The Introduction and Critical Reception of Hegelian Thought in Britain 1830-1900 Author(s): Kirk Willis Source: Victorian Studies,

Vol. 32, No. 1 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 85-111 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3828290 Accessed: 14/12/2009 13:15
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Kirk Willis

THE INTRODUCTIONAND RECEPTIONOF HEGELIAN CRITICAL THOUGHT IN BRITAIN 1830-1900*

"I NOT UNFREQUENTLY THINK OF THE DISGUST YOU MUST FEEL AT THE FATE

which has overtaken Mind," lamented HerbertSpencer to the distinguished AlexanderBain in April 1902: "Thatyou, afterestabutilitarian psychologist lishingthe thing and maintainingit for so manyyearsat yourown cost, should now find it turnedinto an organfor Germanidealismmust be extremelyexasperating. Oxford and Cambridgehave been capturedby this old-worldnon1 sense. What aboutScotland?I supposeHegelianismis rife there also?" Characteristically, Spencer'sobservationwas at once both perceptive and distorted. In one sense, he was quite right to commiseratewith Bain about the currenttrend in Britishphilosophicalfashion. Not only was Bain's beloved Mind in the hands of an avowedlyHegelian editor, G. F. Stout, but the leading positions in philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge- as well as, - were held by men deeply inalas for Spencer, at Glasgow and Edinburgh fluenced by some varietyof German idealist thought: Stout at St. Andrews, F. H. Bradleyand EdwardCaird at Oxford, J. M. E. McTaggartand James Ward at Cambridge, Henry Jones at Glasgow, and Andrew Seth Pringleand influenceGermanphilosoUnder their instruction Pattisonat Edinburgh. an was indeed servingas the subject ascendancy, enjoying unprecedented phy of lecture courses, honors examinations, and fellowship theses in a manner complaintdid scarcelythoughtpossibleeven two decadesearlier.But Spencer's not tell the full story, for by the time of his protest to Bain a reaction had alreadybegun, one first articulated,ironically, in the pagesof Minditself. 2 Led by G. E. Moore and BertrandRussell, a youngergenerationof Britishphiloscommentson earlierdraftsof this article. I Herbert of Spencerto AlexanderBain, 25 April 1902, in DavidDuncan,ed., TheLifeandLetters 2 vols. (New York:D. Appleton, 1908), II, 201. Herbert Spencer, 2 See, forexample,G. E. Moore's "TheNatureof Judgment," twin manifestos, Mind,n. s., 8 (1899), 176-193and "Necessity," Mind,n.s., 9 (1900), 289-304. AUTUMN 1988 and BruceKinzerfor their valuable P. Dauenhauer, to StewartJ. Brown,Bernard *I am grateful

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ophers- themselves trained as disciplesof Kant and Hegel - were turning awayfromGerman thought and back towarda version of the traditionalempiricism that Spencer would have approvinglyregardedas peculiarly and properlyBritish. Despite their misleading character, Spencer's contemporary pronouncements concering the nature of late-Victorianphilosophy are nonetheless testimonyto what studentsof modem Britishintellectualhistoryhave long known: that in the years from roughly 1875 to 1915 Hegelian thought dominatedthe professional studyof philosophyin Britain.This interludehas, however, been only fitfully explored, and its essential place in the largerintroductionand diffusionof German thought in Victorian culturaland intellectual life has been entirelyneglected. To be sure, the writingsof individuals such as Bradley,McTaggart,and T. H. Green have been examined in some detail, as have aspectsof the influence of Hegelian ideas on Britishphilosophy and social theory.3 But the ways in which - as well as the reasonswhy - Hegelian thought came to such prominencehave been scarcelystudied, and those scholars who have touched on these matters have usually contented themselveswith briefdiscussionsof Green'sinfluence, Bradley's publications, and the propagandaefforts of J. H. Stirling.4 Such treatment is, however, sadly inadequate.Not only does it focus too narrowlyon the lateVictorian and Edwardian period and restrictits attention almost exclusively to philosophicalissues,but it offersa distortedaccount of the ways in which Hegelian thought was introducedinto Britain and ignores the many critics or nonsensiwho, farfromembracing Hegel'sideas,damnedthem as pernicious cal. In fact, Hegelianthoughtbecameknown far earlier,enjoyedan influence far greater,and enteredthrougha varietyof channelsfar more numerous than has previously been recognized. Georg Wilhelm FriedrichHegel's name and ideasfirstbecameknown in Britain as early as the 1820s, and by the time of Spencer'slament at the turn of the century, educatedmen and women of remarkably diverseinterests and opinions had become acquainted with various aspects of Hegelian
3 See, for example, RichardWollheim, F. H. Bradley(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959); I. M. Thomas HillGreenandtheDevelopment Greengarten, of Liberal-Democratic (Toronto:UniThought of TorontoPress,1981);MelvinRichter,ThePolitics T. H. Green andHisAge versity of Conscience: MA: Harvard An (Cambridge, UniversityPress,1964);P. T. Geach, Truth,LoveandImmortality: Introduction to McTaggart's (Berkeley: Philosophy Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1979); Andrew Vincentand Raymond and Politics Citizenship: TheLifeandThought Plant, Philosophy, of theBritish Idealists BasilBlackwell,1984). (Oxford: 4 The most of these studiesareJamesBradley, A BriefHistory of British important "Hegelin Britain: and Attitudes,"Heythrop 20 (1979), 1-24 and 163-182;GeorgHollenberg, Journal Commentary "Zur Genesisdes Anglo-Hegelianismus: Die Entdeckung als aus der victorianischen Hegels Ausweg undGeistesgeschichte 26 (1974), 50-59;John H. Muirhead, Glaubenskrise," Zeitschrift fiir Religions "How Hegel Came to England,"in The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon (London: Philosophy en Angleterre de Coleridge a GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1931), 147-173;Jean Pucelle, L'ideaisme La "Absolute in (Neuchatel: Baconniere, 1955); Anthony Quinton, Bradley Idealism," Thoughts andThinkers (London: Duckworth, 1875-1925 1982), 186-206;PeterRobbins,TheBritish Hegelians (New York:Garland,1982). VICTORIAN STUDIES

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thought. Admirersof German literaturehad learned of Hegel's association with such writersas Goethe and Heine as well as of his influentialwritingson aesthetic theory. Students of theology and religion had gained a familiarity with Hegel's religious views and theological writings through the works of David FriedrichStraussand the many other German exponents of biblical had become acquainted and epistemology of metaphysics criticism.Enthusiasts on these subjectsas well as with his influenceon the with Hegel'spublications evolution of philosophicalstudyin nineteenth-centuryGermany.Workersin the philosophy of history had leared of his leading doctrines and of their prominent role in current continental scholarship. Observersof both Prussian politics and contemporarysocialism had become familiarwith Hegel's social and political thought. Finally, investigatorsof physicaland naturalscience had become awareof some of his writingson scientific matters. Indeed, there was scarcelya majoraspectof Victorian intellectual life in which Hegelian ideas were not introducedand discussed,and it is hardly that Britishthinkersas diverseas S. T. Coleridgeand Benjamin Jowsurprising T. D. and B. F. Maurice and Bertrand Eliot Russell, Macaulay, ett, George HenrySidgwickand ThomasCarlyle,LeslieStephenand Adam Sedgwick,and WilliamWhewell and J. S. Mill were able to offerpointed, if not alwaystemperateor well-informed,commentaryon Hegelian thought. Spanning nearly and criticalrecepthe full courseof the nineteenth century, the introduction a matter of exclusivecontion of Hegelianthought in Britainwas not simply but an issuethat went to the veryheartof the cern to professional philosophers, and culturalassumptions. intellectualpreoccupations Victorians' II It was as an aesthetic theorist and philosophical influence on earlynineteenth-centuryGermanliteraturethat Hegel firstbecameknown to British audiences, and the disseminationand appreciationof Hegelian thought was thereforeintimatelybound up with the largerand more complicated introduction and diffusion of German literature in early nineteenth-century Britain. As three generationsof scholarshave amplydemonstrated,that introductionproceededneither quicklynor smoothly, its progress hamperedby the late from and obstaclesof ignorance, prejudice, dating misunderstanding 5 the Gernineteenth century eighteenth century. In the earlydecadesof the
5 The finestof these studiesis Rosemary andtheReWriters Idea:FourEnglish Ashton'sTheGerman 1800-1860(Cambridge: UniversityPress, 1980). See also Cambridge Thought of German ception Ewen, ThePrestige en Angleterre of Plon-Nourrit, 1920);Frederic (Paris: Carre,Goethe Jean-Marie Columbia in England 1788-1859(New York: UniversityPress,1932);LeslieStephen, "The Schiller 4 vols. (London: Duckworth, 1907), II, 38-75; in Studies of German," of a Biographer, Importation in England, 1750-1830(London:G. Routledge, as Known Literature Violet A. Stockley,German 1929). AUTUMN 1988

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man languagewas all but unknown to educatedBritons, and its literatureindeed its thought generally- was variouslycondemnedby influentialBritish critics as irreligious, immoral, jacobinical, obscure, and vulgar. Testimony to the scarcityof German books and to the incapacityof British men and women to read them is abundant.E. B. Pusey,for example, recalledthat in the Oxford of the 1820s "only two personswere said to know German." The undergraduate Puseywas not amongthem. RobertPearseGillies remembered that in the Edinburgh of the 1810s and '20s "all the booksellers'shops . . . could hardlyhave suppliedmore than a dozen [books]in that language. It was among us all but formallyproscribed." FrancisJeffreyridiculedGoeMeisters the's Wilhelm as "absurd, Lehrjahre puerile, incongruous,vulgar, and affected," while William Hazlitt derided Kant's critical philosophy as "the most wilful and monstrousabsurditythat ever was invented."6 Schooled by such authorities, the British educated classes dismissedGerman thought as unworthy of attention. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century Germany'sliteraturethereforeremainedalmostwholly untranslated,its modem works ignored in the periodicalpress, its languageunknown to all but a tiny numberof adepts, its books nearlyunavailablein bookshopsor libraries, and its early proponentsthe recipients of much stem critical disapproval. The 1820s and '30s witnessedthe beginningsof what would become, by mid-century,a dramaticreversalof fortune. In those yearsthe determined proselytizingeffortsof Coleridge, Carlyle, J. G. Lockhart,and others began to chip away at prejudice, to awaken sensitivity, to refashion taste, and, aided by the many translationsproducedby these enthusiasts, to make the work of majorGerman writersavailable in English. Not only did the major reviewsbegin routinelyto publishlengthy essayson Germanculture,but new Reviewand British and Foreign jourals - most notably the Foreign Quarterly Review- expresslyofferedmorecomplete foreigncoverage. Secondarystudies and general surveysof German literaturewere also translatedand widely reviewed, as were importantworksof continental aesthetic theory and liter7 ary criticism. By the 1840s conditions had so altered that John Sterling, himself an early champion of German culture, could claim that German thought was at long last "leaking"into Britain.8 And by the 1850s and '60s
Bouverie Liddon,TheLifeof Edward Puseyis quotedin HenryParry J. O. JohnstonandR. J. Pusey, Wilson, eds., 4 vols. (London: VetLongman,1893-97),I, 72; R. P. Gillies;Memoirs of a Literary eran,3 vols. (London:RichardBentley, 1851), I, 237; [Francis Jefrey], "WilhelmMeister's Apa Novel," Edinburgh Review 42 (1825), 414; [WilliamHazlitt],"Coleridge's prenticeship, Literary Review 28 (1817), 497. Attributions aretakenfromthe Wellesley Index to Victorian Life," Edinburgh Periodicals 1824-1900,WalterE. Houghton,ed., 4 vols. (Toronto:Universityof Toronto Press, 1966-87). 7 Two of the mostwidelyreadand reviewed of theseforeignsurveys wereWolfgang Menzel,German ThomasGordon,trans.,4 vols. (Oxford: D. A. Talboys,1840) and Franz Literature, Thimm,The Literature William ed. D. Nutt, 1844);both contained briefdisof Germany, (London: HenryFam, cussions of some of Hegel'sleadingideas. 8 John 28 June 1842, in Edward WaldoEmerson, Sterlingto RalphWaldoEmerson, ed., A Correbetween andRalph Waldo Emerson JohnSterling spondence (Boston:HoughtonMifflin,1897), p. 59. VICTORIAN STUDIES 6

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that trickle had become a steady stream, its size swollen by new channels of thought in theology, philosophy, classicalscholarship,history, and science. The introduction of Hegelian thought paralleledthis general evoluReviewquoted a descriptionof tion. As earlyas 1822, a critic for the Monthly as one of "the most celebrated Hegel philosophersof nature"writing in Ger9 many. In the 1830s referencesto Hegel's name and allusionsto some of his doctrines appearedin articles on German literaturein several major British reviews. Carlyle, for example, mentioned Hegel in one of his evangelistic esReview.Hesays on behalf of German culture in the March 1831 Edinburgh gel, he noted in passing, was an importantcontemporaryphilosopher who Kant and Schelling in German academic was in the processof "superseding" circles- althoughwhether in philosophicalwisdom, scholarlypopularity,or stylistic obscuritywas not made plain. 10Similar teasing referencesappeared in reviews of studies of individualGerman writerssuch as Goethe, Lessing, Schelling, and Heine, and in articlesdevoted to continental surveysof German literature.1 The authorsof these articles, Carlyle, Sterling, Lockhart,John Mitchell Kemble, J. S. Blackie, and George Moir, among others, were usually propagandistsfor the serious study of German literature. They were not, however, as interested in or knowledgeableabout German philosophy, and althoughawareof a connection between Hegelian thought and contemporary German literature,they were unable or unwilling to do more than assert its existence. To readersof these essays, Hegel appearedvariouslyas "a leading modem metaphysician"whose ideas currentlyenjoyed an "immense influence" over the Germanliterarycommunity,an "eminentman"whose "inspirational teaching" had allowed him to found the philosophical school then dominant in German universities, a dreamyspeculatorwhose "massof confounded and confoundingtranscendentalnonsense"was unworthyof British audiences'attention, and a "spectral figure"whose obscuremetaphysicaldoc9 "Larsche's 2d ser., 98 (1822), 543-544. Review, Monthly Essayon Reason," 10 Review 53 (1831), 166. Historic Edinburgh Survey of German Poetry," [Thomas Carlyle],"Taylor's 11See, for Press:Bome and Heine," Foreign example, [GeorgeMoir], "The GermanUltra-Liberal 6 July1833, p. 441; Review 10 (1832), 160;"Schelling,Hegel, andNovalis,"Athenaeum, Quarterly 15 February of Germany," 1834, pp. 121-123;[AbraAthenaeum, Quinet, "The Literature Edgar 53 Review (1835), 122;0. L. B. Wolff, "RecentGermanBelles-Lettres," ham Hayward], Quarterly 13 June 1835, p. 450; U. G. Lockhart], "Literature of the Nineteenth Century,"Athenaeum, on Ger55 (1835), 5, 10, and 13; U. S. Blackie],"Menzel Review "Heineon Germany," Quarterly with 16 (1835), 2 and 11 and"Goethe's Review manLiterature," Foreign Correspondence Quarterly 16 (1836), 329; [GeorgeMoir],"Menzel's Review Zetterand BettinaBrentano," Quarterly Foreign ConversaReview 63 (1836), 442-469;U. S. Blackie],"Eckermann's German Literature," Edinburgh and Posthumous Works Review18 (1836), 23 and "Knebel's tions with Goethe," Foreign Quarterly Correspondence," ForeignQuarterlyReview20 (1838), 226 and 244. Discussionsof Hegelian of Goethe,3 vols. (London:Effingham thought also appearedin Sarah Austin's Characteristics in 1831 (London: J. Macrone, Germany Wilson, 1833), I, 186-187and 226-271, andJohnStrang's 1836), pp. 29, 199-201, and 338-341. AUTUMN 1988

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trines were inexplicably"in the air"of earlynineteenth-centuryGermany.12 In no case did Hegel's ideasreceive more than a briefmention; even to these championsof German thought, Hegel was more a ghostly name than a fullbodied thinker. The first attempt to investigatethe true natureof that apparition,indeed the first article on any aspect of Hegelian thought to be publishedin a and Foreign Review. majorBritishreview, appearedin the March 1842 British Written by George Henry Lewes, then a young partisanof German culture workof Coleridgeand Carlyleinto a new geneagerto extend the missionary it was an eration, ostensibly examinationof Hegel's posthumouslypublished 13 Unfortunatelyfor the growthof Hegel studfiberdie Aesthetik. Vorlesungen ies in Britain, however, Lewes'slong essaywas not one of his finest. Too diffuse in its energies, too imitative of Carlylein its style, and too self-conscious in its contentiousness, it seemed more concernedwith displayingits author's learning than with elucidating Hegel's subtle aesthetic doctrines. Indeed, only in the final quarterof the essaydid Lewesfocus squarelyand exclusively on Hegel. In that shortdiscussion,however, Lewesattempteda greatdeal. In addition to giving a brief biographicalsketch and mentioning the titles of severalof Hegel's majorworks, he introducedsome of Hegel's difficulttermidescribedas "the fundamentalprinciple" nology, elucidatedwhat he properly of Hegelian philosophy (its absolute idealism), and offered through lengthy quotations examples of Hegel's aesthetic criticism. Lewes suggested,for example, that
It mayassistthe student to observethat the fundamental principleof the Hegelian philosophy is, that the Idea (i.e., the absolute- the ens) determinesor manifestsitself subjectively (or in the mind of man), as Reason- objectively (or externally), as the universe - the non ego. There are three epochs in the evolution of the Idea. I. It determinesitself as quality, quantity, objectively, etc. i.e. Logic. II. It determinesitself as the universe, and develops itself in nature. III. It determinesitself as mind, cognizantof its priorstates. In other words, the Idee is the totality of the universe both of mind and matter, in its unique conception; and this Idee, this Absolute, conceived underthe formof thought, is truth; when conceived under the form of nature or of external phaenomena, is Beauty. Thus Beautyis spirit contemplatingthe spiritualin an object. Art is the Absolute incarnate in the beautiful. ("Hegel'sAesthetics," pp. 44-45).

Just as importantfor the promotion of Hegelian thought as Lewes's explication, however, was his sympathetic- indeed fulsome- tone. Un12 "RecentGermanBelles-Lettres," "German Influence p. 122;[Edward Hayward, SydneyWilliams], and Progress of Uncultivated Review 24 (1839), Nations,"Foreign Upon the Civilization Quarterly British andForeign Review 5 24; U. M. Kemble],"Britishand ForeignUniversities:Cambridge," Posthumous (1837), 175;Blackie,"Knebel's Works," p. 329. p. 226 and"Goethe's Correspondence," 13[G. H. Lewes], and Foreign Review13 (1842), 1-49. Lewesalso dis"Hegel'sAesthetics,"British cussedHegel'saesthetic doctrinesin "Augustus WilliamSchlegel,"Foreign Review 32 Quarterly in France," British andForeign Review 16 (1844), 327-362. (1843), 161-181and"Stateof Criticism VICTORIAN STUDIES

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and comprehensive" sparingin his praise, LewesdescribedHegel's "masterful lectures on aesthetics as "the most delightful, thought-inciting and instructive work on the subjectwe have yet met with," his philosophicalsystem as "the final resultof Germanthought"and "perfectly astounding"in its "depth and completeness,"and the man himself as "a profoundgenius"possessing"a vast and penetratingmind" ("Hegel'sAesthetics," pp. 43-45). as the means of introducingHegelian Lewes'schoice of the Aesthetik was He reasoned that it was the into Britain calculated. carefully thought most lucid and hence accessibleof Hegel's majorworksas well as a powerful statement of the latter'sgeneral metaphysicalsystem; moreover, it complemented the growing British fascination with German culture and might thereforehave been expected to provokethe seriousstudyof a wide rangeof Hegelian thought. In the event, however, Lewes'sforecastfor the immediate prospectsof Hegel studies in Britainprovedfar too sunny;no bright dawn of interest appearedwith the mom. More accuratewas his judgment that Hegel's aesthetic writings- with their explanation of the evolution of art as a necessaryaspect of the developmentof the Idea- would prove of interest to a British audience. In the next half-centuryoccasional articles on Hegel's aesthetic doctrinesappearedin the majorreviewsand in influentialsurveysof aesthetic theory. 14 With the publicationof an Englishtranslationof Hegel's introductionto the Aesthetik by BernardBosanquetin 1886, a new wave of interest helped to swell the idealist tide then beginning to run at flood in British universities;as with the translationsof nearly all of Hegel's works, however, this publication was more a consequence than a cause of British concern with Hegel, more a result of a change in taste than a stimulus to unwhetted appetites.15 A second, and easily the most controversial,channel throughwhich Hegelian thought filtered into Britainderivedfrom the study of nineteenthcentury German theology, an immense and provocativebody of scholarship describedby Victorian commentatorsas "Germanthought," "HigherCriticism," "Germanrationalism,"or "Straussian thought."Something of Hegel's connection with that scholarship- a connection in which he stood more as - becameknown in Britphilosophicalinspirationthan as active participant
14See, forexample,[Thomas BritHandbook of Painting," Studyof Art:Kugler's Wyse],"Aesthetical of the Beautiful," Review14 (1843), 528; John StuartBlackie,"The Philosophy ish and Foreign Sutherlandand Knox, Review43 (1883), 813-830, and On Beauty(Edinburgh: Contemporary FromHegel'sAesthetic,"Macmilof the Sublime: 1858);J. HutchisonStirling,"TheSymbolism A History 16 (1867), 441-451;Bemard lan'sMagazine (London: GeorgeAlof Aesthetic Bosanquet, len and Unwin, 1892), pp. 334-362;WilliamKnight, The Philosophy (1889; rpt. of theBeautiful CharlesScribner's New York: Sons, 1891), pp. 70-78. 15 G. W. F. trans.(Lonto Hegel's Bosanquet, Philosophy of FineArt, Bernard Hegel, TheIntroduction of Hegel'slectureson aestheticsapdon: KeganPauland Trench, 1886). An Englishtranslation to theScientific in the sameyear:G. W. F. Hegel, ThePhilosophy Study of Art:An Introduction peared Oliver and Boyd, 1886). C. L. Michelet, ed., W. Hastie, trans.(Edinburgh: of Aesthetics,

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ain as early as the 1820s. 16 As with his associationwith German literature, however, the precisenatureof Hegel'scomplicatedand evolving relationship to nineteenth-centuryGermantheological and biblical studybecame known only gradually,as did his own theological views and religiouswritings.17Hegel was thereforestudiedalmost exclusively at second hand, and his influential historical and theological doctrines were, for much of the nineteenth century, learnedonly indirectlyand imperfectlythroughthe writingsof such importantfiguresas Strauss,FerdinandChristianBaur,W. M. L. DeWette, and the membersof the Tiibingen School. Hegelian thought was not understood on its own terms, but ratherwas thrust- often in an intemperateand inaccuratemanner- into the center of the nearlyunceasingtheological debate that German biblical criticism provokedin Victorian Britain.18 To be sure, a few scholarsand divines found Hegelian thought to be both a source of religiousillumination and an object of intellectual admiration. But for the orthodox many, Hegel joined Straussand others as one of the demons of the age. In 1825 Hugh James Rose, Christian Advocate at British student of Cambridgeand the preeminent early-nineteenth-century German theology, gave a series of public lectureson The Stateof Protestant in Germanyin which he condemned the "noxiousworks,""mischieReligion vous doctrines,"and "odious,painful, and disgusting" of such conarguments temporary theologians as DeWette, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider.Although Rose did not mention Hegel directly in the firstversion of his publishedlectures, the much-expanded second edition contained a (1829) supplementary essayby the Germandivine P. A. Stapfer that referred to Hegel as the authorof manywritingsof "highermetaphysical speculation" and an important philosophical influence on the embryonic
Tiibingen School. 19

It was, however, the 1830s and especiallythe 1840s that witnesseda dramaticadvance in British awarenessof both the extent and the variety of German biblical and theological scholarship. British theologians roused themselvesfrom their post-Paleyantorporand began to offerdetailed refutadiscussion of the introduction of German biblicalscholarship into VictorianBritinsightful in theNineteenth Criticism andGermany ain, see John Rogerson,Old Testament Century: England (London: SPCK, 1984). 17 derReligion wasnot translated into iiberdiePhilosophie Hegel'sposthumously published Vorlesungen on thePhilosophy E. B. SpiersandJ. Englishuntil 1895;see G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures of Religion, Burdon Sanderson, trans., 3 vols. (London:KeganPauland Trench, 1895). 18See Owen 2 vols. (New York: OxfordUniversity Chadwick,TheVictorian Church, Press,1966 and A Study Attitudes: 1970), II, 40-111;A. O. J. Cockshut,Anglican Controversies of Victorian Religious Church (London: Embattled: Collins, 1959), pp. 13-125;M. A. Crowther, in Religious Controversy Mid-Victorian (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1970), pp. 40-127; Bernard M. G. England in theVictorian Reardon, to Gore(London: Religious Thought Age:A Survey fromColeridge Longman, 1980), pp. 250-359. 19 in Germany HughJamesRose, TheStateof theProtestantism (Cambridge: J. Deighton,1825), pp. v, vii, and 13; P. A. Stapfer,appendixto HughJamesRose, TheStateof Protestantism in Germany, Described C. (London: J. G. Rivington,1829), p. vi. VICTORIAN STUDIES
16 Foran

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tions of "Rationalist"scripturalinterpretationsand theological arguments, while alarmedwritersfor the majorreviews sounded the tocsins against the "Rationalistatheism." A regularfeainsidiousintrusionof German-inspired tureof these warningswas a mention often briefand usuallymisleadingof Hegel's connection with that threat. Two essays by the young Scottish classicistJohn StuartBlackie, for example, appearedin the Foreign Quarterly Reviewin 1838 and 1839. Blackie, who had studied theology in Germanyin the 1820s and had heard Schleiermacherlecture in Berlin, highlighted Hegel's philosophical influence on currentGerman theological scholarship, as did EdmundLaw Lushington,JamesMartineau,and Henry Rogers in essays publishedin the 1840s. 20 Readersof such discussionswould have learnednot mystico-mythicalChristianity[is] founded on the Hemerely that "Strauss's gelian philosophy,"but that Hegel himself was an "allegorico-metaphysicoa "nihilist,"a "pantheisticmystic," and a mystico-logicotranscendentalist," "German infidel" (Rogers, "Reason and Faith," pp. 172-173; Lushington, and Parker," "Mill and Hegel," p. 517; Martineau,"Strauss pp. 75 and 80). Tantalizingand abusiveas these earlyreferencesmight have been, inmore substantialwas William Hodge Mill'sgraphicallytitled Obcomparably to theTheoryand on theAttempted servations Principles of Pantheistic Application Professor of Hebrew at HistoricCriticism of the Gospel (1840). Mill, Regius Cambridge, a distinguished theologian, and a fierce opponent of German biblical criticism in any guise, devoted the bulk of his lengthy work to a detailed refutationof what he termedthe "outrageous infidelity"of the "Mythihas . which . of the Gospels. cal Interpretation lately reachedits highest and most extravagantpitch in the work of Dr. D. F. Strausson the Life of Jesus."21 Mill was well awarethat there were certain "philosophicalprinciples with which the present mythical theory is associated,"principlesderived exclusively from "the deceasedoracle and founderof the school," Hegel. "It is Mill observed, "to separatethe cause of Straussfromthat indeed imposible," Hegelian philosophy of which he is known as a distinguishedexpositor and defender"(p. 4). He thereforededicated his first seventy pages to a spirited condemnationof those "noxiousprinciples,"as well as to a more generaldiscussion of Hegelian philosophy aimed at scaringoff potential recruitsto the Rationalist camp. The issues Mill addressed, however, pertained more to Straussian Christology than to Hegelian philosophy. His account of many of Hegel's
20 U. S.

of Germany,"Foreign Quarterly Review21 Blackiel, "JungStilling: Religious Literature 23 (1839), 426; [EdReview andGermanScholarship," Quarterly Foreign (1838), 251 and "English ReandForeign of the Gospel,"British "Milland Hegel:HistoricCriticism mundLawLushington], Review 47 (1847), and Parker," Westminster "Strauss view12 (1841), 515-542;Uames Martineau], 90 (1849), 155-188. Review and Faith,"Edinburgh 71-90; [HenryRogers],"Reason

21W. H. Mill, Observationson the AttemptedApplicationof PantheisticPrinciplesto the Theory and HistoricCriticism DeightonBell, 1861), pp. 1-2. of theGospel(1840; 2d ed. Cambridge: AUTUMN 1988

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leading theological doctrines- ideaswhich represented religion as a universal expressionof the human spirit and a necessaryelement of all human cultures - was both confused and derivative, relying for its understandingof work, Das LebenJesu (1835-36), and KarlMichHegel entirelyupon Strauss's elet's highly partisanGeschichte der letzten in Deutschland systemderphilosophie von Kantbis Hegel (1837-38). (Mill made no direct referencesto any of Hegel's works;the several quotations from Hegel he either reprintedor badly translatedfromStrauss.)Even more disappointing,Mill made no attempteither to understandHegel's religious and historical argumentson their own termsor to take account of the extraordinary diversityof professedly Hegelian in religiousthought contemporary Germany. Instead, he contented himself with a spitefuldenunciationof Strauss's and disgustingdoctrines,"a "profane breezyargumentthat dismissedall formsof Absolute Idealismas pantheism, and a bald conclusion that Hegelian and Straussianphilosophiesof religion thereforehad as little applicabilityto the studyof Christianityas did the doctrines of the Vedantists (p. 39; for a critique of Mill's misunderstanding of Hegel, see Lushington, "Mill and Hegel," pp. 515-542). The most importantevent for the popularization of Hegelian religious in Britain was the in of 1846 thought publication George Eliot's celebrated translationof Strauss's Leben This Jesu. translation,with its well-knownfinal chapterin praiseof Hegelian philosophy,markedthe beginningof the serious study in Britainof at least one aspect of Hegelian thought. Reviewersof this and other worksof biblicalcriticismnow routinely discussed the role of Hegel's and historical in doctrines such translators theological inspiring scholarship; startedto toy with projectsof rendering Hegel'stortured proseinto comprehensible English;and, especiallyimportant,theologiansbeganto treathis thought with critical attention. 22To be sure, knowledgeof Hegel'sdoctrineswas still all too frequentlyacquiredat second hand, and the sectariansplinteringof "Hegelian"schools in Germanyremainedpoorly understood.But after 1846 it became nearly impossibleto write about German theology and the threat - or deliverance- it posed to "orthodoxopinion" in Britain without in"oracle."23 cludingat least a mention of Hegel'sstandingas its philosophical found itself in the midstof the nearlyincessant Hegelianthoughtconsequently
translation, wasabanprojected begunbyJowettandFrederick Templein the mid-1840s, doned in 1849;see EvelynAbbott and LewisCampbell,TheLifeandLetters Jowett,2 of Benjamin vols. (London: John Murray, 1897), I, 129-130.A translation did, however,appearin 1855;see W. F. G. Logicof Hegel,H. Slomanand J. Wallon, trans. (London: Hegel, The Subjective John Chapman,1855). 23 andTendencies of GermanProtestantism," See, for example,UohnCairns],"Struggles NorthBritish Review 20 (1854), 227-246;[W. J. Coneybeare], "The Eclipseof Faith,"Quarterly 95 Review "The PresentState of Theologyin Germany," (1854), 448-467; [Mark Westminster RePattison], view67 (1857), 327-363; James "Mansel's Limitsof Religious National ReMartineau], Thought," view8 (1859), 209-227;F. C. Cook, "Ideology andSubscription," in WilliamThomson,ed., Aids to Faith(London: John Murray, 1861), pp. 157-216. VICTORIAN STUDIES
22 One such

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storm of theological disputationthat swirledthroughoutthe mid-Victorian years. Indeed, in the three decades when that tempest raged at its most severe, Hegel's doctrines had moved to the very eye of the storm, and serious students representinga broad spectrumof theological opinion began to discuss them with vigilance and concern. To the orthodox majorityHegelian thought specifically- and German criticismmore generally- was a contagion that threatenedthe spiritual and moral health of Britain and thereforehad to be eradicated.The consequences of infection were judged so grave that the mere prospect provoked displaysof prejudiceagainst any and all things German: quite extraordinary to the eminent Sanskritscholar Max the denial of an Oxford professorship of HebrewRowlandWilliams Professor Miiller;the persecutionof Cambridge for his contributionto Essaysand Reviews; the trial of Bishop Colenso of Natal for his heterodox writingson the Pentateuch;the deliberaterepressionof biblical criticism by British theological journals; and the question Bishop Blomfieldof London posed to each of his candidatesfor ordination, "I trust,
sir, that you don't understand German?"24

To more open-minded investigators,German criticism and Hegelian thought meritedstudy and deservedresponse,and a few defiant souls braved (1849), of Religion public obloquy to publish such response. In his Philosophy John Daniel Morell, for example, offeredboth a spiriteddefense of the enterprise- if not the findings- of Germanbiblical criticismand a fair-minded account of some of Hegel's leading doctrines. So did R. W. Mackay in his TubingenSchooland Its Antecedents(1863). 25 Far more controversialwere H. L. Mansel's celebrated Bampton lectures for 1858, published later that Examined. On the eve of becoming the Thought year as The Limitsof Religious of moral and metaphysicalphilosophyat Oxford, and alWaynfleteprofessor on Kant, Mansel readythe firstmemberof that universityto lectureregularly had been animated primarilyby a desire to respondto the argumentsof the BroadChurchmen within Oxford and the "rationalistsceptics"without; his lectures, however, also offered a running commentary on Hegel's views. Mansel'svoluminousnotes presenteda respectful- if deeply critical - discussion of many of Hegel's doctrinesand providedmany lengthy translations 26 So courteousand soderReligion. iiberdie Philosophie from the Vorlesungen
24On of everything German,"see W. Tuckwell,ReminisagainstMiillerand the "horror prejudice cences (1900; 2d ed. New York:E. P. Dutton, 1908), p. 147;on Colensoand Williams, of Oxford 2 W. Ridgway, see GeorgeCox, TheLifeofJohnWilliam Colenso, vols. (London: 1888), I, 171-408 2 vols. (London: and EllenWilliams,ed., TheLifeandLetters Williams, HenryS. King, of Rowland Peronne and Louis see Stewart of German on the J. J. thought, 1874), II, 17:190; repression RichardBentley, 1881), Thirlwall andTheological (London: Stokes, eds., Letters of Connop Literary of Oxnotorious question,see [H. N. Oxenham],"TheNeo-Protestants p. 175;andon Blomfield's 3d ser., 4 (1861), 288. ford,"Rambler, 25 (London: Longman,Brown,and Green, 1849) and of Religion John Daniel Morell,The Philosophy WilliamsandNorgate, 1863). andItsAntecedents School R. W. Mackay,TheTibingen (Edinburgh: 26 Examined Limits The (1858; rpt. Boston:Gouldand Mansel, Thought of Religious HenryLongueville Lincoln, 1859), pp. 244-247, 248-249, 268-271, 292, and 312-315. AUTUMN 1988

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phisticated was Mansel'streatmentof Hegelian ideas, in fact, that his work won instant notoriety, prompting even such scarcely orthodox figures as MauriceandJ. S. Mill to outbursts of rarefuryand bitterness.Mill, for examand "absolutelyloathsome."27 ple, describedMansel'sbook as "detestable" Even more sympatheticto "Germanism" were the targetsof Mansel's lectures: the so-called Broad Churchmen led by Jowett, Williams, A. P. Stanley, Mark Pattison, and H. B. Wilson - the same men, that is, who would publish the notoriousEssaysand Reviews within two years. Driven by dissatisfactionwith the somnolence of English-language theological writing and biblical scholarship, by skepticism concerning the accuracy of the Church'sscripturalinterpretations,and by curiosityabout the frenziedworld of German academic theology, these men travelledto Germany, learned its language, and read its philosophyand theology (Jowett and Stanley, for instance, read Kant and Hegel in 1844). They defended that philosophy in practice (if not in all its details or implications),pursuedthe same sort of revisionist enterprisethemselves, and educatedat least two generationsof Oxabout Germanthought. bridgestudentsto be sympathetically knowledgeable Alwaysa smalland embattledgroup,they were very much on the defensivein the Britain of the 1850s and '60s, and their self-professed Germanismoften a bar to within both the university and the Church.28 proved preferment With the eruption in the 1860s of new controversiessurrounding the of issuestraditionally cluster abbreviated as "Darwinism," as well as with the gradual, albeit grudging, acceptance of at least some of the arguments of the German biblical critics, hostility to German thought abated in the last quarter of the century. One aspect of this change in attitude was that Strauss, Schleiermacher, and Hegel came to be seen less as active threats than as historical figures. And in the years after 1870, the major reviews began to print a growing number of articles concerned with the historical context, theological influence, and intellectual biography of these thinkers - articles that themselves introduced many late-Victorian readers to Hegel. 29 Another consequence of this lessening of hostility was a division of scholarly labor among the ranks of
27 j. S. Mill to Alexander Letters 1863, in The Later Bain, 7 January Mill, 1849-1873, of JohnStuart

FrancisE. Mineka and Dwight N. Lindley,eds., in Collected Worksof JohnStuartMill, J. M. of TorontoPress,1963-), XV, 817; see Robson,gen. ed., 25 vols. to date (Toronto:University also Frederick DenisonMaurice,Whatis Revelation? (London: Macmillan,1859). 28See IeuanEllis,Seven Christ: A Study andReviews" E.J. Brill,1980);Mark Against of "Essays (Leiden: "TheOrigins of Essays andReviews: An Interpretation of Mark Pattison Francis, in the 1850s," HistoricalJournal 17 (1974), 797-811; Reardon, Religious Thought, pp. 216-249and321-359. 29 See, for Renan and 'Ecce Homo,' " Edinburgh example, [G. H. Curteis],"Strauss, Review124 (1866), 450-473;John Hunt, "German of Religion," Theology:Its Placein the History ContempoReview 18 rary (1871), 559-576;[G. H. Curteis],"Dr.Strauss' Review 138 Confession," Edinburgh C. E. as a Theologian," (1873), 536-599; Review Appleton,"Strauss 24 (1874), 234Contemporary A. M. "David Friedrich A Chapterin the Historyof ModemThought," Strauss: 253; Fairbair, Review 27 (1876), 950-977,28 (1876), 124-140 and263-281; T. Collyns Contemporary Simon,"Hegel andHis Connection with British Review 13 (1870), 47-79 and398-421. Thought," Contemporary VICTORIAN STUDIES

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the Britishadmirers of Germanthought;no longer compelled to defend German scholarshipacrossthe full front of its concerns, they were able to focus insteadon areasof individualinterest. The late nineteenth centurytherefore witnessed both the researchesof B. F. Westcott, J. B. Lightfoot, F. J. A. Hort, and Jowett in biblical criticismand the scholarshipof Pringle-Pattison, Caird in the speculative phiMcTaggart,and the brothersJohn and Edward losophyof religion.30To both these groupsHegel was a centralfigure- as an inspirationto their own work, an influence on that of their Germancontemporariesand predecessors,and an object of close study if not outright assent. Apart from the interest in German literatureand aesthetic theory, and also apartfromreligiouscontroversy,the studyof moder philosophywas the third and most importantsource through which Hegelian thought became known in nineteenth-century Britain. As we have seen, British acquaintancewith Hegel's philosophical worksand scholarlyreputationbegan even duringhis lifetime. In 1827 and 1828 the Scottish philosopherRobert of Metaphysicsin Fergusonmentioned Hegel in two articleson the "Progress of the "French Nineteenth and Century"for the ForGermany" Philosophers as an influential "absoReview. DescribingHegel contemporary eignQuarterly lute idealist"who endeavored"to prove the identity of mind and matter by reasoning,"Fergusondevoted the bulk of his essays to the work of the then much admired French philosopher Victor Cousin - himself an acolyte of Hegel, as Fergusonmade plain. 31 And in 1829 William Hamilton cited HeReview(as essaysfor the Edinburgh gel in one of his celebratedpropagandizing did Carlyle in an essay published there just weeks before Hegel's death in 1831). 32 Hamilton, then at the outset of his careerand fresh from a year of philosophicalstudy in Prussia,intended his articlesto reawakenthe study of philosophy in Britain- a study sunk in a dogmatic slumberinduced by the intimidating reputation of Hume, by a pridefulnative aversion to abstract thought, by a suspicion of any manner of German scholarship, and by the and "rationalism" with unbelief. Farfrom beidentificationof "speculation" Hamilton countered, such "perversion," ing an object of national pride, needed to be diminished, and British thinkers, "neglect," and "partiality" of such the major study figuresas Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hethrough
30The sheer was immense,but see, for example,Benjamin Jowett, The quantityof such scholarship
Epistlesof St. Paul to the Thessalonians,Galatians, and Romans, 2 vols. (1855; 2d ed. London: John Murray, 1859), I, xii and II, 580-585; and B. F. Westcott, An Introductionto the Study of the Gospels to the Philosophyof lution of Religion(Glasgow: J. MacLehose, 1893) and John Caird, An Introduction

of religion,see Edward Caird,TheEvo(London: Macmillan,1867), pp. x-xv. On the philosophy

(Glasgow: J. MacLehose,1880). Religion 31 [Robert Cousin'sPhilosophical in Germany: of Metaphysics Foreign Fragments," "Progress Ferguson], of the Nineteenth Century,"Foreign Review1 (1827), 367 and "FrenchPhilosophers Quarterly 3 (1828), 186-188. Review Quarterly 32 [WilliamHamilton], "M. Cousin'sCourseof Philosophy," Review 50 (1829), 207-208; Edinburgh Review 54 (1831), 382. Edinburgh [Thomas Carlyle],"Characteristics," AUTUMN 1988

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gel, shouldbecome both willing and able to reenterthe European philosophical community. 33

Hamilton'scrusadeto reinvigoratethe studyof philosophyin Britain - a campaignhe waged with indifferentsuccess throughoutthe 1830s and into the 1840s - was aided by the appearanceof two remarkable surveysof the historyof modem philosophicalthought. Morell'sAn Historical andCritical Viewof theSpeculative in theNineteenth Philosophy of Europe Century(1846) and Lewes'sA Biographical (1845-46) were the first such Historyof Philosophy to be in since William Enfield's surveys published English of Philosophy History 34 (1791). Both worksreceivedbroadcriticalacclaim,reacheda wide audience, and contributed mightilyto the promotionof Britishinterestin European phiwere boons to studies in Britain, They losophy. special Hegel offering substantial- if scarcelycomprehensiveor uncritical- accountsof a wide range of Hegel'sphilosophicalconcerns. Morell'sworkwas especiallyfine, devoting forty pages to a lucid and sweepingdescriptionof many of Hegel's arguments concerning religion, logic, history, and nature.35 The book was so popular, in fact, that a second, expandededition appearedin 1847. In common with textbook writerseverywhereand always,Morellsometimessacrificedsubtlety to compression,but his command of Germansourcesand knowledgeof the German philosophicalscene (he had studied in Bonn and atcontemporary tended Fichte's lectures in 1840) gave him an unmatched familiaritywith Germanconditions and made his footnotes a rich sourceof informationhitherto unknown in Britain. Although scarcelyuncritical- he objected to "the strangeness of the phraseology," "the dryness of the abstractions," "the of religion, and the uninviting manner of the writing,"the "disappearance" "denial"of freedom in Hegel's work- Morell was insistent that Hegel's apdoctrines be treated with intellectual parently "strange"and "paradoxical" II, 81-85 and 161-196). True to this purpose, Philosophy, respect (Speculative he presenteda courteousand carefuldescriptionthat would not be bettered in English for nearly a generation. No such sympathyand respect, however, markedLewes'saccount of indeed, a more strikingcontrastin tone and Hegel in his Biographical History; purpose to Morell's work can scarcely be imagined. Under the thrall of
33 [William Hamilton], "Recent Publications on Logical Science," Edinburgh Review57 (1833), 194-197. 34 The only exception was a translation of W. G. Tennemann's Grundrissder Geschichteder Philosophie (1832). It contained only a brief reference to Hegel as "a professor at Berlin whose system is one of Absolute Idealism" (W. G. Tennemann, A Manual of the History of Philosophy,Arthur Johnson, trans. [Oxford: D. A. Talboys, 1832], p. 452).

35J. D. Morell,An Historical andCritical Viewof theSpeculative in theNineteenth Philosophy of Europe

Century, 2 vols. (1846; 2d ed. London: John Johnstone, 1847), II, 161-204; see also his "Modem German Philosophy: Its Characteristics, Tendencies, and Results," in ManchesterPapers(Manchester: Dunhill and Palmer, 1856), pp. 97-112 and On the Philosophical Tendenciesof the Age (London: John Johnstone, 1848).

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Comtean positivism, Lewes had abandonedhis formeradmirationfor Hegel and devoted his twenty-five page discussion to a sustained polemic against the doctrinesof "a man more intrepid [than whom] in absurdityit would be impossibleto find." DescribingHegel's thought as full of "vulgarnotions," of notoriousfacts,"LewesdismissedHegel's doc"fictions,"and "perversions trines of logic as "insane,"his philosophyof natureas "deplorably frivolous," Lewes'sobjections were assertedrather and his metaphysicsas "perverse."36 than argued, and his preference for ridicule over analysis meant that the many readersof this extraordinarily popularbook - it would be reprinted in some twenty times the next half century - were introducedto a Hegel whose "fanciful" theoriesexisted largelyin Lewes'soverwroughtimagination. To Lewes'sdistress,his denunciationdid not succeed in scuttling British interest in Hegel, nor, to change the metaphor,did the popularityof his book run others from the field. Instead, in the 1850s and early '60s British awarenessof Hegel's philosophical writingsgrew steadily. The good fortune of Morell'sand Lewes'sworkspromptedimitatorsand translationsof popular continental surveys;Britishstudentsof philosophybegan to discussHegel in their own books and articles;and Hegel was mentioned in encyclopediaentries, novels, parliamentary inquiries,and satiricalplays.37Not surprisingly, these discussionscontinued to reflect the same basic division of opinion first of logic and metaarticulatedby Morell and Lewes. Robert Blakey, professor of the author and at monumental, if "quite physics Queen's College, Belfast, of Mind(1850), dismissedHegel's philosohopeless,"Historyof thePhilosophy phy as "a strikingexample of the puerile, the sublimeand the fantastic"and as "the primest piece of speculative trifling and absurdityin existence."38 So too did Mauricecondemn Hegel in his popularMoraland MentalPhilosophy (1862) as "the great subverter" of philosophy and as an apologist for "repression" and "system" in contemporary Prussia. 39
36 2 vols. (London:C. Knightand Co., of Philosophy, History GeorgeHenryLewes,A Biographical 1845-46), II, 216, 228, 226, 218, 223, and 208.
37 The most influential foreign surveys were Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus, HistoricalSurvey of Speculative Philosophyfrom Kant to Hegel, Alfred Tulk, trans. (London: Longman, Brown, and Green, 1854); Albert Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy,James Hutchison Stirling, trans. (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1867); Friedrich Uberweg, Systems of Logic and a History of LogicalDoctrines, Thomas M. Lindsay, trans. (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1871) and A History of Philosophyfrom Thales to the Present Time, George S. Morris, trans. (London: Hodder, Hegel's Doctrine (London: Longman, Brown, and Green, 1856). For an example of Hegel in fiction, see W. J. Coneybeare, Perversion:A Tale for the Times, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1856), I, 99; II, 82-119; and III, 132-135; for an appearance of Hegel in drama, see H. L. Mansel, "Phrontisterion, or, Oxford in the Nineteenth Century" (1852), rpt. in Letters, Lectures, and Reviews, Henry W. Chandler, ed. (London: John Murray, 1873), pp. 392-408. 38 Robert Blakey, History of the Philosophyof Mind, 4 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, and Green, 1850), IV, 149 and 153. The charge of hopelessness is Quinton's ("Absolute Idealism," p. 198).

to withSpecial andExperimental IntoSpeculative Science, Reference 1872);AugustoVera,An Inquiry

39Frederick 2 vols. (1862;rpt.London:MacmilandMetaphysical Moral DenisonMaurice, Philosophy, lan, 1872), II, 657-658. AUTUMN 1988

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Continental thinkers - such as Augusto Vera, H. M. Chalybaus, Albert Schwegler, and Friedrich Uberweg - tended to be far more generous to Hegel in their surveys of modem European philosophy, as did such British commentators as Mansel, Edward Dowden, Shadworth Hodgson, and J. F. Ferrier. 40 Dowden, for example, judged Hegel to be "the greatest thinker of our modem world," while Ferrier, Mansel, and Hodgson contented themselves with more modest praise of the power of Hegel's mind and the ambition of his enterprise. 41 Each also incorporated aspects of Hegel's thought into his own idiosyncratic metaphysical and logical doctrines. Indeed, Ferrier, professor of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, was especially indebted to Hegelian thought and did his best, in the 1850s and '60s, to propagate all manner of German philosophy: he defended Kant's and Hegel's views in his Institutes of Metaphysics (1854), wrote popularizing essays on Hegel, Schelling, and Kant for encyclopedias and major reviews, lectured on Hegel and Kant at St. Andrews, and recommended the study of German philosophy to his students and contemporaries. 42 The most important contribution to the popularization and understanding of Hegelian thought in mid-Victorian Britain, however, was the appearance in 1865 of Stirling's celebrated The Secret of Hegel. Stirling, a Scottish disciple of Carlyle whose interest in Hegel had been piqued by the mere reading of the latter's name in an early review article, was a combative philosophical polemicist, and his vigorous defense of the full range of Hegel's thought did much to advance British awareness of it. 43 Far from introducing Hegel to British audiences, however, Stirling's work stood as a culmination of two decades of everquickening interest; it did not so much create as encounter a receptive readership. The availability of an English-language introduction to the leading tenets of Hegelian thought naturally did much to prompt the expansion of British interest in philosophical idealism in the last quarter of the century. Its existence, however, does not account for the philosophical ascendancy which that thought rapidly gained. This remarkable paramountcy derived in part from the perceived sterility of indigenous British philosophical study - a sterility manifested most memorably in the interminable and unenlightening
40 See, for example, Schwegler, Handbook, pp. 391-427; Chalybaus, SpeculativePhilosophy,pp. 295363; Shadworth H. Hodgson, Time and Space: A Metaphysical Essay (London: Longman, 1865); H. L. Mansel, Metaphysics(Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1860). Dowden, 'True Conservatism What It Is," ContemporaryReview 12 (1869), 267.

41 Edward

42 See Bradley, "Hegel in Britain," p. 8. Ferrier'sarticles on Hegel and Schelling, which first appeared

in the ImperialDictionaryof Universal Biography(1857-63), are reprinted in E. L. Lushington, ed., Worksof the LateJames Frederick Ferrier,3 vols. (1875-78; 2d ed. Edinburgh:W. BlackPhilosophical wood and Sons, 1881-83), III, 545-568.

43 On

Stirling, see Amelia H. Stirling, James Hutchison Stirling:His Life and Work (London: T. F. Unwin, 1912) and Gerald D. Stormer, "Hegel and the Secret of James Hutchison Stirling," Idealistic Studies 9 (1979), 33-54. A shorter and more lucid English language introduction to Hegel's ideas appeared in 1883 - EdwardCaird's Hegel (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1883).

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Hamilton's Philosoquarrelincited by J. S. Mill'sAn Examination of SirWilliam Such lifeless seemed to thinkers to controversy phy (1865). many younger the the essential barrenness of entire epitomize empiricist position and encouragedseveral figures, most notably Bradleyand McTaggart,to foreswear that tradition;they were, that is, rathermore driven to idealismby dissatisfaction with empiricismthan attracted to it by its own distinctive charms. With the deaths of Hamilton (1856), Ferrier(1864), Mansel (1871), and Mill (1873), moreover, Britainwas without a dominant philosophicalfigure: it lackednot merelya thinker of the statureof Kant or Hegel, but even a single individualof the standingof RudolphHermannL6tze, FriedrichPaulsen, or Christoph Sigwart. Under such circumstancesit is scarcelysurprising that many members of the growing British philosophical community- itself nurturedso solicitously by Hamilton, Mansel, Ferrier,Jowett, and others - began to look to the Continent for sourcesof nourishment,a habit alreadyinstilled in them by these earlyenthusiastsof Germanthought. In part, the attractionof idealism derivedas well fromthe hope sharedby a numberof youngBritishphilosophers that idealistthought might in some mannerprovideeither a doctrineof religiousconsolationor an ethic of socialduty. By offeringits own brandof secular and spirituality as well as its unique mechanismof intellectranscendentalism tual and historicalevolution, Hegelianthought provedespeciallyappealingto many British students schooled in Darwiniancontroversiesand preparedto forgivethe excesses of Straussiantheology and to accept the evidences of bib- irony in this lical criticism.44 There was a considerable- if unrecognized late-Victorianappeal to German thought as a source of spiritualsustenance, but it remainsundeniable that what can only be termed a religiousor metaphysical impulsedrove many to steep themselves in idealist thought. "I took to philosophy," Russell for one recalled, "to find some satisfactionfor religious impulses."Similarly, Green describedhis thought as "the reasonedintellectual expressionof the effort to get to God."45 Forall these reasons,then, Germanidealismgenerally- and Hegelianism specifically - enjoyed a remarkablephilosophical supremacyin the last three decades of the century. Hegel's majorwritingswere translatedinto to sympathetic exegesis; Englishat long last and his leadingdoctrinessubjected his philosophicaldevelopmentand intellectualinfluencereceiveddetailed attention in essayspublishedin the majorreviews;and his philosophicalsystem served as the subjectof lecture coursesand degreeexaminationsat both Ox44 See William Wallace, Prolegomena to the Studyof Hegel'sPhilosophy (Oxford:ClarendonPress, SwanSonnenschein,1893). andHegel(London: 1874), pp. 61-62;see also D. G. Ritchie, Darwin 45 BertrandRussell, Portraits and OtherEssays(London:GeorgeAllen and Unwin, fromMemory andLetters Memoir (London: John 1956), p. 19; Green is quotedin S. Paget,ed., H. S. Holland: 1921), pp. 65-66. Murray, AUTUMN 1988

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46 So esteemed did Hegel become that in 1884 he reford and Cambridge. ceived that highest of tributesto Victorian intellectual respectability: a bust of his likeness was unveiled in the Balliol College library(see Life of Jowett, II, 249). To be sure, such enthusiasmhad its limits. Britainfailed to produce even a single example of that rare and fantastical creature, the "orthodox Hegelian"; there were, rather, nearly as many permutations of idealist thought in the late Victorianperiodas there were idealists,and such thinkers as McTaggart,Green, Bradley,and Bosanquetrepresentedno organizedor self-conscious idealist "school." For all their idiosyncrasy,however, they were nonetheless influenced by Hegelian and Kantian thought to a degree never matchedbeforeor since in the historyof philosophicalstudyin Britain, and for a time they cumulativelysucceededin redirectingthe currentof British philosophy out of its traditionalempiricistcourse. Hegel'swritingson the philosophyof historymarkedthe fourthsource throughwhich his ideas became known in Britain. Yet again, this introduction began in the 1830s and continued throughoutthe nineteenth century, and yet again it was but an aspect of the largerdiffusionand appreciationof Germanhistoricalscholarshipin VictorianBritain.47 Much of Britishawareness of Hegel'sphilosophyof historycame as a productof the ever-deepening of his connection with Germanbiblical criticism. There was, understanding nonetheless, a distinct strainof nontheological interestin Hegel'sphilosophy of history- one that began in the late 1830s and persistedthroughoutthe remainderof the century. In an essaypublishedin the October 1839 Foreign Review,for example, EdmundWilliams mentioned Hegel as one of Quarterly the most "eminent"of the many German philosophersof history in succession to Johann Gottfried Herder, while in the British and Foreign Reviewof G. S. Venables discussed April 1840 Hegel's influence on the distinguished Roman historian BartholdNiebuhr. And in an article on the "State of Historical Science in France"for the British andForeign Review of October 1843, Lewes paused to denounce Hegel's "ingenioustheorizing"on the nature of historical change. 48 Far greater detail on Hegel's historical doctrines was
46On the studyof Kantianand Hegelianthoughtat Oxford,see V. R. Mehta,"TheOriginsof English Idealism in Relationto Oxford," 13 (1975), 177-187;G. R. Journal of theHistory of Philosophy G. Mure,"Oxford and Philosophy," 12 (1937) 291-301. There is no comparable Philosophy study for Cambridge. 47See A. DwightCuller, TheVictorian Mirror (New Haven:YaleUniversityPress,1985); of History KlausDockhor, Der Deutsche in England Historismus and Ruprecht, (Gottingen:Vandenhoeck Ideaof History(Cambridge: 1950); Duncan Forbes,The Liberal Anglican Cambridge University Press,1952);Rosemary Jann, TheArt andScience Ohio State Uniof Victorian (Columbus: History versityPress,1985). 48 [Edmund S. Williams], "German Influence and Progress of Uncultivated NaUpon the Civilization Review 24 (1839), 74; [G. S. Venables],"Niebuhr's tions,"Foreign Lifeand Opinions," Quarterly British and Foreign Review10 (1840), 479; [G. H. Lewes],"The State of HistoricalScience in British and Foreign Review16 (1843), 83-84. Another informed France," earlyarticlewas U. M. Historical andForeign Review 7 (1838), 167-192. Kemble],"English Society,"British VICTORIAN STUDIES

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contained in both Lewes'sand Morell'ssurveys;indeed, Morell gave prideof place to Hegel's historical doctrines in his treatmentof the latter'sthought. JudgingHegel's philosophy of history to be "the crowning glory"of his system, Morell urgedBritishreadersto acquaintthemselves with this most "essential," "accessible,"and "brilliant"aspect of Hegel's writings (Speculative II, 188). Philosophy, By mid-centurythe substantialBritish concern with nearly all forms of Germanhistoricaltheory and practicewas intensifying,and the processof rejection, modification, and imitation that markedthe evolving responseof the British historiographical community to that scholarship was well advanced. In comparisonwith the influence of such men as Niebuhr, Leopold von Ranke, ChristianBunsen, and J. A. W. Neander, Hegel's impacton the writing of history in Victorian Britainwas slight, and his writingson and of historywere not widely readby professionalhistorians.49 Britishappreciation of those writingsdid, however, gain a substantial impetuswith the translation, iiberdie Philosophie der in 1857, of Hegel'sposthumously publishedVorlesungen who a by John Sibree, young Independentclergyman Prepared Weltgeschichte. had studiedfor a year in Halle and was an intimatefriendof Lewesand Eliot, this translationwas rightly judged by Sibree to constitute "a popular introduction to Hegel's system,"and served as such for the remainderof the century.50 For British historiansand nonhistoriansalike who preferredto read Hegel himself ratherthan to digest the work of a commentator,this became the standardintroduction. The fifth, least influential source through which Hegelian thought entered Britain was the study of contemporaryPrussian- and after 1871, and German- politics. Attentive readersof the scoresof articleson Prussian German affairs in the major reviews throughout the century would have learned at least the bare outline of Hegel's political philosophy and been given some notion of his standingas an apologistfor the Prussianstate. E. H. Review Michaelowitztold his readersin the October 1839 Foreign Quarterly in the "national, social, and famthat Hegel'sphilosophyhad been "realized" andForeign Review in the British critic while an of life Prussia," anonymous ily for October 1838 assertedthat the ministersof the Prussianking were "filled with Hegelian casuistry."5' Similarly,Blackieand RichardMonckton Milnes,
49 The only detailed study of Hegel's historical doctrines appeared in Robert Flint, The Philosophyof History in France and Germany (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1874), pp. 496-541. See also F. H. Bradley, The Presuppositions of Critical History (Oxford: J. Parker and Co., 1874); Frederic Harrison, "Mr. Goldwin Smith, The Study of History," WestminsterReview 76 (1861), 293-334; and W. S. Lilly, "The New Spirit in History," Nineteenth Century 38 (1895), 619-633. 50 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophyof History, John Sibree, trans. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1857), p. iii. 51 [E. H. Michaelowitz], "The Philosophy of Kant," ForeignQuarterlyReview 24 (1839). 90; "Catholicism in Prussia: Religious Persecution in Germany," Britishand ForeignReview 7 (1838), 437.

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Reviewand Edinburgh Review,noted writing respectivelyin the Westminster and the role he playedin sanctioningthe represHegel'spoliticalconservatism
sive Prussian regime of the 1840s. 52 Curiously, given this early and negative treatment, Hegel's political thought prompted the first substantial English edition of any of his works, Thomas Collett Sandars's abstract of the Grundlinien der Philosophiedes Rechts in the Oxford Essays for 1855 (although Sandars's work had the form of an extended essay, it was in fact a mixture of summary and translation). 53 Despite Sandars's admiring treatment of Hegel's views, this essay seems not to have reached a wide or sympathetic audience, and it was only rediscovered in the last quarter of the century by those thinkers, led by Green, who found in Kantian and Hegelian idealism a theoretical basis for a new Liberalism. 54 Nor did Sandars's careful analysis of Hegel's obscure and occasionally contradictory political doctrines succeed in lessening the hostility which led later commentators such as William Clarke to observe that nineteenth-century Prussian statesmen - in this case Bismarck - simply "carriedout the general ideas of one of the greatest philosophers of the counterRevolution - Hegel." 55 In the mid-Victorian years, however, both interest in and knowledge of Hegelian political theory was scant. Surveys of Hegel's philosophy made virtually no mention of his political thought, and only one article specifically on Hegel's political views appeared in a major British review in the second half of the nineteenth century. 56 Given Hegel's identification with the Prussian state, an ironic aspect of his relations with the contemporary German political world that became increasingly well known was his connection with Marxism. As early as the 1840s - but beginning in earnest in the 1870s Hegel's role as the philosophical progenitor of that new strain of European socialism received increasing attention in the major reviews and in studies of Marxism and German politics. The economist John Rae, for example, contributed an excellent essay, "The Socialism of Karl Marx and the Young
52[Richard on the PoliticalStateof Germany," 89 Review MoncktonMilnes],"Reflections Edinburgh Review and the Prussian Westminster 37 (1842), 86. (1849), 538;U. S. Blackie],"Prussia System," "ThePoliticalOpinionsof the Germans," British in U. M. Kemble], and Similar judgments appear and Its Parliament," Review10 (1840), 25-49; [W. E. Aytoun],"A Glimpseat Germany Foreign and Re"Austria Blackwood's 64 (1848), 515-542;[Travers Twiss], Germany," Quarterly Magazine view84 (1848), 99-119. 53T. C. Sandars, of Right,"Oxford contributed byMembers Essays, "Hegel's Philosophy of theUniverandSons, 1855-58),I, 213-250.Also important wereGeorgeS. sity,4 vols. (London: J. W. Parker andof History G. BellandSons, 1882)andG. W. F. Morris, (London: Hegel's of theState Philosophy S. W. Dyde, trans.(London: G. Bell and Sons, 1896). Hegel, Hegel's of Right, Philosophy 54In additionto the workscited in n. 3, see StefanCollini, Liberalism andSociology: L. T. Hobhouse andPolitical in England 1880-1914(Cambridge: Press,1979);A. J. University Argument Cambridge M. Milne, The SocialPhilosophy Idealism (London:GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1962); of English Socialism Foundations MA: Harvard AdamB. Ulam, Philosophical (Cambridge, University of English Press,1951). 55WilliamClarke,"Bismarck," Review 75 (1899), 1. Contemporary 56 S. Henderson, His Viewson EnglishPolitics,"Fortnightly Review, n.s., 8 J. "Hegelas a Politician: (1870), 262-276. VICTORIAN STUDIES

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Reviewfor October 1881, while both Ernest Hegelians,"to the Contemporary Belfort Bax (himself a leading BritishMarxist)and Russell discussedthe influence of Hegel's doctrines in their studies of Marxistthought and German politics, respectively.57 In the eyes of many well-informedlate Victorians, Hegel thus stood condemned for an incomprehensible and contradictory militarismand as logician for Marxianrevolucrime:as apologistfor Prussian tionism. That Hegel's doctrines had in fact been adopted by both left and right in Germanyseemed to many Victoriansto be evidence only of his fundamental unreliabilityand unsuitability.

III
I found by actual experience of Hegel that conversancywith him tends to depraveone's intellect. J. S. Mill It seems to me that on every subject he is equally fanciful and shallow. William Whewell He is, to say the least, one of the most impudentof all literaryquacks. Connop Thirlwall In short, Hegel is in many things little better than an ass. Leslie Stephen58

For all the intellectual respectabilityit gained in Britain after 1870, Hegelian thought had been an object of derisionfor many of the most influential thinkersof the precedinghalf century. While generalculturalbarriers had undoubtedlyhelped to arrestthe diffusionof Hegelian thought in Britain, its slow progresshad also resulted from the objections of its Victorian critics. These objections ieflected many of the Victorians'most cherishedassumptions about philosophical truth, intellectual argument, and scholarly standards,and had to be combattedby Hegel's late-Victorian admirers. Complaint over Hegel's style was easily the most common and impatient responseof his early- and mid-Victoriancritics, and like many of Hegel's modem readersthey endorsedDeQuincey'sdescriptionof him as "that
57JohnRae, "TheSocialism Review 40 (1881), of KarlMarxandthe Young Contemporary Hegelians," (London:G. Bell and Sons, 585-607;Erest BelfortBax, A Handbook of Philosophy of theHistory (London:Longman,Green, 1885), pp. 310-351; BertrandRussell, GermanSocialDemocracy 11 Review NorthBritish of earlierarticlesare "German Socialism," 1896), pp. 1-40. Two examples Economiques," (1849), 406-435 and [WilliamHenrySmith], "Mr. Proudhon- Contradictions 65 (1849), 304-313. Blackwood's Magazine 58 S. Miltto AlexanderBain, 4 November1867, in Later Collected Works, XVI, 1324;WilLetters, J. D.D. Master William Whewell, liamWhewellto J. C. Hare,26 October1849, in IsaacTodhunter, 2 vols. (London:Macmillan,1876), II, 353; Connop Thirlwallto College,Cambridge, of Trinity William and Theological, WilliamWhewell, 31 October 1849, in Letters p. 195; Frederic Literary (London:Duckworth,1906), p. 172. Maitland,ed., TheLifeandLetters of LeslieStephen AUTUMN 1988

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59To be sure, Hegel was hardlyunique in greatmasterof the impenetrable." being accusedof impenetrability.Britishcritics routinelydenounced the obscurityof all formsof Germanscholarship;indeed, obscuritycame to be seen as a national intellectual traitof the Germansjust as "commonsense"and lucidity came to be held as innate - and superior- British characteristics. But even within this generalpatternof abuse, Hegel was deemed to be a special case, and virtuallyevery commentatorsingled out his "despicable" style for and "perverse" ridicule and denunciation vocabulary particular (Blakey, of Mind, IV, 150; Lewes, Biographical History,II, 226). Coleridge, Philosophy for example, found even his own uncommontolerancefor metaphysicalargument and German prose strained by close reading of the Wissenschaft der rather the in he abandoned task indeed, Logik; quickly despair,scribblingin the marginof the final cut page, "bewilderment throughoutfromconfusionof found terms."60 Similarly,Ferrier Hegel'swritingsto be "almostthroughout, a mountain of adamant," while Rogers accused Hegel of employing "the darkestlanguageever used by civilized man" (Ferrier,Philosophical Works,I, and "Reason And another 43; Rogers, Faith,"p. 178). Blackie, usuallyindulof German in reader concluded a gent philosophicalprose, gloriouslymuddled metaphor that "to wade through Hegel . . . is merely to grope and grabble,and to gnaw at the root of one's own growthperversely,to ply busily the treadmillof nothing and to dig a man'sown grave"("Traitsand Tendencies," p. 155). To many Victoriancritics schooled in the empiricistdoctrines and elegant style of David Hume, Hegel's writingsseemed simplynot worth the effort and his torturedprose a true mirrorof his unfathomablethought. The second, and perhaps most damning, criticism directed at Hegelian thought related to its allegedly "atheistical"nature. As has been seen, the connection between Hegelianismand biblical criticismwon for the formeran early and enduringnotoriety as nihilistic, pantheistic, and mystical. Typical were Adam Sedgwick'scondemnationof the "Hegelianpantheism ... which idolizes its own conceptions and turs man into a God" and Blakey'sdenunciationof Hegel's "wildand outrageoustheological doctrines" as "so entirely denudedof every particleof scriptural authorityand common sense, that we stand aghast in amazementat the audacityand folly which gave utteranceto them."61 Indeed, even such otherwisetolerant thinkersas
59Quotedin Sigmund K. Proctor, Thomas of (Ann Arbor: DeQuincey's Theory of Literature University MichiganPress,1943), p. 38. 60On see A. D. Snyder,Coleridge on Logic andLearning Coleridge's marginalia, (New Haven:Yale UniversityPress,1929), pp. 162-165. 61 Adam on theStudies Sedgwick,A Discourse (1833; 5th ed. London: of theUniversity J. W. Parker, 1850), p. ccccvi;Blakey,Philosophy Isisand of Mind,IV, 158;see alsoJohnStuartStuart-Glennie, Osiris(London: Green, 1878), pp. 18-25andThomasE. Webb,TheVeilof Isis:A Series Longman, on Idealism (Dublin:Hodges,Figgis,1885), pp. 298-303. of Essays VICTORIAN STUDIES

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Jowett, Morell, Mansel, and J. C. Hare offeredsimilarstricturesconcerning at least the implications, if not the actual arguments,of Hegel's doctrines.62 To combat the charge of atheism, Hegel's late-century admirers, many of whom had first been attractedto idealist thought by what they beand "spiritual" lieved to be its "transcendental" aspects, articulateda rangeof and the most certainlythe most influentialwas a powerful responses.Perhaps called the for what be "secularization" of philosophical, and espemight plea cially metaphysical, inquiry. Argued most ably by Bradley, Shadworth Hodgson, and W. L. Courtney, this line of reasoningattemptedto discredit the traditionalview of metaphysicsas a branch of theology. Instead, these thinkers contended that metaphysical speculation and theological apologetics were two distinct, albeit often closely related, intellectual enterprises, each with its own scholarlylegitimacyand social role. 63A second argument, articulatedby Stirling, McTaggart,the Cairds, and William Graham, aimed at demonstratingthat Hegelian thought, although admittedly not "orthodox" in any specific sectariansense, was itself deeply religiousand arguably even Christian in impulseand implication. Writersas diverse as Morell and Russellassertedthe equivalence of God and the Absolute, and Stirling went so far as to claim that "Hegel'ssystem aims at a complete reconciliation between the highest claims of Philosophyand the deepest truths of Christianity."64 A more modest and common variant of this argument, however, was

an assertionthat the very processof metaphysical,logical, and epistemological inquiry encouraged by Hegel and others served to clarify theological issuesand to clear awaytangles of confusion and contradiction.Throughexamining the limits of human thought and logic, and analyzingsuch vexed concepts as God, freedom, and immortality, philosophers could construct theological edifices of unprecedented intellectual beauty, logical strength, and scholarlydurability. A third line of argument against Hegelianism urged that Absolute Idealism- in common with all formsof idealist thought - was "repugnant to the ordinary conclusions of mankind" (Lewes, Biographical History, II, to the this Most "metaphysicallunacy"of idealcommonly objection 203). mannerthat SamuelJohnson had ism was made in the same rough-and-ready employed in "refuting"Bishop Berkeley (Webb, Veil of Isis, p. 302). Even
62

of a QuietLife,3 vols. (1872-76; 13th ed. LonSee, for example,Augustus J. C. Hare, Memorials don: Daldy,Isbister,1876), I, 191-196and Morell,Historical View, II, 186-196. 63 F. H. Bradley, OxfordUniversityPress, 1893);W. L. Courtney, and Reality (Oxford: Appearance Studiesin Philosophy (London:Rivingtons, 1882); ShadworthHodgson, "The Futureof Meta2 vols. (London: 20 (1872), 819-838, The Philosophy Review of Reflection, Contemporary physics," Green, 1878), and TimeandSpace. Longman, 64 Hutchison of Hegel(1865; 2d ed. London:Simpkin,Marshall,1898), p. Ixi; Stirling,TheSecret J. in PaulArRussell,"MyMentalDevelopment," see also Morell,Historical View,II, 167;Bertrand Russell(Chicago:Northwestern UniversityPress, thur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Bertrand 1944), pp. 10-11. AUTUMN 1988

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such sophisticated thinkers as Mansel and Hamilton did little more than assertthe supposedwisdom of elementaryempiricism.Mansel, for example, appealedto "John Bull's common sense" to endorse "two propositions. . . sufficiently self-evident to need no proof and to admit of no refutation," namely "that the things which I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do really exist; and, secondly, that I, who see and touch them, really exist also" (Letters,Lectures,and Reviews, p. 191). Hamilton, writing in 1852, abusednot merelyHegel but all post-Kantianthinkerswho attempted"to fix the Absolute as a positive of knowledge."In fact, he asserted,"out of Laputa or the Empireit would be idle to enter into an articulaterefutationof a theory, which founds philosophy on the annihilation of consciousness."65Indeed, virtuallyevery early- or mid-Victoriancommentatoron Hegel would have seconded Blakey'soverwroughtjudgment that Hegelian idealism was "discreditable to the human understanding" and a disgraceto "any community where learningand talents are cultivated"(Philosophy of Mind, IV, 153). For his part, Mansel suggestedthat far from succumbingto the debilitating fantasiesof Kant, Hegel, and Fichte, "the risinggenerationof philosophers" in Germanyshould join their Britishcontemporaries in devoting their energies to the robustrealitiesof Locke, Hume, and Reid; he furtheradmonished his "metaphysical kinsmen on the other side of the German Ocean" to "try Dualism"(Letters,Lectures,and Reviews,p. 211). The fourth majorline of assaultagainst Hegelianismwas directed at the workingsof Hegel's "logical method"- at the workings,that is, of the dialectic. Once again, even the most acute Victorianphilosopherscontented themselves with simple statements of disbelief and dismissal.J. S. Mill observedthat Hegel's theory of contradiction"hasfairlyearnedhim the honour which will probably be awardedto him by posterity,of having logicallyextinad absurdissmum" guishedtranscendentalmetaphysicsby a seriesof reductiones (quoted in Bradley,"Hegel in Britain,"p. 10). Similarly, the distinguished logicianJoseph Devey accusedHegel of having tom up "the old logic by the roots"and of "introducing as the criterionof truththe verytenet that [he] upheld as the test of falsity."Devey impatientlyconcluded, "it is idle to attempt to refutea man who assumesthe liveryof falsehoodas the badgeof truth, and who assertsthat, when you have involved him in a contradiction, you have For his part, Henry Sidgwick only establishedthe truth of his principles."66 confessed that Hegel's dialectical "method seems to be a mistake, and therefore the systema ruin."Morespecifically,he challengedHegel'sBritishdisci65 William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy and Literature (1852; rpt. New York:Harperand Brothers,1855), pp. 25 and 28. 66JosephDevey, Logic: H. G. Bohn, 1854), p. 24. Fora similar or, TheScience (London: of Reference WilliamBlackwood,1885), pp. 37-41 complaint,see John Veitch, Institutes of Logic(Edinburgh: and 275-287. VICTORIAN STUDIES

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pies to explain "how they managedto distinguishthe contradictionswhich they took to be evidence of errorfrom those which they regardedas intimations of higher truth."67 To Hamilton matterswere equally simple:
- on a mistakein logic, and Hegel'swhole philosophyis, indeed, foundedon two errors; on a violation of logic. In his dreamof discoveringthe law of ExcludedMiddle (between two Contradictories),he inconceivably mistakesContrariesfor Contradictories;and in positing pure or absolute existence as a mental datum, immediate, intuitive, and above proof... he not only mistakesthe fact, but violates the logical law which prohibitsus to assumethe principleswhich it behoves us to prove. On these two fundamentalerrorsrests Hegel'sdialectic;and Hegel'sdialectic is the ladderby which he attemptsto scale the Absolute. The peculiardoctrine ... is only a sophismof relative self-love, victoriousover the absolute love of truth. (Discussions,p. 31).

And, to offerbut two final examples, LewespraisedHegel's "logicalaudacity" but observedderisively that it was only "with difficulty"that anyone could believe "that any sane man should have put [his logical principles]forth," while Mansel remarkedthat Hegel's dialectic was "constantlyasserted, but never proved"(Lewes, Biographical History,II, 206, 218; Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 312). The fifth and final clusterof criticismsof Hegelian thought focusedon the alleged deficiencies of Hegel'sphilosophyof natureand of his writingson scientific matters.Although such objections were rare, they were articulated most forcefullyand influentiallyby two of the greatestfiguresof Victorian science - Whewell and Sedgwick. The "omniscient" Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge,and a keen student of Kantianphilosophy, published a witheringattack on Hegel's philosophyof nature in the Transactions of the CambridgePhilosophicalSociety in May 1849. 68 Directing his attention to several lengthy quotationsfrom Hegel's discussionof Newtonian and (1817), Whewell ofKeplerianthought in the second partof the Encyklopiidie fered a point-by-point refutationof Hegel's controversialclaims concerning Kepler'sscientific primacy. DescribingHegel's doctrines as "unmechanical" scientific errors,he judgedthat their author and as repletewith "elementary" could only be a "very ignorant and foolish person"(p. 508). The next year Sedgwick presented a blistering critique essentially derived from Whewell. Not only were Hegel's general epistemologicaland logical doctrines destructive of the "logicalfoundationof all materialscientific knowledge,"Sedgwick proclaimed, but his specific assertionsconcerning both the nature and the primacyof Kepler'sdoctrines were "one mass of ignorant blundering."Indeed, Hegel's writings demonstratedplainly that he was "ignorant"of both
67

A Memoir (London:MacQuotedin ArthurSidgwickand EleanorM. Sidgwick,HenrySidgwick: millan, 1906), pp. 238 and 586. 68This On thePhilosophy in Whewell's (London: J. W. Parker,1860), of Discovery essaywasreprinted of severalpagesfromthe versiona translation to this reprinted pp. 504-513. Whewellappended Encyklopddie. AUTUMN 1988

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"the first elements of exact science" and "the first elements of mechanical philosophy."Hegel's philosophyof nature, Sedgwickangrilyconcluded, was therefore "one unmixed, unredeemed mass of almost incredible ignorance and blundering"unworthyof seriousstudy (Discourse,pp. cclxvii-cclxviii). Although high points in invective, these were not the only censures of Hegel's scientific ideas to appearbetween 1830 and 1875. J. S. Mill condemnedHegel in passingas one who believed, quite preposterously, that "the laws even of physical nature were deduced by ratiocinationfrom subjective deliverancesof the mind," while Morell and Lewes castigatedHegel's doctrines as, respectively, "far-fetched" and "deplorably frivolous."69Even in the years after 1870, by way of a final example, Bax was forced to concede that Hegel'swritingson the workingsof biologicalevolution were "an unfortunate blunder"(Handbook of Philosophy, p. 327). Interestingly,this was not an aspect of Hegel's thought that his late-Victorianadmirersrushed to defend; there were, indeed, no works on Hegel's scientific ideas published in nineteenth-centuryBritain,and it wasnot until 1970 that an Englishtranslation of the Philosophy 70 of Nature appeared. "I suppose Hegelianism is rife in Edinburghas it is in Oxford and Cambridge," despairedSpencer to David Massonthe day afterhis similarlament to Bain. "This is one of these inevitable rhythmswhich pervadeopinion, philosophicaland other, in common with other things at large. But our Hegelianism, or German Idealismin England, is really the last refugeof the so-called Orthodox. As I have somewheresaid, what could be a better de71As has fence for incredibledogmasthan behind unthinkablepropositions." been seen, Spencer was not the only opponent of Hegelianismto appeal to the workingsof philosophicalfashion and to identify a religiousimpulsebehind the turn of many late Victorians to idealism. Such facile observations, however, hardly tell the full story. The introductionand critical reception of Hegelian thought in nineteenth-centuryBritainwas a prolongedand complicatedprocess, one which must be understoodboth as an aspect of collective culturalchange and as a matterof individualintellectualbiography.Most striking,perhaps,is the fact that virtuallyevery early-and mid-Victorianstudent of Germanthought was a Whig or Liberal in political allegiance and a reformer in community,
69John Stuart in Collected Mill, An Examination of SirWiliamHamilton's Works, IX, 486; Philosophy, Morell,Historical View,II, 181;Lewes,Biographical II, 223. History, 70G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel'sPhilosophy of Nature,A. V. Miller, trans. (Oxford:ClarendonPress, that "oneof the causesof Hegel'sunpopu1970). As earlyas 1852, in fact, JaneSinnett observed science"("Contemporary of Literature larityis the position in which he standsto experimental Westminster Review 57 Germany," [1852], 173-174). 71Herbert Spencerto DavidMasson,26 April 1902, in LifeandLetters, II, 202. VICTORIAN STUDIES

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Church, and universityaffairs.FromColeridgeto Hare to Lewes to Eliot to Jowett to Green, those Britishmen and women who took the extraordinary on behalfof Germanliterature, step to learnGermanand who then proselytized and classical were self-conscious crithistory,philosophy,theology, scholarship ics of at least some aspectsof Victoriancultural"orthodoxy." Alienated by the narrowcurriculum of the ancient universitiesand the conservativehierarchy of the Church, repelled by the ariditiesof Benthamite utilitarianism,Ricardian economics, Paleyan rationalism, and Eldonian Toryism, they almost uniformlytured to German thought in their searchfor alternatives. Hegelianism both challenged and helped to transform the nature and assumptions of Victorian intellectual life in matters rangingfrom aesthetics to political theory and from metaphysicsto theology. Despite the strident opposition of its critics, Hegelianismflourishedin nineteenth-centuryBritainand in so doing helped to expand the horizonsof Victorian culture. University of Georgia

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