The Metaphysical Society was a famous British debating society, founded in 1869 by James Knowles, who acted as Secretary. Membership was by invitation only, and was exclusively male. Many of its members were prominent clergymen, philosophers, and politicians. [1]
The society met monthly, from November to July (to mirror the sitting of Parliament). Its members were never all present at once, and most meetings never exceeded twenty attendees. [2] Papers were read and discussed at meetings on such subjects as the ultimate grounds of belief in the objective and moral sciences, the immortality of the soul, etc. A description of one of the meetings was given by William Connor Magee (then Bishop of Peterborough) in a letter on 13 February 1873: [3]
Archbishop Manning in the chair was flanked by two Protestant bishops right and left; on my right was Hutton, editor of the Spectator, an Arian; then came Father Dalgairns, a very able Roman Catholic priest; opposite him Lord A. Russell, a Deist; then two Scotch metaphysical writers, Freethinkers; then Knowles, the very broad editor of the Contemporary; then, dressed as a layman and looking like a country squire, was Ward, formerly Rev. Ward, and earliest of the perverts to Rome; then Greg, author of The Creed of Christendom, a Deist; then Froude, the historian, once a deacon in our Church, now a Deist; then Roden Noël, an actual Atheist and red republican, and looking very like one! Lastly Ruskin, who read a paper on miracles, which we discussed for an hour and a half! Nothing could be calmer, fairer, or even, on the whole, more reverent than the discussion. In my opinion, we, the Christians, had much the best of it. Dalgairns, the priest, was very masterly; Manning, clever and precise and weighty; Froude, very acute, and so was Greg. We only wanted a Jew and a Muslim to make our Religious Museum complete (Life, i. 284).
The last meeting of the society was held on 16 May 1880 and it was dissolved later in November of that year. [4] Huxley said that it died "of too much love"; Tennyson, "because after ten years of strenuous effort no one had succeeded in even defining metaphysics." According to Dean Stanley, "We all meant the same thing if we only knew it." [3]
In 1877 Knowles founded The Nineteenth Century, a literary journal whose editorial style was partly inspired by the debates he had managed at the Metaphysical Society. [5] Many of the society's members became supporters and contributors to the magazine.
The members from first to last were as follows: [6]
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art historian, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
John Henry Newman was an English theologian, academic, philosopher, historian, writer, and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s, and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher from the Scottish Lowlands. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature, and philosophy.
James Payn was an English novelist and editor. Among the periodicals he edited were Chambers's Journal in Edinburgh and the Cornhill Magazine in London.
James Anthony Froude was an English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine. From his upbringing amidst the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, Froude intended to become a clergyman, but doubts about the doctrines of the Anglican church, published in his scandalous 1849 novel The Nemesis of Faith, drove him to abandon his religious career. Froude turned to writing history, becoming one of the best-known historians of his time for his History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Sir Peter Courtney Quennell was an English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, poet, and critic. He wrote extensively on social history. In his Times obituary he was described as "the last genuine example of the English man of letters". Anthony Powell called him "The Last of the Mandarins".
Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt was a Church of England bishop. He was the Bishop of Carlisle from 1791 to 1807 and then the Archbishop of York until his death.
William George Ward was an English theologian and mathematician. A Roman Catholic convert, his career illustrates the development of religious opinion at a time of crisis in the history of English religious thought.
Sir James Thomas Knowles was an English architect and editor. He was intimate with the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the founder of the Metaphysical Society to encourage rapprochement between religion and science.
Richard Holt Hutton was an English journalist of literature and religion.
The Nineteenth Century was a British monthly literary magazine founded in 1877 by James Knowles. It is regarded by historians as 'one of the most important and distinguished monthlies of serious thought in the last quarter of the nineteenth century'.
All Saints is an Anglo-Catholic church on Margaret Street in London, England. Founded in the late 18th century as Margaret Street Chapel, the church became an example of the Oxford Movement in the 1830s and 40s. The Movement also prompted the reconstruction of the church in the 1850s under the architect William Butterfield, and the establishment of the Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor, affiliated to the church.
Francis William Newman was an English classical scholar and moral philosopher, prolific miscellaneous writer and activist for vegetarianism and other causes.
The Savage Club, founded in 1857, is a gentlemen's club in London, named after the poet, Richard Savage. Members are drawn from the fields of art, drama, law, literature, music or science.
Wolvercote Cemetery is a cemetery in the parish of Wolvercote and district of Cutteslowe in Oxford, England. Its main entrance is on Banbury Road and it has a side entrance in Five Mile Drive. It has a funeral chapel, public toilets and a small amount of car parking. It was awarded plaques as a category winner of 'Cemetery of the Year' in 1999 and 2001.
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS FRSE was a leading Scottish psychiatrist, neurologist and eugenicist. He is known for studies on the relationship of mental illness to brain injury and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health. Crichton-Browne's father was the asylum reformer Dr William A.F. Browne, a prominent member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society and, from 1838 until 1857, the superintendent of the Crichton Royal at Dumfries where Crichton-Browne spent much of his childhood.
The Nemesis of Faith is an epistolary philosophical novel by James Anthony Froude published in 1849. Partly autobiographical, the novel depicts the causes and consequences of a young priest's crisis of faith. Like many of his contemporaries, Froude came to question his Christian faith in light of early nineteenth century developments in history, theology, and science. Froude was particularly influenced by the Catholic teachings of the Oxford Movement and by the new approach to religious scholarship developed by the German Higher Critics.
Alexander Munro was a British sculptor of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He concentrated on portraiture and statues, but is best known for his Rossetti-influenced figure-group Paolo and Francesca (1852), which has often been identified as the epitome of Pre-Raphaelite sculpture.
Samuel Laurence was a British portrait painter.
"The Higher Pantheism" is an 1867 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in which Tennyson presents a view of God as subsisting throughout the material world. The poem drew both praise and criticism, as well as examination of its inspirations in the words of Tennyson's contemporaries.
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