by Bart Schultz
them it must be usurping a place not its own. Every situation has its use, and
though we ought to consider what we are most fit for, yet we can adapt ourselves
pretty easily to nearly any in which circumstances may for the time place us, if we
do not “consider it too curiously.” One thing, however, is certain, that the most
valuable truths, as you say, are those which grow dim in the closet. Only there
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are of course various ways of connecting oneself with social and national life. I
hesitated long before I gave up my full leisure for thinking and writing, but I have
gained in every way, though I am far from thinking everyone should follow my
example. You are, however, quite mistaken in thinking that I condemn a life of
“pure thought.” What I condemn is precisely the life you describe as your ideal,
at least condemn it abstractedly as an ideal, not to be departed from at any time.
Let the mere student be content to be a mere student, all well. But let him not
hope to acquire a fuller sympathy with the “universal heart of humanity” than the
practical man, by the process of placing himself above or outside of humanity and
contemplating it, (or rather contemplating his idea of it formed a priori and from
books.) A curious sympathy surely will result. He despises common humanity
as vulgar, and will not condescend even to experience the most sacred of its
emotions, because every ignorant poor man seems capable of these – too gross
for the illuminati, and so, delicately sniffing at common humanity and passing
by holding his nose, he expects to sympathize with the “universal heart” of man,
that heart with its unsounded depths and infinite variety, its good and evil, storms
and calms, all in a manner sacred as belonging to it. Can he fitly expound history
who enters not into the commonest yet profoundest Life experience before him?
And to work well at the truly pressing problems of the time implies no shrinking
from common experience, if it comes in our way at least. He will be doing good
work may be in expounding differences of text, varieties of reading, certainly in
expounding physical truths, perhaps metaphysical, but History scarcely seems to be the domain for him. Your ideal seems to be an etherialized Goethe, but he
will have infinitely less power, for he contemns experience. Intellect is the Deity
of Goethe. But to furnish food for intellect he sees the fullest experience to be
necessary. Yet both the practical and the etherial Goethe is in [sic] radically wrong, Intellect is not the most Divine element. In my creed, it is Love. . . . It is plain that if Goetheism is right, we should have a series of isolated, well-cultivated human
units, only working for Society when it is clearly seen to be their interest, but
self being the end of all. If Christ’s spirit is right, Love and universal sympathy
with all good would actuate each and unite each to all by an indissoluble bond,
binding not by the intellect only, but by the very root fibres of the whole being,
the whole man. Is not the harmony of wills our desire for men? And is not this the
spirit by which it can be most certainly attained? But I remember your saying that
in advocating a many-sided experience I was inconsistent, as this is self-culture, Goetheism, as opposed to sacrificing oneself and one’s culture for others. I think
not. The spirit and object is the point of difference. Does a man apply himself
to the study of Truth for the love of Truth – to intercourse with mankind from
sympathy with mankind – to particular social affections for the sake of the Love
and the beloved objects? Or is it all done half-heartedly with one eye upon himself
and all in order only to cultivate himself? This makes the difference. A man must
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have some general bias, or some plan more or less defined according to which he
regulates his life. Is this self-interest, or is it the good of others – the attainment of Truth? That one may be fitted to be an instrument of good, one must cultivate
oneself – and one must have that genuine sympathy which prompts us to put
ourselves in the position of others, to share their infirmities, put up with their
imperfections, and oppose only this want of love. I myself look upon marriage – a
true wise deliberate union – (as a general rule I mean) as the holy school for those
best affections which are to radiate from them, as from a centre, upon mankind, or
as much of mankind as lies within our reach, warmer and more substantial if not so
highflown and etherial as those of the philosophic philanthropist; affections which
can blossom into perfection only under a serener sky. Then you philosophers are
so particular – you must find it seems an actual intangible angel. This would not
do for men of common clay – ought not a man’s ideal to be “a spirit, yet a woman too”?
Apparently, Sidgwick really did envision “a philosophical bachelor life”
guided by the “universal heart of humanity,” with, Noel thought, the
“danger of the general public to whose benefit a man resolves to devote
himself melting – from the largeness and vagueness of his object – into
the image of himself only, and of his undertaking no definite work in their
favour after all.” The hope, Noel suggested, was that his “teaching and
coming in contact with the young” would serve as a corrective, though in
the decades to come Symonds would join Noel in lamenting Sidgwick’s
curious bookish abstraction when it came to human relations. Obviously,
Sidgwick’s etherializing tendencies made even his Goethean side look a
lot less attainable for the normal man. And this is not to mention the
side devoted to altruism and self-sacrifice, as befits a superior man above
inferior attachments. If he and Noel shared much when it came to valuing
love over thought, they evidently had some sharp differences about just
how one entered into the heart of humanity, cultivated sympathy, and so
on. And Noel’s challenges had a serious impact on the practical-minded
Rugbyean and future author of the Methods, who was forever complaining
about the abstraction and practical uselessness of his results and about
the irresolvable tensions between egoism and utilitarianism that might be
embedded even in high-minded utilitarian society. Should not a good
Millian challenge academic celibacy as well as idleness?
That Noel had some real insight into Sidgwick’s other-worldly men-
tality is also suggested by one of Sidgwick’s early poems, “Goethe and
Frederika,” which he published anonymously in Macmillan’s Magazine in
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, the first stanza of which runs:
Wander, O wander, maiden sweet,
In the fairy bower, while yet you may.
See, in rapture he lies at your feet;
Rest on the truth of the glorious youth,
Rest – for a summer day.
That great clear spirit of flickering fire
You have lulled awhile in magic sleep,
But you cannot fill his wide desire.
His heart is tender, his eyes are deep,
His words divinely flow;
But his voice and his glance are not for you;
He never can be to a maiden true;
Soon will he wake and go. (M )
Upon reading Lewes’s biography of Goethe, however, Noel had some
further, rather alarming thoughts about that ideal:
[T]he impression I derive from it is very distinct, that Goethe conceived a manifold
Life experience to be essential to his self-culture, and the Love of many different
women to be an important element of it, that he conceived his soul to be a very great soul and the culture of such a soul to be of paramount importance compared to
which the happiness or unhappiness of meaner souls was of little moment. They
might be indeed and ought to be happy in their connexion with him whatever
that might be. Looking round with his broad dispassionate gaze, he saw that this
seemed to be the Law of all Nature, the weak absorbed in the strong, and all
forming the grand Pantheistic order of the Universe. Other men, with natures
not so elevated as that of Goethe, have expressed such a theory more coarsely and
acted on it more coarsely than he, and do so still and will do so.
Noel cannot go along with this and wants rather to be the poet of wedded
love. “But is there a sacred mystery whose deeps Love may explore, is
there a capacity for varied development Love may quicken and feed on,
in one truly chosen object? Is wedded Love the best and happiest school
for self-denial, for steady devotion to the good of others, strengthening
and widening character?” Nor does it ever occur to him that he might be
somehow unfitted for this mission. By his lights, Sidgwick is the strange
one, with his esoteric, Apostolic pride and taste for Swinburne’s wildly
aestheticized poetry, coupled with the enforced bachelorhood of an aca-
demic Fellowship.
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A weird letter written to Dakyns, also from , sheds further light on
Sidgwick’s feelings:
If a man only could make up his mind not to marry! But the longer I live the more
I believe in that institution for all men but those of very sympathetic disposition:
though I retain my old theory about the perfection of the human race coinciding
with its removal en masse from this planet. I believe also, that by a perverse law of human nature marriage is more necessary to a man not engaged in practical
work. (M )
This would seem to reflect the impact of his arguments with Noel.
Whether Sidgwick regarded Meta Benfey as having lulled him awhile in
magic sleep cannot be determined with any exactitude, but it is plain that
she somehow managed to shake his self-image. In November of , he
confesses to Dakyns, in a somewhat facetious tone, that he is “an inferior
man – a sort of ,” who must “cultivate
principally the art of .” The “inferior man” need not study
“abstruse ancient history,” which is irrelevant to religion, and may be
“a bona fide member of the Church of England if he hold his tongue,
though speculatively a pure Theist.” However, “marriage is necessary to
the inferior man therefore £ per annum is necessary to him.” Since it
“will be precious hard to become at once humble, industrious, practical
& silent,” he considers himself “lucky” that he is only twenty-six and a
half years old. Still, he admits that “I have one or two friends, who will
always think it is my own fault I am not a superior man: also I shall always
have a bitter doubt whether it is not really so.” He prays “for enough
epicureanism” to endure such thoughts. (CWC)
Interestingly, Sidgwick’s views often do seem rather more Goethean –
or at least the usual vacillating alternation between and synthesis of Goethe
and Comte – than Pauline, than the Pauline sentiment as regards marriage,
that it is better than burning in hell. As he writes in a letter from Decem-
ber , “Plato is better than St. Paul. . . . ‘Earth outgrows the mythic
fancies / Sung beside her in her youth / And those debonair romances /
Sound but dull beside the truth’.” Indeed, another letter from this time
carries a remarkable parable, entitled “A Memorable Fancy,” involving a
Devil conversing with an Angel:
The Devil answered; ‘bray a fool in a mortar with wheat yet shall not his folly
be driven out of him: if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him
in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten
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commandments: Did he not mock at the Sabbath & so mock the Sabbath’s God?
murder those who were murdered because of him? turn away the law from the
woman taken in adultery? steal the labour of others to support him? bear false
witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray’d
for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against
such as refused to lodge them? I tell you no virtue can exist without breaking
these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from
rules.’
When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel who stretched out his arms
embracing the flame of fire and he was consumed and arose as Elijah.
Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil is my particular friend: we often
read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall
have if they behave well. (CWC)
Such pure Apostolic insouciance was not presented in full force in
Henry Sidgwick, A Memoir, which quite downplayed any overt sugges-
tion that the “superior man” might be above the rules of commonsense
morality. And this is not to mention the near-total excision of Sidgwick’s
more literary and poetic productions, which appeared with some fre-
quency in his letters. There is a much more Bloomsbury-style elitism
at work in Sidgwick than is apparent from the abridged versions of his
letters – apparently the only versions actually read by the Bloomsberries.
After all, the superior man might have a fairly esoteric morality, and
certainly one with an eye for ae
sthetics, even if he did worry about
“men using their higher culture to add an extra zest to their material
enjoyments.”
Circa , there had of course been much worrying about marriage
on the part of Sidgwick’s other friends as well, not only by Symonds but
also by Dakyns. Dakyns, in fact, had taken an interest in Symonds’s sister
Charlotte at this time, before she married Green. In April of that year,
Sidgwick had written to him: “You seem to be rapidly changing roles with
me. You under the influence of adorable Symondses, (male and female) are
growing so clear, self confident epigrammatic; so passionate and poetical –
while I unbraced by work, absorbed in the futile struggle to comprehend
the Universe am growing timid, amiable, profound inexpressible – in fact
a Great Inarticulate Soul.” (CWC) But Dakyns was apparently not the
kind of match that Dr. Symonds had in mind for his daughter, and his
displeasure with the prospect was communicated through his son. The
delicate state of things was summed up in a letter from Sidgwick, feeling
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very Goethean, trying to console Dakyns:
I think I understand everything now I suppose you have had no communication
since with S. I have burnt his letters. I am desponding but not hopeless. I of course guess in the dark not knowing the people. The one important sentence in S’s
letter is where he says that ‘he is quite certain his sister has no idea’ etc. Now with
brothers out of a I should consider this inconclusive. But S may be the
th: you know better than I do. I may also misunderstand his meaning, but it
seems to me he wishes to leave it open to you to withdraw after hearing the paternal
sentence. He does it most delicately but does it not mean this? I should not do it
myself, () because I am an egotist & () because I believe that love often first starts into conscious life in a woman when she knows she is loved. I suppose you have
not seen them since. You only heard the father’s decision through the son. (CWC)
Revealingly, it is in just this way – pressing one’s claims in love – that
