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Sociology and Idealism in Britain 1880–1920
Stefan Collini
European Journal of Sociology / Volume 19 / Issue 01 / May 1978, pp 3 - 50

DOI: 10.1017/S0003975600005105, Published online: 28 July 2009
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S T E F A N C O L L I N I
Sociology and Idealism in Britain 1880-1920
I T I S something of a commonplace in the history of sociological

theory that during the classical period of the development of the
subject, when Weber and Durkheim and others were formulating
the stock of ideas upon which subsequent theory has so largely drawn,
no significant contribution was forthcoming from Britain. Parsons'
The Structure of Social Action was probably the most influential
single source of this view, and it is one which was subsequently
popularized by Hughes, Annan and others (i). It is now sufficiently
well established to have been taken as the explanandum in several
recent essays (2). Where the explanation has been looked for in
intellectual terms, this has generally involved some variation on the
(1) Talcott PARSONS, The Structure of natural dispostion of the English intellec-
Social Action. A study in social theory tual climate to positivistic modes of think-
with special reference to a group of recent ing'.
European writers (New York 1937; 3rd (2) For example Perry ANDERSON, Com-
edition, 2 vols, Glencoe 1968); H. Stuart ponents of the National Culture, New Left
HUGHES, Consciousness and Society. The Review, (1968), 1-57, on 'The sociology of
reorientation of European social thought no sociology' : 'Britain may be defined
1830-1330 (New York 1958; repr. London as the European country which—uniquely—
1967); Noel ANNAN, The Curious Strength never produced either a classical sociology
of Positivism in English Political Thought. or a national Marxism'; 'Why did Bri-
L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Lecture (Lon- tain never produce a Weber, a Durkheim,
don 1959). Parsons' analysis also provides a Pareto or a Lenin, a Lukacs, a Gramsci ?
the framework for the outstanding study The peculiar destiny of the nineteenth-
of British social thought in the preceding century industrial bourgeoisie in Britain is
period, J. W. Burrow's Evolution and the secret of this twin default', pp. 11,
Society: A study in Victorian social theory 15. Philip ABRAMS, The Origins of
(Cambridge 1966; second edition, 1970), British Sociology 1834-1314. An essay
as is explicitly acknowledged on pp. XII- with related papers (Chicago 1968) : 'The
XIII and 260-1, where he deftly discusses history of British sociology before 1914—
the question 'why did England make no indeed before 1945—is in no sense a success
distinct contribution to the rethinking of story' and the 'problems of institution-
the fundamental concepts of social thought alization' constituted the chief reason
at the turn of the century', and recognizes for 'this failure', p. 4.
the temptation to find the answer in 'the
Arch, europ. tociol., XIX (1978), 3-50. Printed in France.

STEFAN COLLINI
theme of the ' curious strength of positivism' in British thought (3).

The gist of this claim is that the intellectual climate in Britain was
(and is) marked by a tradition of empiricism in philosophy and individ-
ualism in social thought which was unreceptive to the abstract theory
and the social-structural concepts which are integral to classical
sociology. The significance of the British empirical tradition in
philosophy has been particularly insisted upon (4). This makes
it all the more important to point out that it was precisely during
this period that what is generally referred to as Idealism was the
dominant philosophy in Britain, a philosophy characterized by its
thoroughgoing rejection of nominalism and empiricism in favour
of the metaphysical tradition derived mainly from Kant and Hegel,
a philosophy, I shall argue, which was potentially a fruitful basis for
the development of sociological theory (5). Clearly, this observation
cannot be fitted into the standard historical accounts at all easily,
and so in this article I propose to examine the relationship between
Idealism and sociology in Britain during this period.
I shall, first, briefly mention two dangers which seem to me to
lurk in this way of stating the problem, in the hope of removing
some possible misconceptions about what follows. I shall then
indicate why the philosophy of the British Idealists could be considered
a potentially fruitful source of sociological theory, and I suggest
that the germ of much subsequently important sociological thinking
was present in their social thought. Thirdly, I draw attention to
the contemporary understanding of what constituted the sociological
enterprise, and in particular the ways in which the Idealists shared
and developed this understanding, and I suggest how this may have
obscured the conceptual space which alternative conceptions of that
activity might otherwise have occupied. In the fourth section I
examine certain further features of British Idealism and of its relation
(3) And it is still the case that the lack as such. Talcott PAHSONS, Economics and
of 'a climate of theoretical speculation' Sociology: Marshall in relation to the
and the 'conspicuous absence of a cohe- thought of his time, Quarterly Journal of
rent body of theory' are considered to Economics, XLVI (1931-2), p. 337, n.
distinguish sociology in Britain. 'British (5) It is indisputable that Idealism was
sociology continues to be influenced by a the single most important philosophical
tradition of commonsense empiricism movement in Britain during most of this
tempered to the concerns of middle range period, and there is no need here to go
domestic problems and enlightened social into the intricate problems of the extent
policy'. David MORGAN, British Social and duration of its 'dominance'. For a
Theory, Sociology, IX (1975), 119-24. brisk assertion that it was the dominant
(4) From his earliest studies, Parsons school, see Anthony QUINTON, Absolute
argued 'it is ultimately the character of Idealism, Proceedings of the British Aca-
English philosophy which shuts out sociol- demy, LVII (1971), 303-29.
ogy' in the sense of a study of the social
SOCIOLOGY AND IDEALISM IN BRITAIN
with the surrounding intellectual landscape which may have militated

against its theories being developed in a more recognizably sociological
direction. Finally, in the light of my general argument, I offer one
or two reflections upon the current approaches to the history of
sociological theory. I am conscious that in this article I only touch
very briefly on many of the complex questions which it raises, and
that I can only offer illustrations rather than demonstrations of my
argument, but even this ambitious brevity may at least open up the
question for more critical and more genuinely historical discussion
than it has hitherto received.
The first danger in the traditional way of approaching this question

is the tendency to lapse into teleology, wherein it is axiomatic that
sociology is destined to 'emerge' or 'be realized', and so the task of
the historian becomes that of explaining how, until the crucial moment,
the 'obstacles' prevented this from happening. In the present case,
there seem to me to be two assumptions which encourage this tendency.
The first is that in asking why Britain did not contribute to the form-
ative period of the development of sociological theory, we assume an
homogeneity in sociology's past which is illusory. We talk as if
there was a common body of theory being developed in the late
nineteenth century, rather than recognizing the extent to which
this has been created subsequently by selectively abstracting from a
range of ideas drawn from contexts as different as the debates in
Germany over the consequences of industrialization, or the contro-
versies in France about the Third Republic's need for a secular morality.
Here we can see how hard it is to get behind Parsons both in our
conception of sociology and in our interpretation of its history (6).
The second assumption is more methodological, for it rests upon
taking for granted the propriety of asking why something did not
happen in the past. Little or no attention has been given to the
problems of justifying the rationality of the implied surprise at the
'failure' of British theorists to think in different ways, or of specifying
what a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for this 'failure'
would look like. After all, the possible reasons for their not being
interested in a certain question are theoretically infinite, and any
attempt to narrow them to the actual reasons will very soon collapse
(6) Indeed, one sociologist has recently sociology was like before Parsons'. John
announced, rhetorically but revealingly, GOLDTHORPE, An Introduction to Sociology
that 'it is impossible now to think of what (Cambridge 1968), p. 54.
STEFAN COLLINI
into an account of what they were interested in. Only the assumed
teleology then enables this to masquerade as an answer to the initial
question.
However, where past thinkers had access to the appropriate range
of concepts and were interested in the relevant set of problems, then
it can be illuminating to consider why their thought did not develop
further in a certain direction, if only as a way of focussing on the limits
and presuppositions of their actual thinking. The nature of sociology
was a much discussed question in the circles in which Idealism
nourished, and, I shall argue, the structure of the Idealists' thought
and the range of their interests were such as to make it plausible to
begin by reflecting on why they did not have a greater impact on socio-
logical theory in Britain. Moreover, a considerable historiography
has grown up around the question of the absence of a certain kind
of sociological theory in Britain during this period, and so although
I want to distance myself from this approach and to emphasise the
doubtful assumptions upon which it rests, it seems expedient to begin
by addressing myself to the question in these terms.
The second danger in the conventional way of stating the question
is the likelihood of exaggerating the contrast between the state of
sociology in Britain and that in the other leading European countries
(in practice these reduce to France and Germany, with minor parts
being given to Italy and, occasionally, Austria) (7). The result
is that one all too easily ends up wondering why Englishmen failed
to be Weber and Durkheim, whilst losing sight of the fact that this
was an achievement which eluded all the compatriots of the latter
pair as well. This leads to the tendency to produce explanations
which are so overdetermined that it becomes hard to see how any
thinking about society was managed in Britain, so unfavourable
are the conditions made out to be. The risk of such exaggeration
is reduced if one distinguishes at the outset between the degree to
which sociology was successfully institutionalised, the amount of
attention given to the subject, and the level of theoretical achievement
(bearing in mind that the latter will be judged in terms of the residue
of subsequently interesting theory which it deposits). Of course,
these three features are to be separated only for the purposes of
preliminary analysis, since in practice they are always interrelated,
(7) Most historians follow Hughes in Austria are well brought out in John
dealing with what he called the ' "heartland" TORHANCE, The Emergence of Sociology in
of Western society: France, Germany Austria, Archives europe'ennes de sociologie,
(including Austria) and Italy', op. cit., XVII (1976), 185-219.
p. 12. The peculiarities of the situation in
6
successful institutionalization stimulating further theoretical synthesis

and so on.
In institutional terms, the situation in Britain by 1920 was if
anything slightly better than in Austria or Italy, not so very much
worse than in France, and not even utterly beyond comparison with
that in Germany, where the importance and vitality of the theoretical
tradition has obscured the rather weak institutional position which
sociology had achieved by this date. Only in America was it a
flourishing discipline within the university system (8). Again,
there was a good deal of discussion of sociology in books and journals
in Britain (and, of course, in the Sociological Society, founded in 1903),
and throughout this period there was debate over the nature and claims
of the new science. It is certainly true that this discussion was
largely critical, and I am not suggesting that sociology was given a
warm and lasting welcome into British intellectual life; but then its
initial reception in other European countries was also generally
hostile. Nor is it the case that parochial insularity meant that develop-
ments elsewhere and works published in foreign languages were
ignored. The work of some of the leading continental theorists
such as Tonnies and Durkheim was well known (9), abstracts of
foreign periodical literature were published, and a variety of works in
the main European languages (including some of the landmarks of
(8) The information upon which these Guenther ROTH, Scholarship and Partisan-
judgements are based is drawn from the ship: Essays on Max Weber (New York
following sources: ABHAMS, Origins of 1970) (Chapter 11 shows the institutional
British Sociology: E.M. BURNS, The weakness of sociology in Germany by the
Social Sciences as Disciplines: Great 1920s); Anthony OBEHSCHALL (ed.), The
Britain, Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, Establishment of Empirical Sociology (New
Vol. I (London and New York 1930); York 1973); Edward SHILS, Tradition,
T.N. CLARK, Prophets and Patrons: The Ecology and Institution in the History of
French university and the emergence of the Sociology, Daedalus, XCIX (1970), 760-826,
social sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1973) (which contains a great deal of relevant
(particularly important in showing that comparative information); Edward
Durkheim's personal success did not A. TIRYAKIAN (ed.), The Phenomenon of
result in much permanent penetration of Sociology (New York 1971); TORRANCE,
the French educational system); Ronald The Emergence of Sociology in Austria.
FLETCHER (ed.), The Science of Society (9) Aided by their contributions to British
and the Unity of Mankind. A memorial journals: thus, Tonnies' Welby Prize
volume for Morris Ginsberg (London 1974); Essay on 'Philosophical Terminology'
Morris JANOWITZ, Professionalization of appeared in Mind in 1899, and Durkheim's
Sociology, in Robert K. MERTON et al., paper 'on the Relations of Sociology to the
Varieties cf Political Expression in Sociology Social Sciences and to Philosophy' was read
(Chicago 1972); Steven LUKES, fimile (by Bernard Bosanquet) to the Sociological
Durkheim: his life and work, A historical and Society in I9°4. a n < i published in Socio-
critical study (London 1973); D.G. MACRAE, logical Papers in 1905. Durkheim's work,
The Basis of Social Cohesion, in W.A. ROB- in particular, was well known in Britain
SON (ed.), Man and the Social Sciences from the publication of De la division du
(London 1973); Reinhard BENDIX and travail social onwards.
STEFAN COLLINI
theoretical sociology) were reviewed in such journals as Mind (then

a far more international and 'interdisciplinary'journal than now) (10).
Weber, it is true, was practically unheard of in Britain before 1914,
but much of his early work was specialized and not published in
easily accessible form. Indeed, Shils can write with only slight
exaggeration : 'Before World War One, Weber seems to have been
quite unknown in the rest of Europe and in the United States' (11).
It is when we turn to the achievements of general sociological theory
that the discrepancy is most marked, and I do no intend to belittle
it. But the extent to which this is dependent upon subsequent
evaluation is often forgotten. It involves the judgement that the
evolutionary sociology and morphology of social structures which
was the theoretical legacy of Hobhouse and his successors contains
less explanatory power and has generated fewer interesting insights
about the relations between individual behaviour and social forces
than the work of his leading European contemporaries. It also
relies upon the fact that current methodological concerns do not
find such resonance in the essays of Hobhouse or Ginsberg as in those
of Weber or Durkheim. And it usually implies that British theorists
of the period were insufficiently concerned with the unique character
of modern society, which frequently reduces to the charge that they
did not make the nature of capitalism the focus of their enquiries.
Once again, the importance of Parsons in shaping this view of
sociology's development is evident. I do not want to challenge this
assessment of the relative poverty of the British theoretical achieve-
ment, nor do I intend to deal with the larger institutional and social
setting of British sociology (though I should emphasize from the
outset that I am not thereby suggesting that such matters are unimport-
ant or could be omitted in an account which aspired to anything like
completeness). But it is essential to isolate just what it is that the
'curious strength of positivism' has been supposed to explain if
we are to appreciate the significance of the potential contribution
of Idealism.
(10) E.g., Havelock Ellis reviewed tution, p. 782. Bendix and Roth suggest
Durkheim's Le Suicide in 1898, George that Weber was by no means a famous
Unwin reviewed Simmel's Philosophic des figure in Germany before 1914 (Scholarship
Geldes in 1901, and so on. and Partisanship, ch. 11).
(11) SHILS, Tradition, Ecology and Insti-
8
II
It is difficult to indicate briefly why philosophical Idealism might

be considered particularly fertile soil for the development of sociolog-
ical conceptions, all the more so because the designation 'Idealist'
covers such a variety of philosophical positions. But it is clear
that the Idealist tradition, broadly understood, has played an important
part historically in the development of such ideas, especially in
Germany: however diverse the social theories of, say, Marx, Tonnies,
Simmel, or even Weber (12), the heritage of German Idealism was
obviously crucial to their formation, and surely contributed a view
of the role of theoretical abstraction, and some substantive doctrines
about the interrelation of mind and society, which could not be
obtained so readily, if at all, from empiricism or from other varieties
of rationalism. Moreover, without doing too much violence to the
intricacies of individual philosophies, one can isolate the salient
features of this tradition which provided the conceptual basis for at
least one kind of sociological theory. For example, the Hegelian
account of the historical formation of consciousness and its articula-
tion in the social life of particular communities opens the way to a
consideration of the changing social constitution of individual person-
ality in a way in which more static or more individualist philosophies
do not. Furthermore, the concentration on the shared moral world
as the essence of such communities and as informing the growth and
socialization of its members is already an implicitly sociological
critique of utilitarian or contractarian theories. In addition, Idealism
encouraged a particular approach to what may broadly be called
methodological questions which facilitated the analysis of the puzzles
inherent in the attempt to conceptualize the 'social' as such. Baldly
summarized, the component parts of this approach include: 1) a kind
of methodological collectivism, that is, an insistence on the social
group, ultimately the community or state as a whole, as the primary
unit or appropriate level for the understanding of man and his history;
(12) Although the influence of the Neo- of course, Parsons has testified to the crucial
Kantians is well established, Weber's rela- importance of the German speculative
tionship to the Hegelian tradition is noted tradition, and its recognition of varying
by Bendix who suggests that it has been levels of abstraction, for the initial develop-
rather neglected in previous studies of ment of his own theory: Talcott PARSONS,
Weber's intellectual development. Rein- 'On Building Social Systems Theory: A
hard BENDIX, Max Weber: An intellectual Personal History, Daedalus, XCIX (1970),
portrait (London 1966 [first published p. 830.
New York 1959]), p. 388 and note. And,
STEFAN COLLINI
2) an anti-essentialism in psychology, which was important in combat-

ting theories which explained social phenomena in terms of fixed
human attributes or instincts; 3) a tradition of speaking of the institu-
tions of the social and cultural world as the objectification of 'Spirit',
which recognized their origins in meaningful human actions and
beliefs without reducing them to deliberate contrivances of individual
will; 4) a concentration on the differences between the human
and the natural sciences, and the consequent attempt to develop a
method appropriate to the former; 5) finally, and most speculatively,
a logic which habitually talked about eidentity-in-difference', a way
of talking which made it easier to overcome the individualist antitheses
embodied in much everyday thinking about the relation of individual
to society. I am not suggesting that these notions were unique to
Idealism, nor that they specify a set of necessary or sufficient conditions
for the formulation of sociological theories. But it does seem to
me that when found together as part of a coherent structure they
constitute a particularly fertile soil for the germination of such theories.
Equally, I do not think all of these features are necessarily essential
or even desirable in a developed sociological theory (though some
certainly are), nor do I think that they cannot, when pursued mechan-
ically or to exaggeration, be obstructive of further advances in such
theorizing. But, again, what I wish to draw attention to is their
important historical role in fostering the emergence of what is fre-
quently called 'the sociological perspective'.
In turning to consider the actual part played by British Idealism
in this story, the reservation about the philosophical diversity which
hides behind this common label needs to be repeated. In particular,
a strong Kantian streak is sometimes evident against a generally
Hegelian background, most notably perhaps in Green's ethics (13),
whilst F.H. Bradley, the most distinguished metaphysician of the
group, notoriously repudiated all conventional labels. But the primary
inspiration of their philosophy was certainly Hegel (14), though
the common debt to Plato and Aristotle was' brought out in best
'Greats' fashion, and they tended to be thought of as a 'school',
or a 'movement', particularly by their critics. On the present issue,
there was certainly sufficient overlap in their social theories and their
(13) This is well brought out in the essays of Philosophy Lectures, V (London 1972).
dealing with Green's 'individualism' in (14) Quinton, among others, insists upon
H.D. LEWIS, Freedom and History (London this very strongly ('Absolute Idealism',
1962), and in J. KEMP, T.H. Green and the previously cited); see also Hiralal HALDAR,
ethics of self-realization, in G.N. VESEY Neo-Hegelianism (London 1927).
(ed.), Reason and Reality, Royal Institute
10
metaphysical foundations to justify considering the structure of their

philosophy, and the nature of its conceptual legacy, as a whole.
To illustrate concretely my contention that there was a range of
potentially sociological concepts implicit in their thought, I shall
take examples from works of different kinds written by three leading
Idealists.
The first is F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies, published in 1876,
a work which, as a foundation manifesto of the group, was immensely
influential during the next forty years, and which Bradley was in the
process of revising for a second edition when he died in 1924 (15).
The book attacked the 'preconceptions metaphysical and psycholog-
ical' (p. vm) which Bradley found underlying the prevailing theory
of morals in England, and its central and most celebrated chapter
on 'My Station and Its Duties' contained a savage denunciation
of the fallacies of individualism. He began by stating his intention
of showing that 'what we call an individual man is what he is because
of and by virtue of community, and that communities are thus not
mere names but something real' (p. 166) (16). The philosophical
underpinnings of this assertion are suggested by the following passage:
Let us take a man, an Englishman as he is now, and try to point out that, apart
from what he has in common with others, apart from his sameness with others, he
is not an Englishman—nor a man at all; that if you take him as something by himself,
he is not what he is. Of course we do not mean to say that he cannot go out of
England without disappearing, nor, even if all the rest of the nation perished that
he would not survive. What we mean to say is, that he is what he is because he is
a born and educated social being, and a member of an individual social organism;
that if you make abstraction of all this, which is the same in him and in others,
what you have left is not an Englishman, nor a man, but some I know not what
residuum, which never has existed by itself, and does not so exist. If we suppose
the world of relations, in which he was born and bred, never to have been, then
we suppose the very essence of him not to be; if we take that away, we have taken
him away; and hence he now is not an individual, in the sense of owing nothing to
the sphere of relations in which he finds himself, but does contain those relations
within himself as belonging to his very being; he is what he is, in brief, so far as he
is what others also are (pp. 166-7).
So, the individual 'into whose essence his community with others
does not enter, who does not include relations to others in his very
being, is, we say, a fiction' (p. 168). Obviously, some kind of theory
of internal relations is being made to do a lot of work here, and Bradley
(15) F.H. BRADLEY, Ethical Studies (16) It is an indication of the prevailing
(London 1876 [second edition, revised with mode of treating such topics that Bradley
additional notes by the author: Oxford pointedly remarks that 'we will not call
1927]); all citations are from the Oxford to our aid the life of animals, nor early
Paperback edition, with Introduction by societies, nor the course of history, hut
Richard Wollheim (London 1962). we will take men as they are now' (p. 166).
II
STEFAN COLLINI
repudiates, in his usual tone of aggressive disdain, the superficial

logic of those who think that diversity excludes identity. Also,
it is far easier to assert the idea of the social constitution of the individ-
ual than actually to demonstrate the process through which this
takes place. Here, Bradley was not so free from the prevailing beliefs
of his time as he liked to believe, and he soon falls back on heredity
for an explanation, indeed on a Lamarckian account of it (17).
'Civilization is to some not inconsiderable extent hereditary', and each
generation inherits the acquired 'civilized tendencies' of its ancestors;
the infant is already partly constituted by his 'stock' (pp. 168-70).
Once born, 'the child is not for one moment left alone, but continually
tampered with [...] And yet the tender care that receives and guides
him is impressing on him habits, habits alas not particular to himself,
and the "icy chains" of universal custom are hardening themselves
around his cradled life' (p. 171). By the time that he is capable of
distinguishing his self from his world, 'then by that time his self,
the object of his self-consciousness, is penetrated, infected, charac-
terized by the existence of others. Its content implies in every fibre
relations of community' (p. 171). So the individual 'can only be
described as the specification or particularization of that which is
common [...] In short, man is a social being; he is real only because
he is social, and can realize himself only because it is as social that he
realizes himself. The mere individual is a delusion of theory' (pp. 171,
174)-
This is the voice of the combative polemicist, and the implications
of these particular arguments are not pursued systematically in
Ethical Studies. Nor, given that Bradley's main concern was to
demonstrate the inadequacies of hedonism and 'duty for duty's sake'
as descriptions of the moral end, is this surprising. But these themes
were taken up in subsequent Idealist works, and their sociological
tendency was well brought out in what is perhaps the maturest
statement of the social philosophy of British Idealism, Bernard
Bosanquet's The Philosophical Theory of the State (18). Consider,
(17) This he took to be the teaching of of sociability as such: 'It all holds good
science: 'On the descent of mental qualities, against individualism, but does not all
modern investigation and popular expe- hold in favour of this or that particular
rience, as expressed in uneducated vulgar community as distinct from others of more
opinion, altogether, I believe, support one or less the same general character'. Note
another' (p. 169). In a note added in his added to p. 170.
1924 revision, he had to reconsider: 'Are (18) Bernard BOSANQUET, The Philoso-
civilized tendencies hereditary? How far phical Theory of The State (London 1899).
is very doubtful'. He also recognised All citations are from the fourth edition
that his arguments only suggested the action (London 1923).
12
for example, the way in which Bosanquet approached the question of

the relation between social institutions and the social whole generally,
and the individual's perception of them. He developed the view
that 'minds and society are really the same fabric regarded from
different points of view [...] Every social group is the external
aspect of corresponding mental systems in individual minds', and so
'every individual mind is a system of such systems corresponding
to the totality of social groups, as seen from a particular position'
(pp. 158-9). Thus the 'reality' of institutions which analysis would
reveal would be 'an identical connection running through a number
of minds, various and variously conditioned [...] Every social
group or institution is the aspect in space and time of a set of corre-
sponding mental systems in individual minds', and 'each individual
mind, if we consider it as a whole, is an expression or reflection of
society as a whole from a point of view which is distinctive and
unique' (pp. 158-62). An institution is, therefore, 'an ethical idea',
an 'ideal substance, which, as a universal structure is the social, but
in its differentiated cases is the individual mind' (p. 277). So 'the
social whole [...] would be a whole consisting of physical dispositions
and their activities, answering to one another in determinate ways'
(p. 163).
This view of society as a 'psychical whole' and of institutions as
'ethical ideas' provides the foundation of Bosanquet's philosophy
of the state, the central concern of which was the restatement in
modern terms of the idea of the General Will. But, of course, in the
hands of other writers similar notions played an important part in
that overcoming of the individualist positivism of commonsense
which was involved in developing a specifically sociological under-
standing of society. They are, for example, clearly similar to Durk-
heim's notion of society as 'above all a composition of ideas, beliefs
and sentiments of all sorts which realize themselves through individ-
uals. Foremost of these ideas is the moral ideal which is its principal
raison d'etre'. This led Durkheim to conclude that 'the ideal is in
fact its [sociology's] peculiar field of study' (19). For Bosanquet,
the value of such ideas lay in the contribution they could make to the
understanding of how social institutions elicited and expressed a
moral will. At times, this involved bringing out the complexity of
social conditioning: 'Our vocation, like our neighbourhood, and
usually of course in connection with it, stamps both mind and body;
(19) limile DURKHEIM, Sociology and Introduction by J.G. Peristiany (London

Philosophy, trans, by D.F. Pocock, with 1953), pp. 59, 96-
13
STEFAN COLLINI
and what we consider most intimately ourself is really the structure

of ethical ideas which we are describing, with the feelings and habits
in which they are rooted, but none of which are unmodified by them'
(p. 293). But, more frequently, this concentration on the moral
potential of social life encouraged a neglect of the actual operation of
social forces. For example, his discussion of class as an 'ethical
idea' revolved around the 'service' or obligations which one's 'status'
required, and led him to argue that 'in social intercourse, though it
[class] practically exists as an institution, it claims to be an expression
of what people are in character and behaviour, and its differences
are not annexed by any iron bond to differences of occupation'
(p. 289) (20). This indicates the tendency, always lurking in this
philosophical tradition, to consider social relations only in terms of
their constitutive ideals, and consequently to exaggerate the extent to
which society is the expression of a moral consensus. But, paradox-
ically, this criticism also underlines, I would suggest, the affinities
between his theory and those which, largely as a result of Parsons'
systematic extrapolation from some Durkheimian ideas, have domin-
ated much of mid-twentieth-century sociology (21).
So far, I have deliberately chosen my examples from two classics
of British Idealism in order to make clear that the potentially socio-
logical perspective which I am suggesting was implicit in this phi-
losophy was not a peripheral concern or something only to be found
in the less well-known writings of minor figures. But the focus of
my argument is not on the theories of one or two leading philosophers,
but on the contribution of Idealism to more general intellectual
debate, and for this purpose one needs also to look at lesser writers
and more occasional pieces. A particularly interesting figure here is
D. G. Ritchie, the subsequent neglect of whose work owes much to
the fact that he wrote no full-scale philosophical treatment of the
questions which he had made his particular province, preferring
instead to disseminate his ideas in more accessible form in essays and
articles in the leading periodicals. He made 'a special study of the
Lamarckian and Darwinian theories in biology with the object of
weighing and considering the use of biological notions in politics and
(20) He even suggested that 'wealth (21) This affinity, and its relation to the
has weight because people give it weight; underlying optimism of Bosanquet's social
but no one need give weight to wealth philosophy, is commented upon in Stefan
in politics or social intercourse unless he COLLINI, Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the
likes', and he took a very idealised view of State: philosophical idealism and political
how 'labourers and mechanics' could argument in England 1880-1918, Past and
realize the qualities of a 'gentleman' (p. 289 Present, LXXII (1976), 86-111.
and n.).
14
philosophy', and although he was always a critic of the popular

attempts to base the study of society on the 'laws' of biology (to the
importance of which I shall return below), he was probably more
sympathetic than any other Idealist to some kind of evolutionary
science of society. As Latta noted: 'Ritchie continually insisted on
the importance of the "social factor" in mental development, not
merely with regard to the higher or more complex mental processes,
but in connection with the most elementary forms of cognition' (22).
And Ritchie was always at pains to insist that cultural and intellectual
elements 'are transmitted in the social inheritance of the race and are
not dependent on heredity in the biological sense' (23), a point well
worth insisting on in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s. He combined
this with certain Idealist insights to provide the basis for an account
(his fragmentary publications and early death meant that he never
proceeded to a full analysis) of how our experience itself is, in any
developed form, dependent on socially-formed categories. As he
put it in a review of James Ward's Gifford lectures:
The truth is that there is no such thing as wholly individual experience, beyond
mere uninterpreted feeling and blind willing. It is human society [...] with its
accumulated stock of concepts, that makes our experience a more or less organic
system. The psychologists with their individualistic standpoint are, I think,
responsible for much more confusion than even Mr. Ward admits. It takes more
than one man to know anything, or to have an ideal end for volition (34).
Elsewhere, Ritchie revealed the kind of interest in the methodology

of the social sciences, particularly economics, which in the case of
Weber and others was to be an important stepping stone to sociology.
In an impressive essay entitled 'What are Economic Laws?' (25),
he touched on a variety of points which, although now more or less
commonplace, are frequently assumed to be absent from British
speculation in the late nineteenth century. For example, he emphas-
(22) Both quotations from the Memoir The article was a reply to an article in the
by Robert LATTA, prefixed to RITCHIE'S previous issue of the journal by the Cam-
posthumously published Philosophical bridge economic historian, the Rev.
Studies (London 1905), pp. 8, 34. William Cunningham, arguing that eco-
(23) D.G. RITCHIE, Social Evolution, nomics is a purely theoretical subject like
first published in The International Journal logic or geometry and so had no place for
of Ethics for 1896, and reprinted in the language of 'causes' and 'laws'. They
D.G. RITCHIE, Studies in Political and completed their exchanges in ibid. pp. 538-
Social Ethics (London 1902), pp. 7-8. 44, and Ritchie modified his article very
(24) D.G. RITCHIE, Nature and Mind. slightly in response to Cunningham's
Some notes on Professor Ward's Gifford reply; all citations are from this version, as
Lectures, Philosophical Review, IX (1900), reprinted in RITCHIE, Darwin and Hegel,
pp. 265-6. With Other Philosophical Studies (London
(25) D.G. RITCHIE, What are Economic 1893).
Laws ?, Economic Review, II (1892), 359-77-
STEFAN COLLINI
ized that research is dependent upon (frequently implicit) hypotheses;

he distinguished laws from empirical generalizations, and carefully
divested them of any normative force; he noted the concern with
'the particular' in history as contrasted with the scientific search for
'universals'; he remarked that the purposive nature of human action
distinguished it from the merely causal relations which natural science
studies; he hinted at a notion of the role of 'models' in theory con-
struction, as, for example, in his discussion of the importance in the
elaboration of economic theory of a hypothetical situation of free
competition to which no actual conditions ever conformed; and in
general, he insisted that economics, like all the social sciences, must
deal with history, for its principles depend upon
the conditions which make different commodities desirable in different degrees

to different persons. The attempt to construct a pure theory of economics equally
applicable at all times and in all places must necessarily result in the economist
taking certain phenomena of his own time in isolation from his social context, and
formulating principles which can only be made rigidly true and universal by gra-
dually being divested of all reference to any reality, so that they finally become
absolutely identical, i.e. purely verbal propositions (pp. 156-7) (26).
In this connection, he also pointed out, in Durkheimian vein, how

economic relations presuppose others, in that, for example, they
require 'a certain minimum amount of mutual trust and confidence'
(p. 163). And, finally, he observed that 'in all parts of social evol-
ution, many of the most striking results have been those which the
agents did not intend' (p. 166). This last insight was, of course, by no
means a rare one—Spencer had remorselessly reiterated it over
several decades—but it was one which Idealists, with their bias
towards rational and teleological explanations, were prone to lose
sight of. (I return to this point in section IV). In fact, Ritchie's
argument is rather elusive at this point, for he was also concerned to
combat the view that social phenomena developed according to a
logic of their own, independent of human volition. But in insisting
on the necessary role of the latter, he treated it in such a rationalistic
and individualistic way that deliberate volition by assignable individuals
seems to become essential to the explanation of all social phenomena,
even language and its evolution. At other times, however, he retreats
(26) In this context he remarked that and Austinian jurisprudence: 'In each case
'the attempt to escape history in dealing the attempt to work out "pure theory"
with human phenomena makes the restor- unadulterated by history, has resulted in
ation of the particular historical background the ' 'theory'' being unintelligible and inex-
of the theorist essential to the understanding plicable except in the immediate surround-
of the professedly abstract theory'. He ings of those who have enunciated it'
offered as examples Ricardian economics (p. 157 and n.).
16
from this extreme position to one which merely asserts that social
institutions are the outcome of human action and so subject to alter-
ation by human action (27). (It was important to establish this point
against the popularized assumptions of classical political economy
as part of his Socialistic critique of existing economic and political
arrangements). None of these points is made at any length (and
I have somewhat schematized Ritchie's more casual presentation
of them), nor, though he recognized the inadequacies of existing social
science (28), were they followed up in the remainder of his relatively
brief writing career (29). But they suggest a range of interests and
a set of concepts which it is not mere present-mindedness to regard as
propaedeutic to sociology.
Although Ritchie did not systematically develop these specific
points elsewhere, the rest of his work exhibited the same general
approach to social issues, albeit that his intention in most of his
essays was more directly political and polemical (30). And I would
suggest that a similar approach to that sketched for Bradley, Bosanquet
and Ritchie informed, often loosely and sometimes in much feebler
form, the social philosophy of British Idealism as a whole. It is
certainly the case that I have chosen my examples from the strongest
representatives of this approach, but diluted versions of such state-
ments could be drawn from a host of other sources, from Muirhead
on the family, Mackenzie on social philosophy, Hetherington and
(27) Cf. his discussions of language on the question of the attitude of Ritchie and
pp. 168-70 with his claim on p. 171 that the other Idealists towards existing 'sociol-
'there are very many economic phenomena ogy' in section III, below.
which are dependent on individual action (29) The bulk of Ritchie's essays were
and social approval, e.g. the different forms written when he was in his thirties and a
of land-tenure, the degree in which freedom Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. After
of bequest is permitted, and the kind of taking the chair of Logic and Metaphysics
contracts which are sanctioned by law and at St. Andrews in 1894, he was heavily
custom. All these may be and have been involved in teaching and administrative
altered—not indeed by the arbitrary will responsibilities, and increasingly suffered
of individuals acting in isolation, but by various sorts of illness until his death in
the will of individuals approved of by the 1903. The duties of his chair meant
general consent, or submitted to by the that what writing he did do during these
general acquiescence of the community'. years was more concerned with the tradi-
(28) Which he saw as dominated by tional problems of epistemology and meta-
'the dogmatic exaggeration of Mr. Benjamin physics than with social theory (see the
Kidd' and 'the facile metaphors of the late memoir by Latta, pp. 11-15).
Henry Drummond'. D.G. RITCHIE, review (30) See, for example, Darwinism and
of Robert MACKINTOSH, From Comte to Politics (London 1889), The Principles of
Benjamin Kidd: The Appeal to Biology or State Interference (London 1891), and
Evolution for Human Guidance (London Studies in Political and Social Ethics (London
1899), in The International Journal of 1902), all of which are collections of his
Ethics (1899-1900), at p. 252. I take up occasional political writings.
17
STEFAN GOLLINI
Muirhead on social purpose, and so on (31). One could quote Henry

Jones on how a man's 'self, or character, and his world have grown
together, and [...] they are not merely counterparts of each other, but
the same thing looked at in different ways. [...] As life is the
process of internalizing the world, and the environment is the potential
content of character, the power of society over unformed childhood
is indefinitely great' (32). Or again, Sidney Ball on how
society no more than the individual mind can be understood apart from the idea
of system [...] The working ideas of Sociology should be those of function, structure
and organization—of a true identity in difference, not a mere contagion of similars.
If you are going to explain society in terms of mind, you must at any rate take mind
where it is most, not where it is least, mind: any casual association of psychical
units no more explains the structure and working of a mind than any mere association
of human units explains the structure and working of a State (33).
Of course, isolated remarks indicating 'sociological insight' can easily

be culled from the works of any number of 'pre-sociological' authors
(a vocabulary which tends to express or encourage a teleological
perspective), and correspondingly inflated claims then made on their
behalf—often in terms of that most sterile of intellectual history's
categories, 'anticipations'. However, in the present case it is clear
that the quoted statements were far from isolated, and, more import-
antly, that they were integrated into a theory of considerable sophistic-
ation. But Ball's reference to 'Sociology' in my last example indicates
that it is time to examine the attitudes of the Idealists to the versions
of that enterprise which were then current.
(31) J.H. MUIRHEAD, IS the Family ogy, Mind, N.S., X (1901), pp. 161-2.
Declining, International Journal of Ethics, Ball is not included in the standard dis-
VII (1896), 33-55; J.S. MACKENZIE, An cussions of British Idealism, presumably
Introduction to Social Philosophy (Glasgow because he wrote so little actual philosophy,
1890)—see also his Outlines of Social but he surely belongs here. He was a
Philosophy (London 1918), which was disciple of Green's at Oxford in the late
intended to replace the earlier volume, and 1870s before going to study at Gottingen;
his Lectures on Humanism, with Special as 'Greats' Tutor at St. John's College,
Reference to its Bearings on Sociology Oxford, he expounded a generally Idealist
(London 1907); H.J.W. HETHERINGTON philosophy. His more specifically political
and J.H. MUIRHEAD, Social Purpose: A writings (he was the founder of the Oxford
contribution to a philosophy of civic society Fabian Society and an advocate of 'moral
(London 1918). Socialism') are certainly informed by an
(32) Henry JONES, The Working Faith of a Idealist viewpoint. See Oona Howard
Social Reformer and Other Essays (London BALL, Sidney Ball: Memories and Impressions
1910), pp. s i , 56. of'An Ideal Don' (Oxford 1923).
(33) Sydney [sic] BALL, Current Sociol-
18
III
By the late nineteenth century, 'Sociology' was already a term
with a great future behind it, but in Britain in the last two decades
of the century it was enjoying something of a revival. Its vogue
was closely bound up with debates about, on the one hand, the
causes of and remedies for the 'Social Question', and, on the other,
the frequently related issue of the nature and conditions of progress
(or social development—the rather loose equation of the two was of
some importance here). It became a label which could be tied to a
variety of intellectual baggage in order to indicate that the discovery
of the 'laws of social life' was its destination, and that it thereby
merited first-class treatment. However, as is so often the case with
exotically-labelled luggage, this frequently led to its being roughly
handled. For the term was overwhelmingly associated with the
grandiose constructions and implausible analogies of Comte's and
Spencer's evolutionary theories, and that was enough to guarantee
it a hostile reception from most British philosophers of the period,
including the Idealists. Indeed, what needs to be emphasized is
the extent to which the Idealists shared the understanding of, and
attitude to, sociology which prevailed in established intellectual
circles. And the chief target of this barrage of philosophical criticism
was the claim that the proper task of sociology was to apply Darwinian
(and, in practice, Lamarckian) theories of evolution to the study of
society, or, as it was put by the best-selling popularizer Henry Drum-
mond, 'more than ever, the method of Sociology must be biolog-
ical' (34).
It is this understanding of what constituted the activity referred to
as 'sociology' which needs to be recovered if we are to make sense of
the development of the subject in Britain. For the tendency to
equate sociology with variations of biological social theory meant that
the criticisms so widely directed at the latter were for long assumed to
dispose of the claims of the former. I cannot here detail the range of
these criticisms, so I shall restrict myself to the views of one repre-
sentative critic, Henry Sidgwick. Actually, Sidgwick's caution and
scrupulous fairness mean that he only represents the most moderate
versions of such criticism, but as 'the last utilitarian', who had done
battle with the champions of Idealism on countless issues, he will
(34) Henry DHUMMOND, The Ascent of Man (London 1894), p. 61.

STEFAN COLLINI
hardly be suspected of merely repeating views originally formulated

by Idealists (35).
As early as 1885, Sidgwick felt that the recent rise of interest in
sociology demanded attention (36). Taking the three 'most elaborate
and ambitious treatises of sociology' in the three major European
languages—Comte's Politique Positive, Schaffle's Bau und Leben des
Sozialen Korpers, and Spencer's Sociology (which, presumably,
referred to The Principles of Sociology, possibly in combination with
The Study of Sociology)—he scoffed at their claims to have discerned
the law of social development: 'Each philosopher has constructed
on the basis of personal feeling and experience his ideal future in which
our present social deficiencies are to be remedied', and so 'the process
by which history is arranged in steps pointing towards his Utopia
bears not the faintest resemblance to a scientific demonstration'.
Certainly, there was a damning congruence of each writer's socio-
logical conclusions with his political preferences, and Sidgwick dis-
missed the claims of such a science of society until such time as 'it
can offer us something better than a mixture of vague and variously
applied physiological analogies, imperfectly verified historical gener-
alizations, and unwarranted political predictions' (pp. 192-5, 198).
Before the end of the century, Sidgwick repeated substantially similar
criticisms in two further articles, indicating that in his opinion this
time was still some way off. In 1894, he was disturbed by the success
of Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution (37), with-its claim that in studying
society 'we are merely regarding the highest phenomena in the history
of life, and that consequently all departments of knowledge which
deal with social phenomena have their true foundations in the biolog-
ical sciences', the recognition of which, he asserted, would have a
(35) Of course, such debates presupposed, Quotation from this and the two succeeding
rather than denied, the existence of some essays is from this edition.
common ground. Exaggerating this point, (37) Benjamin KIDD, Social Evolution
C.J. Dewey has suggested that there was a (London 1894); the book ran to nineteen
'convergence' between Sidgwick's moral printings in its first four years, according
and social theory and that of the Idealists, to Halevy (Elie HALEVY, Imperialism and
in 'Cambridge Idealism': utilitarian revisio- the Rise of Labour [first edition, in French,
nists in late-nineteenth century Cambridge, 1926] London 1961, p. 19). As a result
Historical Journal, XVII (1974), 63-78. The of the success of his book, Kidd was asked
evidence against this suggestion is presented to write the article on 'Sociology* for the
in Stefan COLLINI, Idealism and 'Cambridge 10th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
Idealism', ibid., XVIII (1975), 171-77. in 1902, where he could authoritatively
(36) H. SIDGWICK, The Scope and confirm the equation of the subject with
Methods of Economic Science (the Presi- biological social theory. This was the
dential Address to the 'Economic Science first edition of the Encyclopaedia to include
and Statistics' section of the British Associ- an article on sociology, itself an indication
ation), reprinted in his Miscellaneous of the increased attention recently paid to
Essays and Addresses (London 1904). it.
20
'transforming effect [...] in the department of sociology' (38). Once

again Sidgwick focussed on the pseudo-scientific use of the language
of biology to describe the 'evolution' of the 'social organism': 'In all
such phrases, an essentially vague analogy is strained to produce a
false semblance of definite knowledge'. Not surprisingly, he conclud-
ed that 'Mr. Kidd has left the science of society where he found it—
unconstructed as far as the laws of social development are concern-
ed' (39). Nor did he think that this situation had improved by 1899,
when, in an article on 'The Relation of Ethics to Sociology', he tried
to counter the widespread notion that, since the sociologist demon-
strates the 'natural' line of social evolution, 'the moralist must accept
this sociological end as his ultimate ethical end, since otherwise he
would be setting up an ideal opposed to the irresistible drift of the
whole process of life in the world, which would obviously be futile'.
In rejecting such claims, he once again pointed out that 'sociology,
as conceived by Comte and Spencer, may be briefly described as an
attempt to make the study of human history scientific by applying
to it conceptions derived from biology, with such modifications as
their new application requires' (40).
This was the understanding of sociology shared by the Idealists,
though generally in an even more hostile form. Characteristically, it
was sociology's relation to moral philosophy which most disturbed
them, for here it struck at the heart of their whole enterprise of under-
standing man and his essentially*moral nature in spiritual (i.e. non
naturalistic terms. The two foundation statements of Idealist moral
philosophy, Bradley's Ethical Studies and Green's Prolegomena to
Ethics, were written before the threat from something specifically
called 'sociology' was of any significance. Indeed it is interesting
that Green, in rejecting the claims of an empirical or naturalistic
approach to morality, referred to 'the physical science conveniently
(38) Social Evolution, pp. 33, 35. In order to induce the world to accept any
(39) Political Prophecy and Sociology change they desire, they endeavour to
(first published in 1894 in The National show that the whole course of history has
Review), in Miscellaneous Essays, p. 333. been preparing the way for it [...] It is
Sidgwick perceptively noted that the success astonishing how easy it is plausibly to
of Kidd's book reflected a very general represent any desired result as the last
belief in laws of social development: 'When inevitable outcome of the operation of the
this attitude of mind is widely prevalent laws of social development'(pp. 218-9).
among educated persons generally, innov- (40) The Relation of Ethics to Sociology
ators whose social and political ideals are (first published in 1899 in International
really in their inception quite unhistorical, Journal of Ethics), in Miscellaneous Essays,
are naturally led to adopt the historical p p , 249, 263.
method as an instrument of persuasion.
21
STEFAN COLLINI
called Anthropology', a reflection of the earlier vogue of this term (41).

But when his successor, William Wallace, came to give his Inaugural
lecture in 1883, he took 'Ethics and Sociology' as his title. He
conceded the desirability of ascertaining 'if possible, the laws which
govern the sympathetic connection between one part of the body
social and another, and the order in which its states succeed each
other', which enquiry was now called 'sociology'. But he firmly
denied that this newly fashionable study could perform the traditional
tasks of moral philosophy (which he took to be one of the claims
of its proponents). At best, he argued, it tended to confuse the
explanation of the origin of morality with the standard of morality,
and, at worst, it reduced man to the status of the most complex unit
of matter produced by evolution, thereby denying his distinctively
moral nature (42). This was the gist of the criticism which Idealists
were to direct against sociology over the next thirty years.
Obviously Spencer was cast as the villain in this story, a role for
which Kidd later became the understudy, and the uncritical application
of evolutionary biology to the study of society was his crime. Ritchie
summed up the case of the prosecution against the claim that
with the help of a few formulae that have, or seem to have, the sanction of biological
science, the sociologist can solve theoretical and practical problems which have
baffled historians and politicians for centuries [...] The sociologist (especially when
he is simply the biologist sociologizing) is apt to regard the historian as merely
occupied with the higher gossip; on the other hand, the contempt for distinctions of
time and place, and the unscholarly use of authorities, which too often characterize
the sociologist, are apt to make the very word 'evolution' stink in the nostrils of the
genuine historian. 'Evolution' and 'development' seem only grand names for his-
tory treated inaccurately (43).
The particular addition to this common charge which the Idealists

tended to make was that in claiming to provide a scientific under-
standing of human action, sociology was trespassing on territory
rightly belonging to philosophy. For it was an essential part of the
inspiration and self-definition of British Idealism that it undertook
to rescue man from the reductionism of his own science. Its philo-
sophical anthropology was, often explicitly, constructed as a defence
of the 'higher' or 'nobler' facets of human life against the levelling
(41) T.H. GREEN, Prolegomena to Ethics, 'anthropology', see BURROW, Evolution and
edited by A.C. BRADLEY (Oxford 1883), Society, ch. IV.
p. 4. (The book was based on lectures (42) William WALLACE, Ethics and Sociol-
given several years earlier). The first ogy, Mind, O.S., VIII (1883), 222-50,
part of the book had already been published quotation at p. 225.
as three articles in Mind for 1882 under (43) D.G. RITCHIE, Social Evolution,
the revealing title 'Can there be a natural in Studies in Political and Social Ethics,
science of man ?' For the vogue of pp. 1-2, 3,
22
iconoclasm of scientific naturalism. Its primary commitment, there-

fore, was precisely to treating man as qualitatively different from the
rest of nature, and hence to understanding the social world which is
both his creator and his creation in terms of the unique activity of
human consciousness (and ultimately, at least in some varieties of
Idealism, in terms of the eternal consciousness, or of the Absolute,
which embraced it). From such a standpoint, sociology, as an enter-
prise which was explicitly an extension of the methods of the natural
sciences to human studies, was seen as one of the more recent and
more dangerous excesses of the scientific temper of the nineteenth
century.
Even those Idealists who were most sympathetic to the idea of
sociology, and best informed about its recent manifestations, such as
Bosanquet or Ball, ultimately rested their case on this argument.
Bosanquet, for example, considered not only Comte and Spencer,
but also the recent work of Tarde, Durkheim, Giddings and others,
and he certainly recognized the superiority of the latter group (44).
As he observed of recent work in France and America, 'that a science
of man must be a science of mind seems no longer disputable', and he
was encouraged to see sociology being resolved into more of a 'psycho-
logical science'. But he still insisted that 'the positive bias of sociol-
ogy is not transcended simply by this resolution'. Its observations
were always prone to be merely 'dumb facts': 'the only unity that can
really afford an explanation, that can correlate this irregular fragment
of fact with the whole to which it belongs, is the living mind and will
of the society in which the phenomenon occurs. Explanation aims
at referring things to a whole; and there is no true whole but mind'.
But the understanding of mind at this level is peculiarly the task of
philosophy, and so it is philosophy which 'has to deal with the prob-
lems which arise out of the nature of a whole and its parts, the relation
of the individual to the universal, and the transformation by which
the particular self is lost, to be found again in a more individual, and
yet more universal form'. And, finally, it is only philosophy which
can 'point out when and how, and how far by social aid, the human
soul attains the most and best that it has in it to become'. He was
(44) He seems to have come to his of Durkheim's earliest critics (LUKES,
knowledge and appreciation of them £mile Durkheim, p. 314). Bosanquet re-
between 1897 and 1899. In 'The Relation tained a strong interest in Durkheim's
of Sociology to Philosophy', Mind, N.S., work, though always critical of its 'mater-
VI (1897), 1-8, he is much less well-in- ialist' tendency: see his essay 'Atomism
formed, is rather more critical of sociology, in History' (a lecture of 1911) in Bernard
and relies for some of his opinions of BOSANQUET, Social and International Ideals
French sociology on Marcel Bernes, one (London 1917).
23
STEFAN COLLINI
prepared to allow that a greatly improved version of what was currently

known as sociology could assist philosophy in this task, but, like Ball,
he concluded that success was only to be hoped for from a science
'controlled by "the idea of the good'" (45).
Towards the end of this period, the Idealists did encounter some
studies pursued under the name of sociology which they recognized
as less 'materialistic' and certainly less biological, and they were
correspondingly less hostile to them. J.S. Mackenzie still expressed
the prevailing view in 1907 when he spoke of sociology as 'a subject,
indeed, which has not yet assumed any definite form, and which,
consequently, serves to cover many heterogeneous discussions', but
already he recognized that sociology was not always being treated 'as
a branch of biology'. It was still the case that sociology did not
recognize what was peculiar to the study of man—'that it involves a
reference to conscious ends'—but he found the development of ideas
such as Hobhouse's concept of 'orthogenic evolution' encouraging (46).
And by 1918, Hetherington and Muirhead, though firmly distin-
guishing genuine social philosophy from mere sociology, could
acknowledge the merits of recent work by such self-proclaimed sociol-
ogists as Hobhouse and Maclver (47). But by them the star of
Idealism was very much on the wane in Britain, and what sociological
theory did develop in the period between the wars tended to be at the
expense of, rather than as a result of, the influence of Idealism (48).
(45) BOSANQUET, The Philosophical Theory recognition of the different degrees to which
of the State, pp. 40, 42, 47, 48-9; BALL, individuals can enter into the 'real end of
Current Sociology, p. 171. society'.
(46) MACKENZIE, Lectures on Humanism, (48) I have in mind the way in which
pp. 1, 5-6, 9; he was referring to the expo- Hobhouse, Maclver, Ginsberg and others
sition of the idea of 'orthogenic evolution' made a criticism of Idealism, particularly
as the line of 'the growth of mind' in the theory of the General Will, one of the
L.T. HOBHOUSE, Democracy and Reaction foundations on which they built their own
(London 1904), ch. iv. It is hardly surpris- sociological constructions. For HOBHOUSE,
ing that Idealists looked favourably on this in addition to his famous The Metaphysical
concept, since it was essentially a working Theory of the State (London 1918), see how
out of an Idealist notion of teleology in his own theory is related to a criticism of
biological terms. (I am, at present, engaged Idealism in his essay Sociology, in
in a much larger study of the place of R. J.S. MCDOWALL (ed.), The Mind (London
Hobhouse's thought in relation to the 1927); R.M. MACIVER, Community, A
turn-of-the-century debates about Liber- sociological study (London 1917), esp.
alism and Sociology, in which I hope to Appendix on 'A Criticism of the Neo-
document and substantiate this interpre- Hegelian Identification of Society and State';
tation more fully). also his The Modern State (London 1926);
(47) HETHERINGTON and MUIRHEAD, Morris GINSBERG, IS there a General
Social Purpose, pp. 78, 100, 119. The Will?', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
passages selected for praise are usually XX (1920), 89-112; also his Sociology (Lon-
those where these writers come closest to don 1934). I develop this point more fully
an Idealist view, e.g. p. 100 on Maclver's below.
24
It was the identification of sociology with a particular kind of evo-

lutionary, and generally biological, social theory during the period
when Idealism was at its most creative (say, the eighties and nine-
ties), which had helped to obscure the conceptual space which, under
this label, a development of aspects of their own social philosophy
might have occupied.
This is a large part of the story, but not the whole of it. After all,
an initial hostility to what passed for sociology was not peculiar to
Britain. For example, 'at the turn of the century, sociology meant
for Weber an inflated approach vainly claiming the status of a master
science in pursuit of the empirical and normative laws of social life.
At best it meant the three-stage evolutionary scheme of Auguste
Comte, the mechanistic similes of Herbert Spencer, or the organicist
analogies of Albert Schaffle' (49). And for a long time Weber did
not think of himself as contributing to a subject which was, at most,
a schematic ancillary to history (50). Again, in France in the late
nineteenth century, the philosophers 'were unanimous in finding
['sociology'] bizarre and unwarranted', and associated it strongly
with the followers of Comte (51). But in each country, the situation
was different in many complex ways. In Germany, for example,
there were already independent-minded theorists of the stature of
Tonnies and Simmel who were willing to stake a claim for the new
discipline, and, as an anonymous reviewer in Mind observed, 'the
biological school has obtained little hold in Germany' compared
to Britain (52). And from very early on, Durkheim managed to
identify 'sociology' with his own writings and those of his close-knit
band of followers, and his personal ascendancy was obviously very
remarkable (53). But one can go on enumerating differences in the
situation of sociology in each of these countries almost indefinitely,
and any more sustained analysis is beyond the scope of the present
article. Instead, in the following section, I shall point to certain
features of British Idealism and of its relations to the wider intellectual
context which may help to explain why the potential for sociological
theory implicit in its conceptual scheme did not develop further in
this direction. Although organized around this question, this section
(49) BENDIX and ROTH, Scholarship and A. Espinas.

Partisanship, p. 37. (52) Anon, review of C. BOUGLE, Les
(5°) Just how long is well brought sciences sociales en Allemagne, in Mind, N.S.,
out in John TORRANCE, Max Weber: VI (1897), 426-7.
methods and the man, Archives europiennes (53) Actually, despite the merits of
de sociologie, XV (1974), 127-165. Lukes' Smile Durkheim and Clark's Prophets
(51) LUKES, Smile Durkheim, p. 66, and Patrons, the initial basis of the Durk-
quoting the contemporary opinion of heimian ascendancy is still rather elusive.
25
STEFAN COLLINI
will in effect look in more detail at the attitudes of the British Idealists
to a range of issues relating to the understanding of society, since only
by recovering their responses to the problems raised by these issues
can we begin to appreciate the complex part they played in the intel-
lectual life of the period.
IV
I shall begin by looking at two further features of the social theory

of British Idealism itself. The first is its account of the relation
between state and society (54). In keeping with their Hegelian
ancestry, the British Idealists largely interpreted the unity of a modern
society as a political unity, as the life of the state, in the sense that the
regular practices of organized social life take place within limits laid
down by the recognized and, if need be, enforced norms of that
society, and that, the ultimate arbitrations in questions of dispute
being political, the state can be said to be responsible for, and the
informing spirit of, the social practices and institutionalized values
which flourish within its boundaries. They tended to concentrate,
therefore, on the extent to which the state, as the expression of the
common life, constituted the realization of an ethical ideal or end.
Of course, in the context of political debate in late nineteenth-century
Britain there was some incentive to develop a notion of the state as
something more than an insurance company or protection agency
set up by the community to safeguard its material interests (which
was the caricature of Individualism put about by its opponents). But
the Idealists' essentially classical approach diverted attention from
the way in which social forces moulded the very values and shaped the
very practices which were supposed to be expressions of the ends of
the state. This clearly dovetailed with their suspicion of sociology
as a trespasser on ground rightly belonging to political philosophy.
Thus, when Ritchie remarked on the Social Darwinists' 'applica-
tion of heredity to sociological (i.e. ethical and political) problems' (55),
he was not allowing room for the Social Darwinists' contribution,
albeit in crippled form, to the understanding of the dynamics of
distinctively social processes. Many writers have argued for the
intimate connection between the analytical separation of state and
society, and the historical separation of sociology from traditional
(54) This section draws on material (55) Quoted by Latta in the memoir in
discussed more fully in COLLINI, Hobhouse, RITCHIE, Philosophical Studies, p. 42.
Bosanquet and the State.
26
political theory (56); but the standard account of this distinction was
one which British Idealists repudiated in principle, even if, in altered
form, they often accepted it in practice.
This point can be made in another way by considering how those
writers who did develop sociology in Britain in the first part of this
century were nearly always critics of Idealism on this issue. An
attack on the neo-Hegelian theory of the state became almost a rite
de passage for the budding social scientist (57). Hobhouse probably
provides the best-known example of this. As the first Professor of
Sociology in Britain from 1907 till his death in 1929, as the first editor
of the Sociological Review, and as the author of several standard texts
on the subject, Hobhouse has been recognized as the 'decisive' figure
in the development of British sociology, the man 'who made sociol-
ogy [•••] m Britain' (58). But he is also the best-known critic of
Idealist political philosophy, his Metaphysical Theory of the State
still being recognized as the standard demolition of the theory of the
General Will. And the first chapter of that work was precisely an
elaboration of the distinction between sociology and social philosophy,
with the charge that Idealism systematically confused them, and the
claim that 'the foundation of true social method is to hold the ideal
and the actual distinct'. The central premise of Hobhouse's argu-
ment is that the state is only 'one of the ways in which human beings
are grouped [...] To confuse the state with society and political with
moral obligation is the central fallacy of the metaphysical theory of
the state' (59). Hobhouse certainly had political reasons for wishing
to insist on this distinction, but, as his later works make clear, he also
found it essential to his conception of sociology as 'the study of human
society, which means in its most general sense the tissue of relations
into which human beings enter with one another', and even his
specifically sociological works frequently repeat his charge against
(56) Among the best known examples are (58) ABRAMS, Origins of British Sociology,
R. ARON, The Main Currents of Sociological p. 87; Donald G. MACRAE, Leonard
Thought, I (London 1968 [first published Trelawny Hobhouse 1864-1929, L.S.E.
in French in 1965]), esp. Introduction; The Magazine of the London School of
W.G. RUNCIMAN, Social Science and Polit- Economics, XLIII (1972), p. 10. Cf.
ical Theory (Cambridge 1963), passim; Ronald FLETCHER, The Making of Sociology,
Sheldon WoLiN, Politics and Vision (Boston Vol. II (London 1971), p. 13s; 'Hobhouse,
i960), esp. chs. IX and X. from 1907 to his death in 1929, was prob-
(57) Abrams rightly remarks that 'modern ably the most dominant influence on the
British sociology was built, more than making of sociology in Britain'.
anything else, as a defense against Spencer' (59) L.T. HOBHOUSE, The Metaphysical
(Origins of British Sociology, p. 67), but by Theory of the State (London 1918), pp. 17,
1920 the negative importance of Bosanquet 77.
was almost as great.
27
STEFAN COLLINI
Idealism of having subsumed society into the state (60).

Another important theorist for whom the development of sociology
was premised upon a rejection of the Idealist account of the state was
R.M. Maclver. Maclver is nearly always omitted from histories of
British sociology because so much of his mature work was written in
North America where he lived from 1915 until his death in 1970.
But he was born in Scotland in 1882, received the traditional Scottish
and Oxford 'Greats' education, and in 1907 became assistant to
J.B. Baillie, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen and translator
of Hegel's Phenomenology. Moreover, it was while at Aberdeen that
he wrote Community : A sociological study, one of the minor classics of
twentieth-century sociology (61). Maclver became interested in
'the academically unesteemed and undeveloped field of the social
sciences' while at Oxford, and although at first he denied that there
was any discipline of sociology separate from the traditional studies
such as economics, politics and ethics, he soon became interested in
developing the notion of a science of society as such (62). A necessary
precondition for such a study he took to be the criticism of the Idealists'
account of the State, and in 1911 he published an important criticism
of Bosanquet, of whose Philosophical Theory of the State he wrote:
'In no modern work are the inconsistencies and contradictions of
applied Hellenism more apparent' (63). The attack on Idealism was
the foundation of his career in more ways than one, for it so greatly
offended Baillie that Maclver was more or less forced to leave his post
and take up an appointment in North America (first at Toronto, then
at Columbia), eventually becoming one of the leading figures of Amer-
ican sociology (64). But he remains an example of the way in which
(60) L.T. HOBHOUSE, 'Sociology' (first R.M. Maclver (Chicago 1970), esp. 'Intro-
published in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of duction'.
Religion and Ethics, Vol. XI (New York (62) MACIVER, AS a Tale that is Told,
1920)), in L.T. HOBHOUSE, Sociology p. 65; he denied the claims of sociology in
and Philosophy: A centenary collection of his first article, Ethics and Politics, Interna-
essays and articles edited by Morris Ginsberg tional Journal of Ethics, XX (1909), 72-86,
(London 1966), p. 23. See also p. 25: esp. p. 77 and n.
'The political philosopher is convinced that (63) R.M. MACIVER, Society and State,
the state is society'. And see the attack Philosophical Review, XX (1911), 30-45,
on Idealism in HOBHOUSE, 'Sociology' at p. 34. The substance of this article was
in R.J. MACDOWALL (ed.), The Mind, reproduced as an Appendix to Community,
previously cited. entitled 'A Criticism of the Neo-Hegelian
(61) Although not finally published until Identification of "Society" and "State" '.
1917, the Preface is dated September 1914. (64) As a Tale that is Told, pp. 75-103.
For further information see his autobio- Of course, his contribution might well
graphy, As a Tale that is Told: The auto- have been very different had he stayed
biography of R.M. Maclver (Chicago 1968), in Britain: it is hardly a wild exaggeration
and L. BRAMSON (ed.), On Community, of the influence of institutions to suggest
Society and Power: Selected writings of that one would be more prone to write
28
what self-conscious sociological theory did develop in Britain in the

early years of the century frequently did do on the basis of a rejection
of the Idealist account of state and society [(65). Indeed, something
similar might be said, in a rather weaker form, in the case of those
figures whose writings are often seen as pioneering contributions to
the disciplines of social psychology and political science (66). And,
of course, it was central to all the varieties of pluralism which blos-
somed during this period (67).
A second, closely related, feature of British Idealism was the way
in which, with its fundamentally teleological approach, it celebrated
moral and sometimes religious values (68). An exhortation to assist
in the realization of all that is 'highest' or 'noblest' in man was a stan-
sociological textbooks as Professor of Haven 1917). At this time, A.D. LINDSAY,

Sociology at Columbia than as Assistant too, was a critic of Bosanquet who was
to the Professor of Moral Philosophy at sympathetic to pluralism; see his articles,
Aberdeen. The State in Recent Political Theory,
(65) And like Hobhouse he returned to The Political Quarterly, I (1914), 128-145;
the charge in later works (see, for example, The State and Society, in L. CREIGHTON
The Modern State (New York 1926)), and et al.. The International Crisis (London
eventually obtained the ultimate recognition 1916); and his later Bosanquet's Theory
of the importance of his criticisms—a of the General Will, Aristotelian Society
reply in Mind from Muirhead, the self- Supplement (1928) (a symposium with
appointed guardian of the honour of the H. J. Laski). But the relation with Idealism,
memory of Idealism: J.H. MUIRHEAD, in general terms, is ambivalent in these
Professor Maclver's Criticism of the writers: Rousseau is appealed to more than
Idealistic Theory of the General Will, any other philosopher, and there is one
Mind, N.S., XXXVII (1928), 82-7. fairly obvious line of descent which can be
(66) Consider McDougall's rejection of traced back through Figgis and Maitland
Idealism in The Group Mind (London 1920) to Gierke and German historical jurispru-
or Wallas's in Human Nature in Politics dence. And in fact, I think it could be
(London 1908); also his Our Social Heritage argued that the ultimate influence of some
(New Haven, Conn., 1921), for example of the figures involved in this movement
p. 202. Indeed there were so many such was to frustrate rather than foster the
attacks that in 1924 Muirhead had to write growth of distinctively sociological studies
three articles by way of reply: see his 'Recent in Britain. Consider, for example, the
Criticisms of the Idealist theory of the strategic position of Barker who developed
General Will', Mind, N.S., XXXIII (1934), his own strongly classical version of 'Political
166-75, 233-41. 361-68. Science' at Cambridge, or of Lindsay who
continued the tradition of 'Politics, Ethics
(67) And although the pluralists did not and Economics' which ultimately issued in
write sociology as such, theirs was in a the P.P.E. course, which for so long was
sense an inherently 'sociological' political Oxford's answer to sociology.
theory—and certainly one which defined
itself in opposition to Idealism as represented (68) Muirhead later wrote, exaggeratedly
by Bosanquet. For some early examples but not fantastically, that 'British Idealism
of this, see E. BARKER, The Discredited has been from the first a philosophy of
State, The Political Quarterly, V (1915), religion'. The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-
101-121; G.D.H. COLE, Conflicting Social Saxon Philosophy (London 1931), p. 197.
Obligations, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Melvin RICHTER, among others, has devel-
Society, XV (1914-15), 140-159 (and reply oped the idea of Idealism as a 'substitute
by Bosanquet, Ibid. 160-3); H J . LASKI, faith'; see his The Politics of Conscience:
Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New T.H. Green and his Age (London 1964).
STEFAN COLLINI
dard coda to Idealist compositions. Since this approach permeated

their analysis of social life, it encouraged a tendency to concentrate
on 'the true nature of will and its continuous effort to satisfy itself,
on the question 'in what way, through society, and in what charac-
teristics of society, does the soul lay hold upon its truest self, or become,
in short, the most that it has in it to be' (69). With deliberate opti-
mism, they recommended 'a high opinion of human nature, a strong
trust in the good which is already working in the world and which
has brought it thus far on its way'. And they reminded their readers
that society, or the state, 'is the product, in every part, of the rational
nature of man, and by far the most glorious exhibition of his
powers' (70). In this way, the Idealist conviction that 'the forces that
rule the destiny of society are moral' was integrated into an optimistic
teleology rather than giving rise to the study of the changing norma-
tive structure of social life. And this, of course, was reinforced by
the Gestalt of Progress, which shaped the Idealists' perception of
social change as much as that of any of their contemporaries. The
pervasive influence of this combination is apparent even in one of the
last and most 'sociologically conscious' Idealist works, Hetherington
and Muirhead's Social Purpose. The 'defect' of social science, its
authors claimed, 'is that it is untrue to the unity of the human spirit';
in restoring this unity, they intended to reveal 'the working-out of the
constructive social impulses'. (The unity seems not to include the
destructive impulses). They recognized the action of 'social forces',
but only in so far as 'it is through the moulding influence of social
forces that [man] comes to the knowledge and realization of his
powers. What he is in himself, the varied capacity latent in his
nature, can unfold itself only in an environment that sustains and
trains him'. Again, only the beneficial action of social forces seems
to be considered. The teleological approach systematically diverts
attention away from one whole class of social facts—Hetherington and
Muirhead even dismiss some options as 'irrational—i.e. foreign to
the nature of man' (71). The legacy of what Maclver had called
'applied Hellenism' is clearly evident here, but even without their
particular concentration on man's moral potential, there was an
essentially anti-sociological strain in their kind of Idealism. In our
terms, this involved an emphasis on purposes rather than causes,
rational rather than irrational behaviour, intended, conscious or rule-
guided actions rather than the unintended consequences of collective
(69) BOSANQUET, Philosophical Theory of Reformer, pp. 6, 17.

the State, pp. 240, 47. (71) HETHERINGTON and MUIRHEAD, SC-
(70) JONES, Working Faith of a Social cial Purpose, pp. 10, 117, 121.
3O
social action, and so on. Certainly, sociology need by no means

restrict itself to the study of the second component of each of these
pairs, but it cannot permanently exclude them. The controversy
surrounding Winch's Idea of a Social Science (which in many ways
embodies the arguments of the Idealists in fashionable disguise) has
at least shown that an exclusive concentration on the former elements
is the nemesis of social science (72).
In turning to examine the relation of the British Idealists to neigh-
bouring disciplines, one is struck first of all by their comparative
neglect of the theoretical and substantive problems of history. It has
often been remarked that German sociology, for example, was 'the
offspring of a union between history and philosophy' (73), and it is
arguable that, for the development of sociology generally, the never
entirely successful attempt to distinguish it from history has been
almost as fruitful methodologically as its involvement with concrete
historical problems has been substantively. Now, German Idealism
was deeply involved in trying to understand the peculiar nature of the
historical world (which in some cases was equated with the study
of the human world as such), and certainly a properly Hegelian philo-
sophy has a historical dimension built into its very categories. But
this involvement with history, though not entirely absent, is certainly
very much diminished in the case of British Idealism. There was
little sustained analysis of the theoretical questions of the nature and
validity of historical knowledge. F.H. Bradley wrote an early pam-
phlet on 'The Presuppositions of Critical History' in 1874, but this
was actually rather narrowly concerned with the controversy sur-
rounding the 'higher criticism', though he touched on the implications
for historiography as a whole (74). Nor was this interest followed
up in his own later work or that of the next generation of Idealists (75).
Not until the influence of Croce enjoyed its brief vogue in Britain
(72) Peter WINCH, The Idea of a Social commentary by Pierre Fruchon (Paris
Science and its Relation to Philosophy 1965).
(London 1958); one of the best discussions (75) Except in a few occasional essays,
of it is Alasdair MACINTYRE, The Idea of a ranging from D.G. RITCHIE, Rationality in
Social Science, reprinted in Alan RYAN History, in A. SETH and R.B. HALDANE (eds.),
(ed.), The Philosophy of Social Explanation Essays in Philosophical Criticism (London
(London 1973), which also contains other 1883), to A.S. PBINGLE-PATTISON (to
articles relevant to this controversy. which Seth changed his name in 1898),
(73) R.M. MACIVER, Sociology 1904-29, The Philosophy of History, Proceedings
reprinted in BRAMSON (ed.), On Community, of the British Academy (1921-3), pp. 515-29.
Society and Power, p. 229. I am grateful to Mr. Peter Nicholson for
(74) F.H. BRADLEY, The Presuppositions this last reference, and generally for allowing
of Critical History (London 1874), reprinted me to profit from his unrivalled command
in his Collected Essays, Vol. I (Oxford 1935). of the literature of British Idealism.
There is a useful critical edition with
31
STEFAN COLLINI
(from about 1910 to 1925) did these questions receive much philo-
sophical attention, and it could be argued that not until Collingwood,
and perhaps Oakeshott, did British Idealism lead to a serious engage-
ment with the philosophical problems of historical knowledge (76).
The limits of the British Idealists' involvement with concrete
historical problems are harder to indicate. Certainly they wrote a
good deal on the history of philosophy, and some of their major works
were organized around the treatment of the subject matter by previous
philosophers (77). However, the history of philosophy is perhaps in
itself less suggestive of sociological reflection than is, say, the study of
social change or economic development, and the Idealists were not
only not involved in these latter studies (it has always to be remembered
that they were for the most part professional philosophers) but they
never really seemed to grapple with the larger issues which such studies
raised. It may have been that the contemporary practice of history
did not encourage such speculation. The historians themselves were
usually hostile to the claims of sociology, associating it with biological
reductionism, inaccuracy, and Spencer; the self-proclaimed sociol-
ogists frequently reciprocated this hostility, which was compounded
by antagonism towards the academic establishment (78). The
(76) Collingwood was drawn to the German (Kant and Lotze as well as Hegel),
philosophical problems of history at a very and that indefatigable entrepreneur of
early stage, but his most famous statement philosophy, J.H. Muirhead, was involved
was, of course, The Idea of History (Oxford in several enterprises in the history of
1946); see p. 145 where he quotes philosophy, and also edited the (subse-
Bosanquet's characterization of history as quently named) 'Muirhead Library of
'the doubtful story of successive events' Philosophy' for fifty years.
which, constituted 'a hybrid form of expe- (78) The attitude of many historians
rience, incapable of any considerable is captured by Maitland's reported remark
degree of "being or trueness" ', and about Political Science—"either it is
criticizes him for 'conceiving the proper history or it is humbug"—but even those
object of knowledge platonically as a timeless who were more sympathetic, like J.B. Bury
world of pure universality'. By contrast, he or Oscar Browning, accepted that, as the
referred to OAKESHOTT'S Experience and its latter put it, 'at present the whole field of
Modes (Cambridge 1933) as 'the high- sociology is too vague for our purposes'.
water mark of English thought upon Both quotations from G. Kitson CLARK,
history' (p. 159). Oakeshott, and even A hundred years of the teaching of history
to some extent Collingwood himself, at Cambridge 1873-1973, Historical Journal,
ought perhaps to be regarded as sympathetic XVI (1973), p. 543. For an example of
to the tradition of British Idealism rather Bury's positivistic sympathy for sociology,
than as belonging to it. see: The place of modern history in the
(77) BOSANQUET'S History of Aesthetic perspective of knowledge (1904), in Harold
(London 1892) is a well-known example of TEMPERLEY (ed.), Selected Essays of
the first category, and GREEN'S Lectures J.B. Bury (Cambridge 1930). Spencer
on the Principles of Political Obligation was notoriously hostile to the historians
(first published separately, London, 1895) and constantly berated 'the ordinary
of the second. In addition, of course, they historian who, thinking of little else but
undertook or sponsored the translation the doings of kings, court-intrigues, and
of important philosophical works from the international quarrels, victories and defeats,
mainstream of political, legal and institutional history remained for

the most part within the confines of governing-class preoccupations
and did not encourage the formulation of general theories of social
explanation. Its closest links, both intellectually and institutionally,
were with the study of the law, though here as elsewhere there is
something of a mystery about what happened to the legacy of Maine,
which in England seems to peter out in the study of 'comparative
politics' (though of course Tonnies, perhaps Maine's most ardent
admirer, developed his insights in a quite other direction) (79). One
could gather examples of historians with promising intellectual
connections, but the crop would be small and the fruit rather pinched.
Maitland certainly had much to contribute to a sociological history,
but he was very cautious about venturing beyond the confines of
English legal history, and very wary of Idealism (against which, I
suggest, he may have been inoculated by Sidgwick) (80). Had he
not died so young, Arnold Toynbee might have contributed more to
the comparatively feeble residue left by 'historical economics' in
Britain, though he would surely have done still more for those causes
of social reform about which he moralized to such effect (81). But
whatever the achievements of figures such as A.L. Smith, A. J. Car-
lyle, or H.A.L. Fisher, the generation of historians reared in the
milieu of Idealism could hardly be said to have contributed to the
cross-fertilization of history and sociology (82).
concerning all of which no definite forecasts physical sciences [which] discourses of
are possible, asserts there is no social organs and organisms and social tissue', and,
science'. Herbert Spencer, An Autobio- 'among the summits of philosophy', of 'a
graphy, 2 vols. (London 1904): II, p. 253. doctrine, which makes some way in England,
(79) I am grateful for discussions with [which] ascribes to the State, or, more
John Burrow on this point, but my remarks vaguely, the "community", not only a
are too brief to do justice to the issues invol- real will, but " t h e " real will'. O. GIERKE,
ved. For a properly subtle account of the Political Theories of the Middle Ages, trans-
complexity of one aspect of English historical lated and introduced by F.W. Maitland
thought during this period, see J.W. BUR- (Cambridge 1900), p. xi.
ROW, 'The Village Community' and the (81) See Arnold TOYNBEE, Lectures on
Uses of History in Late-nineteenth Century the Industrial Revolution in England (first
England, in N. MCKENDRICK (ed.), Histor- published 1884, reprinted with Introduc-
ical Perspectives: Studies in English thought tion by T.S. Ashton, Newton Abbot,
and society (London 1974). 1969); also Gertrude TOYNBEE (ed.),
(80) Consider his letter to Sidgwick Reminiscences and Letters of Joseph and
of 22.1.1900 about the relation of Gierke's Arnold Toynbee (London, n.d. [1910]).
theory to that of the British Idealists, and (82) It is worth noting that Bosanquet's
to Pollock of 18.10.1890 where he complains very brief discussion of historical method
that Gierke's 'splendid' book is 'too meta- ('Atomism in History') takes its examples
physical'. C.H.S. FIFOOT (ed.), The Letters from the French debate between the dis-
of F.W. Maitland (Cambridge 1965), ciples of Langlois and Seignobos (and the
pp. 209, 86. In his famous 'Introduction' 'slips of paper' method—his strictures on
to his translation of part of Gierke's Die this resemble Collingwood's on 'scissors
Deutsche Gennossenschaftsrecht, he is drily and paste' history), and those of Durkheim.
scornful both of 'a sociology emulous of the
33
STEFAN COLLINI
To consider the Idealists' relations with anthropology is to draw

attention to the curiosity of its existence as a separate discipline. For,
of course, in the traditional account, Britain's poor showing in the
track events of sociology could be partly compensated for by its
splendid performance in the field events of anthropology, were the
two disciplines to be recognized as one. But in Britain during this
period, neither was understood in such a way as to suggest this identity
very readily. The historical separation of them owes more to the
belief in Progress than to any more systematic classification of the
sciences (83). For obvious social evolutionary reasons, 'anthropol-
ogy', which in the early nineteenth century was used to refer to 'the
natural history of man' or 'the study of man as an animal', soon came
to be applied exclusively to the study of the earlier stages of human
development, and hence, following the comparative method, to the
'lower' races, that is, to existing 'primitive' societies. It flourished as
the study of those societies for which written records were not avail-
able—• as did archaeology at much the same time (hence their fre-
quent, if now sometimes implausible, yoking together in university
syllabuses). This evolutionary perspective meant that anthropology
was generally looked upon more as a substitute for the study of pre-
history than as an analysis of one type of existing society, the methods
and theories of which could be applied to other types. Correspond-
ingly, sociology was not regarded as what would now be seen as 'the
anthropology of complex (or industrial or whatever) societies', but
as the attempt to interpret social development as a whole, while anthro-
pology dealt with the earlier stages and history with the later. Thus,
Sidgwick's definition of sociology, quoted above, as 'the attempt to
make the study of human history scientific [...]' continued: 'We have,
however, for this purpose, to include, along with history in the ordi-
nary sense, a large part of what is commonly known as anthropology,
—this is, the comparative study of the contemporary social conditions
and recent social changes, so far as ascertainable, of those parts of the
human race that have not arrived at a sufficiently advanced stage of
civilization to have a history in the ordinary sense' (84). The most
ambitious sociological theories, from Spencer's to Hobhouse's, incor-
(83) Also, of course, the growth of an anachronistic description) is to be

anthropological interest was stimulated by resolved by recognising how the dominant
Britain's imperial connections, though it ideology meant that Britain could only
is much too simplistic to regard it as some 'export its totalisations' (ANDERSON, Corn-
form of 'colonial ideology'. Nor does ponents of the National Culture', pp. 56,
it seem to me to be very helpful to suggest 47).
that 'the paradox of an anthropology where (84) SIDGWICK, Miscellaneous Essays and
there was no sociology' (which is anyway Addresses, p. 263.
34
porated anthropology in this way, which hardly served to recommend

it to most Idealists. It suggested the explanation of the 'higher'
human phenomena by means of the 'lower', or even a confusion of
'nature' and 'origins', whereas they endorsed Aristotle's dictum that
'what a thing is when its growth is completed, that is what we call its
nature' (85). In fact, this understanding of anthropology was about
to be sabotaged, for Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski had already
started on their portentous fieldwork during this period, but the
theoretical fruit of their researches was not to be published until the
1920s.
The one application of anthropology which, whilst retaining its
'prehistorical' character, did interest some Idealists was in the work
of classicists such as Gilbert Murray, Jane Harrison and F.M. Corn-
ford (86). Their education certainly predisposed them to an interest
here, and it was a point where several traditional concerns, the history
of religion and magic, as well as the classics, met with some of the
recent trends in social thought: here, indeed, was the beginning of
British anthropology's long affair with Durkheimianism (87). Bosan-
quet showed a keen interest in this work, and in referring in 1911 to
Durkheim's work he wrote: 'I certainly think that there is a great truth
in the idea of collective production and creation even in the world of
mind and art, as you find it represented, for example* in Professor
Murray's Rise of the Greek Epic'. But his reservations were as strong
as ever. He was wary of 'the man who is obsessed in sociology by the
ideal and method of natural science in the wrong place'. He allowed
that the conscience collective might not mean 'social despotism', as
critics so often alleged during this period, 'but if it is not the collec-
tive mind but the collective hard fact—e.g. the density of popula-
tion—which is alleged as a cause, then perhaps the critic has a good
deal of right on his side' (88). Once again Bosanquet shied away
from any approach which he suspected of 'embodying] the prejudice
that natural science is the model of research', and in this reaction he
epitomized the Idealists' relationship to anthropology, a relationship
largely built upon mutual ignorance and neglect. And although
(85) As quoted by BOSANQUET, The attraction to Durkheimianism see LUKES,

Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 122. Smile Durkheim, p. 399 and n.
(86) See particularly Gilbert MURRAY, (88) BOSANQUET, Social and Internatio-
The Rise of the Greek Epic (Oxford 1907); nal Ideals, pp. 34, 40. In the second edi-
Jane Ellen HARRISON, Themis, A study of tion of The Philosophical Theory of the
the social origins of Greek religion (Cam- State (1910), Bosanquet also recognized
bridge 1912); F.M. CORNFORD, From Reli- that 'a new spirit is abroad in the study of
gion to Philosophy (London 1912). Greek antiquity' and again singled out
(87) For an example of Harrison's Murray's book for praise (p. 31, n.).
35
STEFAN COLLINI
twentieth-century British anthropology was founded upon the reaction

against the social evolutionism which prevailed during this period,
its self-description as a 'scientific theory of culture' (89) would not
have appealed to latter-day Idealists. Meanwhile, though it did not
obtain a complete divorce from sociology, a condition of its indepen-
dence was that the two should live apart for several decades to come.
The relation of Idealism to the third discipline to be considered
here—economics—presents a different picture if only because of the
prominence of economics on the British intellectual landscape. In
contrast to anthropology, it was a well-established, if not yet securely
institutionalized, subject with a highly developed body of orthodox
theory. It was recognized as the most (perhaps the only) developed
social science, and was widely held to have established empirical
truths about social phenomena. Now, I would argue that any assertion
of the claims of sociology would be bound to call the logical status of
economics into question, at least where the subject was regarded as a
concrete or empirical rather than an analytical or hypothetical disci-
pline. Within the nascent profession itself there was, as ever, some
controversy over the nature and limits of the science (90). Although
Parsons later indicted Marshall—who spoke of economics as the 'study
of mankind in the ordinary business of life'—for conceiving the disci-
pline in a concrete and individualistic way, and so in a sense 'incor-
porating' any potential sociology within it (91), it is arguable that the
overall consequence of the 'marginalist revolution' was to narrow the
boundaries of the discipline and to concentrate attention more exclu-
sively on the articulation of deductive theory (92). Moreover, in
the face of external criticisms, some of them made from the standpoint
of a 'sociology', the claims and presuppositions of economics emerged
at the end of this period remarkably undisturbed (93). Once again,
(89) See Bronislaw MALINOWSKI, A Scien- the second, article was reproduced as ch. iv
tific Theory of Culture (Chapel Hill 1944). of The Structure of Social Action). Alfred
British anthropology was, of course, more MARSHALL, Principles of Economics (London
diverse than this reference, and indeed 1890, eighth edition: 1920), p, I.
this paragraph, suggests, but its diversity (92) Donald WINCH, Marginalism and
does not seem to have attracted the Idealists' the boundaries of economic science, The
attention. History of Political Economy, IV (1972),
(90) For some indication of the range of 325-43. Torrance ('Emergence of sociol-
this controversy, see the addresses collected ogy in Austria', section 5) considers the
in R.L. SMYTH (ed.), Essays in Economic counter-sociological influence of margi-
Method 1860-1913 (London 1962). nalist economics in Austria where it was
(91) Talcott PARSONS, Wants and Activi- also well established.
ties in Marshall, Quarterly Journal of Econo- (93) T.W. HUTCHISON, A Review of
mics, XLVI (1931-2), 101-40; Economics and Economic Doctrines 1870-1929 (Oxford
Sociology: Marshall in relation to the 1953) concludes that at the end of his
thought of his time, ibid. 316-47. (The period 'the fundamental motivating assump-
substance of the first, but much less of tions and beliefs of British economists
36
the nature of the contemporary understanding of sociology meant that

it was not difficult to dismiss criticisms made in its name. It was no
rival to economics in 'its [sociology's] present very rudimentary
state', and although both Sidgwick and Marshall announced their
willingness to consider sociology's claims to subsume economics
should it come near to being able to fulfil its grandiose ambition, for
the present such a move was obviously 'premature', and this remained
the orthodox view throughout 'the Marshallian dictatorship' (94).
Both these writers were replying to claims made on behalf of an
explicitly Comtean conception of sociology, but the Hegelian counter-
part to the Comtean claim that economics is essentially part of sociol-
ogy is that economics is essentially part of history, a claim which
could have momentous consequences for the classification of the social
sciences as a whole. It was certainly crucial for the development of
sociology in the case of Weber and his contemporaries in Germany.
In Britain, however, this claim was only advanced spasmodically.
Those who advocated the historical method in economics, whether
as disciples of Schmoller and the German historicist school or inde-
pendently, constituted a very small group, mostly known for work in
economic history—Thorold Rogers, Arnold Toynbee, William
Cunningham, W J . Ashley (95). It was a claim to which the Idealists
were for the most part sympathetic: in commenting on his own attack
on Cunningham, quoted in section II, Ritchie explained that he had
been surprised to see 'this seemingly reactionary "plea for pure
theory" coming from a distinguished champion of the historical
school', which was why he had hastened to emphasize the historical
framework of economics (96). But the thoroughgoing critique of the
a-historical premises of economics which often seemed to be present
in germ in Idealism was never fully developed. As ever, Bosanquet
offered a few suggestive remarks. For example, he observed that a
conception such as 'the standard of life'—which Marshall had defined
as 'the standard of activities adjusted to wants [...] a rise in the standard
remained essentially similar in outline to 706-29.
those which had moved Jevons and Mar- (95) As Hutchison points out, in Britain
shall' at the beginning (p. 430). the emphasis 'was much more strongly on
(94) SIDGWICK, Scope and methods of the "history" and less on the "economics",
economic science (in Miscellaneous Essays), than in the work of Schmoller and his
p. 198; MARSHALL, Principles, p. 771, followers' (p. 21). Cliffe Leslie was
n.; A.C. PIGOU, quoted in HUTCHISON, A probably the only significant exception,
Review of Economic Doctrines, p. 430. but the views of figures as different as
A.W. COATS has indicated the extent of Ashley and Marshall would need to be
Marshall's authority during this period, considered in more detail,
particularly in Sociological aspects of (96) D.G. RITCHIE, Dr. Cunningham
British economic thought 1880-1930, Jour- and economic laws, Economic Review, II
nal of Political Economy, LXXV (1967), (1892), p. 541.
37
STEFAN COLLINI
of life implies an increase of intelligence and energy and self-res-

pect' (97)—embodied more than merely economic categories, and so
'it becomes plain that the contrast too commonly accepted between
the mechanical pressure of economic facts and the influence of ideas
stands in need of a completely fresh criticism and of entire restate-
ment' (98). This was a characteristically Idealist line of attack, but
Bosanquet never pursued it in relation to economics. Again, James
Bonar (99) acknowledged that 'when dealing with the economical
aspects of the body politic, and of even larger groups of men, economic
science becomes conscious of its shortcomings': for example, it has
to recognize that 'the conditions of distribution or the causes of a
particular system of property in land, or in moveable goods, are
subjects for history to investigate', but he did not go on to make clear
what implications this had for economics as an analytical enterprise.
He gestured toward 'the presumably close kinship of the social sciences
with one another' as a source of assistance, but the social sciences
which he listed were 'biology, psychology, ethics and political philo-
sophy'. As these disciplines lined up, their jostling obscured the
place which it might otherwise have seemed that a historical sociol-
ogy would fill (100).
The writer who promised the fullest analysis along these lines was
J.A. Smith, a philosopher who was rather peripheral to the main
current of Idealism in that when he did finally stop editing Aristotle
and start formulating his own philosophy, he drew almost exclusively
from Croce and Gentile (101). Shortly after this transformation, he
wrote a series of articles in the Economic Review on 'some fundamental
(97) MARSHALL, Principles, p. 689. work, Philosophy and Political Economy in
(98) BOSANQUET, Philosophical Theory of some of their Historical Relations, published
the State, p. 28. It was by concentrating in Muirhead's Library of Philosophy in
on this concept that Parsons was later to 1893, is informed by a broadly Idealist
demonstrate so convincingly the funda- approach.
mental instability of Marshall's theoretical (100) BONAR, op. cit., pp. 4-5. The
system, in that such surreptitiously nor- only place where Bonar did mention 'sociol-
mative factors were a way of smuggling in ogy' was in referring to the application of
implicitly sociological conceptions for which, evolutionary theory (p. 361).
explicitly, there was no place in the neo- (101) As Smith himself later described
classical economics of marginal utility his development, whatever light he came to
(see, particularly, PARSONS, 'Wants and see was somewhat less than blinding.
Activities in Marshall'). Returning from 'a long holiday [...] during
(99) BONAR is not strictly an Idealist most of which I let my mind lie fallow',
philosopher, being for the greater part of and 'finding myself in Naples [...] I was
his life a government official who also wrote struck with the evidence which the book-
economics: but as a pupil of Caird at Glas- sellers' shops there displayed of a wide-
gow and of Green at Balliol, and then an spread local interest in philosophy, and pur-
associate of Muirhead and others in their chased two or three volumes by Benedetto
educational enterprises, he certainly moved Croce whose name was only slightly known
in the ambiance of Idealism, and his major to me'. 'On my return to Oxford I found
38
notions of economics' which was in fact a criticism of Marshall (102).

At first, it promised to be a 'historicist' critique. He argued that
Marshall's definition of 'wealth' was a self-contradictory one, and
suggested instead 'all the rights which legally belong to me or are my
property'. This, he continued, would make it 'entirely relative to
the particular legal system' in which it is set, and so the analysis of
it would be 'never a philosophical or scientific question, but an histor-
ical one'. The conclusions of his first article, therefore, was that
'economic science is essentially an historical study' (103). But in the
two subsequent articles this point seems rather to have been lost sight
of as he engaged, first, in the Crocean task of distinguishing economics
from ethics—'The subject of economics is the workings and effects
of man's unmoral will'—and then in a long jeremiad on the dangers
of Socialism (104). The articles were an eclectic combination of
historicism, of elements drawn from Croce's recently published Filo-
sofia della Pratica, and of Christian Social Union moralizing. As
in so much of the British Idealists' writing, this last element was
eventually the dominant one. Twenty-five years earlier, Edward
Caird had concluded an address characteristically entitled 'The Moral
Aspects of the Economical Problem' by saying: 'I do not think it will
be possible, henceforth, to separate political economy from the general
study of politics, or to discuss the laws of the production and distri-
bution of wealth apart from the consideration of the relation of the
distribution of wealth and the modes of distributing it to other elements
of social well-being' (105). 'Social well-being' remained the Idealists'
central preoccupation, and in so far as they did engage in a critique
myself through my election to the Wayn- (103) J.A. SMITH, On Some Fundamen-
flete Professorship of Moral and Meta- tal Notions of Economics, I: Wealth,
physical Philosophy, assigned the task of Economic Review, XXIII (1913), 366-81,
thinking out a philosophy' in which task, quotation at pp. 371, 380.
to judge by the results, his browsing stood (104) J.A. SMITH, Ibid. II: Capital, and
him in good stead. J.A. SMITH, Philoso- III: Labour, ibid., XXIV (1914), 48-64,
phy as the Development of the Notion and and 283-97. Smith could hardly have
Reality of Self-consciousness, in J.H. Mum- been encouraged to pursue the argument of
HEAD (ed.) Contemporary British Philosophy: his first article by the stinging reply which
personal statements, Second Series (London it elicited from a representative of ortho-
'925), PP- 320-1. doxy: P. SARGANT-FLORENCE, Professor
(102) As the organ of the Oxford Chris- Smith and Dr. Marshall, ibid., XXIV (1914),
tian Social Union and the vehicle for moral- 170-85. The correspondence between Mar-
ising on the social problem, the Economic shall and Cannan reveals their reaction to
Review was always a likely base from which Smith's attack—they regarded it as 'bosh'—
to launch attacks on orthodox economics and their decision to get a junior Marshallian
but never a likely source of a new theory. to reply to it; see COATS, Sociological
It attracted, however, the requisite amount aspects of British economic thought,
of disdain and hostility from the Marshall- (105) Edward CAIRD, The Moral Aspect
ians—see COATS, Sociological Aspects of of the Economical Problem (London 1888),
British Economic Thought. p. 17.
39
STEFAN COLLINI
of orthodox economics, it was a moral rather than a sociological one.

Finally, I want to look very briefly at two more general features of
the intellectual life of the period which had some bearing on the
Idealists' understanding of society. The first is the now-fashionable
question of the comparative weakness of Marxism in Britain and its
relation to the development of sociology. Some historians have
argued that 'the debate with Marxism' was crucial for the develop-
ment of classical sociological theory, claiming, as Hughes expressed
it, that Marx was 'the midwife of twentieth-century social
thought' (106). There is a danger here of applying current assess-
ments of importance too readily to the past, as well as of forgetting
the changes which have taken place in Marxism in the meantime.
Nonetheless, it has concentrated attention on possible relations be-
tween the state of Marxism and the state of sociology in Britain in the
early twentieth century (107). But where the Idealists are concerned,
ritualistic references to the 'empiricism' and the 'atomism' of British
thought are no more explanatory in the first than in the second case.
In pursuing the question of 'why Marxism never found a congenial
home in the British intellectual climate', Charles Taylor noted that
this was a period of 'Hegelian dominance' in philosophy, and so asked
'if Hegel, why not Marx ?' (108). But in Britain in 1900 this was by
no means the obvious question to ask, and to see why it was not, one
needs to recover that account of Marx which made Le Play and Buckle
seem like more natural figures for comparison than Hegel (109).
(106) HUGHES, Consciousness and Society, cipate'in these innovations in social thought,
p. 76. Irving Zeitlin makes the point by G. STBDMAN JONES, History: the poverty
asking us to substitute, for the sociologists of empiricism, in Robin BLACKBURN (ed.),
he considers, 'an equal number of different Ideology in Social Science: Readings in
theorists who never explicitly participated critical social theory (London 1972), pp. 100-
in the debate with Marx's ghost, and reflect 102.
on whether social theory would then be of (108) Charles TAYLOR, Marxism and
equal quality'. Ideology and the Develop- Empiricism, in Bernard WILLIAMS and Alan
ment of Sociological Theory (Englewood MONTEFIORE (eds.), British Analytical Phi-
Cliffs 1968), p. 322. losophy (London 1966), pp. 227-230.
(107) Thus Giddens, remarking 'upon Beyond suggesting that Idealism 'was
the fact that no British author of comparable only an interlude in a long tradition of
status to Durkheim or Weber emerged in empiricism', Taylor does not attempt to
their generation', argued 'it is unquestion- answer this question; but to be fair to him
ably true that one factor responsible was it must be said that he makes no claims to be
the absence, in Britain, of a really signifi- considering the issue historically in his brief
cant revolutionary socialist movement'. analytical essay.
Anthony GIDDENS, Capitalism and Modern (109) BOSANQUET, for example, remarked
Social Theory: An analysis of the writings of 'the materialist conception of history':
of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber (Cam- 'Primarily connected with the name of
bridge 1971), p. 185. Stedman Jones Marx, it may also be illustrated by many
goes further and finds the fact that 'Marx's contentions of Buckle and Le Play, and has
work evoked little response in England' become, indeed, the formula of a school*,
to be the reason why Britain did not 'parti- Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 26.
40
Above all, Marx stood for 'historical materialism', and historical

materialism was understood as a reductionist account of social evo-
lution which asserted that all changes were determined by changes in
economic conditions which took place in accordance with certain
laws. In so far as it was associated with 'sociology', it was as yet
another of those grandiose and one-sided interpretations of the course
of human history as a whole which proliferated under that title. This
was, to a lesser extent, the predominant interpretation in Europe
generally, and it was reinforced by the later works of Engels and those
of his epigoni in the S.P.D. who were recognized as authoritative
exponents of the doctrine (no). The further dimension which
received special emphasis in Britain was his economic theory, where he
was seen as 'an economist in the classical tradition whose major
theoretical achievement had been surplus value' ( i n ) . By 1890,
this was a theory which was generally thought to have suffered fatal
criticism. The philosophical writings were much less well known than
the historical and economic works, and Marxists and non-Marxists alike
in Britain before 1914 understood Marxism as 'an extremely mecha-
nical version of the materialist conception of history which they inter-
preted as a demonstration of the economic factor. The whole of
human activity was controlled by economic forces independently of
individual volition' (112).
It is hardly surprising, then, that when Idealists did devote any
attention to this theory, they should find it so uncongenial. For
understood in this way, Marxism obviously fell foul of the basic pre-
mises of Idealist social thought: it dealt, as Bosanquet said in criti-
cizing it, with merely 'mechanical causation', whereas 'the world in
which man lives is himself, but is constituted, of course, by presen-
tation to a mind, and not by strictly physical causation' (113). And
this served to reinforce their hostility to sociology for Marxism was
classed, along with works as disparate as Durkheim's Division of Labour
or Loria's The Economic Foundations of Society, as 'economic sociol-
ogy', and criticized for its one-sidedness (114). Paradoxically,
( n o ) For a recent account of the Marxism (112) Stuart MACINTYRE, Marxism in Bri-
of this period in these terms, see Tom tain 1917-33, unpublished Ph. D. disser-
BOTTOMORE, Marxist Sociology (London tation (Cambridge 1976), pp. 7-8. I am
I975)i c h- " . grateful to Dr. Macintyre for permission to
( i n ) Willard WOLFE, From Radicalism quote from his dissertation.
to Socialism: men and ideas in the formation (113) BOSANQUET, The Philosophical
of Fabian socialist doctrines i88i-i88g Theory of the State, p. 29.
(London 197s), p. 208. See also Eric (114) For example, by BALL, Current
HOBSBAWM, Dr. Marx and the Victorian Sociology, p. 169. It was also treated in
critics, in his Labouring Men (London this way in a classification of 'sociologies'
1964). in P. BARTH, Die Philosophie der Geschichte
41
STEFAN COLLINI
indeed, it is their criticisms rather than the 'sociology' at which they

were directed, which strike us today as the more sociological. Ritchie,
for example, argued that 'economic wants are dependent on the whole
social environment in which people live, and therefore moral, reli-
gious, intellectual, artistic conditions must be taken account of in
order to explain them' (115). Similarly, Bosanquet insisted that
when it is clearly seen that economic needs and devices are no detached, nor, so to
speak, absolutely antecedent department of human life—a fact which the epithet
'materialist' has done something to obscure for, in truth, in economics there is no
question of genuine material causation—then it becomes obvious that we have not
here any prior determining framework of social existence, but simply certain import-
ant aspects of the operations of the human mind rather narrowly regarded in their
isolation from all others (116).
Indeed, the same line was taken by those who were to be important in
developing a non-reductionist sociology: Hobhouse, for example,
objected that 'it attributes the phenomena of social life and develop-
ment to the sole operation of the economic factor, whereas the begin-
ning of sound sociology is to conceive society as a whole in which all
the parts interact' (117). It was a sign of the prevalence of this view
of Marxism that when, in 1913, A.D. Lindsay wrote an introduction
to a translation of a selection of Croce's essays on Marxism, he had to
explain that 'much of the difficulty of Marx's work comes from his
relation to Hegel', and that, in particular, this meant that he was
writing at a certain level of abstraction: 'Only darkness and confusion
can result from mistaking the abstraction for reality and from the
production of those a priori histories of the stages of civilization or the
development of the family which have discredited Marxianism in the
eyes of historians' (118).
als Sociologie (Leipzig 1897), which receiv- some indication of the distance between our
ed some attention in Britain (it was revie- understanding of Marxism and Bonar's
wed by G. Dawes HICKS in Mind, N.S., that he found Engels 'more philosophical
VIII (1899), 114-7). It may well have than Marx' and endowed with 'a much
accounted for much of the difference clearer philosophical vision than his mas-
between Bosanquet's 1897 article and the ter'. BONAR, Philosophy and Political Eco-
corresponding chapter in The Philosophical nomy, pp. 344, xvi, 346.
Theory, since he seems to have read Barth's (117) L.T. HOBHOUSE, Liberalism (New
book and in the latter work follows his York 1964 [first published London, 1911]),
classification in several places. p. 88.
( u s ) RITCHIE, What are economic laws ?, (118) Benedetto CROCE, Historical Mate-
p. 173. rialism and the Economics of Karl Marx,
(116) BOSANQUET, Philosophical Theory translated by C M . Meredith, with Intro-
of the State, p. 28. Bonar dealt at some duction by A.D. Lindsay (London 1913),
length with Marx's economics, but found pp. XII-XHI. Lindsay was to make a fur-
his theory 'as strictly deductive as RicardoV, ther contribution to the recovery of the
and repeated the usual criticisms of his Hegelian dimension of Marx in Britain
one-sided view of history. It is perhaps with his Karl Marx's Capital: An intro-
42
Obviously, in a fuller account it would not be enough to consider

the fate of Marxism in these terms alone. The political weakness of
Marxist-inspired parties in Britain certainly contributed to its neglect
as a theory; the comparison with Germany is instructive here, for
political events there forced otherwise disdainful academics to consider
its theoretical claims. My impression is that it received more atten-
tion in Britain in the 1880s and early 1890s, when it did threaten to
become of some political significance, than thereafter when it was
easier to dismiss it as the dogma of an unsuccessful sect, and when
British Socialism prided itself on not being Marxist (119). None-
theless, it is still the case that simply to select for separate treatment
the relation of sociology or of Idealism to Marxism in Britain during
this period may well be to allow present preoccupations to distort the
shape of the past. It is worth remembering that for Durkheim, as
much as for Hobhouse or Bosanquet, Spencer's was a much more
important ghost to exorcize. Moreover, not only did the task of
refuting Spencer involve formulating a rival account of social devel-
opment, but it had a much more immediate relevance to the central
themes of political argument at the end of the century, and this brings
me to the final feature which I want to consider in this section.
This feature is much harder to characterize than the others, and is
linked to an unmanageably wide-ranging set of issues, but in essence
it concerns the narrow scope of the sociological material considered
in the political debates which Idealists contributed to during this
period. Here, I only want to draw attention to two aspects of these
debates. The first is the extent to which the limited empirical study
of contemporary society which was undertaken during this period
concentrated upon the question of poverty, and the strong emphasis
within these studies on the 'case', with the family budget or the indi-
vidual's employment record as the focus. They were, it has been
argued, social but not sociological surveys (120). In fact, the individ-
ualism of the British tradition of empirical research, especially that
sponsored or inspired by charitable organizations, reinforced rather
than challenged the morally conservative strain in the political thinking
of many of the Idealists. Although there may be no necessary connec-
ductory essay (London 1925), which grew the relevant parts of Stanley PIERSON,
out of that fusion of the Glasgow-Balliol Marxism and the Origins of British Social-
tradition with W. E. A. and Clydeside ism: The struggle for a new consciousness
experience so characteristic of British (Ithaca 1973).
socialist thought at this time. See Drusilla (120) On this tradition, see ABRAMS,
SCOTT, A.D. Lindsay, A biography (Oxford Origins of British Sociology, and T.S. and
1971), esp. pp. 97-9. M.B. SIMEY, Charles Booth: social scientist
(119) This impression is borne out by (Oxford i960).
43
STEFAN COLLINI
tion between political and methodological individualism (121), it was

certainly the case that writers such as Bosanquet or Jones or Muirhead,
in reflecting on such studies, tended to conceptualize the issues in
terms of 'character', 'self-maintenance' and 'will' (122). The Charity
Organization Society was the focus of much of their interest in these
matters and it was, of course, notoriously anti-sociological (123).
Bosanquet, as the philosopher-in-residence of the Society, repeatedly
tried to demonstrate how the findings of social investigations reinfor-
ced the Society's individualist analysis of social problems. He
insisted that 'the individual member of society is above all things a
character and a will', and frequently complained of 'the inadequacy
with which our social reformers conceive the power of character as
a material agent' (124). Attempts to deal with poverty as a social-
structural problem were, therefore, misguided, and rested on an
exaggeration of the evils of poverty. 'Our growing experience of all
social "classes" proves the essentials of happiness and character to
be the same throughout the social whole' (125). Armed with such
preconceptions, these Idealists were able to assimilate the findings of
Booth or Rowntree or Bowley to their philosophical analysis. As
Muirhead put it, commenting on the more radical proposals of the
Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, 'to me
it has always seemed that any discussion of sociological problems that
does not begin and end in psychology must in the last resort be futile.
There is, I believe, no way of escaping the conclusion that the defects
of a social organization rest in the last instance on defects of charac-
ter' (126).
Of course, not all the Idealists drew these conclusions, nor did
all the empirical studies lend themselves to this reading quite so
easily; Rowntree's later work in particular was used to support more
radical political arguments (127). Equally obviously, political
(121) The different sorts of 'Individual- quet, was a prominent C.O.S. publicist and
ism', and the variety of relations between social investigator, and a well-known writer
them, are discriminated in Steven LUKES, on such topics, as social work and the family.
Individualism (Oxford 1973). (125) BOSANQUET, Philosophical Theory
(122) This is discussed more fully in of the State, p. 4.
COLLINI, Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the (126) J.H. MUIRHEAD, The Starting Point
State. of Poor Law Reform (London 1910) (first
(123) See C.L. MOWAT, The Charity published in 1909 under the title By What
Organization Society 1869-1913 (London Authority?), p. 88.
1961), and, for a more critical analysis, (127) See, for example, the way in which
G. STEDMAN JONES, Outcast London. A Hobhouse puts his findings to the service of
study in the relationship between classes in the campaign for a minimum wage and
Victorian society (Oxford 1971), Part III. related welfare measures; L.T. HOBHOUSE,
(124) Bernard BOSANQUET (ed.), Aspects The Labour Movement (third edition:
of the Social Problem (London 1895), London 1912), esp. pp. 31-38.
pp. V, 103. His wife, Helen Dendy Bosan-
44
preconceptions tended to determine the ways in which the evidence

was interpreted. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to point to any
empirical research published during this period which might have
led professional philosophers interested in social questions to recon-
sider any of their fundamental concepts (128). Moreover, these
studies reflected a wider context of assumptions about poverty in
which it was often treated as an excrescence, a cancer on the
underside of society which could be removed without any fundamental
alteration to the nature of that society. The 'Residuum' was, as
recent historians have noted, a revealing term in this connection (129),
and the picture of society of which it was a part was not such as to
encourage speculation about, say, more general relationships between
social structure and the conceptualization of the world by different
social groups. The Gestalt of Progress was crucial here, not just for
providing a general framework about the direction of social change
(and particularly moral advance), but more specifically for providing
a larger account into which the facts of the 'progress of the working
class' could be fitted. For 'conservatives' and 'progressives' alike
argued that the material conditions of the working class had been
improving in the second half of the nineteenth century (130), and
although contrasting political conclusions could be drawn from this
claim, it was widely taken to reinforce rather than challenge the
dominant beliefs about 'character', 'self-restraint' and the rest of
that particular scale of virtues.
This leads on to the second aspect of these debates to be mentioned
here: the way in which differences over the issue of state-intervention
—the polemics between 'Individualists' and 'Collectivists' which so
dominated this period—masked a shared commitment to the values
associated with a certain character-type. The literature of the debate
is full of earnest exhortations to realize the ideal of the altruistic,
self-restraining, morally strenuous individual. These values them-
selves were rarely seen as problematic, odd or as objects of sociological
(128) The Webbs' 'institutional' studies (130) Robert GIFFEN, The Progress of
might need to be considered further in this the Working Classes, Journal of the Sta-
context, but while 'The art of note-taking' tistical Society (1883) (reprinted in ABRAMS,
was the highpoint of their methodological Origins of British Sociology, pp. 157-76) was
reflections, they were unlikely to be at- probably the best-known statement of this
tended to sympathetically by the Idealists. view. But a similar account of the facts,
(129) See, for example, STEDMAN JONES, though a different evaluation of them, can be
Outcast London. The continuity of atti- found in writers of very different political
tudes towards poverty is emphasized, from persuasion—-e.g. J.A. HOBSON, The Crisis
a rather different point of view, in E.P. HEN- of Liberalism: new issues of democracy
NOCK, Poverty and Social Theory in England: (London 1909) (repr., edited by P.F. CLARKE,
The experience of the 1880s, Social History, Brighton 1974), pp. 159-60.
I (1976), 67-91.
45
STEFAN COLLINI
curiosity: the question was how to enable or induce various sections

of society to live up to them, not how to explain their incidence (131).
'Individualists' argued that their political prescriptions were a deduc-
tion from this set of values; 'Collectivists' attacked the validity of
the deduction rather than challenging the values themselves (even
much of the rhetoric of 'socialist morality' was largely an exhortation
to live up to ideals endorsed in principle by society at large). This
was nicely illustrated by Bosanquet when he distinguished between
'Economic Socialism' and 'Moral Socialism' and between 'Economic
Individualism' and 'Moral Individualism'. He argued that 'Moral
Socialism'—which he denned as 'the view which makes society the
moral essence of the individual', the antithesis of 'egoism' or 'the
materialist or Epicurean view of life'—could only be achieved on the
basis of 'Economic Individualism' and not, as his Fabian audience
supposed, of 'Economic Socialism'. But in so arguing, he assumed it
could be taken for granted that 'Economic Individualism' and 'Eco-
nomic Socialism' were 'each desiring to make good its differently-
founded claims to harmonize with "Moral Socialism", which is the
only thing for which any healthy human being at the bottom of his
heart cares a single straw' (132). As in so much of the social thought
of this period (as Parsons must certainly be credited with showing
in Marshall's case), an historically specific set of moral values was
treated as the natural realization of progressive human capacities.
Obviously, I can do little more than gesture towards this complex
set of assumptions here, and it would require a much more systematic
survey of the evidence to substantiate even my brief remarks. These
two aspects of this debate need to be set within the wider structure
of arguments and assumptions which sustained them. But the
absence of, say, any detached and theoretically sophisticated analysis
of the normative structure of British society during this period would,
I suspect, only be made more striking. However, it is also clear that
(131) Tawney's Religion and the Rise of clear that he hoped his work would be a
Capitalism is generally considered simply contribution to the current debate about
as a diluted—and distorted—version of setting religious or moral limits to econo-
Weber's Protestant Ethic. Here it is mic activity, and hence 'to see from a
worth recalling that the book was initially new angle the problems of our own age',
given as the Scott Holland Memorial Lee- R.H. TAWNEY, Religion and the Rise of Capi-
tures, and in the Preface Bishop Gore talism: A historical study (London 1926
emphasized their common task of 're- [lectures given in 1922]), pp. ix-x, 13, 5;
awakening the conscience of Englishmen see also pp. 277, 279, 283.
to the social meaning of the religion of the (132) Bernard BOSANQUET, The Anti-
Incarnation* and 'the need of accurate thesis between Individualism and Socialism
research into the causes which have so Philosophically Considered, in The Civili-
disastrously obscured it'. In similar Chris- zation of Christendom and Other Studies
tian Social Union vein, Tawney made (London 1893), pp. 302-357.
46
the hydra-headed monster of positivism has made something of

a reappearance in this last section, and one must never lose sight of
the fact that British Idealism was not part of an intellectual culture
which was suffused with its categories, as was to some extent the case
in nineteenth-century Germany. The Idealists were on the whole as
representative of the dominant assumptions morally as they were of the
background and education of the intellectual class socially. But
this is to raise a far wider range of issues than can be pursued here,
and instead, in the final section, I shall briefly make explicit some
assumptions about the intellectual history of sociology which have
been implicit in my treatment of the British Idealists.
'Those who can, do; those who can't, write the history of it'
might, with pardonable exaggeration, be said of many an academic
discipline (including sociology), where becoming its historian so fre-
quently fills in the years between achievement and retirement. This
ceased to be the case in the natural sciences some time ago, and there
are signs of change in the historiography of the social sciences. But
the history of sociology is still largely written by sociologists, and the
professional concerns of the practising sociologist all too easily inhibit
a properly historical reconstruction of the past (133). In his search
for ancestors, he tends to reduce history to its lowest form, genealogy,
and his chief explanatory concept is 'begat' (or 'influenced', which
in practice often amounts to much the same thing). Moreover, since
only a very recent generation is assumed to have really 'achieved'
sociology, the whole affair becomes like a retrospective prizegiving
in which no candidate before a certain date can be more than pro-
xime accessit. So the dominant mode is still for a whiggish or trium-
phalist account of the past to be based on a parochial preoccupation
with the current controversies of the profession. As with 'official
histories' in recently-established republics, rival teams of great
predecessors may be assembled, ostensibly to proclaim and honour a
tradition of surprising antiquity, but in fact to legitimate the claims of
the current protagonists in the struggle for power.
(133) Consider, for example, Andreski's ters what has become untenable, their
injuction to ignore 'everything that appears contributions dovetail like parts of a jigsaw
[...] to be mistaken or superseded' in the puzzle'. Stanislav ANDHESKI, 'Introduc-
work of previous 'sociologists', their tion' to Herbert Spencer, The Principles of
'errors and foibles', on the grounds that Sociology (London 1969), pp. ix-x.
'if we cut out from the works of old mas-
47
STEFANCOLLINI
It is, of course, undeniable that the past will only answer the ques-
tions we put to it, and that in framing these questions we are inesca-
pably under the sway of our present interests. Fifty years ago, a
rather different story was told of sociology's past (134), and recent
accounts, including my own, are obviously shaped by changes which
have taken place since then in sociologists' conceptions of their activity
(not, of course, that there is any consensus of such conceptions).
But it seems to me to be equally undeniable that the history of socio-
logical theory is doomed to anachronism unless it is considered in the
context of a more general intellectual history. This is not to deny
the legitimacy or the necessity of the division of intellectual labour,
but rather to insist that it is a mistake to assume, in advance of histor-
ical investigation, that there is a self-contained subject called 'sociology'
which, like the hero of an old-fashioned novel, has adventures rather
than identity-crises. In reconstructing the thought of the past,
however much we must select from it, we are committed to trying to
recover its understanding of its enterprises, and these may well not
correspond to the divisions and definitions of the disciplines which
prevail in the present. Again, this does not mean that the history
of sociology can be equated with a history of the uses of the term
'sociology': the former remains dependent on our criteria for selection,
while the latter may both include activities which are not now so
classified and exclude activities which are. But, as I have tried to
suggest in this article, the recovery of an earlier period's criteria
for the application of the term 'sociology' may well help us, at the very
least, to understand why the two did not correspond more closely.
The adequacy of the precursors' parade as a form of history is now
being challenged even in the case of sociology, but the new orthodoxy
which is growing up seems to me to conceal at least one very dubious
methodological assumption of its own. In rejecting the mere summary
of previous 'systems', the advocates of this approach urge, as J.D.Y.
Peel puts it in his excellent study of Spencer, that we need to be told
less about how sociologists 'saw the world' and more 'about that world
itself. For it is claimed that 'each new sociological generation's
writing is shaped primarily by what social features distinguish their
age from previous ones'. So to account for the differences between
the theories of these generations 'we should not look first at the
(134) Particularly in American text- Small received a great deal of attention,

books: Spencer, Tarde and Hobhouse Before long, it may seerr. appropriate to
figured much more prominently than begin a book by asking 'Who now reads
Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and of course Parsons?'
native figures like Ward, Giddings and
48
deficiencies of the then current, but immanently developing, "theory

of Society", but [at?] the novel features of their own societies' (135).
Similarly, Anthony Giddens, in his already and deservedly standard
text-book on the theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, emphasizes
the need to look at 'the differences in social development between
Britain, Germany and France', claiming that this 'social and historical
"rooting" ' is 'essential to the interpretation of their writings'.
Indeed, it is a central argument of his book that a consideration of
'the social and political background [...] understood in terms of the
development of Britain, France and Germany in the latter part of
the century' is a necessary condition for the explanation of the differ-
ences among the theories of the three writers whom he discusses (136).
Now, as I have emphasized above, I do not wish to deny the relevance
of such considerations to the history of the social sciences, but there
is a danger, already evident in some of the less distinguished examples
of this approach, of these precepts being applied mechanically. It
is already the case that the laudable conviction that we should look for
sociological explanations of such intellectual developments has outrun
our capacity to produce them. Furthermore, although most of those
who pursue such explanations would now describe themselves as
'anti-positivist', there seems to be an undesirable element of residual
positivism in the implicit assumption that past writers so directly
apprehended or even 'reflected' the nature of their own societies.
It is, of course, becoming de rigeur to set texts in their 'social context',
but I suspect that what encourages the interpretation of this precept
in a positivist, and sometimes even reductionist, direction is a common
confusion of two senses of the term 'social'. For while it is certainly
the case that our explanations must be 'social' in the sense in which the
contrast is 'individual'—we must, that is, go beyong the text itself and
that necessarily involves reference to 'social facts'—that is no reason to
concentrate on the 'social' in the sense in which the contrast is 'intellec-
tual'. Ideas, beliefs, values, or language are just as much social facts
as economic development or class structure; indeed it is often only by
a sophisticated process of abstraction that we can separate them, and
the assumption that they simply exist as distinct entities, often being
related to each other in a straightforwardly causal way, certainly
seems to rest upon a discredited empiricism about the formation of
our concepts (as well as possibly on some ramshackle notions about
the distinction between 'thought' and 'action'). For, what tends to
(135) J- D. Y. PEEL, Herbert Spencer: (136) GIDDENS, Capitalism and Modern

The evolution of a sociologist (London 1971), Social Theory, pp. vm, 244.
pp. 239-40.
49
STEFAN COLLINI
be lost sight of in these attempted explanations is the extent to which

'social background' is itself a complex abstraction, embodying a
decision to specify the 'social', with reference to a particular question,
so as to exclude certain aspects of human (social) behaviour. Instead,
the 'social' is often assumed to refer to a given (and perhaps fixed)
set of concrete phenomena which in some unspecified way 'generates'
the relevant intellectual activities. All too often, this simply allows
the rehearsal of a few well-known facts about the 'uneven development'
of industrialization in the nineteenth century to masquerade as an
explanation of complex differences in the abstract theoretical creations
of that century's social thought. If the ambition to produce a 'socio-
logical history' of sociology continues to be realized in this narrow
and mechanical way, there is a danger of its 'intellectual history'
being stifled before it has properly begun *.
* This article was written in the Spring of 1976, and a shortened version was
presented at the 1976 Social Science History Association Conference in Philadelphia.
I am indebted to the University of Sussex and to the Committee on the History
and Epistemology of the Sciences of Man for sponsoring my participation in that
conference, and I am grateful to many friends and colleagues there and elsewhere
for suggestions and criticisms.—This article was to have been published in 1977,
but, for editorial reasons, had to be held over to the present issue. The editors
wish to express their regret at this delay.
5°

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Sociology and Idealism in Britain 1880–1920

European Journal of Sociology / Volume 19 / Issue 01 / May 1978, pp 3 - 50

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Sociology and Idealism in Britain 1880-1920

I T I S something of a commonplace in the history of sociological

Arch, europ. tociol., XIX (1978), 3-50. Printed in France.

theme of the ' curious strength of positivism' in British thought (3).

with the surrounding intellectual landscape which may have militated

The first danger in the traditional way of approaching this question

successful institutionalization stimulating further theoretical synthesis

theoretical sociology) were reviewed in such journals as Mind (then

It is difficult to indicate briefly why philosophical Idealism might

2) an anti-essentialism in psychology, which was important in combat-

metaphysical foundations to justify considering the structure of their

repudiates, in his usual tone of aggressive disdain, the superficial

for example, the way in which Bosanquet approached the question of

(19) limile DURKHEIM, Sociology and Introduction by J.G. Peristiany (London

and what we consider most intimately ourself is really the structure

philosophy', and although he was always a critic of the popular

Elsewhere, Ritchie revealed the kind of interest in the methodology

ized that research is dependent upon (frequently implicit) hypotheses;

the conditions which make different commodities desirable in different degrees

In this connection, he also pointed out, in Durkheimian vein, how

Muirhead on social purpose, and so on (31). One could quote Henry

Of course, isolated remarks indicating 'sociological insight' can easily

(34) Henry DHUMMOND, The Ascent of Man (London 1894), p. 61.

hardly be suspected of merely repeating views originally formulated

'transforming effect [...] in the department of sociology' (38). Once

called Anthropology', a reflection of the earlier vogue of this term (41).

The particular addition to this common charge which the Idealists

iconoclasm of scientific naturalism. Its primary commitment, there-

prepared to allow that a greatly improved version of what was currently

It was the identification of sociology with a particular kind of evo-

(49) BENDIX and ROTH, Scholarship and A. Espinas.

I shall begin by looking at two further features of the social theory

Idealism of having subsumed society into the state (60).

what self-conscious sociological theory did develop in Britain in the

sociological textbooks as Professor of Haven 1917). At this time, A.D. LINDSAY,

dard coda to Idealist compositions. Since this approach permeated

(69) BOSANQUET, Philosophical Theory of Reformer, pp. 6, 17.

social action, and so on. Certainly, sociology need by no means

mainstream of political, legal and institutional history remained for

To consider the Idealists' relations with anthropology is to draw

(83) Also, of course, the growth of an anachronistic description) is to be

porated anthropology in this way, which hardly served to recommend

(85) As quoted by BOSANQUET, The attraction to Durkheimianism see LUKES,

twentieth-century British anthropology was founded upon the reaction

the nature of the contemporary understanding of sociology meant that

of life implies an increase of intelligence and energy and self-res-

notions of economics' which was in fact a criticism of Marshall (102).

of orthodox economics, it was a moral rather than a sociological one.

Above all, Marx stood for 'historical materialism', and historical

indeed, it is their criticisms rather than the 'sociology' at which they

Obviously, in a fuller account it would not be enough to consider

tion between political and methodological individualism (121), it was

preconceptions tended to determine the ways in which the evidence