by Bart Schultz
W. A. Dunning, writing in The Political Quarterly, shrewdly argued that
As a matter of fact we find everywhere in Professor Sidgwick’s work, along with
a most rigorous adherence to the forms of a priori reasoning, evidence that the substance of his thought is inductive. While he tries to derive existing institutions from his fundamental principles, he really is conforming the principles to the
institutions. It is hard to believe, for example, that his chapter on ‘Federal and
Other Composite States,’ represents a laborious deduction from the dogmas of
utilitarian ethics rather than an intelligent generalization from the constitution of the United States and one or two similar documents.
And none other than Woodrow Wilson, the future U.S. president, then a
professor of political science at Princeton, insisted that Sidgwick’s “proce-
dure is deductive . . . but his treatment is of course more or less saturated with experience.” Wilson’s review was generally favorable, but he did
sharply observe that “[t]here may be Elements of English Politics, or of
American, or of French or Prussian; but the elements of general politics,
if cast into general considerations, must either be quite colorless or quite
misleading. The considerations urged by Professor Sidgwick are for the
most part quite colorless.” But perhaps the most infamous review, mar-
shalled on behalf of the notion of natural rights, came from D. G. Ritchie,
a pugnacious defender of Green’s Idealism:
Perhaps one might safely characterize the ‘Elements of Politics’ as a discussion
of most political problems of present-day politics, with some hints towards their
partial solution. The discussion is distinctly of today, not of yesterday, and with
just a slight regard for tomorrow morning early. Although we are told that ‘the
primary aim of the theory of politics as here expounded is to determine what the
constitution and action of government ought to be,’ we must not expect to find a sketch of an ideal state. Professor Sidgwick argues deductively from ‘psychological propositions not universally and absolutely true, but approximately true of
civilized men,’ and yet, somehow, the conclusion again and again turns out to be
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just what we have in the present British constitution. Thus our unpaid members
of parliament, and our parliaments of five, six, or even seven years’ duration, are
exactly the results at which Professor Sidgwick arrives by deductive arguments
about what ought to be. He nowhere arrives at any conclusion which would differ
very widely from that of the average man of the professional and commercial
middle-class at the present day. The method is Bentham’s; but there is none of
Bentham’s strong critical antagonism to the institutions of his time, and the mode
of thought is much more what we might expect from an end-of-the-nineteenth-
century Blackstone, or from an English Hegel, showing the rationality of the
existing order of things, with only a few modest proposals of reform. If this is
Benthamism, it is Benthamism grown tame and sleek.
Ritchie does go on to say some nice things about the “immense value of his
calm discussion, carried on in the undogmatic spirit of a sane and sober,
if rather old-fashioned, utilitarianism,” but his criticisms have endured
longer than his compliments.
Between Wilson and Ritchie, Sidgwick felt the pinch. He often ex-
pressed some doubt himself as to the nature of his work, whether it was
not either colorless or a longish summary of the principles of British pol-
itics. During the extremely long gestation period of this -page tome,
he was prone to all the usual disparagements of his work – “Labor Im-
probus,” he called it, and one can almost hear the groan. In February of
, he would respond to Bryce’s comments on his proofs:
I quite agree with your general criticism that the whole thing is too English. I will try to remedy that a little, so far as my knowledge allows. Something about America
is to come in a later chapter on ‘Local and Federal Government’: something more
in a chapter on ‘Parties and Party Government.’ But I will try and put some more
references to American Conditions and expedients in the chapters that you have
seen. (CWC)
Although he had long rumbled about doing a book on politics, Sidgwick
apparently first began to think seriously about writing the Elements in the
mid-s, when he began lecturing on political economy and related
subjects. Thus, the Memoir has him writing to Browning in June of :
“I should like to talk to you about Political Philosophy. I am prepar-
ing myself to write ‘Elements of Politics,’ and am thinking of printing
some ‘outlines of Politics’ to use for my lectures, and also to get criti-
cised as regards arrangement, etc., before I write my book.” (M )
The next explicit reference is in a journal entry from February ,
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when he is particularly distressed about Gladstone’s campaign for Irish
Home Rule:
For the first time for weeks I am moved to write about Politics, chiefly to mark,
with some alarm, the extent of my alienation from current Liberalism. We are
drifting on to what must be a national disaster, and the forces impelling are Party
organisation and Liberal principles. The stability of the dual organisation of
parties makes it difficult for the average politician to see any way out of the
trouble without satisfying the Irish; and Liberal principles make it seem right to
let them have what they want. So the good man closes his eyes and hopes that what
they want will not turn out, after all, so ruinous to England as some people think.
My personal trouble is that I do not quite see what to do about my book on
Politics. My political ideal is nearly written out – and lo! I begin to feel uncom-
fortable about it; I begin to find something wooden and fatuous in the sublime
smile of Freedom. (M )
The last part of the eighties, following Sidgwick’s crisis period, appears
also to have marked the most intense period of work on the Elements. His
journal for April explains: “During the last fortnight I have settled
all my literary hesitations; determined to bring out two books () Elements
of Politics, and () Development of European Polity; have made out the plan of () – twenty-three chapters, of which sixteen are more or less written –
have sent off the first three to the printer, and got three more ready for
sending.” (M ) In January , he explains, “We are both of us very
busy: I have two books on Politics – one deductive and analytical going
through press, one (smaller), inductive and historical, ge
tting ready for
press – on my hands” (M ). By December he is announcing “Well,
term is over, and eighteen chapters of my book on Politics are ready for
printing off, and of the thirteen that remain about eleven are wholly or
partially in type, and the other two half-written” (M ). It was at this
point that he was busily sending proofs to various friends in the field –
Bryce, Dicey, and F. W. Maitland – soliciting their critical feedback. He had
earlier in the decade given Bryce extensive commentary on the proofs of his
The American Commonwealth, and their friendship and collaboration was
a particularly close one, of special significance for interpreting Sidgwick’s
views, as we shall see. By the end of , he is complaining to Noel that
he has lost interest in his book, “which makes it harder to finish,” and it is
only the next July that he can write to Bryce, “I have just sent off my last
sheet!” (CWC)
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It is interesting that during the period leading up to his crisis about
psychical research and its bearing on his professional position, Sidgwick
should also have been so wholly absorbed in politics as well. His journal
to Symonds records how he has
a certain alarm in respect of the movement of modern society towards Socialism,
i.e. the more and more extensive intervention of Government with a view to
palliate the inequalities in the distribution of wealth. At the same time I regard
this movement as on the whole desirable and beneficent – the expectation of it belongs to the cheerful side of my forecast of the future; if duly moderated it
might, I conceive, be purely beneficent, and bring improvement at every stage.
But – judging from past experience – one must expect that so vast a change will
not be realised without violent shocks and oscillations, great blunders followed by
great disasters and consequent reactions; that the march of progress, perturbed
by the selfish ambitions of leaders and the blind appetites of followers, will suffer many spasmodic deviations into paths which it will have painfully to retrace.
Perhaps – as in the movement of the last century towards Liberty – one country
will have to suffer the pains of experiments for the benefit of the whole system
of States; and if so, it is on various grounds likely that this country may be
England. . . . My recent fear and depression has been rather of a different kind: has related rather to the structure of Government than the degree of its interference
with property and contract. I have hitherto held unquestioningly the Liberal
doctrine that in the modern industrial community government by elected and
responsible representatives was and would remain the normal type. But no one
has yet found out how to make this kind of government work, except on the
system of alternating parties; and it is the force of resistance which this machine
of party government presents to the influence of enlightened and rational opinion,
at crises like this, which alarms. I find myself asking myself whether perhaps, after all, it is Caesarism which will win in the competition for existence, and guide
modern industrial society successfully towards its socialistic goal. However, I do
not yet think this; but it is a terrible problem what to do with party government.
(M –)
Caesarism? Perhaps the model of Bismarck’s Germany ushering in the
welfare state? Such doubts suggest just how uncertain Sidgwick was about
the direction of civilization, and how exasperated with the crude self-
interest of party politics. A Godless universe above and vulgar party pol-
itics below were the two poles of Sidgwick’s midlife crisis.
These last few passages sum up quite a bit of Sidgwick’s political ori-
entation, especially the anxiety about the “selfish ambitions of leaders and
the blind appetites of followers.” An academic Liberal favorably disposed
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to Gladstone, he had broken with him over Home Rule for Ireland. Opti-
mistic about socialist drift, he nonetheless wanted it to be gradual and high-
minded; the raucous corruption of democratic party politics – studied so
diligently by his friend Bryce, with his famous account of Boss Tweed –
worried him greatly. In , he is even invited – by “Hall of Six Mile
Bottom” – to stand as a Liberal candidate for Parliament for the county,
an offer to which he gives serious consideration:
I was tempted; but I communed with my political conscience and discovered that
I could not come forward as a Liberal at this juncture without hypocrisy. I am a
Utilitarian, and would be a hypocrite if I were convinced that the country required
this sacrifice; but I cannot rate my political value so high. In fact the temptation
was really this: I want to write a great book on Politics during the next ten years,
and am afraid it will be too academic if I do not somehow go into the actual
struggle. (M )
In a further note on this, which Trevelyan advised Eleanor Sidgwick to
leave out of the Memoir, he recalls that “Hall ventured the prediction
that about one-third of the agricultural labourers in these parts would
give their votes by chance, owing to inability to read the name of their
candidate.”
Revealingly, he is also at this time “studying Plato again, in spite of
my despair as to the possibility of making out what he means.” Perhaps
Symonds was having some effect, however, since he confesses that he is
coming to the conclusion that his myths are not as I once thought the drapery of a half-philosophised creed to which he clings while conscious that it is not
philosophy. I now think he was not half poet, half philosopher, but philosopher
to the core, as determined as Descartes to believe nothing but the clearest and
most certain truth, who only used his imagination in myths to dress up for
the vulgar, as near the truth as their minds could stand, but that a long way off.
(M )
All of these would be auspicious happenings for his work on the Ele-
ments. If much of Sidgwick’s hands-on dealing with politics came from his
academic reformism, he was also deeply involved in some larger causes
(and certainly loved the political gossip that came his way from Bryce
and Arthur Balfour). True, he was ever the academic in politics. Collini
has insightfully argued that Sidgwick does not quite fit the mold of the
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earnest, politically active “public mo
ralist” of the mid-Victorian era, but
instead foreshadows a rather different type:
In European terms, Sidgwick perhaps corresponded more to the older figure
of the ‘notable’, a personage who was of consequence in the community partly
through social connection, partly through institutional role, and partly by virtue
of personal gifts or capacities. In English terms, he may have been an early example
of a type which became more familiar by the mid-twentieth century: the socially
well-connected don, one who made a career by attaining eminence in a branch of
scholarship, but one whose social experience gave him both the confidence and
means of access to contribute directly and indirectly to the policy-making process,
largely by-passing general public debate.
This is a helpful description, as long as one remembers that in Sidgwick’s
day, prior to the politicized rift between liberal and professional or voca-
tional education, it was possible to think that one could somehow have it
all, that one’s politics could envision both culture and professionalization
flourishing.
Before turning to the text, it should be underscored just how entan-
gled in certain real-world political events Sidgwick was. The very long
controversy over Home Rule for Ireland, from through , was
a political event that captured the political and intellectual energies of
Sidgwick and such friends as Seeley, Bryce, and Dicey like no other. In
the early phases of the dispute, though not later, it clearly had what Dicey
termed a “civil Gladstonian” quality, with influential friends and brothers
lined up in decorous opposition: Dicey against, Bryce for; Morley against,
Stephen for; Henry Sidgwick against, Arthur Sidgwick for; and George
Trevelyan changing sides. Harvie observes that it “was all rather like Walter
Raleigh’s description of the contest between Faith and Doubt, as refereed
by Henry Sidgwick: the combatants spent more time shaking hands, ex-
changing compliments and costumes, than in actually fighting. Each had
more trouble establishing his own identity than hitting his opponent.”
Sidgwick’s position on the matter was in essence this:
In the most important parts of the discussion that is now being carried on, I
agree with the opposition: that is, I think, as I have always thought, that if there
