Studies in Contemporary Biography Part 9

He took infinite pains to find the most competent writers, and was able to exercise effective personal supervision over a very large proportion of the articles. The ninth edition was much fuller and more thorough than any of its predecessors; and good as the first twelve volumes were, a still higher level of excellence was attained in the latter half, a result due to his industry and discernment.

Not a few of the articles on subjects connected with the Old Testament were from his own pen; and they were among the best in the work.

The appearance of one of them, that ent.i.tled "Bible," which contained a general view of the history of the canonical books of Scripture, their dates, authorship, and reception by the Christian Church, became a turning-point in his life. The propositions he stated regarding the origin of parts of the Old Testament, particularly the Pentateuch, excited alarm and displeasure in Scotland, where few persons had become aware of the conclusions reached by recent Biblical scholars in Continental Europe. The article was able, clear, and fearless, plainly the work of a master hand. The views it advanced were not for the most part due to Smith's own investigations, but were to be found in the writings of other learned men. Neither would they now be thought extreme; they are in fact accepted to-day by many writers of unquestioned orthodoxy in Britain and a (perhaps smaller) number in the United States. In 1876, however, these views were new and startling to those who had not studied in Germany or followed the researches of such men as Ewald, Kuenen, and Wellhausen. The Scottish Free Church had theretofore prided itself upon the rigidity of its orthodoxy; and while among the younger ministers there were a good many able and learned scholars holding what used to be called "advanced views," the ma.s.s of the elder and middle-aged clergy had gone on in the old-fashioned traditions of verbal inspiration, and took every word in the Five Books (except the last chapter of Deuteronomy) to have been written down by Moses. It was only natural that their anger should be kindled against the young professor, whose theories seemed to cut away the ground from under their feet.

Proceedings were (1876) taken against him before the Presbytery of Aberdeen, and the case found its way thence to the Synod of Aberdeen, and ultimately to the General a.s.sembly of the Free Church. In one form or another (for the flame was lit anew by other articles published by him in the _Encyclopaedia_) it lingered on for five years. So far from yielding to the storm, Robertson Smith defied it, maintaining not only the truth of his views, but their compatibility with the Presbyterian standards as contained in the Confession of Faith and the Longer and Shorter Catechisms. In this latter contention he was successful, proving that the divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had not committed themselves to any specific doctrine of inspiration, still less to any dogmatic deliverance as to the authorship of particular books of Scripture. The standards simply declared that the Word of G.o.d was contained in the canonical books, and as there had been little or no controversy between Protestants and Roman Catholics regarding the date or the authorship or the divine authority of those books (apart of course from disputes regarding the Apocrypha), had not dealt specifically with those last mentioned matters. As it was by reference to the Confession of Faith that the offence alleged had to be established, Smith made good his defence; so in the end, finding it impossible to convict him of deviation from the standards, and thereby to deal with him as an ordained minister of the Church, his adversaries fell back on the plan of depriving him, by an executive rather than judicial vote, not indeed of his clerical status, but of his professorship, on the ground of the alleged "unsettling character"

of his teaching.

Meanwhile, however, there had been an immense rally to him of the younger clergy and of the less conservative among the laity. The main current of Scottish popular thought and life had ever since the Reformation flowed in an ecclesiastical channel; and even nowadays, when Scotland is rapidly becoming Anglicised, a theological or ecclesiastical question excites a wider and keener interest there than a similar question would do in England. So in Scotland for four years "the Robertson Smith case" was the chief topic of discussion outside as well as inside the Free Church. The sympathy felt for the accused was heightened by the ingenuity, energy, and courage with which he defended his position, showing a power of argument and repartee which made it plain that he would have held a distinguished place in any a.s.sembly whatever. If his debating had a fault, it was that of being almost too dialectically cogent, so that his antagonists felt that they were being foiled on the form of the argument before they could get to the issues they sought to raise. But while he was an accomplished lawyer in matters of form, he was no less an accomplished theologian in matters of substance. Although the party of repression triumphed so far as to deprive him of his chair, the victory virtually remained with him, not only because he had shown that the Scottish Presbyterian standards did not condemn the views he held, but also because his defence and the discussions which it occasioned had, in bringing those views to the knowledge of a great number of thoughtful laymen, led such persons to reconsider their own position. Some of them found themselves forced to agree with Smith. Others, who distrusted their capacity for arriving at a conclusion, came at least to think that the questions involved did not affect the essentials of faith, and must be settled by the ordinary canons of historical and philological criticism. Thus the trial proved to be a turning-point for the Scottish Churches, much as the _Essays and Reviews_ case had been for the Church of England eighteen years earlier. Opinions formerly proscribed were thereafter freely expressed. Nearly all the doctrinal prosecutions subsequently attempted in the Scottish Presbyterian Churches have failed. Much feeling has been excited, but the result has been to secure a greater lat.i.tude than was dreamt of forty years ago. At first the rigidly orthodox section of the Free Church, now almost confined to the Highlands, thought of seceding from the main body on the ground that tolerance was pa.s.sing into indifference or unbelief. But the new ideas continued to grow, and the sentiment in favour of letting clergymen as well as lay church members put a lax construction on the doctrinal standards drawn up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has spread as widely in Scotland as in England. The Presbyterian Churches in America and the Roman Catholic Church now stand almost alone among the larger Christian bodies in retaining something of the ancient rigidity. Even the Roman Church begins to feel the solvent power of these researches. It may be conjectured that as the process of adjusting the letter of Scripture to the conclusions of science which Galileo was not permitted to apply in the field of astronomy has now been generally applied in the fields of geology and biology, so all the churches will presently reconcile themselves to the conclusions of historical and linguistic criticism, now that such criticism has become truly scientific in its methods.

Having no longer any tie to Scotland, as he had never desired a pastoral charge there, since he felt his vocation to lie in study and teaching, Smith was hesitating which way to turn, when the offer of the Lord Almoner's Readership in Arabic, which had become vacant in 1883, determined him to settle in Cambridge. He had travelled in Arabia a few years earlier, thereby adding a colloquial familiarity to his grammatical mastery of the language. He was an ardent student of Arabic literature, and indeed devoted more time to it than to Hebrew.

Though he had felt deeply the attacks made upon him, and was indignant at the mode of his dismissal, he was not in the least dispirited; and his self-control was shown by the way in which he resisted the temptation, to which controversialists are p.r.o.ne, of going further than they originally meant and thereby damaging the position of their supporters. Still, he was weary of controversy, and pleased to see before him a prospect of learned quiet and labour, although the salary of the Readership was less than 100 a year. Fortunately he had come to a place where gifts like his were appreciated. The Master and Fellows of Christ's College elected him to a fellowship with no duties of tuition attached to it--a wise and graceful recognition of his merits which did them the more credit because they had very little personal knowledge of him, while he had possessed no prior tie with the University. Christ's is one of the smaller colleges, but has almost always had men of distinction among its fellows, and has maintained a high standard of teaching. In the list of its alumni stand the names of John Milton, Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and Charles Darwin. Robertson Smith dwelt in it for the rest of his days, entering into the life of hall and common-room with great zest, for he was of an extremely sociable turn, and the College became proud of him. When a vacancy occurred in the office of University Librarian, he was chosen to fill it. His knowledge of and fondness for books fitted him excellently for the place, but the details of administration worried him, and it was a change for the better when (in 1889), on the death of his friend, William Wright, he became Professor of Arabic.[49] His efforts to build up a school of Oriental studies on the foundations laid by Wright, and with the help of an eminent Syriac scholar, Bensley, were proving successful, and a considerable number of able young men were gathering round him, when (in 1890) the hand of disease fell upon him, obliging him first to curtail and afterwards to intermit his lectures. The last year of his life was a year of suffering, borne with uncomplaining fort.i.tude.

What with work on the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, with the distractions of his prolonged trial, with the time spent in oral teaching, and with the physical weakness of his latest years, Smith's leisure available for literary production was not large, and the books he has left do not adequately represent either his acc.u.mulated knowledge or his faculty of investigation. The earlier books--_The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_ and _The Prophets of Israel_ (the latter a series of lectures delivered at Glasgow)--are comparatively popular in handling.

The two later--_Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_ and _The Religion of the Semites_--are more abstruse and technical, and also more original, dealing with topics in which their author was a pioneer, though he had been influenced by, and acknowledged in the amplest way his obligations to, his friend John F. Maclennan, the author of _Primitive Marriage_. _The Religion of the Semites_, though masterly in plan and execution, and though it has excited the admiration of the few Oriental scholars competent to appraise its substantial merit, suffers from its incompleteness. Only the first volume was published, for death overtook the author before he could put into final shape the materials he had collected for the full development of his theories. As the second volume would have traced the connection between the primitive religion of the Arab branches of the Semitic stock (including Israel) and the Hebrew religion as we have it in the earlier books of the Old Testament, the absence of this finished statement is a loss to science. Changes had pa.s.sed upon his views since he wrote the incriminated articles, and he said to me (I think about 1888) that he would no longer undertake any clerical duties. He had a sensitive conscience, and held that no clergyman ought to use language in the pulpit which did not express his personal convictions.

What struck one most in Robertson Smith's writings was the easy command wherewith he handled his materials. His generalisations were based on an endlessly patient and careful study of details, a study in which he never lost sight of guiding principles. With perfect lucidity and an unstrained natural vigour, there was a sense of abounding and overflowing knowledge which inspired confidence in the reader, making him feel he was in the hands of a master. On all that pertained to the languages and literature of the Arabic branch of the Semitic races, ancient and modern (for he did not claim to be an a.s.syriologist), his knowledge was accurate no less than comprehensive. Full of deference to the great scholars--no one spoke with a warmer admiration of Noldeke, Wellhausen, and Lagarde than he did--he was a stringent critic of unscientific work in the sphere of history and physics as well as in that of philology, quick to expose the uncritical a.s.sumptions or loose hypotheses of less careful though more pretentious students. He used to say that when he had disposed of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, he might undertake a "Dictionary of European Impostors." Oriental lore was only one of many subjects in which he might have achieved distinction. His mathematical talents were remarkable, and during two sessions he taught with conspicuous success the cla.s.s of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh as a.s.sistant professor. He had a competent acquaintance with not a few other practical arts, including navigation, and once, when the compa.s.ses of the vessel on which he was sailing in the Red Sea got out of order, he proved to be the person on board most competent to set them right. In metaphysics and theology, in ancient history and many departments of modern history, he was thoroughly at home. Few, indeed, were the subjects that came up in the course of conversation on which he was not able to throw light, for the range of his acquirements was not more striking than the swiftness and precision with which he brought knowledge to bear wherever it was wanted.

There was hardly a line of practical life in which he might not have attained a brilliant success. But the pa.s.sion for knowledge made him prefer the life of a scholar, and seemed to have quenched any desire even for literary fame.

Learning is commonly thought of as a weight to be carried, which makes men dull, heavy, or pedantic. With Robertson Smith the effect seemed to be exactly the opposite. Because he knew so much, he was interested in everything, and threw himself with a joyous freshness and keenness into talk alike upon the most serious and the lightest topics. He was combative, apt to traverse a proposition when first advanced, even though he might come round to it afterwards; and a discussion with him taxed the defensive ac.u.men of his companions. Having once spent five weeks alone with him in a villa at Ala.s.sio on the Riviera, I observed to him when we parted that we had had (as the Americans say) "a lovely time" together, and that there was not an observation I had made during those weeks which he had not contested. He laughed and did not contest that observation. Yet this tendency, while it made his society more stimulating, did not make it less agreeable, because he never seemed to seek to overthrow an adversary, but only to get at the truth of the case, and his manner, though positive, had about it nothing either acrid or conceited. One could imagine no keener intellectual pleasure than his company afforded, for there was, along with an exuberant wealth of thought and knowledge, an intensity and ardour which lit up every subject which it touched. I once invited him and John Richard Green (the historian) to meet at dinner. They took to one another at once, nor was it easy to say which lamp burned the brighter. Smith had wider and more accurate learning, and stronger logical power, but Green was just as swift, just as fertile, just as ingenious. In stature Smith, like Green, was small, almost diminutive; his dark brown eyes bright and keen; his speech rapid; his laugh ready and merry, for he had a quick sense of humour and a power of enjoying things as they came. The type of intellect suggested a Teutonic Scot of the Lowlands, but in appearance and temperament he was rather a Scottish Celt of the Highlands, with a fire and a gaiety, an abounding vivacity and vitality, which made him a conspicuous figure wherever he lived, in Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge. Even by his walk, with its quick, irregular roll, one could single him out at a distance in the street.

When a man is attractive personally, he is all the more attractive for being unlike other men, and he often becomes the centre of a group.

This was the case with Smith. His numerous friends were so much interested by him that when they met their talk was largely of him, and many friendships were based on a common knowledge of this one person. Indeed, the geniality, elevation, and simplicity of his character gave him a quite unusual hold on those who had come to know him well. Few men, leading an equally quiet and studious life, have inspired so much regard and affection in so large a number of persons; few teachers have had an equal power of stimulating and attracting their pupils. He loved teaching hardly less than he loved the investigation of truth, and he was the most faithful and sympathetic of friends, one who was felt to be unique while he lived and irreplaceable when he had departed.

I have spoken of the courage he had shown in confronting his antagonists in the ecclesiastical courts. That courage did not fail him in the severer trials of his last illness. The nature of the disease of which he died was disclosed to him by his physician in September 1892, while an international Congress of Orientalists, in which he presided over the Semitic section, was holding its meetings.

A festival dinner was being given in honour of the Congress the same afternoon. When the physician had spoken, Smith simply remarked, "This means the death my brother died" (one of his brothers had been struck by the same malady a few years before). He went straight to the dinner, and was throughout the evening the gayest and brightest of the guests.

Fancy sometimes indulges herself in imagining what part the eminent men one has known would have played had their lot been cast in some other age. So I have fancied that Archbishop Tait (described in an earlier chapter) ought to have been Primate of England under Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth. He would have guided the course of reform more prudently and more firmly than Cranmer did; he would have shown a broader spirit than did Parker or Whitgift. So Cardinal Manning, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might haply have become General of the Jesuit Order, and enjoyed the secret control of the politics of the Catholic world. So Robertson Smith, had he been born in the great age of the mediaeval universities, might, like the bold dialectician of whom Dante speaks, have "syllogised invidious truths"[50] in the University of Paris; or had Fortune placed him two centuries later among the scholars of the Italian Renaissance in its glorious prime, the fame of his learning might have filled half Europe.

[48] No life of Robertson Smith has yet been written, but it is hoped that one may be prepared by his intimate friend, Mr. J.

Sutherland Black. A portrait of him (by his friend Sir George Reid, late President of the Royal Scottish Academy) hangs in the library of Christ's College, Cambridge, to which Smith's collection of Oriental books was presented by his friends, and another has been placed in the Divinity College of the United Free Presbyterian Church at Aberdeen. A memorial window has been set up in the chapel of the University of Aberdeen, where he won his first distinctions. I have to thank my friend Mr.

Black for some suggestions he has kindly made after perusing this sketch.

[49] There was an aged Jewish scholar who came now and then to Cambridge in those days, and who, as sometimes happens, disliked other scholars labouring in the same field. He was (so it used to be said) one of the few who knew exactly how the word which we write Jehovah or Iahve ought to be p.r.o.nounced, and it was believed that he had solemnly cursed Wright, Smith, and a third Semitic scholar in the Sacred Name. All three died soon afterwards.

What would have been thought of this in the Middle Ages!

[50] _Parad._ x. 136, of Sigier, "Sillogizzo invidiosi veri."

HENRY SIDGWICK

Henry Sidgwick was born at Skipton, in Yorkshire, where his father was headmaster of the ancient grammar school of the town, on 31st May 1838.[51] The family belonged to Yorkshire. He was a precocious boy, and used to delight his brothers and sister by the fertility of his imagination in inventing games and stories. Educated at Rugby School under Goulburn (afterwards Dean of Norwich), he was sent at an unusually early age to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brilliant University career was crowned by the first place in the cla.s.sical tripos and by a first cla.s.s in the mathematical tripos, and he was speedily elected a Fellow of Trinity. Intellectual curiosity and an interest in the problems of theology presently drew him to Germany, where he worked at Hebrew and Arabic under Ewald at Gottingen, as well as with other eminent teachers. After hesitating for a time whether to devote himself to Oriental studies or to cla.s.sical scholarship, he was drawn back to philosophy by his desire to investigate questions bearing on natural theology, and finally settled down to the pursuit of what are called in Cambridge the moral sciences--metaphysics, ethics, and psychology; becoming first a College Lecturer and then (in 1875) a University Praelector in these subjects. In 1869 he resigned his fellowship, feeling that he could no longer consider himself a "_bona fide_ member of the Church of England," that being the condition then attached by law to the holding of fellowships in the Colleges at Cambridge. This step caused surprise, for the test was deemed a very vague and light one, having been recently subst.i.tuted for a more stringent requirement, and there had been many holders of fellowships who were at least as little ent.i.tled to call themselves _bona fide_ members of the Established Church as he was. But, as was afterwards said of him by Mrs. Cross (George Eliot), Sidgwick was expected by his intimate friends to conform to standards higher than average men prescribe for their own conduct. Taken in conjunction with the fact that several English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians had won the distinction of a Senior Wranglership and been debarred from fellowships, though they were in theological opinion more orthodox than some nominal members of the Established Church who were holding fellowships, Sidgwick's conscientious act made a great impression in Cambridge and did much to hasten that total abolition of tests in the Universities which was effected by statute in 1871; for in England concrete instances of hardship and injustice are more powerful incitements to reform than the strongest abstract arguments, and Sidgwick was already so eminent and so respected a figure that all Cambridge felt the absurdity of excluding such a man from its honours and emoluments. In 1883 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy, and continued to hold that post till three months before his death in 1900, when failing health determined him to resign it.

His life was the still and tranquil life of the thinker, teacher, and writer, varied by no events more exciting than those controversies over reforms in the studies and organisation of the University in which his sense of public duty frequently led him to bear a part.

These I pa.s.s over, but there is one branch of his active work to which special reference ought to be made, viz. the part he took in promoting the University education of women. In or about the year 1868 he joined with the late Miss Anne Jane Clough (sister of the poet Arthur Clough) and a few other friends in establishing a course of lectures and a hall of residence for women at Cambridge, which grew into the inst.i.tution called Newnham College. It and Girton College, founded by other friends of the same cause about the same time, were the first two inst.i.tutions in England which provided for women, together with residential accommodation, a complete University training equivalent and similar to that provided by the two ancient English universities for men. The teaching was mainly given by the University professors and lecturers, the curriculum was the same as the University prescribed, and the women students, though not legally admitted to the University, were examined by the University examiners at the same time as the other students. Henry Sidgwick was, from the foundation of Newnham onwards, the moving spirit and the guiding hand among its University friends, the spirit which inspired the policy and the hand which piloted the fortunes of the College. Its growth to its present dimensions, and its usefulness, not only directly, but through the example it has set, have been largely due to his a.s.siduous care and temperate wisdom. He had married (in 1876) Miss Eleanor Mildred Balfour, and when she accepted the princ.i.p.alship of Newnham after Miss Clough's death, in 1889, he and she transferred their residence to the College, and lived thenceforward at it. The England of our time has seen no movement of opinion more remarkable or more beneficial than that which has recognised the claims of women to the highest kind of education, and secured a substantial, if still incomplete, provision therefor. The change has come so quietly and un.o.btrusively that few people realise how great it is. Few, indeed, remember what things were forty years ago, as few realise when waste lands have been stubbed and drained and tilled what they were like in their former state. No one did more than Sidgwick to bring about this change. Besides his work for Newnham, he took a lead in all the movements that have been made to obtain for women a fuller admission to University privileges, and well deserved the grat.i.tude of Englishwomen for his unceasing efforts on their behalf.

The obscure problems of psychology had a great attraction for him, and he spent much time in investigating them, being one of the founders, and remaining all through his later life a leading and guiding member, of the Society for Psychical Research, which has for the last twenty years cultivated this field with an industry and ability which have deserved larger harvests than have yet been reaped. Two remarkable men, both devoted friends of his, worked with him, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers the poet, the latter of whom survived him a few months only. It was characteristic of Sidgwick that he never committed himself to any of the bold and possibly over-sanguine antic.i.p.ations formed by some of the other members of the Society, while yet he never was deterred by failure, or by the discovery of deceptions, sometimes elaborate and long sustained, from pursuing inquiries which seemed to him to have an ultimate promise of valuable results. The phenomena, he would say, may be true or false; anyhow they deserve investigation.

The mere fact that so many persons believe them to be genuine is a problem fit to be investigated. If they are false, it will be a service to have proved them so. If they contain some truth, it is truth of a kind so absolutely new as to be worth much effort and long effort to reach it. In any case, science ought to take the subject out of the hands of charlatans.

The main business of his life, however, was teaching and writing. Three books stand out as those by which he will be best remembered--his _Methods of Ethics_, his _Principles of Political Economy_, and his _Elements of Politics_. All three have won the admiration of those who are experts in the subjects to which they respectively relate, and they continue to be widely read in universities both in Britain and in America. All three bear alike the peculiar impress of his mind.

It was a mind of singular subtlety, fertility, and ingenuity, which applied to every topic an extremely minute and patient a.n.a.lysis. Never satisfied with the obvious view of a question, it seemed unable to acquiesce in any broad and sweeping statement. It discovered objections to every accepted doctrine, exceptions to every rule. It perceived minute distinctions and qualifications which had escaped the notice of previous writers. These qualities made Sidgwick's books somewhat difficult reading for a beginner, who was apt to ask what, after all, was the conclusion to which he had been led by an author who showed him the subject in various lights, and added not a few minor propositions to that which had seemed to be the governing one.

But the student who had already some knowledge of the topic, who, though he apprehended its main principles, had not followed them out in detail or perceived the difficulties in applying them, gained immensely by having so many fresh points presented to him, so many fallacies lurking in currently accepted notions detected, so many conditions indicated which might qualify the amplitude of a general proposition. The method of discussion was stimulating. Sometimes it reminded one of the Socratic method as it appears in Plato, but more frequently it was the method of Aristotle, who discusses a subject first from one side, then from another, throws out a number of remarks, not always reconcilable, but always suggestive, regarding it, and finally arrives at a view which he delivers as being probably the best, but one which must be taken subject to the remarks previously made. The reader often feels in Sidgwick's treatment of a subject as he often feels in Aristotle's, that he would like to be left with something more definite and positive, something that can be easily delivered to learners as an established truth. He desires a bolder and broader sweep of the brush. But he also feels how much he is benefited by the process of sifting and a.n.a.lysing to which every conception or dogma is subjected, and he perceives that he is more able to handle it afterwards in his own way when his attention has been called to all these distinctions and qualifications or antinomies which would have escaped any vision less keen than his author's. For those who, in an age p.r.o.ne to hasty reading and careless thinking, are disposed to underrate the difficulties of economic and political questions, and to walk in a vain conceit of knowledge because they have picked up some large generalisations, no better discipline can be prescribed than to follow patiently such a treatment as Sidgwick gives; nor can any reader fail to profit from the candour and the love of truth which illumine his discussion of a subject.

The love of truth and the sense of duty guided his life as well as his pen. Though always warmly interested in politics, he was of all the persons I have known the least disposed to be warped by partisanship, for he examined each political issue as it arose on its own merits, apart from predilections for either party or for the views of his nearest friends. We used to wonder how such splendid impartiality would have stood a practical test such as that of the House of Commons. His loyalty to civic duty was so strong as on one occasion to bring him, in the middle of his vacation, all the way from Davos, in the easternmost corner of Switzerland, to Cambridge, solely that he might record his vote at a parliamentary election, although the result of the election was already virtually certain.

Sidgwick's att.i.tude toward the Benthamite system of Utilitarianism ill.u.s.trates the cautiously discriminative habit of mind I have sought to describe. If he had been required to call himself by any name, he would not have refused that of Utilitarian, just as in mental philosophy he leaned to the type of thought represented by the two Mills rather than to the Kantian idealism of his friend and school contemporary, the Oxford professor T. H. Green. But the system of Utility takes in his hands a form so much more refined and delicate than was given to it by Bentham and James Mill, and is expounded with so many qualifications unknown to them, that it has become a very different thing, and is scarcely, if at all, a.s.sailable by the arguments which moralists of the idealistic type have brought against the older doctrine. Something similar may be said of his treatment of bimetallism in his book on political economy. While a.s.senting to some of the general propositions on which the bimetallic theory rests, he points out so many difficulties in the application of that theory to the actual conditions of currency that his a.s.sent cannot be cited as a deliverance in favour of trying to turn theory into practice. He told me in 1896 that he held the political and other practical objections to an attempt to establish a bimetallic system to be virtually insuperable. When he treats of free trade, he is no less guarded and discriminating. He points out various circ.u.mstances or conditions under which a protective tariff may become, at least for a time, justifiable, but never abandons the free trade principle as being generally true and sound, a principle not to be departed from save for strong reasons of a local or temporary kind. His general economic position is equally removed from the "high and dry" school of Ricardo on the one hand, and from the "Katheder-Sozialisten" and the modern "sentimental" school on the other. In all his books one notes a tendency to discover what can be said for the view which is in popular disfavour, even often for that which he does not himself adopt, and to set forth all the objections to the view which is to receive his ultimate adhesion. There is a danger with such a method of losing breadth and force of effect. One is ready to cry, "Do lapse for a moment into dogmatism." Yet it ought to be added that Sidgwick's subtlety is always restrained by practical good sense, as well as by the desire to reconcile opposite views. His arguments, though they often turn on minute distinctions, are not bits of fine-drawn ingenuity, but have weight and substance in them.[52]

One book of his which has not yet (December 1902) been published, but which I have had the privilege of reading in proof, displays his constructive power in another light. It is a course of lectures on the development of political inst.i.tutions in Europe from early times down to our own. Here, as he is dealing with concrete matter, the treatment is more broad, and the line of exposition and argument more easy to follow, than in the treatises already referred to. It is a masterly piece of work, and reveals a wider range of historical knowledge and a more complete mastery of historical method than had been shown in his earlier books, or indeed than some of his friends had known him to possess.

The tendency to a.n.a.lysis rather than to construction, the abstention from the deliverance of doctrines easy to comprehend and repeat, which belong to his writings on ethics and economics, do not impair the worth of his literary criticisms. In this field his fine perception and discriminative taste had full scope. He was an incessant reader, especially of poetry and novels, with a retentive memory for poetry, as well as a finely modulated and expressive voice in reciting it. His literary judgments had less of a creative quality, if the expression be permissible, than Matthew Arnold's, but are not otherwise inferior to those of that brilliant though sometimes slightly prejudiced critic. No one of his contemporaries has surpa.s.sed Sidgwick in catholicity and reasonableness, in the power of delicate appreciation, or in an exquisite precision of expression. His essay on Arthur Hugh Clough, prefixed to the latest edition of Clough's collected poems, is a good specimen of this side of his talent. Clough was one of his favourites, and has indeed been called the pet poet of University men.

Sidgwick's literary essays, which appeared occasionally in magazines, were few, but they well deserve to be collected and republished, for this age of ours, though largely occupied in talking about literature, has produced comparatively little criticism of the first order.

Sidgwick did not write swiftly or easily, because he weighed carefully everything he wrote. But his mind was alert and nimble in the highest degree. Thus he was an admirable talker, seeing in a moment the point of an argument, seizing on distinctions which others had failed to perceive, suggesting new aspects from which a question might be regarded, and enlivening every topic by a keen yet sweet and kindly wit. Wit, seldom allowed to have play in his books, was one of the characteristics which made his company charming. Its effect was heightened by a hesitation in his speech which often forced him to pause before the critical word or phrase of the sentence had been reached. When that word or phrase came, it was sure to be the right one. Though fond of arguing, he was so candid and fair, admitting all that there was in his opponent's case, and obviously trying to see the point from his opponent's side, that n.o.body felt annoyed at having come off second best, while everybody who cared for good talk went away feeling not only that he knew more about the matter than he did before, but that he had enjoyed an intellectual pleasure of a rare and high kind. The keenness of his penetration was not formidable, because it was joined to an indulgent judgment: the ceaseless activity of his intellect was softened rather than reduced by the gaiety of his manner. His talk was conversation, not discourse, for though he naturally became the centre of nearly every company in which he found himself, he took no more than his share. It was like the sparkling of a brook whose ripples seem to give out sunshine.

Though Sidgwick's writings are a mine of careful and suggestive thinking, he was even more remarkable than his books. Though his conversation was delightful, the impression of its fertility and its wit was the least part of the impression which his personality produced. An eminent man is known to the world at large by what he gives them in the way of instruction or of pleasure. A man is prized and remembered by his friends for what he was in the intercourse of life. Few men of our time have influenced so wide or so devoted a circle of friends as did Henry Sidgwick; few could respond to the calls of friendship with a like sympathy or wisdom. His advice was frequently asked in delicate questions of conduct, and he was humorously reminded that, by his own capacity as well as by the t.i.tle of his chair, he was a professor of casuistry. His stores of knowledge and helpful criticism were always at the service of his pupils or his fellow-workers.

From his earliest college days he had been just, well-balanced, conscientious alike in the pursuit of truth and in the regulation of his own life, appearing to have neither prejudices nor enmities, and when he had to convey censure, choosing the least cutting words in which to convey it. Yet in earlier years there had been in him a touch of austerity, a certain remoteness or air of detachment, which confined to a very few persons the knowledge of his highest qualities.

As he grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness of discernment mellowed into a sweet and persuasive wisdom. A life excellently conducted, a life which is the expression of fine qualities, and in which the acts done are in harmony with the thoughts and words of the man, is itself a beautiful product, whether of untutored nature or of thought and experience turning every faculty to the best account. In the modern world the two types of excellence which we are chiefly bidden to admire are that of the active philanthropist and that of the saint. The ancient world produced and admired another type, to which some of its n.o.blest characters conformed, and which, in its softer and more benignant aspect, Sidgwick presented. In his indifference to wealth and fame and the other familiar objects of human desire, in the almost ascetic simplicity of his daily life, in his pursuit of none but the purest pleasures, in his habit of subjecting all impulses to the law of reason, the will braced to patience, the soul brought into harmony with the divinely appointed order, he seemed to reproduce one of those philosophers of antiquity who formed a lofty conception of Nature and sought to live in conformity with her precepts. But the gravity of a Stoic was relieved by the humour and vivacity which belonged to his nature, and the severity of a Stoic was softened by the tenderness and sympathy which seemed to grow and expand with every year. In Cambridge, where, though the society is a large one, all the teachers become personally known to one another, and the students have opportunities of familiar intercourse with the teachers, affection as well as admiration gathered round him. His thoughts quickened and his example inspired generation after generation of young men pa.s.sing through the University out into the life of England, as a light set high upon the bank beams on the waves of a river gliding swiftly to the sea.

It was a life of single-minded devotion to truth and friendship, a life serene and gentle, free alike from vanity and from ambition, bearing without complaint the ill-health which sometimes checked his labours, viewing with calm fort.i.tude those problems of man's life on which his mind was always fixed, untroubled in the presence of death.

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.

When his friends heard of his departure there rose to mind the words in which the closing scene of the life of Socrates is described by the greatest of his disciples, and we thought that among all those we had known there was none of whom we could more truly say that in him the spirit of philosophy had its perfect work in justice, in goodness, and in wisdom.

[51] It is hoped that a life of Sidgwick, together with a selection from his letters, may before long be published.

[52] It was his aim to avoid as much as possible technical terms or phrases whose meaning was not plain to the average reader. An anecdote was current that once when, in conducting a university examination, he was perusing the papers of a candidate who had darkened the subject by the use of extreme Hegelian phraseology, he turned to his co-examiner and said, "I can see that this is nonsense, but is it the right kind of nonsense?"

EDWARD ERNEST BOWEN[53]

Ever since the publication of Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold that eminent headmaster has been taken as the model of a great teacher and ruler of boys, the man who, while stimulating the intelligence of his pupils, was even more concerned to discipline and mould their moral natures. Arnold has become the type of what Carlyle might have called "The Hero as Schoolmaster." Though there have been many able men at the head of large schools since his time, including three who afterwards rose to be Archbishops of Canterbury, as well as a good many who have become bishops, his fame remains unrivalled, and the type created by his career, or rather perhaps by his biographer's account of it, still holds the field. Moreover, during the sixty years that have pa.s.sed since Arnold's death scarcely a word has been said regarding any other masters than the head. During those years the English universities have sent into the great schools a large proportion of their most capable graduates as a.s.sistant teachers; and some of the strongest men among these graduates have never, from various causes, and often because they preferred to remain laymen, been raised to the headships of the schools. Every one knows that a school depends for its wellbeing and success more largely on the a.s.sistants taken together than it does on the headmaster. Most people also know that individual a.s.sistant masters are not unfrequently better scholars, better teachers, and more influential with the boys than is their official superior. Yet the a.s.sistant masters have remained unhonoured and unsung in the general chorus of praise of the great schools which has been resounding over England for nearly two generations.

Edward Bowen was all his life an a.s.sistant master, and never cared to be anything else. As he had determined not to take orders in the Church of England, he was virtually debarred from many of the chief headmasterships, which are, some few of them by law, many more by custom, confined to Anglican clergymen. But even when other headships to which this condition was not attached were known to be practically open to his acceptance, were, indeed, in one or two instances almost tendered to him, he refused to become a candidate, preferring his own simple and easy way of life to the pomp and circ.u.mstance which convention requires a headmaster to maintain. This abstention, however, did not prevent his eminence from becoming known to those who had opportunities of judging. In his later years he would, I think, have been generally recognised by the teaching profession as the most brilliant, and in his own peculiar line the most successful, man among the schoolmasters of Britain.

He was born on 30th March 1836, of an Irish family (originally from Wales) holding property in the county of Mayo. His father was a clergyman of the Church of England; his mother, who survived him a few months (dying at the age of ninety-four) and whom he tended with watchful care during her years of widowhood, was partly of Irish, partly of French extraction. Like his more famous but perhaps not more remarkable elder brother, Charles Bowen, who became Lord Bowen, and is remembered as one of the most acute and subtle judges as well as one of the most winning personalities of our time, he had a gaiety, wit, and versatility which suggested the presence of Celtic blood. He was educated at Blackheath School, and afterwards at King's College in London, whence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1860, after a career at the University, distinguished both in the way of honours and in respect of the reputation he won among his contemporaries, he became a master at Harrow, and thenceforth remained there, leading an uneventful and externally a monotonous life, but one full of unceasing and untiring activity in play and work. He died on Easter Monday 1901.