by Bart Schultz
Symonds and his friend Sidgwick had to say about culture and educa-
tion, inquiry and change. The serious business of pursuit of truth always
devolved into one or another web of intimate friendships, with the com-
panions of Socrates looking a lot like new groups of Apostles probing the
recesses of the “true self.” But the drift of politics, in the late Victorian
world, was not making things easier. Hypocrisy remained, even as religion
declined.
The nexus with Symonds illuminates the various core concerns defining
Sidgwick’s effort to shed light on the “deepest problems of human life,”
yielding nothing less than the primary source material for Sidgwick’s
experimentalizing struggles with the meaning of death, particularly for
morals. In their exchanges, one discerns the concrete ways in which
Sidgwick worried out the possibilities of the lower Goethean ideal, the
symmetrical people, and the serious limits of the “sensual herd” when
it came to achieving even that limited ideal. The urgency that he felt
about his work – from psychical research to women’s higher education –
manifestly had a great deal to do with his fear about the impotence of
practical reason and his conviction that a powerful reshaping of human
sentiment – a new religion – was needed to move civilization in the right di-
rection. In many ways, such fears and convictions fell in with Symonds’s
diagnosis of the state of things, even if Sidgwick could not regard the
peril to philosophical reason with anything like his friend’s insouciance
(or James’s insouciance).
Obviously, Sidgwick’s worst anxieties were not always evident on the
surface of either his life or his writings. Clearly, as shown, he was much
obsessed with sexual hypocrisy, as well as with religious hypocrisy, and
he was not at all averse to esoteric moral reasoning when it came to his
religious, parapsychological, and sexual doubts. If he was in some ways
suited for his skeptical results, the larger public, he was confident, was
not. Silence was often best, outside of the knowing elite.
Yet, if many of the Apostolic and Millian dimensions of Sidgwick’s
practical reformist efforts – above all, of his educational efforts – are by
now tolerably clear, the full force of his thinking on all of these matters can
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only be appreciated by engaging with his economic and political writings,
writings that often develop the positions set out in the Methods. These
help to flesh out both his views on the social implications of the dual-
ism of practical reason and the broader nature of his evolving academic
liberalism – the ways in which, for good or ill, he did share many of the
presuppositions of Jowett and Green, as well as of Symonds, and this de-
spite his greater skeptical reticence and his worries about making people
come to resemble him. Of course, Sidgwick was still Sidgwick, and his
thinking about economic and political matters has the clarity and tough-
mindedness that one would expect from the author of the Methods. If he
shared the Idealist’s sense of the Philistinism of capitalism, he was also ca-
pable of dissecting the debates over the economic system with all the rigor
of a professional economist. The new discipline of political science could
also regard him as one their own. Often dry and abstract, his Principles of
Political Economy and Elements of Politics were not designed to whip up enthusiasm.
Still, strange as it may seem, in his major works – the Methods, the
Principles, and the Elements – Sidgwick appears to have applied the lessons that he had set out so many years before, for his friends in the Initial
Society. That is, he became quite expert at masking the originality and
subversiveness of his claims by the Mauricean tactic of presenting them
as mere developments of received belief, cloaking his real insights with
massive tomes of respectable opinion so that few could apprehend how
destructive his criticism was. Each of his three major treatises follows the
same pattern, burying the reader in a great mass of the relevant received
wisdom – commonsense morality or political common sense – such that
the critical working free of “respectable” opinion seems comparatively
modest and respectful. Perhaps, as with the Methods, Sidgwick always
felt that the respectable views he criticized were enduring elements of his
own being, and that his criticism really was a form of self-scrutiny, an
inner Socratic dialectic rather than “hostile criticism from the outside.”
Certainly, this was the attitude of spectatorship toward his own inner
reactions that he offered up to his friends when criticizing their poetry, and
that led Symonds to describe him as a perfect “scientific thermometer.”
At any rate, the result was invariably a single-minded attempt to articulate
through extended sympathy some consensus that could then be worked
over in a way that made it difficult to feel that the criticism involved a
failure to see the other side. In this way, his books were reflections of his
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conversational ideal, albeit lacking the zest. Common sense helped with
the opening moves; the end game was another matter.
Consequently, if one digs into these tomes a bit more deeply, one finds
that they often do address, in abstract, oblique fashion, the burning ques-
tions that were so evident in his personal crises and more candid writ-
ings. Again, one must read the works in light of the life, as well as the
life in light of the works. Indeed, before addressing Sidgwick’s politi-
cal economy, political theory, and political practice, it might prove help-
ful to further illustrate how the Methods reflects various of the preoc-
cupations that emerged in his exchanges with Symonds and work with
Newnham. Reading the Methods in light of these matters should help to
indicate how his other major works might be similarly interrogated in
order to bring out how they reflect his deeper concerns about politics and
civilization.
Clearly, some of the discussions in the Methods directly relate to
Sidgwick’s dealings with Symonds. The most obvious case in point is
the material in Book III, Chapter , section , which in an almost eerie
way reflects their exchanges. This is the section of his “Review of the
Morality of Common Sense” that concerns duties to self and covers such
matters as suicide and the regulation of sex. Earlier in the book, in his
summation of commonsense morality, Sidgwick had rightly noted that
this morality actually insisted that any too-close inquiry into the issue of
sex was it
self morbid, and thus not to be indulged. But when he gets to his
review of this morality, he in effect pleads the case of Symonds and Ellis,
not to mention Bentham:
In the case, however, of the sexual appetite, a special regulation seems to be
prescibed on some independent principle under the notion of Purity or Chastity.
In chap. ix. of this Book, where we examined this notion, it appeared that Common
Sense is not only not explicit, but actually averse to explicitness, on this subject. As my aim in the preceding chapters was to give, above all things, a faithful exposition of the morality of Common Sense, I allowed my inquiry to be checked by this
(as it seemed) clearly recognisable sentiment. But when it becomes our primary
object to test the intuitive evidence of the moral principles commonly accepted,
it seems necessary to override this aversion: for we can hardly ascertain whether
rational conviction is attainable as to the acts allowed and forbidden under this
notion and its opposite, without subjecting it to the same close scrutiny that we
have endeavoured to give to the other leading notions of Ethics. Here the briefest
account of such a scrutiny will be sufficient. I am aware that in giving even this
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I cannot but cause a certain offence to minds trained in good moral habits: but I
trust I may claim the same indulgence as is commonly granted to the physiologist,
who also has to direct the student’s attention to objects which a healthy mind is
naturally disinclined to contemplate. (ME –)
The discussion that follows is a model of Sidgwick’s subversive chipping
away at orthodox belief. After observing that since “the normal and obvious
end of sexual intercourse is the propagation of the species, some have
thought that all indulgence of appetite, except as a means to this end, should
be prohibited,” he goes on to note, ever so briefly, that “this doctrine would
lead to a restriction of conjugal intercourse far too severe for Common
Sense” (ME ). And against the idea that purity would forbid any such
sensuous activities except as prescribed by law, he sensibly holds that as
in the case of justice, the law is very imperfect in any such regulation of
conduct, and that it is essential to ask “what kind of sexual relations we
are to call essentially impure, whether countenanced or not by Law and
Custom?” But here, “there appear to be no distinct principles having any
claim to self-evidence, upon which the question can be answered so as to
command general assent.” Indeed:
It would be difficult even to state such a principle for determining the degree of
consanguinity between husband and wife which constitutes a union incestuous;
although the aversion with which such unions are commonly regarded is a pe-
culiarly intense moral sentiment; and the difficulty becomes indefinitely greater
when we consider the rationale of prohibited degrees of affinity. . . . if legal polyg-yny is not impure, is Polyandry, when legal and customary – as is not unfrequently
the case among the lower races of man – to be so characterised? and if not, on what
rational principle can the notion be applied to institutions and conduct? Again,
where divorce by mutual consent, with subsequent marriage, is legalised, we do
not call this an offence against Purity: and yet if the principle of free change be
once admitted, it seems paradoxical to distinguish purity from impurity merely
by less rapidity of transition; and to condemn as impure even ‘Free Love,’ in so
far as it is earnestly advocated as a means to a completer harmony of sentiment
between men and women, and not to mere sensual license.
Shall we, then, fall back upon the presence of mutual affection (as distinguished
from mere appetite) as constituting the essence of pure sexual relations? But this,
again, while too lax from one point of view, seems from another too severe for
Common Sense. . . . Again, how shall we judge of such institutions as those of Plato’s Commonwealth, establishing community of women and children, but at
the same time regulating sexual indulgence with the strictest reference to social
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ends? Our habitual standards seem inapplicable to such novel circumstances.
(ME –)
Hence Sidgwick’s destructive analysis of the coherence of commonsense
morality: he would like to believe in purity, but what could it possibly mean?
Common sense leads only to yet another dualism, and to indecision:
The truth seems to be, that reflection on the current sexual morality discovers to
us two distinct grounds for it: first and chiefly, the maintenance of a certain social order, believed to be most conducive to the prosperous continuance of the human
race: and, secondly, the protection of habits of feeling in individuals believed to
be generally most important to their perfection or their happiness. We commonly
conceive that both these ends are to be attained by the same regulations: and in
an ideal state of society this would perhaps be the case: but in actual life there
is frequently a partial separation and incompatibility between them. But further,
if the repression of sexual license is prescribed merely as a means to these ends,
it does not seem that we can affirm as self-evident that it is always a necessary
means in either case: on the contrary, it seems clear that such an affirmation would
be unreliable apart from empirical confirmation. We cannot reasonably be sure,
without induction from sociological observations, that a certain amount of sexual
license will be incompatible with the maintenance of population in sufficient
numbers and good condition. And if we consider the matter in its relation to the
individual’s perfection, it is certainly clear that he misses the highest and best
development of his emotional nature, if his sexual relations are of a merely sensual
kind: but we can hardly know a priori that this lower kind of relation interferes with the development of the higher (nor indeed does experience seem to show that this
is universally the case). And this latter line of argument has a further difficulty.
For the common opinion that we have to justify does not merely condemn the
lower kind of development in comparison with the higher, but in comparison with
none at all. Since we do not positively blame a man for remaining celibate (though
we perhaps despise him somewhat unless the celibacy is adopted as a means to a
noble end): it is difficult to show why we should condemn – in its bearing on the
individual’s emotional perfection solely – the imperfect development afforded by
merely sensual relations. (ME )
Characteristically, Sidgwick goes on to explain that he has said nothing
to “show that we have not distinct moral impulses, claiming
authority
over all others, and prescribing or forbidding kinds of conduct as to which
there is a rough general agreement, at least among educated persons of the
same age and country.” The notions of justice, purity, and so forth are not
necessarily “emptied of significance,” since the “main part of the conduct
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prescribed under each notion is sufficiently clear: and the general rule
prescribing it does not necessarily lose its force because there is in each
case a margin of conduct involved in obscurity and perplexity, or because
the rule does not on examination appear to be absolute and independent.”
The morality of common sense “may still be perfectly adequate to give
practical guidance to common people in common circumstances.” (ME
–)
But what about common people in extraordinary circumstances? Or,
more to the point, extraordinary people – sensitives such as Symonds and
Noel – under any circumstances? The superior man or woman might on
this account find his or her best development outside of marriage, and even
remain undiminished by a certain degree of license. Sidgwick himself, in
his younger days, had aspired to be a chaste “superior” man, a virtual
Platonic guardian, albeit one without breeding duties.
When he returns to the subject, in Book IV, Chapter , section ,
he is in the midst of a utilitarian attack on the double standard of sexual
morality. Although he allows that the double standard, by which unchastity
in men is accepted more readily than unchastity in women, could be said to
reflect the unconscious utilitarianism of common sense, he thinks that this
standard still threatens the security of family life and encourages women
to ruin their reputations, and that even socially countenanced prostitution
would risk the “contagion of unchastity” and thus override the arguments
on the other side. His defense has a Millian ring: “the Virtue of Purity
may be regarded as providing a necessary shelter under which that intense
and elevated affection between the sexes, which is most conducive both
