correspondence included in the database, and then on the volume Strange Audacious Life: The Construction of John Addington Symonds  – has been a delight. I was also led in this connection to make contact with Herbert Schueller and Bob Peters, the heroic editors of the pathbreaking, three-volume Letters of John Addington Symonds (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967–69), a complementary copy of which Bob generously sent to me.

  Andrew, Belinda, and I first got together at a conference, John  Addington  Symonds: The Public and Private Faces of Victorian  Culture, sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and the Department of Historical Studies and held at Bristol University in the spring of 1998. My visit to Bristol was enchanting, thanks especially to John Pemble and Annie Burnside, the latter being the warden of Clifton Hill House, Symonds’s old home, in which the conference was held, and where I also had the pleasure of meeting Vikky and Chris Furse, the latter one of Symonds’s descendants. The conference papers were revised and published as John Addington Symonds: Culture and the Demon Desire, ed. John Pemble (London: Macmillan, 2000). My paper on that occasion, “Truth and Its Consequences: The Friendship of Symonds and Henry Sidgwick,” was a distillation of much of my work following an earlier conference, Henry Sidgwick as Philosopher and Historian, organized by me and held at the University of Chicago in May of 1990 – work that later appeared in revised, extended form as my collection Essays on Henry Sidgwick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). A special thanks to the many reviewers of this last volume.

  Much of the preparatory work for this project was conducted at  Cambridge University, Sidgwick’s home for most of his adult life. My visits there always involved trips to the beautiful Wren Library, Trinity College, to consult the Sidgwick Papers. Working in the shadow of Lord Byron proved inspirational, and it is a great pleasure to thank David  McKitterick, the librarian; Ronald Milne, the former sublibrarian; Jonathan Smith, the archivist; and former archivist Diana Chardin for making these visits so enjoyable and productive. Without their help – and without the generous assistance of many other staff members as well, notably  Andrew Lambert – my work could not have prospered. A special thanks goes to Diana Chardin for tracking down one of Sidgwick’s (all-too-few) lecture manuscripts and to Jonathan Smith for vital aid with my references and the cover photo. My most grateful  acknowledgment goes to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College for allowing the reproduction of various manuscript materials from the  Sidgwick  Papers.

  The Modern Record Centre at King’s College, Cambridge, also proved to be an invaluable resource. It contains a great quantity of important correspondence and manuscript material, including the correspondence with Oscar Browning and eight volumes of student notes taken from Sidgwick’s lectures on the history of ethics. Jacqueline Cox, the archivist, has been extraordinarily helpful and efficient, along with her assistant, Elizabeth Stratton. I am very pleased to thank the Master and Fellows of King’s College for allowing the reproduction of various letters.

  My visits to Newnham College were also inspirational; Newnham simply lives and breathes the spirit of the Sidgwicks, what they stood for practically and philosophically. It was during my first visit to Cambridge, while meditating by the Sidgwick fountain at Newnham, that the resolution to write this book formed in my mind. My thanks go to the Newnham College Library and Archives, especially to Elisabeth van Houts, the former archivist; Anne Thompson, the current archivist; and Deborah Hodder, the librarian, who have been unfailingly pleasant and helpful. I happily acknowledge the Principal and Fellows of Newnham College for allowing reproduction of certain materials herein.

  At University Library, Cambridge, which also holds a significant body of Sidgwick material, I received much aid and information from Mark Nichols and Godfrey Waller, for which I am most grateful; my thanks go to that remarkable institution for allowing the reproduction of various materials herein.

  Thanks also go to the staff members at Darwin College Library, the Philosophy Library, the Library at Gonville and Caius College, the  Social and Political Library, the Library at Downing College, the Marshall  Library, and the Library at Girton College (where Kate Perry was especially helpful). Special thanks go to the people at Clare Hall, particularly Dacea Smith, for their hospitality during some of my visits to Cambridge.

  At Oxford University, the Bodleian’s Helen Langley, in Modern Political Papers, very generously gave of her time and expertise, doing much to expedite my work. Thanks also go to Colin Harris, in Modern  Papers, for his valuable assistance. Grateful acknowledgment goes to the Bodleian Library for supplying microfilm copies of the Bryce correspondence  (especially valuable for analyzing Sidgwick’s handwriting) and the correspondence between Symonds and Roden Noel and for allowing various reproductions of their materials.

  Katharine Thompson, the modern manuscripts assistant at Balliol College Library, was quite helpful in fielding my inquiries about Sidgwick holdings. And I would like to thank the library at Harris Manchester College for supplying me with a missing Metaphysical Society paper and graciously allowing the reproduction of various parts of Sidgwick’s papers for the Society. Ms. Pauline Adams, at the Amelia B. Edwards Archive, Somerville College, also supplied me with some most helpful information about their archival holdings.

  The London Library, which holds the original manuscript of the Symonds memoirs, is a remarkable institution, and I am most grateful to the staff there for welcoming me and providing expert help with my research.

  I am also delighted to thank the Department of Manuscripts at the  University of St. Andrews, especially Norman Reid, who was a wonderful fund of helpful information and of crucial importance in allowing the reproduction of Sidgwick’s letters to Wilfrid Ward in the InteLex database. Thanks also go to Paul Johnson for his help with the final check of the  transcriptions of that correspondence. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the   University of St. Andrews for allowing me to use this material.

  A warm thank-you goes to Richard Freeman, the owner of the Foxwell Papers, for graciously allowing their reproduction in my database and aiding my research in other ways as well.

  Liz Waxdoff, the archivist at Knebworth, and the staff at the Hertfordshire Record Office, especially Kathryn Thompson, helped track down some important correspondence and were most generous in lending their efforts to this project. I am of course delighted to express my thanks to Lord Cobbold for kind permission to reproduce Sidgwick’s letter to Robert Lytton, from the Knebworth House Collection.

  Sincerest thanks also go to Michael Richardson, in Manuscripts at the University of Bristol Library, for expertly and enthusiastically fielding any number of inquiries about the Sidgwick and Symonds material held in the collection there and supplying me with some very important material. It is a pleasure to thank the University of Bristol Library for permission to reproduce the letters from Sidgwick to Symonds.

  And another sincerest thanks goes to Brian Dyson, the university archivist, in Archives and Special Collections at the Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull; his help, and that of his assistant, Angela Quinby, in dealing with the Roden Noel letters to Sidgwick was  invaluable, as was his aid in contacting Desmond Heath, the author of Roden Noel: A Wide Angle and the husband of Sylvia Putterill, one of Noel’s descendants. I am delighted to thank the library at the University of Hull for allowing me to use some of this material. And I am delighted to thank Desmond Heath for supplying me with a complementary copy of his book and valuable – very rare – additional correspondence from Sidgwick to Noel, not only granting me permission to use it, but gifting it to me. I eagerly look forward to continuing work with him to bring to light more Sidgwick–Noel correspondence.

  The British Library has been another happy and rewarding retreat, with particular thanks going to C. J. Wright, J. Conway, Zoë Stansell, and Michael Boggan, of the Department of Manuscripts, for helping me in various ways, notably by expediting receipt of a microfilm copy of the  Sidgwick–Balfour correspondence. I am grateful to the British Library for permission to reprint selected letters from this collection, and to Lord Balfour, who has always been very cordial and helpful in responding to my inquiries. Jane Hill and the staff at the Historical Search Room of the Scottish Records Office, Edinburgh, where most of the Whittingehame Balfour papers are now held, were also singularly patient and helpful in responding to my many questions.

  The staff at the Sheffield Archives, Sheffield City Libraries, have also been a valuable resource, supplying me with important material from the Carpenter manuscripts in their possession; I gratefully acknowledge their permission to use some of the letters of Edward Carpenter and Horatio Brown in their possession. A sincere thanks goes to François Lafitte, the literary heir to Havelock Ellis, for graciously and helpfully responding to my inquiries.

  Naturally, the Historical Manuscripts Commission, UK National Register of Archives, was a most useful resource, and I have often availed myself of it; warm thanks go to the many staff members there who have aided my efforts, particularly Dr. A. P. Lewis, in the Curatorial Office, who supplied me with much information about Horatio Brown’s manuscripts and correspondence.

  The staff at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin, has been a rich resource, both personally and electronically.

  Grateful acknowledgment also goes to the staff in Special Collections and Archives at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at The Johns Hopkins University, particularly to Joan Grattan, who helped discover the (presumed lost) letter from Sidgwick to John Stuart Mill. It is a pleasure to thank the Milton S. Eisenhower Library for allowing the reproduction of this important document.

  And it is a special pleasure to express my indebtedness to Harvard University, the vast scholarly resources of which have been invaluable to my work. I am especially grateful to the Houghton Library, particularly to Leslie Morris, and to Bay James, the James heir, for permission to reproduce parts of Henry and Eleanor Sidgwick’s letters to William James.

  Thanks, too, go to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, for their helpful reception while researching Sidgwick’s letters to George Eliot.

  I am also delighted to thank the Library at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, especially Jackie Woollam, for help with my inquiries and for generously and speedily supplying me with a copy of the unabridged version of “The Pursuit of Culture.”

  Over the years, many other institutions and individuals have been very generous in furthering my research. With apologies to those I may inadvertently omit, I would like to record my thanks to the staff in Special Collections at the University of Edinburgh and the staff in Special Collections at the University of Glasgow. In the United States, I have also been helped by the staffs in Special Collections at the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, the Bancroft Library at the University of California–Berkeley, the Sterling Memorial Library at Stanford University, the Butler Library at Columbia University, the New York Public Library, and numerous others. The Regenstein Library, I should add, has been a source and second home to me for more than twenty-five years.

  The Theosophical Society, with its U.S. national headquarters in Wheaton, Illinois, responded to some of my inquiries.

  Lord Rayleigh and the Rt. Honorable Guy Strutt were most gracious in allowing me to visit Terling Place, where the Sidgwicks spent so much of their time (and are buried), and to do research on the estate. Their aid and hospitality was and is deeply appreciated, and I gratefully acknowledge their efforts and generosity. My feeling for the atmosphere in which the Sidgwicks lived gained much from this truly memorable visit.

  A visit to the Sidgwicks’ house in Cambridge, “Hillside,” was also fascinating, and my thanks go to the students who now inhabit it for allowing me to look around, wandering and wondering in incomprehensible reverie.

  Last, but very, very far from least, my research and travels have benefited immeasurably from the aid and sympathy generously given by Ms. Ann Baer, Sidgwick’s great-niece, a descendant of Arthur Sidgwick, who supplied me with much useful information about the Sidgwick family tree. My profound thanks go to her and to the other members of the Sidgwick family  – especially the philosopher Andrew Belsey  – for being so supportive of my research and encouraging the publication of the fruits thereof. Ann Baer was also kind enough to put me in touch with Roberta Blanshard, who was eager to aid my search for various Sidgwick materials that had once been in the possession of her late husband, Brand Blanshard, a founder of the Sidgwick Society.

  As this record should suggest, the voyage producing Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe has been a long one. And it could well go on forever, given how much research remains to be done. Sympathetic understanding, contemporary or historical, is hard work.

Abbreviations

References to and citations of Sidgwick’s major works are given parenthetically in the text using the following abbreviations. All works were published by Macmillan and Co., London, except for the pamphlet “The Ethics of Conformity and Subscription” (London: Williams and Norgate) and Practical Ethics (London: Swan Sonnenschein). A space separates abbreviation and page number. If the reference is to an edition other than the last, the number of the edition is placed immediately after the abbreviation and before the space. Thus, (ME1 7) refers to The Methods of Ethics, first edition, p. 7.

For a complete bibliography, covering all of Sidgwick’s many essays, articles, and reviews, as well as the archival resources and reviews of his major works, see the entry on him by J. B. Schneewind and Bart Schultz in The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. 4, 1800–1900, 3rd ed., ed. Joanne Shattock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). The only complete collection of Sidgwick’s writings is The  Complete Works and Select Correspondence of Henry Sidgwick, ed. Bart Schultz et al.  (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation, 1997; 2nd ed. 1999), an electronic database to which frequent reference is made in the text. This collection is referred to in the text by the abbreviation CWC; because of the electronic format, no page references to it are given, though the original print or archival references are often provided or simply used instead. However, much of the material in the database  –  such as the complete, matched Sidgwick–Dakyns correspondence  – has been transcribed and reproduced for the first time, and the originals are from private collections without archival or other reference numbers. Please note that the translations of Greek terms and expressions are reserved for the notes, though, unless otherwise indicated, these are simply the translations given in the work being cited.