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The Young Controversialist

Well. Now it’s anything but clear,
What is the tone that’s taken here;
What is your logic? What’s your theology?
Is it or is it not neology?
— Arthur Hugh Clough: Dipsychus and the Spirit (II, I)1

Robertson Smith had received a thorough grounding in the art of disputation under his father’s tutelage at Keig2 and thereafter had been subtly initiated into the art of academic cut and thrust by the active stimulus and constant encouragement of Peter Guthrie Tait at Edinburgh. The rapid growth of this “controversial alliance”3 from 1869 was to play a major part in shaping the future course of Smith’s combative career and his letters home at this stage illustrate how firmly he had come under Tait’s sway.4 Smith’s more than slightly malicious reference to John Tyndall (T´´) in the Alps with his copy of Alexander Bain’s new book, Logic (published in 1870), adds a further dimension to the story, bears on the young student’s ambivalent relationship with his former teacher of Logic and Rhetoric at Aberdeen University, and points towards one of the major intellectual controversies of the Victorian era. As Black and Chrystal make clear, the relationship between Smith and Bain was always polite but somewhat strained.5 A strangely vituperative letter, written seven years after Smith’s death, claimed that Bain had provided monetary assistance to William Pirie Smith at the time of the family’s move to Keig in 1845 and that the Smith family had not only shown insufficient gratitude but had borne life-long resentment towards such charity:

Smith’s father (M.A. 1839) had long ago in Aberdeen a struggling private school, or something of that kind, and by Bain’s aid the family were enabled to remove to Keig, the first and only charge of WRS’s father. After the silence of nearly half a century B. is to render that account to posterity and ask its opinion on the “lifelong spite & the ingratitude of the Smith family”. Mark the infernal subtle nature of B’s hate. The serpent (Genesis III.i) is not in it.6

This “rendering of the account to posterity” alludes to Bain’s planned publication of his autobiography; but that book, published posthumously in 1904, a year after Bain’s death, makes not the slightest allusion to any such matters, nor indeed does it mention his acquaintance with the Smith family. There are two passing references to Robertson Smith himself7 but these relate solely to the battles being waged at a much later stage within the University over the retention of Greek as a compulsory element in the academic curriculum.8

Some degree of acquaintance between Bain and Robertson Smith’s father is certain – both were contemporaries at Aberdeen University, where the student numbers in those days were very small indeed – but no extant reference to the nature or depth of the relationship appears either in Smith’s biography or in his correspondence.9 Bain’s own autobiography is notable for its dry, factual style and details of personal animosities would have been wholly uncharacteristic of its author. The implied threat (in Leask’s letter) of published scandal from that source seems likely therefore to be spurious, all the more so in view of its almost paranoid tone, well exemplified in the following passages:

[A close friend of Bain] Prof. M.10 has warned Mrs B. as to the ferment such an outrage would bring upon herself and B.’s memory. But I fear she is powerless, Bain having compounded for his shameless servitude to his first wife (a relative of J.S. Mill) by making his second a mere Oriental slave.

You had better keep this quiet yet; but Bain’s hate in exposing the poverty of the [Smith] family is diabolical.

In the earliest years, the Smith family undoubtedly struggled to make ends meet and we know that William Pirie Smith augmented his income by taking private pupils,11 yet this was a common and respected expedient for young married members of the clergy endeavouring to bring up a large family on a tight budget. From WRS’s letters during his student days at Edinburgh, however, there is no suggestion whatsoever of severe financial stringency.12 Whether or not William Pirie Smith ever received significant financial support in 1845 from Bain may never be conclusively established but the claim seems unlikely.13 Alexander Bain himself came from very humble beginnings14 and in the mid 1840s was still struggling unsuccessfully to obtain some kind of permanent academic post, while at the same time earning a meagre return from intermittent lecturing and occasional writings.15 Having formed a close and fruitfully collaborative friendship in London with John Stuart Mill, Bain eventually secured the new chair of Logic and English Rhetoric at Aberdeen University in 1860, at the age of forty-two, and remained in that post until retiring in 1880, having accrued by then a considerable reputation both locally and internationally.16 Despite his austere manner, he grew to be a popular figure with the student body at Aberdeen and was twice elected University Rector there.

Mauling Mill and baiting Bain

Within the academic environment, the young Robertson Smith’s precocity had been clearly recognised by his teachers, including Bain himself, who had written of him in 1865:

I see a complimentary allusion to one of the best pupils that we ever had at the University, since the union [of the Colleges] at least; but alas, poor fellow, his bodily frame is not equal to the indwelling mind. The last accounts I had of him and his brother [George] from their father were a little more encouraging, but one cannot help feeling anxious for both.17

This genuine and characteristically expressed solicitude for Smith was maintained by Bain in the years to come – he contributed a testimonial on behalf of the latter’s application for the Aberdeen Free Church College chair which drew attention to Smith’s potential for “any effort of erudite acquirement”, while doubting “whether he would manifest a corresponding amount of originality”.18 On the other hand, Bain presented an ideal target for Smith (under Tait’s influence) to test out his youthful skill in polemic and the series of papers which he produced at this stage mirrors Tait’s own larger and more public confrontations with Tyndall and with all those who comprised:

… a numerous group, not in the least entitled to rank as Physicists (though in general they assume the proud name of Philosophers), who assert that not merely Life, but even Volition and Consciousness are mere physical manifestation.19

Bain was not only an agnostic20 but a positivist, having avidly imbibed the works of Auguste Comte as they appeared from 1843 onwards.21 Both he and John Stuart Mill were deeply influenced by Comte’s aim to revolutionise politics and society through the rigorous application of scientific method to those fields of study.22 It is somewhat paradoxical, in view of Smith’s later career, which so strongly emphasised the scientific approach both to Biblical criticism and to the sociological study of comparative religion, that his animus at this stage towards the followers of Comte should have been so intense: the fact can only be attributed to the overbearing influence of the two dominant influences upon his life – Peter Guthrie Tait and William Pirie Smith.

Smith’s driving ambition at this stage to have his work published is evident from his letters home. As early as May, 1868, he had tried unsuccessfully to have his paper on “Prophecy and Personality”23 accepted, first by the Contemporary Review and then by the British Quarterly Review,24 while in December, 1869, he expressed disappointment that his proffered review of an (unidentified) book had not been accepted by the Academy.25 Instead, he had for the time being to be satisfied with the more restricted publicity given through the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, before whom Tait read Smith’s initial scientific and mathematical papers. Smith’s disinclination for the pursuit of experimental physics led him to focus on mathematics and logic, his first foray, clearly instigated and guided by Tait, being “Mr Mill’s Theory of Geometrical Reasoning Mathematically Tested”,26 designed to parade John Stuart Mill’s “absurdity” in arguing that the proof of Euclid I.5 could not be “perceived intuitively” from observation of the drawn figure but required inductive reasoning:

Those who remember that Mr Mill assures Dr Whewell that he has conscientiously studied geometry (Logic, 7th ed. i. 270) will probably find some difficulty in believing that the demonstration of Euc. I.5, which Mr Mill offers as an illustration of the justice of his theory of geometric reasoning, depends on the axiom, that triangles, having two sides equal to each, are equal in all respects. Such nevertheless is the case; and when one sees the absurdity pass unnoticed from edition to edition of Mr Mill’s Logic … one cannot help think that logic would make more progress if logicians would give a little more attention to the process they profess to explain.”27

The youthful arrogance of Smith’s attack on Mill betrays characteristics of his personality which were to persist throughout his life and were, within a few years’ time, to evoke such great impatience and exasperation from so many of his ecclesiastical brethren. Mill himself, having received a copy of the paper from its author, wrote a typically restrained and courteous response in April of that year:

I am obliged to you for sending me your paper. I am always glad when my speculations are criticized by anyone who understands what he is talking about. The oversight you have pointed out consists only in not making explicit in the statement of the demonstration what is implicitly contained in its terms; and this was an oversight, inasmuch as I tacitly undertook to state everything explicitly. You will, however, not fail to observe that I did not introduce Euc. I.5 in confirmation or illustration of my opinion respecting the foundation of mathematical evidence. I gave it as a specimen of a train of reasoning in illustration of my view of the Syllogism and it is, probably, from an acceptance of it as what it was intended for, and not as anything else, that (as you remark) none of my other critics have noticed the defect.28

While admitting a technical error or “oversight”, Mill of course is gently implying that not every minor detail required to be spelt out to the intelligent mathematician: whether Smith himself perceived the mildly ironic tone of Mill’s letter is not recorded. Bain, however, as Mill’s disciple, wrote more forthrightly and stiffly to Smith:

I have read attentively your paper on Mill’s Theory of Geometrical Reasoning. I think you have detected a slight flaw in his mode of stating the subject, but not to the extent that you seem to imagine. It has long been remarked, (by De Morgan) that the fifth proposition of the First Book needs an additional postulate to justify the process of assuming a triangle to be turned round on itself. That postulate is omitted in the common demonstration and Mill merely repeats the omission; in this respect being nowise inferior to Euclid himself. I would not call his assumption an axiom. It seems to me that in this whole demonstration Mill copied the original, and has no faults but what belongs to it.

As to the dispute between Intuition and Induction, I think you have disposed, in a too off-hand way, of a large question, not to say a series of questions. I cannot pretend to consider these in a note but I would remark that you seem to confound the alleged inductive origin of the axioms of Geometry with the inductive foundation of the separate demonstrations. I do not think Mill holds that the proofs of the propositions are inductions; he would say they are deductive. As to the final axioms, ‘the sums of equals are equals’, ‘things equal to the same thing are equal’, I agree with him in calling these inductions, and I see nothing in your remarks to make me depart from that opinion. That ‘two straight lines cannot enclose a space’ is not an induction because it is not an axiom.

… When Mill talks of dropping the use of diagrams and carrying on the demonstration algebraically, I do not see that he commits any mistake. Of course he would have to make his formulae express all that is meant by the diagrams, and to suppose that the user of the formulae had conceived the full diagrams for once in order to know what the symbols stand for …

… It seems to me that in going so far as you have done, you ought to have given much farther, and made good a theory of the intuitive foundations of Geometry, free from all the difficulties so often pointed out, from Locke downwards, as attaching to innate truth.

You and Mill both make use of the word Intuition, to mean simply ‘perception’, which I think tends to confuse the whole argument. The ordinary sense of intuition, in which it stand opposed to induction, is ‘innate’ or primordial.

The whole strain of your paper appears to me hypercritical and over-done;29 while you have not yourself so guarded your language as to avoid a damaging retort by an equally acute opponent.

With best remembrances to your father and mother.30

WRS was in Göttingen when he received this letter and he reacted angrily in a letter of 24.5.1869 to his father:

As to Bain his letter is to my mind intended to be a crusher – it is as severe as he could make it without incivility, but he has wholly mistaken my position and I can answer every sentence he has written if need be. My strictures on Mill have no affinity to De Morgan’s strictures on Euclid and it is simply not true that Mill has followed Euclid. Mill’s error is wholly his own. It is clear to me that Bain regards my paper as a deliberate insult to his School. I don’t agree with you that there is some truth in his conclusion. I stand wholly on mathematical grounds and will be happy to fight the question out against all the empirical logicians in England.31

Once more, Smith’s indignant and stridently self-righteous tone is disconcertingly apparent. The fact that he is now prepared to voice disagreement with his father’s milder views on the matter is still more interesting and reflects how far he was now being seduced into such confrontational exercises by Tait, who was strenuously promoting in Edinburgh the image of his acolyte as “Jack the Giant-Killer”32 and already inciting him to take up the cudgels against an even weightier adversary – Hegel.

Induction and Intuition

Smith’s reference to “Dr Whewell” in what he came to call his “Mill paper” deserves comment at this stage, since Whewell’s writings33 represent a milestone in nineteenth century thinking about scientific method and since the issues raised as to the nature of scientific methodology (and its applicability to other fields of intellectual investigation) continue to reverberate to the present day. Whewell refined and modernised Francis Bacon’s argument for the inductive approach to scientific research,34 describing this in terms of careful and measured observation leading to a hierarchy of generalised “conceptions”. These general ideas, which ultimately take on the form of “Propositions of a higher degree of Generality”,35 are in turn verified by the reverse process of deductive reasoning, from the general to the particular.36 In other words, the validity of the general laws, established through inductive reasoning, becomes assured deductively through their consequential application to (new) particular instances – whence derive the practical or tangible outcomes of the scientific method. Intuition, for Whewell, played an important role, by enabling us to grasp those “fundamental truths” (axiomatic or “elementary” truths) upon which the processes of experimental observation and induction were inescapably founded.37

Six years after Mill’s publication of his Logic, Whewell wrote a critique of certain aspects of Mill’s work38. Unlike Smith’s paper, this is justifiably generous in its praise for Mill:

Mr Mill’s work has had, for a work of its abstruse character, a circulation so extensive, and admirers so numerous and fervent, that it needs no commendation of mine. But if my main concern at present had not been with the points in which Mr Mill differs from me, I should have had great pleasure in pointing out passages, of which there are many, in which Mr Mill appears to me to have been very happy in promoting or in expressing philosophical truth.39

One can hardly avoid wishing that Smith had taken lessons in diplomacy from the urbane Dr Whewell. The latter’s criticism of Mill centres upon his somewhat over-inclusive understanding of induction: for Whewell, induction is (correctly) the process of moving to a higher level of generalisation and he criticises Mill for using the term to “arrive at individual facts from other facts of the same level of particularity”.40 It is wrong, argues Whewell, to regard a skill derived empirically from experience (such as hitting a billiard ball) as an instance of induction: otherwise we should have to credit animals with the capacity for inductive reasoning. In making this careful distinction, Whewell is taking a “high” view of science as pre-eminently the finest expression of the human intellect in operation and in this respect he would undoubtedly have met with P.G. Tait’s full approbation.41 In practice, as Medawar notes, scientific methodology is generally a much more disorganised, haphazard and less consciously controlled procedure than scientists like to believe;42 and Medawar continues:

Nearly all scientists are loud in deploring the utterly unscientific way in which everyone else carries on – politicians, educationalists, administrators, sociologists – and it is upon them that they urge the adoption of the scientific method, whatever it may be. John Stuart Mill, the most influential of all methodologists, was certainly not trying to teach scientists their business. On the contrary, his ambition was to analyse and expound their methods in the hope that the complex and baffling problems of society would eventually give way before their use. In a sense this was Bacon’s ambition too, for though one cannot be confident of any simplified interpretation of that brilliant and strangely compound character, yet his New Atlantis is the very consummation of what he thought the application of his methods might achieve.43

It is relevant at this point to recall Mill’s explicit aim, as recorded in his Autobiography – “to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life”,44 since Robertson Smith (had he attempted to articulate his own philosophy of life) might well have been in full accord with his opponent in this respect. Stung by Bain’s reproving letter on his “Mill paper”, Smith returned to the attack but directed his fire now at Bain – making no reference whatsoever to his receipt of Mill’s open-spirited letter.45 This second paper on geometry is short but tedious – essentially a further exercise in quibbling over the demarcation between induction and intuition, and complicated by the special nature of a geometric proof, which (it may validly be argued) is an example of neither. Fortunately, the wrangle was interrupted by Smith’s second visit to Germany and was not resumed.

Jousting with Hegel

WRS’s challenge to the Hegelians in 186946 had, as indicated, been prompted by Tait,47 who was convinced that one of his many Germanic bêtes noires, Hegel, had committed the cardinal sin of impugning the integrity of Isaac Newton, Britain’s first and greatest scientist. The paper begins:

It is now many years since Dr Whewell drew the attention of the Cambridge Philosophical Society to the courageous, if somewhat Quixotic, attempts of Hegel to cast discredit on Newton’s law of gravitation, and on the mathematical demonstrations of Kepler’s laws given in the Principia.48

And Smith goes on to note that Hegel’s popularity and influence have increased despite “the repelling impression which the obscurity and arrogance of the philosopher are sure to produce at first …”.49 The focus of Smith’s attack is less on Hegel, however, than on James Hutcheson Stirling (then living in Edinburgh), the leading proponent of Hegelian philosophy in Britain and author of The Secret of Hegel.50 The argument of the paper itself is of less significance now than the fact of Smith’s quite extraordinary virulence:

It is rather hard that, from a metaphysical standpoint, a man should be allowed to write about things he has not studied; and more than this, that men so able as Dr Stirling should be found imploring great mathematicians to come and read such utter nonsense as naturally results from the attempt. Certainly Hegel’s fame is not likely to rise higher the more his notes on the calculus are studied; for these notes show quite clearly – first, substantial ignorance of the subject in hand, bolstered up by some hasty glances at the “literature in hand”; secondly, great disingenuousness in criticising Newton, without having ever given his views a careful study; thirdly, almost incredible confusion of mind, in so far as he seems to have thought he knew his own meaning when he really had no meaning at all; and lastly, to add nothing more, such a degree of self-complacent arrogance as led him to fancy the results of his “half-hour” more valuable than the fruit of the whole life of men like Newton.

On receiving a copy of Smith’s paper from its author, Stirling sent a polite acknowledgement, indicating that he hoped to respond fully when he had the time, and remarking:

I saw the newspaper report of the meeting in connection with the reading of your paper: I could not be sure from it that you rightly comprehended Hegel’s object, and I certainly thought that Professor Tait and Sir William Thomson had given way to strange misconceptions in regard to it.51

His fuller response came a few weeks later on 1st January, 1870, and is patiently chiding in tone, acknowledging that many found Hegel perplexing until they took the trouble to understand him properly:

I have admitted in The Secret of Hegel the equivocal look of much in Hegel … (as examples, see him on gravitation at the equator or on the tides) and there is nothing easier than to raise a laugh against him. The truth is, however, Hegel was quite as well informed as either you or I, and all is changed when the “conditions” are “seen into”. As regards mathematics, Hegel was evidently conditioned by Lagrange. That being so, however, it is Lagrange must suffer for any errors, and not Hegel. I feel quite sure that … however often Hegel may say things that a professional mathematician would not say, there is not one technical blunder in elementary mathematics.52

With Tait holding the ring in Smith’s corner, the fight – “in which” (as Smith wrote) “neither party gave way on any point”53 – was prolonged, being conducted for the most part, rather ominously, through the medium of the Edinburgh Courant until 1873, when Stirling published a second book and WRS finally secured acceptance from the radical periodical, the Fortnightly Review,54 for a lengthy riposte entitled “Dr Stirling, Hegel, and the Mathematicians”,55 in which Smith frankly acknowledges his role as youthful pugilist fighting on behalf of both Tait and Sir William Thomson and styles himself “advocate” of the “cause of mathematics, and particularly of Newtonian mathematics, impugned by the head, in our country, of a great metaphysical school”.56

Smith’s paper is highly technical and can have hardly been congenial, in its more arcane aspects at least, to the majority of the Fortnightly Review’s readership. His dispute with Stirling comes down (as Smith admits57) largely to semantics in the end but WRS may be judged to have won convincingly on points – as he generally did. Hegel’s slighting of Newton’s calculus was certainly unwarranted, based as it was on a wholesale misconception of the latter’s “doctrine of fluxions”58. As Smith rightly observed, the validity of Newtonian mathematics rested on its capacity to be applied fruitfully in the attainment of correct results to concrete problems: not least, of course, in establishing the accuracy of Kepler’s observations on planetary movement. Those readers prepared to grapple with the mathematics would no doubt have enjoyed Smith’s dextrous and sustained slanging, of which at least one sample warrants quotation:

If Hegel had understood Newton’s notion as Newton himself states it, we could have nothing but admiration for his philosophic skill. But what I object to Hegel is, that he applied his powers of abstraction to Newton’s language before he understood its meaning, and so cut himself off from all intelligent contact with Newtonian processes, and fell into the absurd errors which have been sufficiently exposed. In fact, here as elsewhere, Hegel and Dr Stirling have simply been indulging in that metaphysical pride which goes before a fall.59

Tait was exhilarated by the ferocity of Smith’s attack and took it upon himself to ensure its publication, sending a complimentary postcard:

Have read the Article with great pleasure (save always the extracts from Stirling w^h are painfully absurd) and it goes by the post to Mess^rs Virtue.60 I think this time you have finally choked him off …61

Coda: furioso ma con brio

There the matter rested and WRS thereafter took his leave of mathematics – as he was to do also in the case of physics and psychology – although six years later, under the intense pressure of his “heresy” trial, he was briefly to contemplate the possibility of re-engaging in a professional capacity with the discipline. Despite his normal optimism and temperamental resilience, Smith at length became quite down-hearted in 1879, when it appeared that he might not command a majority in his support at the Free Church Assembly that year; and he wrote to T.M. Lindsay:

I went today with Whyte to Rainy. Had a great fight and shook him as to the idea he has that the amended libel has been found relevant. Then I frankly asked him whether he desired I should be condemned or acquitted … At least I have given R. such a dressing such as he hasn’t got [before]. I drove him from pillar to post and kept my temper.

PS Now if this Glasgow thing is to be seriously followed up, Tait must be got and that if possible before he is committed …62

The chair of Mathematics at Glasgow University had become vacant and clearly Smith had already discussed the possibility of applying for the post although, rather curiously, a letter to his friend J.F. McLennan, later the same month, implies otherwise:

I mean to fight them for another year. It is hard to make up one’s mind what to do; but were I to give in the adversary would score and many friends – notably James Candlish who freely publishes the fact that he has now satisfied himself that all the laws in Deuteronomy are not Mosaic – would be left in evil case. Even if we gain, my position will not be enviable; and then I may have to think of a change. But this is not the time to do so.63

In the event, WRS did make up his mind to apply for the post64 and (as before) canvassed as many testimonials he could, with Lindsay’s indefatigable assistance. Most of those to whom he applied were highly supportive, wishing, as McLennan remarked, that he “would shake himself free of his friends [i.e. the Free Church]”65 but, while Tait gave him full backing, Maxwell appears to have demurred. Writing to Lindsay, Smith speculated:

Is Maxwell in your quarter? I wish I c^d get something out of him but I fear there is little chance66

and later (in the same letter) added the darkly jaundiced comment:

Tait wrote Thomson but has heard nothing. He won’t try Maxwell after some very unaccountable tergiversation of that savant in re Chrystal at Edin^r.67

As it happened, Smith received direct support from neither Maxwell nor Thomson. Lindsay had written encouragingly – yet equivocally – on July 21:

The Edinburgh Election is all right. Chrystal is in and Tait will do his best for you … If Sir Wm. Thomson wd: support you, your election is quite safe. You don’t understand this I dare say – but you are too scientific, my dear fellow, to understand the workings of the Glasgow mind. The Glasgow man of business says what we want is not so much a man who is at the head of mathematical science, but a man who can teach a big class. He must know mathematics of course, but it is of more importance that he should be able to inspire students, or as Caird elegantly puts it, have something of the “demoniac” about him. We are practical people here in Glasgow, and to my mind our ideas are right. Then Crum of Thornliebank and Cowan, look at the matter in this way – “Robertson Smith will be a credit to the city, and if we can at all conscientiously vote for him on mathematical grounds, we shall do so for the town’s sake”. On the other hand King of Levenholm will say, “I do not wish to get the Free Kirk out of a scrape and I had rather vote for some other body, but I’ll do what J.A. Campbell will do … The trouble about Glasgow is that it is too good … nearly £2000 or at least between £1800 and £2000.68

At all events, the bid for a return to mathematics failed, despite impressive references such as that from Sir William Huggins, the Astronomer Royal:

It gives me pleasure to say how well qualified I consider you to be for that post. In addition to the purely technical qualifications, you possess, so it seems to me, an unusual aptitude for mathematical and physical studies, and you possess moreover so much energy that I am convinced you will perform any duties you undertake with thoroughness and zeal.69

By November, 1879, Smith was back in the Middle East where he was able to pursue the Semitic studies which were by now engrossing his mind and which were to lead him into the realms of philology and anthropology. Both letters illustrate how Smith was seen at this time by those who were his friends: a man possessed of an abundance of energy and zeal; an excellent, inspirational teacher, able to command respect; a personality with a certain “demoniac” quality; and a budding polymath with an “aptitude” for many things. Yet, even to WRS himself, it would have been evident, had Lindsay not emphasised the fact, that he was not now destined to be “at the head of mathematical science”. Moreover, his situation, from a personal point of view, was equivocal: as a Professor of the Free Church, he retained much of that “uncouth power” of which Tait had spoken in 1865, yet had been instrumental in putting his Kirk “into a scrape” such as they had never found themselves in before. Clearly Robertson Smith was someone to be reckoned with; but what as yet he was fitted for remained an enigma to many – not least to himself.