Social Science History Association

Social Theory and National Culture: The Case of British and American Absolute Idealism, 18601900 Author(s): David Watson Source: Social Science History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp. 251-274 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1170902 . Accessed: 20/01/2011 04:08
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Social Theory and National Culture

The Case of British and American Absolute Idealism, 1860-1900

DAVID WATSON
Crewe and Alsager CollegeCheshire, England

In this essay, taking as a case study the comparative history of the two groups that gave absolute idealism a leading edge in late nineteenth-century intellectual debate in the United States and Great Britain, I attempt to make a contribution to the recent trend toward the use of sophisticated or "difficult" ideas in comparative analysis (see Moore, 1979). My intentions are twofold: (1) to assist in the clarification of how "social theory" is developed, and (2) to provide an outline of how such comparative cultural analysis can be achieved. After a preliminary discussion of the concept of "social theory" and the component parts into which it can be separated, I proceed to identify the two groups in question, locate their philosophical schemes in the development of contemporary thought, and finally, attempt to demonstrate the value of the approach in an analysis of one aspect of their specifically social and political theories.

Author's Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the Ninth World Congress of Sociology in Uppsala, Sweden, in August 1978. Part of the research on which it is based was supported by grants from the Research Committee of Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education, whose assistance I gratefullj) acknowledge.

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I. As a definition, 1 assume the field of "social theory" encompasses any analytical scheme for interpreting the network of social relations in which the agent takes part, including the possibility of extrasocietal (perhaps divine) motivation, and the potential for making prescriptions to change that network. Obviously, every reflective social agent (that is, every participant who interprets his actions within some organised framework, and recognizes personal motive beyond the simplest relation of stimulus-response) has a social theory of sorts. However, certain more "professional" theorists will aim for a higher level of sophistication, inclusiveness, and explanatory power. In proposing a social theory they will make statements with a broad range of analytically separable meanings. To take a crude example: an expressed belief in Christian theism will suggest, on one level, not only a normative commitment to a set of universal values, but also adherence to certain beliefs about human nature and the origin of knowledge. On another level, given understanding of the social context, it may further imply a preferred form of social organization and motivate specific social criticism or constructive policy. In other words, the sophisticated theorist will inevitably assert and attempt to justify a number of different claims. I contend that there will be five such claims or component parts in a sophisticated social theory. A theory need not include all of these components, but, taken together, they will provide categories for all possible types of claims. They are:
(1) Normative claims about the good society, including visions of the ideal political, social, economic, cultural, and diplomatic (international) systems. These normative claims establish abstract values as guides to the construction of an ideal society and motivate critical evaluation of the existing state of society. (2) Empirical claims about the present state of society; that is, theories about the actual nature of contemporary or historical society, including the perceived operative political, social, economic, cultural, and diplomatic systems. These theories can be accepted,

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defended, criticized, or deplored. Essentially they are perceptions of how the real world is, and how it functions. (3) Claims about human nature, including perceptions of (a) human drives (basic, biologically determined, instinctual forces), and (b) human capacities (moral, religious, intellectual, aesthetic, economic, and so on) whether individual or collective, rational or irrational, creative or reflexive, free or determined. (4) Policy claims, or theories which outline what can and should be done to shift from the empiricallyperceivedpresent to the normative future (if such a shift is possible). These theories can be categorized according to their intended audience, the intended agents of policy execution, their prescribedmethods, the intended scope and effect of policy execution, and the perception and calculation of unintended effects of policy. (5) Epistemological claims, which explain the origin and nature of all such knowledge. They include claims about the content, location, potential or actual comprehensiveness of knowledge (for example, seeing genuine knowledge as deriving from "reason" or the "senses"),and the relationship of knowledge to true belief (as identical, compatible, or in opposition). This broad definition of epistemology thus subsumes such categories as metaphysics and cosmology, and such issues as the physical structure of the universe, the extent of "spiritual"participation in the processes of the natural world, the characteristics of time, and overarching views of the development of human society (as progressive, regressive, cyclical, or unchanging). At the highest levels of "professional" philosophy, the epistemological categories have generally set the terms for intellectual debate. Questions about the sources and content of knowledge, together with considerations of its actual or potential comprehensiveness and the relationship of knowledge to belief, have proved to be the pivotal categories for determining the character of general analysis of social development and the prescription for correct action. For social theorists operating at this level, the legitimacy of their total theory (of history, of institutions, and of ethical conduct) will depend on answers to basic questions about the nature of reality and our perceptions of it.

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In this article I take two groups and attempt to follow a pair of philosophical schemes, both based on a sophisticated idealist epistemology, through to their components of social and political prescription. The groups are the St. Louis Hegelians, around William Torrey Harris (1835-1909), the St. Louis School Superintendent and Federal Commissioner of Education, and the Oxford Idealists, who, following Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882), created the so-called "Anglo-Hegelianism" that dominated the philosophy teaching and the moral atmosphere of Oxford University until well into the twentieth century. The context within which both sets of theory are formulated is the late nineteenth-century debate over the relative claims of religion and science. In their reaction to the apparently antihistoricist and narrowly empiricist developments of contemporary science, as well as to the naive materialism of several of the popular adjustments to the crisis that Darwinism prompted for a fixed world-view, Harris and Green shared a common, idealist concern for the demonstration that reality and meaning were essentially spiritual and transcendent. For both, the key to this demonstration was a critical reading of idealist philosophy, from Plato to Kant and Hegel. For both, the enemies were the empiricism of Locke, Hume, the Scottish school of realism, and Mill, as well as the evolutionary materialism of Herbert Spencer and G. H. Lewes that enjoyed such a vogue in mid-nineteenth-century Britain and America. There was also much that they did not share; not only in epistemological nuance (Green's philosophical apparatus, for example, was more complex and subtle than that of Harris or his immediate associates), but also in their outlines of those institutional forms that would best preserve and cultivate permanent spiritual values. Consequently, my analysis proceeds along two main lines: the reconstruction of the "technical"philosophies of Harris, Green, and their circles, and the comparative cultural examination afforded by study of the "social" philosophy (particularly in regard to education) that these technical philosophies determined in the contemporary fields of American and British social life.

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II
The St. Louis Hegelians saw themselves as the agency that introduced genuinely "speculative" philosophy, by which they meant an adapted Hegelian dialectic, to the United States. Modern investigation, in particular the study by L. Easton of the Ohio Hegelians (John B. Stallo, Peter Kaufmann, Moncure Conway, and August Willich) between 1848 and 1860,has placed this claim in the perspective of a growing interest in German philosophy during the early nineteenth century (Easton, 1966:227). Nevertheless, the group that formed the St. Louis Philosophical Society in 1866 can legitimately be regarded as the most intense and effective popularisersof absolute idealism in America. Of the 59 charter members of the Society, a surprising number were to add national prominence to their local reputations as members of the city's cultural elite: Harris, the Secretary, as U.S. Commissioner of Education; George Holmes Howison, as the architect of the Berkeley Philosophical Union; Thomas Davidson, as a founder and instructor of schools in New England and New York, notably the famous "Breadwinners'College" on the lower East Side, as well as creator of the group ("The Fellowship of the New Life") that eventually became the London Fabian Society; Denton J. Snider, the historian of the group, as the founder of Literary Schools in St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, chairman of the Association for Universal Culture, and a prolific author; Judge J. Gabriel Woerner, as an authority on probate law, a novelist and playwright; Alfred Kroeger, as the translator of Fichte; James Kendall Hosmer, as the author of the best-selling Short History of German Literature; Louis Soldan, as Harris's successor in the posts of St. Louis School Superintendent and President of the National Education Association; and Henry C. Brokmeyer, the President of the Society, as Governor of Missouri. Meanwhile, the list of auxiliary members reveals an international cast of contemporary thinkers: Alcott and Emerson in America, together with Stallo, Willich, Frederick Hedge (the first American translator of Hegel), General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and Henry James, Sr.; J. Hutchinson Stirling from Scot-

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land; and Karl Rosenkranz, Jacob Bernays, Ludwig Feuerbach, and J. H. Fichte from Germany. (For general information on the society see Pochmann, 1957: 257-294; Forbes, 1930-1931; Riedl, 1973; Snider, 1910: 294-446, and 1920; Schuyler, 1904; Flower and Murphey, 1977, Vol. 2: 463-516.) All accounts agree that Brokmeyer provided the core of inspiration for the group. His is an extraordinarystory, beginning with the creation and loss of a large fortune between 1844, when he immigrated from Prussia, and 1854, when he retired to a solitary homestead in Warren County, Missouri, with the works of Hegel. Eventually, after his reemergence into society (loosely documented in a book he called A Mechanic's Diary [1910]), a meeting with Harris, and resuming a social and political career in St. Louis, he returnedagain to the wildernessto teach philosophy to Oklahoma Indians (Pochmann, 1957: 274-281; Forbes, 1930: 90-91; Goetzmann, 1973: 3-4). The development of a national and international audience for the St. Louis Movement was, however, uniquely the achievement of Harris. His foundation of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1867, after Charles Eliot Norton and the North American Review (on the advice of Chauncey Wright) had turned down his article on Spencer that appeared in its first number, provided the first American periodical devoted to "professional" philosophy (Leidecker, 1946: 324-325; Snider, 1910: 326). It rapidly became an outlet for a number of contemporary philosophers, among them Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. The Journal, from 1867 until 1893, played a major role in presenting translation and criticism of contemporary European philosophy, but Harris was not able to convert his editorial eminence into academic status. Despite a brief interlude as the leading light of a successful New England summer school (the Concord School of Philosophy) from 1880 to 1887, and his tentative consideration for a Harvard chair in philosophy, Harris'sprofessional career was dedicated to the "real world" of elementary and secondary education: first as Superintendent of the St. Louis Schools (1868-1880), where he built a system nationally and internationallyrecognized as a pace-

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setter; and subsequently as Federal Commissioner (Leidecker, 1946: 366-367, 397; Kuklick, 1977: 135-136). The effect of this career pattern was that Harris became more of a propagandist than the "speculative"thinker whose image he tried to present to his contemporaries. The vast bulk of his work is of the type that his friend Snider dismissed as "magazine"articles: 145 speeches to the NEA, the preparation of Johnson's Cyclopaedia and Webster's Dictionary, the Appleton's School Readers, together, of course, with the translations and commentary for the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. In contrast, there are only two works of mature reflection: the critical account of Hegel's Logic (1890) and the Psychologic Foundation of Education(1898). The former is self-consciously a commentary and exposition. Tile only major adjustment to Hegel's original scheme involves a restatement of the latter's view of "the relation of Nature to the Absolute Idea," ensuring that Hegel escapes the charge of pantheism (Harris, 1890: xiv-xv). The latter, a systematic statement of epistemology, historical philosophy, and educational theory, based on classically idealist premises, appeared a curious anachronism eight years after the publication of William James's Principles of Psychology. After the initial impact of the Journal as a medium, the internal debates of institutionally affiliated philosophy had proceeded without Harris's active participation. The practical, nonacademic bent of the professional lives of members of the St. Louis Movement is in fact one of their chief collective characteristics. Of the core set, outlined above, only Howison obtained and held a prestigious academic position. After a decade of attempts to enter the circle at Harvard, and the eventual choice of Josiah Royce to fill a temporary position in the Philosophy Department, he left for the West Coast in 1884, to take up the Mills Professorship in Philosophy at the University of California. Not surprisingly, he was also the only member of the group to develop a significantly modified version of the rightHegelian views stated by Harris and Brokmeyer. Howison (echoed in some of these respects by Thomas Davidson) came to reject all suspicions of monistic absolutism, developing an

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alternative which he called "personalism"or "personal idealism" (see Buckham and Stratton, 1934: 1-122; Knight, 1907). The majority concern was with what might be called prescriptive social theory. Harris's career and outlook typified this orientation. He proceeded directly from an account of the correct sources and modes of knowledge to an historical and social analysis of how those modes might be realized. This second endeavor, the evaluation and criticism of social institutions, consumed the major part of his working life, drawing him further and furtheraway from "technical"philosophical pursuits. In 1890 he claimed that he had reached his "final and present standpoint in regard to the true outcome of the Hegelian system" as early as 1879 (Harris, 1890: xiv). These emphases were in direct contrast to the preoccupations of an influential generation of academic American idealists who turned to post-Kantian and Hegelian schemes between the late 1870s and the end of the century. In this period, as has been amply documented by Herbert Schneider and others, a number of leading university departments developed distinctive schools of idealism (Schneider, 1963: 383, 400; Reck, 1975). The most prestigious was that led by Josiah Royce who, with the encouragement of William James and George Herbert Palmer at Harvard, provided in his The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885) a proof for the existence of the Absolute that was not seriously challenged for a decade (Kuklick, 1972). Ironically, given their generally aloof attitude toward the western "amateurs," such professionals owed a considerable debt to the translations and commentary of Harris and his group, not least for the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. More importantly for the purpose of this analysis, the "academics" tended to rely more on Kant than Hegel, and stopped well short of an historicist teleology of individuals, institutions, and societies. It is interestingto compare the rather abstract ethical imperative of Royce's "loyalty to loyalty," and its extension into the idea of the "Great Community," with the concrete historical and sociological projections made by Harris and the St. Louis Group (see Watson, 1980).

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The chosen careers of almost all of the members of the St. Louis Philosophical Society ensured that a large portion of their personal and collective resources were directed toward the establishment and execution of public policy. Apart from Howison, only J. K. Hosmer (at Washington University) pursued an exclusively academic career. Most of the others were professionals (lawyers, physicians, civil servants), while a significant number shared Harris's enthusiasm for educational institutions as the guarantors of the progressive traditions of civilization, and worked as teachers or educational administrators.They dedicated themselves to such movements as the standardization of elementary and secondary education, the introduction of the kindergarten, university extension, adult education in general, and the education of women. The breadth and apparent arrogance of their claims about social development, portraying all intermediate phenomena as incomplete moments in the progress of Absolute Mind, should not be allowed to conceal their precise and extensive interest in the minutiae of organization and administration. Given the prior belief in the Hegelian scheme of institutions as the progressive embodiment of the Idea, it remained a task of great importance to discover how these institutions worked in the "State-producing State" (Snider's term for the federal system) and how to ensure that they functioned at their best.

Ill

In several important respects the Oxford Idealists occupied a different world from that of the St. Louis Hegelians. In the first place, they instituted a confident and successful academic tradition that survived beyond the realist attacks of Bertrand Russell (1903) and G. E. Moore (1903) well into the twentieth century; for example, in the works of John M.E. McTaggart, J. H. Muirhead, Michael Oakeshott, and R. G. Collingwood. Antony Quinton (1971: 304) comments aptly on the durability of

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this orientation and its survival long after alternative philosophical schemes had been effectively championed: Until well into the 1920'sidealists held nearly all the leading of positions in the philosophydepartments Britishuniversities, and continued to be the largest group in the philosophical thantheveryhigh of character thisstateof affairsmorepoignantly level of technological unemploymentof idealists within the of this A profession. number themnimblyovercame philosophical misfortuneby becomingvice-chancellors. The achievements of British absolute idealism were thus made and evaluated in an academic, institutional context, a fact reflected in the lives of the major figures. Green was a fellow of Balliol from 1860, the College'sfirst nonclericaltutor from 1870to 1878, and thereafter the Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University (Richter, 1964). F. H. Bradley also remained at Oxford for life, retaining the fellowship at Merton to which he was elected in 1870 (Wollheim, 1959: 13-15). Bernard Bosanquet took his undergraduate degree from Balliol and spent a decade (1871-1881) as a fellow of University College before going to London to work with the Ethical Society, Charity Organisation Society, and various adult education initiatives. He returned, however, to an academic position, holding the chair in Moral Philosophy at St. Andrew's from 1903 until 1908 (Bosanquet, 1924). The University of St. Andrew's, in fact, became an important satellite, hiring Oxford-trained idealists for its chairs of Moral Philosophy and Logic and Metaphysics. EdwardCaird, Professor of Moral Philosophy from 1866 until 1893, had been a fellow and tutor of Merton College (1864-1866) and returned to Balliol, his undergraduate College, as Master (1893-1907). His colleagues and successors at St. Andrew's included not only Bosanquet but also D. G. Ritchie (formerly at Jesus College, and Lecturer at Balliol). Not only did the institutional base that made this an academic tradition determine priorities for the working time of its members (concentrated, as it was, on the "technical" fields of logic,
professoriate until 1945. . . . Nothing shows the anachronistic

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epistemology, and metaphysics), but the educational aims of the institutions themselves were also characteristically reshaped by idealist social philosophers, assisted by some sympathetic administrators. The ideal of public service associated with Oxford after Green and his Master, Benjamin Jowett, had made their mark at Balliol (which saw, at one point, one-sixth of the Indian Civil Service and three consecutive Governors-Generalas Balliol men) exercised a potent, if indirect, influence on English public affairs toward the end of the Victorian era (Richter, 1964: 52; Harvie, 1976: 12, 63, 104-114; compare Freeden, 1978: 16-19). Furthermore, the longevity of absolute idealism in Britain means that the homogeneity of the idealist school (a strong feature of the St. Louis group) must not be overstressed. Not only were the Britishidealists inclinedto ground their theories in a more subtle appreciation of Kant, a more critical reading of philosophical tradition, and a more complex treatment of various internal premises of idealist theory such as the intelligibility of the Absolute, in contrast to the literal, expository Hegelianism of Harris and Brokmeyer, but, especially after the prematuredeath of Green, they were more inclined to disagree with each other on technical grounds. Certainly, as the technical theories advanced by the idealists became integrated into general intellectual debate around the turn of the century, the legacy of Green becomes confused and hard to trace, while a number of disparate groups queued up to acknowledge the influence of the pioneer. Indeed, one recent commentator has suggested an ingenious division into right- and left-Greenians led respectively by Bosanquet and the sociologist L. T. Hobhouse (Collini, 1976). In at least the first two decades of the British Hegelian revival, however, certain unifying themes stand out which justify the comparative perspective I have adopted here. First, there is a general tendency to acknowledge intellectual debts to Green for his demonstration of the flaws in the materialist or "naturalist" tradition that had dominated British philosophy for a century. Despite, for example, Bradley's and Bosanquet's long and intense disagreements over issues of logic and metaphysics, they continued to acknowledge the breakthroughs effected by Green.

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A similar measure of this influence can be derived from the memorial volume for Green, Essays in Philosophical Criticism, published in 1883. As Edward Caird explains in the Preface, the nine authors that the line of investigation whichphilosophy agreein believing must follow, or in which it may be expected to make most importantcontributionsto the intellectuallife of man, is that whichwas openedup by Kant,and for the successful prosecution of which no one has done so muchas Hegel[Seth and Haldane, 1883:2]. Thus Green and his followers at Oxford solidified and extended the achievement of James Hutchison Stirling (the author of The Secret of Hegel [1865], the first complex British account of postKantian German idealism) at almost exactly the same time as Harris and his Journal of Speculative Philosophy were performing a similar task for American philosophy. Second, Oxford idealism came to be clearly associated with a form of social philosophy well toward the liberal pole of the political spectrum. Green, again, was the pioneer, as his work with the Oxford School Board and Town Council, on the Royal Commission on Endowed Schools of 1865-1866, his lobbies for reform legislation, and his association with figures such as John Bright inspired a generation of academic involvement in politics (Harvie, 1976).On certain issues, such as thrift and public charity, as well as the authority of the State, Bosanquet's views hardened in comparison with Green's, but he too, in association with the Charity Organization Society and other London-based groups, demonstrated a distinct class-consciousness and concern for the underprivileged (Bosanquet, 1893: v-vi; 1919: 178, 296-298). Their influence can be traced through a broad section of their contemporaries, producing such derivative works as Ritchie's Principlesof State Interference(1891) and Muirhead's TheService of the State (1908). In this direction, however, Bradley must be acknowledged a dissenter. An out-and-out Tory, he despised liberalism and cast his idealism more in the mould of Carlyle, but, unlike other leading idealists, left no systematic comment on

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social or political affairs, and hence can be counted an anomaly in this as in other aspects of his personal life (Wollheim, 1959: 1314). In general, absolute idealism contributed to a characteristic style of British philosophical activity exactly contemporary to that of Harris and the St. Louis Hegelians, and employing a similar epistemology to combat "erroneous"tendencies in philosophy, religion, and science.

IV
Briefly, the American and British schools substantially agreed on several crucial tenets, directly dependent on Hegel's resolution of problems left by Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. First, they all found a core value in the concept of individuality or "selfactivity"; where the actions of individuals are free and morally responsible in so far as they are self-prescribed or rational, and personal fulfillment is found within the system of inner relations that constitutes the Absolute. Second, building on this insight, an essentially social base was constructed for morality (following Hegel's Sittlichkeit), where genuine, free personality is achieved only in recognition of the equal individuality of others and of the ethical requirements of an organic community. Finally, religious truth (more precisely, the truths of Christian theism) was seen as the guardian and guarantor of these freedoms, in at least three senses; in its symbolic representation of the Absolute, historical alliance with the rise of individual freedom, and provision of a uniform ethical code. Despite their varying interest in, or grasp of, complex logic and metaphysics (in which Bradley, Bosanquet, and to a lesser extent, Howison, led the way), their leanings toward a monistic (Harris) or pluralist (Howison and Davidson) construction of the universe of free souls, and the variability of their vigor in defending traditional Christianity (with only Snider marching toward the ideal of a fully syncretic world religion, based, nonetheless, on the Christian principle of the Trinity), these normative and epistemological theories representbedrock for the two schools. Against

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the broad relief of middle and late nineteenth-centuryphilosophical controversy, they clearly mark their expositors as neoHegelians firmly opposed to certain other powerful themes in contemporary discourse. The rejected theories included not only those of the standard opposing "realistic" schools-Locke's empiricism, Mill's utilitarianism, the "mechanical"and materialist adaptation of Darwin in the work of Spencer and Lewes-but also certain primitive, and by their lights, underdeveloped forms of Kantian idealism. The latter encompassed both the Scottish school of realism (the "intuitionist" adaptation of Locke's psychology that had become philosophical orthodoxy in American colleges) and the development of pragmatism (by Peirce and James) as one form of idealist reaction to the problem of science and religion posed by Darwin (Murphey, 1968). Certain members of both groups correctly identified these themes as transatlantic in scope, uniting the western (American) "amateur"group (American academic idealism came later and survived less well) and the British academic school in "an immense religious movement" (Harris, 1867: 1). For the participants, as well as several subsequent critics, the adoption of absolute idealism, once the American schools had caught on in the 1880s, was an Anglo-Saxon movement, based on transatlantic cooperation. Howison, for example, shared Green'shope for a perfecting of the Hegelian system, and held no nationalistic brief for the origin of the solution:
inheritance,which despite his metaphysicalabuses of it, and despite its sundryslips and gaps, only awaitsthe laboursof some sufficiently powerful successor to become a complete system of our experiential ascent out of inadequate to adequate categories. One might yet hope that this service may yet be performedfor us by the Master of Balliol [Edward Caird] or by our own National Commissioner of Education [Harris] [Howison, 1901: xxvi; see also Cunningham, 1933: vi, and Muirhead, 1931: 13-16].

in He [Hegel]has let us, I am persuaded, his Logic, a permanent

There was, however, another task besides the generation of clear exposition of idealist doctrine. Correct knowledge deter-

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mines correct action, and the two groups were equally concerned to prescribe social and institutional forms and functions that would assist in the realization of the Absolute. Despite this identity of epistemological premises and abstract normative goals, the differing conditions of two contemporary national cultures resulted in dramatically dissimilar contents for this component of their social theories-the policy prescriptions. I shall now try to demonstrate this divergence, using as examples the two leaders and their views on education.

Harris, once he had established his somewhat dogmatic philosophical base, made a career out of the establishment and prescription of a "course of study for culture"or "the training of the individual for social institutions" (Harris, 1898c: 148, 1905: 18). His educational program was built on an unlimited belief in progress. Against the claims of the "socialists" (a camp in which he located a number of quite disparate theorists, from Marx through Henry George and Jane Addams to Edward Bellamy), he asserted that industry and technology under the capitalist system could so far elevate man's material condition that 99% of the population "would find ample employment in the higher order of employments, which provide means for luxury, protection and culture" (Harris, 1887, 1889, 1897, 1898b: 236). Against the backdrop of this process of universal social elevation, it was the task of the school (an intermediarybetween the family and civil society in the Hegelian scheme of institutions) to educate the individual into correct internal consciousness, in preparationfor the actualization of that consciousness in external, institutional life. This was to be achieved both by appealing to the self-activity of the individual soul (here the Hegelians crossed swords violently with the American Herbartian movement, and its denial of the individual capacity to make genuinely independent moral choices), and by developing appreciation of the true nature of human intercommunication (Wesley, 1957: 185-192).

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Harris's model curriculum demonstrated this twin purpcee. The five branches of study, the five "windows on the world" based in arithmetic, geography, history, grammar, and literature (the first two directed toward Nature in its "inorganic"and "organic" phases, and the last three comprising the study of Man in his phases of "intellect," "will," and "sensibility")were to be replicated at all levels, from kindergartento university (Harris, 1898a: 340). In comparison, "industrial education" was a very low priority. Specialized education, in fact, was seen as a responsibility of civil society, outside the school (Harris, 1886). In the context of a heterogeneous religious population, specifically religious instruction was also excluded. "Moral" education, in the sense of the inculcation of correct social and ethical habits, was seen as a legitimate function of pedagogy, but Harris, in contrast to Green, did not believe in the possibility of nonsectarian religious instruction and ruled against what he termed the "usurpation" of the prerogative of the church (see McCluskey, 1958: 99-176; Harris, 1881). These, then, were the practical lines along which Harris set out to reconstruct and expand the school system, first in St. Louis and then nationally. The task involved a number of far-reaching developments, including the importation and popularization of the kindergarten (together with the educational philosophies of pioneers like Froebel and Rosenkranz),the design of an integrated curriculum(to which Harriscontributed by writing a considerable volume of material himself), the universaladoption of the grading system, and a more sophisticated and comprehensive training of teachers (see Kinzer, 1940; Butts and Cremin, 1953: 293-458; Wesley, 1957: 182-293;Cremin, 1961: 14-21;Troen, 1975:48, 138, 159-166). During the period of initial expansion of the modern American school system, it was Harris'sview that constituted the orthodoxy. This view, of the conservative, retentive role of school learning in emancipating the child from his isolation in the family through self-estrangement and appreciation of the wisdom of a social tradition, was not only an educational method but also part of a general theory of society. Flanking Harris'sanalysis of the school

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were views of the family, civil society, and the church, extending the idea of self-activity into conservative policies of individualism, self-help, capitalist consolidation, and imperialism(see Leidecker, 1935).

VI

Green, unlike Harris, was only indirectly and intermittently involved in the administration of elementary and secondary education. His main preoccupation was with professional philosophy and the moral training of a generation of potential national leaders. Nevertheless, he was intimately involved in late nineteenth-century reform of both the universities and the schools, and saw education as a central vehicle for his social philosophy in general. Green's work with the Royal Commission and the Oxford School Board, together with a number of surviving public lectures, gives us a clear picture of his aspirations for the national educational system (see Taunton Commission, 1868, Vol. 1: 659661, and Vol. 8; Green, 1906-1908, Vol. 3: 387-412, 456-476; Gordon and White, 1979: 69-88). Essentially he saw a graded hierarchy of schools and curriculum (as recommended by the Commission but not adequately provided for by the ensuing Parliamentary Act) as serving the cause of universal literacy, the special needs of particular classes (like the middle-class requirement of instruction in commercial skills), and a meritocratic scheme of promotion for the best and the brightest. Such a structure would mitigate the class specificity of its predecessors, and leaven each group of university graduates with representatives of interests other than the clerical and landed aristocracy. At the same time he participated vigorously in the solicitation of endowments, the removal of residence requirements, and other measures to make the University itself more accessible. Among the obstacles to large-scale reconstruction of both the school system and curriculum in nineteenth-century Britain was the controlling interest of the church. Given the hold of the three

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"denominations" on the educational system (particularly their maintenance of all but five of the teacher training colleges in the country in 1878), Green compromised on the question of freedom of conscience in moral education. He considered that the principle of nonsectarian Christian moral education, in conjunction with the "time-table"conscience clause (allowing parents to withdraw their children from periods of specifically doctrinal instruction), was at least potentially viable, once properly overseen by the School Boards (Green, 1906-1908, Vol. 3: 430, 439-441). Meanwhile, he hoped for the kind of secular development of institutions that would allow the dissenter (the nonconformist, in several respects his model for the virtuous citizen) the right of unhampered participation. Combining these views of Green with his theories of legal competence (as outlined in the Principles of Political Obligation), a paradigm can be established for his theory of individual and collective responsibilities. The highest normative value is clearly placed on individual moral improvement through service and personal religious commitment. The essential conditions for these "positive freedoms" can only be guaranteed, however, through legislation and other collective action designed to enact minimum standards for equal opportunity (Green, 1906-1908, Vol. 2: 335553). Although, for example, property is an expression of will, it is not an absolute right compared with those of moral selfimprovement. Green advocated no fundamental social engineering; for example, he did not favour the disestablishment of the Church or immediate redistribution of wealth, and he approved the existing structure of the Poor Law as an appropriate conduit for charitable giving. But he did place himself firmly in the radical wing of the Liberal party as well as the Evangelical tradition of philanthropy and humanitarianismthat he had inherited from his family. Thus he became a supporter of the "Manchester School" against the more cautious Gladstone, and an advocate of social equality over absolute freedom of contract, of national reconstruction over imperial adventure, of temperance legislation over a traditional interpretation of individual freedom, and tolerance

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for the nonconformist over a traditional theory of ecclesiastical authority (Richter, 1964: 19, 269, 285).

VII

As a more lengthy analysis would reveal, Harris, Green, and their respective circles held almost antithetical views on the nature of social and economic classes, the utility of public charity, the extent of the state's authority in social regulation, and the needs of the organized church. For the American group, as represented by Harris, perceptions of a heterogeneous, polyglot, rapidly expanding society determined a conservative defense of the values of individualism and self-help. For Green, Bosanquet, and a large section of their followers (if not for Bradley), a social and political culture based on traditional class authority, the established church, and a demonstrably inadequate social philosophy of laissez-faire necessitated a different series of prescriptions. These included some elements of radical government intervention and a view of national leadership that took into account the realities of social stratification (see Watson, 1975: 116-216). I have summarized here the divergence through an assessment of the relative educational schemes of the two leaders, on the assumption that the prescribed role of the school and the university, the agencies of socialization and technical instruction, provides a major clue about the character of any scheme based, like the social theory of absolute idealism, on organically related institutions. Harris and the St. Louis Hegelians, as I have tried to demonstrate, were committed to a vision of unlimited social progress, dependent on the values of individualism. This vision determined a uniform curriculum and school system, the complete separation of church and state, and confidence in the untrammeled capitalist mode of production. Green and the Oxford Idealists, operating within a more explicit class structure and under the traditional authority of the established church,

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were more inclined to promote collectivist, gradualist, and piecemeal solutions to social problems. My suggestion is that the key to this independent development can be found in reaction to the immediate social, political, and economic environment perceived by the two groups in their respective national societies; in short, to the salient features of culture. My claim is that the St. Louis Hegelians and Oxford Idealists shared the absolute idealism of Hegelian epistemology and derived from it several important normative goals, including "individuality," "social morality," and "Christian theism." I further contend that the impact on these abstract normative ideas of their empirical perceptions of how society works motivated radically different types of policy prescription for each of the national societies. More precisely, I have used a number of features of the national culture-the perception of modes of social progress, the relevant units of social analysis, and the relative priority of social programs-as an explanation of the different orientation and content of the two policy theories: classically individualist in America, guardedly collectivist in Great Britain. Finally, I suggest that the juxtaposition of a shared epistemology leading to a shared set of abstract ideals, but different types of social and political prescription in two different national contexts, justifies two further hypotheses about the internal structure of social theory and the effect of empirical upon normative components of that theory:
(1) that the separate evidence of each national school's agreeing on a "technical" philosophy (the idealist epistemology) and its prescriptive social consequences, implies in this case a causal flow from "technical"to "social" philosophy and the dependence of choice of a policy orientation upon the structure and content of the entire social theory; (2) that the national difference in policy theory is motivated by each group's shared empirical perception of the nature of the social and political environment, i.e., that empirical theory can modify

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antitheticalpolicy normativetheory to the extent of requiring cultures. theoryin differentcontemporary But this is as far as the analytical hypotheses can be pushed. The experiment is limited in that it is restricted to two groups, almost exactly contemporaneous, and sharing a language that set bounds of philosophical and political discourse (Murphey, 1973: 139). Similarly, the choice of relatively sophisticated thinkers makes generalization about the activity of social theorizing at the popular level impossible, and keeps alive the possibility that my categories for the components of social theory are self-confirming in this case and not generally applicable. Such caveats should not, however, deter us from extending the range of comparative studies to include the history of sophisticated ideas.

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FORBES, C. (1930-1931) "The St. Louis school of thought." Missouri Historical Rev. 25 and 26: 68-77, 83-101, 289-305, 461-473, 609-622. FREEDEN, M. (1978) The New Liberalism:An Ideology of Social Reform. Oxford: Clarendon. GOETZMANN, W. H. (1973) The American Hegelians: An Intellectual Episode in the History of Western America. New York: Knopf. GORDON, P. and J. WHITE (1979) Philosophers as Educational Reformers:The Influence of Idealism on British Educational Thought and Practice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. GREEN, T. H. (1969) Works of Thomas Hill Green (R. L. Nettleship, ed.). New York: Kraus. (Originally published 1906-1908; in 3 vols.) --(1969) Prolegomena to Ethics. New York: Kraus. (Originally published 1906) HARRIS, W. T. (1867) "Editor's introduction." J. of Speculative Philosophy 1: 1-2. --(1881) "The church, the state and the school." North Amer. Rev. 133(September): 215-227. --(1886) "Industrialeducation in the common schools." Education 6 (June): 607-611. --- ((1887) "Henry George's mistake about land." Forum 3 (July): 435-442. ---( (1889) "Edward Bellamy's vision." Forum 8 (October): 199-208. --((1890) Hegel's Logic: A Book on the Genesis of Categories of the Mind. Chicago: S. C. Griggs. ---(1897) "Statistics versus socialism." Forum 14 (October): 186-199. ---- (1898a) Psychologic Foundations of Education: An Attempt to Show the Genesis of Higher Faculties of the Mind. New York: Appleton Century Crofts. ---- (1898b) "Is there work enough for all?" Forum 25 (April): 224-236. ---( (1898c) "The use of higher education." Educ. Rev. 16 (September): 147-161. - (1905) "Social culture as the form of education and religion." Educ. Rev. 29 (January): 18-37. HARVIE, C. (1976) The Lights of Liberalism: University Liberals and the Challenge of Democracy, 1860-1886. London: Allen Lane. HOWISON, G. H. (1901) The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustratingthe Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism. New York: Macmillan. KINZER, J. R. (1940) A Study of the Educational Philosophy of William Torrey Harris, with Reference to the Education of Teachers. Nashville: George Peabody College for Teachers. KNIGHT, W. (1907) Memorials of Thomas Davidson, the Wandering Scholar. Boston: Xerox. KUKLICK, B. (1972) Josiah Royce: An Intellectual Biography. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill. --(1977) The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. LEIDECKER, K. F. (1935) "Harris'theory of culture and civilization." Int. Educ. Rev. 4: 266-278. --(1946) Yankee Teacher: The Life of William Torrey Harris. New York: Philosophical Library. McCLUSKEY, N. G. (1958) Public Schools and Moral Education: The Influence of Horace Mann, William Torrey Harris and John Dewey. New York: Doubleday.

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MOORE, G. E. (1903) "The refutation of idealism." Mind new series 12: 433-453. MOORE, J. R. (1979) The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press. MUIRHEAD, J. H. (1908) The Service of the State: Four Lectureson the Political Teaching of T. H. Green. London: John Murray. --- (1931) The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America. London. MURPHEY, M. G. (1968) "Kant'schildren:the Cambridge pragmatists."Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 4: 3-33. --(1973) Our Knowledge of the Historical Past. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. POCHMANN, A. (1957) German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences. Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. QUINTON, A. (1971) "Absolute idealism." Proceedings of British Academy 57: 303-329. RECK, A. J. (1975) "Idealismin American Philosophy Since 1900,"in J. Howie and T. O. Burford (eds.) Contemporary Studies in Philosophical Idealism. Cape Cod, MA: Claude Stark. RICHTER, M. (1964) The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. RIEDL, J. O. (1973) "The Hegelians of St. Louis, Missouri, and their influence in the United States," in J. J. O'Malley et al. (eds.) The Legacy of Hegel: Proceedings of the Marquette Hegel Symposium, The Hague, 1970. RITCHIE, D. G. (1891) Principles of State Interference: Four Essays on the Political Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill and T. H. Green. London: Swan, Sonnenschein. ROYCE, J. (1885) The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. RUSSELL, B.A.W. (1903) The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press. SCHNEIDER, H. W. (1963) A History of American Philosophy. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. SCHUYLER, W. (1904) "German philosophy in St. Louis." Bull. of Washington Univ. Assn. 2 (April): 62-84. SETH, A. and R. B. HALDANE (eds.) (1883) Essays in Philosophical Criticism. London: Longman. SNIDER, D. J. (1910) A Writer of Books in his Genesis. St. Louis: Sigma. --(1920) The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, Literature, Education and Psychology, with Chapters of Autobiography. St. Louis: Sigma. STIRLING, J. H. (1865) The Secret of Hegel: Being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form and Matter. New York: Macmillan. Taunton Commission (1868) (Royal Commission on the Endowed Schools) Report of the Commissioners. TROEN, S. K. (1975) The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St. Louis System, 18381920. Columbia, MO: Univ. of Missouri Press. WATSON, D. J. (1975) "Idealism and social theory: a comparative study of British and American adaptations of Hegel, 1860-1914." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

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(1980) "The neo-Hegelian tradition in America." J. of Amer. Studies 14 (August). WESLEY, E. B. (1957) NEA, The First Hundred Years: The Building of the Teaching Profession. New York: D. C. Heath. WOLLHEIM, R. (1959) F. H. Bradley. London: Penguin.

David Watsonis Principal Lecturerin Humanitiesat Creweand Alsager College of Higher Education, Cheshire, England. He has published articles on the histort of American and British ideas in several journals, including the Journal of American Studies, Cross Currents, Contexts and Connections, and the Times Higher Education Supplement.