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simply the natural and inevitable thing to do.” (M ) He explained the
case more fully to Mrs. Clough, in a letter from July of :
As for my resignation and consequent prospects, you are very good to think about
them. Personally I feel no doubt that I have done right. For long I have had no doubt except what arose from the fact that most of the persons whose opinion I most
regard think differently. But one must at last act on one’s own view. It is my painful conviction that the prevailing lax subscription is not perfectly conscientious in
the case of many subscribers: and that those who subscribe laxly from the highest
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motives are responsible for the degradation of moral and religious feeling that
others suffer. It would require very clear and evident gain of some other kind
to induce me to undergo this responsibility. And such gain I do not see. Even
if I make the extreme supposition that all heretics avow themselves such and
are driven away from the universities, some harm would no doubt be done, but
not so much as is supposed. A reaction must come soon and the universities be
thrown open; meanwhile there are plenty of excellent teachers on all subjects who
are genuinely orthodox; and even as regards religious speculation the passion for
truth in young minds would be stimulated by such an event, and they would find
plenty of sources for “illumination” even if our rushlights were put out.
All this is, of course, an unpractical supposition. I make it to show myself that I
am obeying a sound general rule – I feel very strongly the importance of “providing
things honest in the sight of all men.” It is surely a great good that one’s moral
position should be one that simple-minded people can understand. I happen to
care very little what men in general think of me individually: but I care very much
about what they think of human nature. I dread doing anything to support the
plausible suspicion that men in general, even those who profess lofty aspirations,
are secretly swayed by material interests.
After all, it is odd to be finding subtle reasons for an act of mere honesty: but I
am reduced to that by the refusal of my friends to recognise it as such. (M )
Thus, as always, Sidgwick is concerned about the general state of
public morals, worrying away about egoistic hypocrisy – for why is it
a “plausible suspicion” that “men in general, even those who profess
lofty aspirations, are secretly swayed by material interests”? Is that not at
least part of the “degradation of moral and religious feeling” that even
high-minded laxity aggravates? Is he not still worried about “fire and
strength” and cultivating a humanity that knows and values self-sacrifice
and sympathy?
Even so, Sidgwick refrained from being too unctuous about his course.
As he wrote to Dakyns, the “great, vital, productive, joy-giving qualities
that I admire in others I cannot attain to: I can only lay on the altar of
humanity as an offering this miserable bit of legal observance.” In fact,
he simply hates being “forced to condemn others . . . for not acting in the
same way,” although he admits that “a moral impulse must be universally-
legislative: the notion of ‘gratifying my own conscience’ is to me self-
contradictory.” Even his positivism is “half-against” him – the “effect on
society of maintaining the standard of veracity is sometimes so shadowy
that I feel as if I was conforming to a mere ‘metaphysical’ formula.” He
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has, he feels, been “under water in the depths of abstract-ethical egoistic
debate,” and he longs to “emerge; perhaps I shall recover the calm outward
gaze, the quick helpful hand, of the lover and child of nature.” (M –
).
Hardly a likely outcome, for a Sidgwick. Noel wrote to him: “You must
feel fish-out-of-watery?”
But things did turn out tolerably well. Once again, Cambridge proved
to be Sidgwick’s salvation. As he explained to his mother, in a letter dated
June , :
Everything is settled. The “Seniority” have offered me the post of Lecturer on
Moral Sciences on £ a year, with the understanding that I am going to repudiate
all dogmatic obligations, – I mean to resign my fellowship because it is held on terms of such obligations. I have also had a conversation with Lightfoot (whom I name orthodox causâ) who is very kind and understands the step as I mean it –
regretting it, of course. I have been partly determined by his advice not to secede
from the Church of England. I have no wish to do that, as long as orthodox persons
of a reasonable sort – I mean persons who really do accept the “Apostles Creed”
and yet are not bigots – have no wish that I should secede from it. I think that as
“Apostles Creed” is used in Baptism and Confirmation, I am primâ facie supposed to accept it, and ought not to claim the social privileges of a member of the Church
against the wish of the mass of reasonable persons in it. At the same time I do
not think one is bound to regard the creed that is necessary for admission as
meaning for bonâ fide membership afterwards, if reasonable orthodox persons do not so regard it. And my wish is to show myself as sympathetic as possible to the
national religion, while declining to profess agreement with it’s doctrines. (CWC)
This decision on the part of the “Seniority,” which must have included
Maurice, allowed Sidgwick to carry on in his familiar life, though with
some reduction in income. And the counsel of Bishop Lightfoot allowed
him to carry on some semblance of his church affiliation. Here, of course,
one sees the careful gradations of duty according to role. The standard of
veracity for laity and that for clergy or those taking definite tests are not
necessarily the same thing. If Lightfoot held that the Apostles’ Creed was
“not dogmatically obligatory on laymen,” then that was the reasonable
view (M ). The balance of considerations involved in showing his
sympathy for the national religion while declining to profess it is perhaps
what would have been expected, given his rationalist tendencies hedged
by skepticism. Some lines from Tennyson apparently caught his mood:
“Yet pull not down my minster towers, that were / So gravely, gloriously
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wrought; / Perchance I may return with oth
ers there / When I have
cleared my thought” (M ).
VIII. The Ethics of Conformity and Subscription
I have written a pamphlet . . . which will perhaps be printed – on the text, ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.’ That is really the gist of the
pamphlet – that if the preachers of religion wish to retain their hold over educated
men they must show in their utterances on sacred occasions the same sincerity,
exactness, unreserve, that men of science show in expounding the laws of nature.
I do not think that much good is to be done by saying this, but I want to liberate
my soul, and then ever after hold my peace.
Sidgwick to his sister, Mary, April (M )
What were the actual consequences of Sidgwick’s resignation? How
accurate was his assessment of the situation? How, exactly, did his strug-
gle with the question of subscription lead him through the thinking ex-
pounded in The Methods of Ethics? Was this episode really as significant
as he seemed to think? Was it the culmination of his years of storm and
stress?
These are difficult questions, but in the final analysis, there appears to
be little reason to doubt the veracity of Sidgwick’s estimate of these mat-
ters. The themes and problematics of his resignation crisis, the anxieties
over egoism and hypocrisy, would reverberate and replay themselves in his
later life and work, forming a turbulent subcurrent running beneath his
cautious reformism and weighty academic efforts to gauge just what the
British public might be ripe for. Once one reads such works as the Methods
and the Elements of Politics bearing in mind Sidgwick’s profound commit-
ment to avoiding the rupture of common sense and common religion –
the importance, for him, of instigating social change only from a platform
firmly planted in the realities of the present (or of at least masking the call
for change by an appeal to what we all think) – it becomes very difficult
to resist the thought that his formative period formed him for a very long
time to come. The Apostolic virtues of the discussion group must allow
the interplay of speaker and hearer, proceeding (ideally, anyway) from
an empathetic grasp of the views of one’s partners. In a very real sense,
Sidgwick wanted to regard the larger public as a conversational part-
ner, albeit one he could come to understand and guide, educate, without
offending.
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A good way to appreciate the position Sidgwick had reached in the
late sixties is by attending closely to his pamphlet on “The Ethics of
Conformity and Subscription.” It was a profoundly Cloughian piece of
work, replete with all the anxieties of an anxious age, but also with a certain
fearless zest – the liberation of a soul that had been long pent up.
“Conformity and Subscription” certainly conveys Sidgwick’s sense that
the Cloughian age had come. He is impressed by the “large strides” that
have been made “towards complete civil and social equality of creeds”
and thinks the “secular disadvantages that religious dissidences formerly
entailed, have been so rapidly diminishing, that we may look forward
confidently to their speedy exinction.” Thus, we “have abolished church
rates; we are inaugurating a system of primary education, which is, at any
rate, designed to place all sects, as far as possible, on a par; and it is obvious
that the ecclesiastical restrictions on the higher education cannot be much
longer maintained.” (CS )
Most importantly, Sidgwick is persuaded that “on the whole, the recog-
nition of the necessity of free inquiry, and of the possibility of conscientious
difference of opinion, almost without limit, is so general, that most of my
readers will be prepared to discuss the question on the neutral ground of
ethics.” Indeed, the “effort to unite cordially with Dissenters, wherever
such union is possible, has ceased to be the differencing characteristic of
one party in the Church of England; and it is but rarely that a conformist
dares to avow in public any sentiment but respect for conscientious non-
conformity.” Even those fighting “for the relics of Anglican privilege” have
given up grave admonitions concerning schism, offering instead “voluble
and pathetic appeals to ‘our common Christianity’.” (CS , ) All this
toleration is not “the mere drapery of enlightened unbelief ” or a mere
“external compromise,” but is in fact deeply rooted in
the present tendencies of religious thought; and not of religious thought only, but of all thought on subjects where first principles and method are as yet indeterminate,
and where therefore persons of equal intelligence, sincerity, and application, are
continually led to the most profoundly diverse conclusions. Controversies on
such subjects are carried on, not perhaps less keenly than before, but more fairly,
temperately, and dispassionately, with more mutual understanding, and, we may
almost say, mutual interest, in the conflicting opinions. This tempered dogmatism
must be carefully distinguished from the superficial eclecticism that sometimes
results from the same causes, the state of mind that prides itself on holding no
form of creed in particular, but combining the best parts of all: this latter is
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not, I think, peculiarly characteristic of the present age; what I am noticing is
the habit of holding opinions firmly and earnestly, and yet, as it were, at arm’s
length, of seeing how they look when viewed on the outside, and divining by
analogy how the opinions of others look when viewed on the inside. A dogmatist
of this temper has a natural respect for, even a spontaneous sympathy with, any
one who holds any creed with consistency, clearness, and sincerity. Accordingly,
one result of this increase of real internal toleration on the part of dogmatists,
is to encourage much greater openness and unreserve on the part of heretics
of all kinds and degrees. This openness is sometimes deplored by ecclesiastical
writers and speakers, but in the present strained relations of intellectual culture
and religious faith, the most fatal mistake that can be made in the interests of the
latter, next to that of discouraging theological inquiry as sinful, is to discourage
the expression of theological disagreement as unedifying. It would be a great
gain to religion if preachers would abandon all idea of restricting inquiry and
discussion, and confine themselves entirely (in so far as they deal with the question) to improving the method of inquiry, and elevating the manner of the discussion.
(CS
–)
All this was profoundly heartfelt, of course, though it strikes a slightly
more optimistic note than the earlier letter to Mill. The direction of
the times is here made to sound highly Apostolic, as the flowering
of Socratic discussion conjoined with sympathy. But of course, unlike
Arnold, Sidgwick gives this cultural change a certain modernist cast: “this
frankness, even audacity, in theological investigation and discussion, is ren-
dered especially necessary by a fact, the influence of which upon theology
is often noticed, although not quite from this point of view – I mean the
increasing predominance of positive science as an element of our highest
intellectual culture.” Sidgwick does not agree with those who hold that
for those of a scientific bent, “theology must inevitably become more and
more shadowy and unreal, and its interminable debates more and more
distasteful.” Perhaps he had psychical research in mind, as well as Darwin,
when he continued by suggesting “that the scientific inquiries which are
most eagerly pursued, and excite the keenest interest in lookers-on, are
precisely those where the method is least determinate, the reasonings most
hypothetical, and the conclusions most disputable.” But the crucial point
is that
What theology has to learn from the predominant studies of the age is something
very different from advice as to its method or estimates of its utility; it is the
imperative necessity of accepting unreservedly the conditions of life under which
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these studies live and flourish. It is sometimes said that we live in an age that rejects authority. The statement, thus qualified, seems misleading; probably there never
was a time when the number of beliefs held by each individual, undemonstrated
and unverified by himself, was greater. But it is true that we only accept authority
of a particular sort; the authority, namely, that is formed and maintained by the
unconstrained agreement of individual thinkers, each of whom we believe to
be seeking truth with single-mindedness and sincerity, and declaring what he
