Physical metempiric

Front matter

EARRATlF iiS

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Preface

It is only after mucli consideration that it has been decided to proceed with the publication of the follomng Treatise, which was left unfinished at the time of the author’s sudden and early death, but it has l)een felt that the responsibility of putting aside the labour of several years upon the highest and deepest subjects, containing much that might be of value in the progress of thought, was too great to incur ; and the question was finally settled after hearing from Mr. Carveth Eead, who kindly undertook to examine and arrange the MS., that it would be possible to prepare the greater part of it for the press. It thus becomes needful to offer some explanation of the circumstances which prevented the work from being finished, and, at the same time, it may be of general interest to give a short account of the author’s remarkable career. In this undertaking I have been much helped by the kindness of those friends who have contributed their recollections of my husband, and I would take this opj^ortunity to express my gratitude to them. My thanks are also due to Professor Groom Kobertson, who has taken a

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special interest in tlie work, giving me the benefit of his advice throughout, and being consulted by ]\Ir. Eead on all questions of importance that arose in the editing of the volume.

Alfred Barratt was born on the 12th of July, 1844, at Heald Grove, near Manchester, being the eldest son of the late Mr. James Barratt, of a Cheshire family, and a solicitor by profession. Eds mother was of Scottish descent, the only child of hir. Charles Stewart, H.E.I.C.S. She had two sons, and lost her only daughter in 1872.

Alfred early began to show unusual quickness and intelligence. His mother relates that, at twelve months old, he was able, when asked, to pick out all the letters of the alphabet, though he could not yet pronounce the names of many ; and how, at three years old, he repeated by heart a story, told in about twenty-eight verses, which had been read to him only three times. It was soon apparent that he was able to do everything with wonderful ease, delighting especially in music and arithmetic. He had the power of concentrating his whole attention upon a subject, and, when he had anything to learn, he would go by himself into a corner of the room and very soon master it, whatever distractions there might be at the time. He must have been a singular child : extremely shy of strangers and disliking even companions, so that a children’s party was only a penance to him. He never cared for outdoor games and riding like most boys ; but, as long as he was exercising his

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VU brain in some direction, he was perfectly happy. As a child, he was subject to occasional gusts of passion, and he went through several severe illnesses from which it was feared, at the time, that he would not recover. He also had a habit of walking in his sleep, which was not broken until he found himself one dark night in the middle of Brasenose quadrangle, kneedeep in snow !

"^Vhen he was eight years old, he went to a small day-school under first a German and afterwards a French master. Here he made progress with modern languages, besides beginning Latin and Greek, and after four years he was sent to a grammar-school at Sandbach, kept by the Eev. Lewis Evans. His masters all agreed in saying that he was the cleverest boy they had known, and he simply carried away every prize that was to be had. At the Sandbach school, there was an under-master, named Hughes, of no common acquirements, who took a great interest in the boy and, seeing how eager he was to learn, taught him in play-hours the rudiments of Hebrew and Arabic, and also a little Persian. Alfred always remembered this master with gratitude, and ascribed much of his success in after-life to the influence received from him.

At the age of fourteen, he went to Eugby, and the present Head-master, Dr. Jex-Blake, who was then his house-master, has sent me the following recollections of him from this time ; —

Wlien I succeeded the present Dean of Westminster in his House at Eugby, August, 1858, the most striking of the

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iiew boys was Alfred Barratt. Short and rather stout, with a large head, bright face, and very bright eyes, he arrested attention at once ; hovering rather shyly behind Ms parents, and exceedingly like his mother in the face.

He was placed in the 2nd Fifth, a Mgh form for a boy only just fourteen; but he might have been placed higher, liad it not been well never to press by Mgh placing those quick young thoroughbreds, of whom this boy obviously was one. He gained promotion at Christmas into the Fifth, whose master, Mr. Charles Evans, soon to be Head-master of Birmingham, spoke with dehght of his memory, and of his power of reproducing whatever had been taught him. At Easter he was promoted into the XX., where he charmed Mr. Thomas Evans, soon to be Greek Professor and Canon of Durham, with his rapid progress in Greek versification and his grasp on subtle intricacies of the Pauline Epistles. The one was a favourite vehicle, the other a pet subject, of the excellent Canon. His first Christmas examination had shown a knowledge of Hebrew that Ms examiners did not possess. He had learnt Hebrew, in play-hours, from an under-master at Sandbach School ; of whom Alfred spoke Avith gratitude and warmth. He was, of course, a delightful pupd ; and every Master who taught him, whether languages, history, divinity, or mathematics were the study of the hour, might feel that the real limit to what the boy could learn was what the master could teach.

My own work as Tutor lay mainly in Composition, and touched perhaps on the weakest points in the boy’s mind : a lack of imaginative spontaneity and of natural grace ; but in Prose and Verse alMe he could translate any tiling, and could imitate any style.

In leisure hours he was a great reader, not least of novels ; was rather good at football, but not otherwise distinguished in games. In temper he was channiug : simple, gay, even ; and though I have seen liuii in difficulties, I never saw him

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IX out of temper. He never was Head of the School, leaving as he did at just eighteen, — a year before his natural time, had he not been so exceptionally forward. He won the first Balliol Scholarship when already a Commoner of that College.

During his Oxford days I often saw him, and the same even calmness was visible, with increasing capacities of excellence and dehght.

It was thought that at Oxford he gave many hours to whist and innocent sociality ; and it was sometimes said that to secure those five First Classes, which no man has done before or since, he must, after all that whist, have worked very hard and very late. My own belief is that he was a most rapid worker, and that his work was done not by long hours, but by intense concentration. He was not physically capable of the slow accumulative processes, or of the long hours of successive fatigue, by which most men, even of quick parts, get through heavy work. Neither the legal business nor the philosophical studies of his later years demanded a continuous strain, or entailed a race against time.

^Meeting him abroad, or seeing him in England, after he was thirty, the same variety of intellectual interests was visible ; and hardly could a sensitive and highly trained artist have felt keener delight than that inspired in Alfred Barra tt by an exhibition of works of the old Umbrian school, at Perugia, September, 1879.

With all his philosophical interests, he was distinctly a religious man and a Christian ; willing to talk of religious matters, though not obtruding them. He was most cheerful and unselfish ; one of the very brightest of companions.

It may be added, that during the four years he was at Rugby, he gained no less than twenty-nine prizes, consisting altogether of a hundred £ind six volumes.

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The Master of Balliol has given a short account of his Oxford course, which began, at Balliol College, in the Michaelmas term of 1862, and Sir William Anson (Warden of All Souls), who was a College contemporary, has also written of those days.

Professor Jowett writes to me : —

You asked me to give you some recollections of your husband during his undergraduate life. I fear that they may he slighter than I could wish.

More than eighteen years have passed since he was elected to a Scholarship at Balliol. He came to us from Eugby with a high reputation, which he fully sustained. At the examination, he impressed the Examiners by his imcommon abilities and wide range of knowledge. Other honours — a double First in Moderations — quickly followed, and before he left Oxford, he attained the imique distinction of three First Classes — in Classics, in Mathematics, and in Modern History.

Notwithstanding the great efforts wliich were necessary for obtaining such a succession of honours, he seemed never to be wearied or oppressed by study. He took life easily, and enjoyed society as much as any one. He was a most agreeable companion, very amiable and popular among his friends and in the College generally. He was one of a set of distinguished undergraduates who, as often happens with College friends, clung together in after years. In those days he was not much affected by the political or religious questions of the time. If I remember rightly, like the majority of schoolboys, he used to be a Conservative in politics. He was light-hearted, and did not trouble himself with the deeper problems of existence. He had the gift of a simple character, and a mind unclouded either from without or within.

He was elected a Fellow of Brasenose in 1867, and was

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XI soon afterwards called to the Bar. To a superficial observer he would have seemed to possess the very qualities likely to succeed in the legal profession ; for to an extraordinary memory he added great readiness as well as clearness of mind. But his heart was not in the law ; though honestly desirous of making himself a good lawyer, he had other objects. He was never fired by ambition, or, if he was, only by an ambition of his own, and he probably injured his chances of success at the Bar by writing a book on Moral Philosophy. His friends who had been well aware of his unusual capacity for acquiring knowledge were now surprised to find that a new interest had taken possession of him. This latent interest seems to have been aroused partly by his studies for the school of Literte Humaniores, partly by the influence of the speculations with which the late Mr. Darwin’s name is associated.

The book, which he entitled Physical Ethics, is a remarkable work to have been written by a young student at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. It is an attempt to develop the moral nature of man out of the physical without admitting a break between them, and without losing sight of either. He likes to think of Being as extending from the simplest elements of animal life up to the perfection of the Divine nature. Though he regards revelation as an anticipation of a higher fonn of religion, yet he strongly insists that “ the great ideas of Christianity are wide enough to comprehend the whole breadth and height of human aspiration There are many links wanting in the chain ; and the writer appears to me sometimes to have fallen into an error which he himself condemns in others — namely, that of explaining phenomena by the transfer of words from one sphere of knowledge to another. Yet he also shows many of the qualities of a real thinker. The book is very interesting and in parts eloquent ; it exhibits a great knowledge, not only of English philosophy, but of general literature, and is

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full of ingenious illustrations. That the theory should not he perfectly consistent 'will surprise no one who is versed in the writings of metaphysicians. His delight in such speculations, his regardlessness of everything hut what appeared to him to be the truth, his precision in the use of language, are true notes of the philosophical habit of mind. The very crudeness of some of his ideas arises from his having thought out for himself subjects which had been already treated of by others.

Another ‘ love of his youth,’ to which, for several years, he devoted himself with characteristic ardour, was Music; and at one time he seriously entertained the thought of becoming a musical composer. The love of music was partially superseded by the interest of philosophy, which, in spite of legal business, continued to the end. He threw his whole heart into the subject. Much more might have been expected from him had he lived, as he would have learned to temper ethical speculation by practical experience, and would have been less under the influence of contemporary writers.

I do not think that he really injured himself by excessive work, though his methods of study were pecuhar. His failure of health was simply due to an accidental illness, by which his powers of mind were also impahed. Like some others, he was taken away before he could achieve a distinguished name ; but we who knew him will always retain the remembrance of his charming disposition, of his simple and blameless life, and of his great intellectual powers.

Sir William Anson writes : —

I first became acquainted with Alfred Barratt when he came up to Balliol in the autumn of 1862 ; he was my junior in standing by a term, but I did not get to know him beyond mere acquaintanceship for more than a year afterwards. If I recollect rightly he soon became popular in the College,

PEEFACE, xm making friends more rapidly than was the custom of the Eugheians of those days with men from the other public schools.

He obtained a scholarship a few weeks after he had come into residence, and joined what was at that time a very brilliant group at the scholars’ table. The scholars of that day were not merely distinguished in University honours, they played a prominent part in the social life of the College, and Barratt’s habits were eminently sociable.

I remember in the summer of 1864, when he was reading for double Honours in Moderations, wondering when and how he did his work. It was a year when summer began early, and those who were not oppressed by the nearness of the Schools used to sit through the May mornings under the chestnut trees in the garden quadrangle, making believe to read. Barratt, with a book in his hand, would spend his morning among the group of idlers, and would seem almost to have forgotten the responsibilities of a scholar. Yet the two First Classes seemed to come to him almost as of course, and soon after I came to know him better, and discovered the marvellous power of concentration and quickness of apprehension which enabled him to turn to good account every moment spent upon his work.

Besides this, though very capable of enduring bodily fatigue, he had a remarkable power of dispensing with the bodily exercise which the ordinary undergraduate considers to be a necessary part of a well-spent day. Thus his mornings and evenings were comparatively leisure time ; his hardest work was done in the hours which we devoted exclusively to amusement.

In the summer of 1865 I joined him on a reading-party at Dresden. We travelled thither in company with two other Balliol men, there to meet Ilbert, then the junior fellow of Balliol, and to be ‘coached’ by him in logic and moral philosophy. Barratt was then about to attempt the Honour

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School of Literae Humaniores on eighteen months’ reading, an attempt seldom made by men who aimed at a First Class, and still more seldom justified by success. Yet he was by no means oppressed with the task he had undertaken. He was the only one of our outward-bound party who had any experience of foreign travel, he possessed the bulk of our meagre stock of German idioms and phrases, he knew the mysteries of the registration of baggage, and imder his guidance we made our way to our destination. He was a capital fellow-traveller, seemingly insensible to fatigue, and uniformly cheerful under the changes and chances of a long journey.

And our hfe at Dresden is a pleasant time to look back upon. We lived in spacious lodgings in the Eackenitz Strasse, occupying in common a large sitting-room in which we each appropriated a corner ; and every morning Barratt and I repaired to Ilbert’s private room to be instructed in logic and metaphysics. I did not then realise how much he was really interested in this portion of his work, for his facility was so great as to create an impression among his companions that he cared for no one subject more than for another. All that I did realise was his rapid comprehension and appreciation of things which seemed to me to he dark and unfruitful sayings, and the absence of effort with which he turned from metaphysics to Greek history, and from that to the enjoyment of the “ music of the future ” which we then heard for the first time. We spent our mornings at work, our afternoons in sight-seeing or wandering about the neighbourhood, or listening to a concert in the public gardens, our evenings at the early opera, and at work again. But often when we started on our afternoon ramble, unless sights were to be seen or music to be heard, Barratt would light his pipe and settle down to the serious work of the day.

We came back to England early in October, and in the course of the ensuing term he obtained liis Classical First Class.

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And now began the most remarkable part of his University career. For the next six months he appeared to be enjoying that leisure for miscellaneous reading which used to be considered a man’s due, when having obtained a good First Class, he proposed to work for a Fellowship. He worked at mathematics, but his friends hardly understood that he was working with a view to double Honours till in the summer of 1866 his name appeared in the First Class in the Final Mathematical School.

In the long vacation I lost sight of him, but we had arranged that I should take up my abode in his lodgings in the October term, in the Broad Street just opposite BalHol, and work together for fellowships. I came back to Oxford before term began, and his return was a little delayed by business arising from the death of his father, which had taken place in the long vacation. When he did come back and we were settled in our lodgings, he told me that he was meditating an attempt upon another First Class, and had begun to work at Law and Modern History.

His work in this term was the most extraordinary process of rapid acquisition and methodical arrangement of knowledge in a subject which was to a great extent novel to him. He had been reading mathematics until the middle of June; his long vacation had been broken into by the family sorrow which I have mentioned. Throughout the whole term he was certainly the most sociable and seemed to be the most leisured of companions ; the week before the examination in the Law and History School he stood for the BalHol fellowship and narrowly missed it, and then he obtained what I believe was a very distinguished First Class in the Law and Modern History School. He thus achieved five Classes within four years and two months from the commencement of his residence, a list of honours which has no counterpart in University history.

At the end of this term I went abroad, and though Barratt and I never lost sight of one another, the period concerning

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which I have been asked to write ends here, and others may follow it up with better knowledge of his after life.

But there are two matters wliich I would not pass over. One is the strange fortune which caused a man who had obtained five Classes to have to wait for more than a year, and to make several unsuccessful attempts before he could obtain a Fellowship. I attribute this to a certain unreality which marked the intellectual standard at Oxford in his time. It used to be said that the Final Classical School taught the science of writing leading articles, and this was so far true that a man was apt to get undue credit for the power of throwing a little knowledge into an artistic form and for a certain faculty for literary display. The tide has turned, and it may he that the amount of knowledge now exacted from the student overtaxes his powers of assimilation, and leaves him too little capable of literary effort or the artistic arrangement of ideas. Yet the test of acquisition is a sound one, and may lead to less disappointment in the long run, than the assignment of substantial and permanent rewards to work that is regarded as “ interesting ” or “ suggestive ” or as exhibiting the “ historic sense”. For criticism of this sort Barratt’s work was ill adapted. He would write the history of an idea or of an institution, and his work would be rapid, methodical, and full, but he stated results, he did not think it worth while within the compass of an examination-paper to reason upon them independently, or to make any show of literary ingenuity. He had a great deal to say, and he so said it as to convey the impression that his mind was a mere repository of facts. It is strange that while such a judgment was being passed upon him, he was in course of composing a book, which is not only markedly original, but is charged with an enthusiasm surprising even to those who knew him best. Whatever the cause may be, it is not very creditable to the system on which fellowships were awarded that a man of Barratt’s immense

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XVU and ordered knowledge should have been four times an unsuccessful candidate.

And lastly, though his manner was undemonstrative, I think Barratt was one of the friendliest men I ever knew. Whether a long or short interval elapsed between our meetings he was always the same, full of quiet interest in all that concerned his friends. I do not think that anything of any importance happened to me since I knew him, but I received a note of sympathy, of congratulation, or of good wishes. His friendship was a little like his work, it went on so quietly that only upon occasion one discovered how full and genuine it was.

It is not exactly known when Physical Ethics was commenced; but in a letter on the 9th May, 1868, (some time after he had been elected Fellow of Brasenose) he writes : “ I am thinking of publishing an essay on Moral Philosophy (of all subjects) which I used to amuse myself with at Oxford, at times when they kept me up there with nothing to do”. The book appeared in January, 1869.

After this he seems to have determined to settle down to the Law, the profession which most naturally suggested itself, and he began reading with the late Vice-Chancellor Wickens, and afterwards with Mr. Horace Davey. He was called to the Chancery Bar in 1872, and took chambers at 11 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, at first with his friend Mr. George Far well, who writes as follows : —

My acquaintance with Alfred Barratt began at Eugby, but our friendship commenced at Balliol. I was in the Sixtli with him at Eugby for only three months, and therefore was never intimate with him there. One of the most endearing points

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in liis character was his kindness to his juniors. I have a vivid recollection of the consolation that he afforded me when I was in for the Balliol in November, 18G4: he met me coming out of hall abont 9 p.m., after nine hours’ examination and feeling rather forlorn and very weary, and carried me off (although our acquaintance then was of the slightest) to Ms rooms, and gave me tea and encouragement and pleasant talk. When I came up to town to read Law in October, 1869, he was a pupil of the late V. C. Wickens. We lived together at 18 Eyder Street for some months, and used to read Law together in the evenings. His versatility was very striking ; after a conple of hours of Law, he would take refuge in his piano and the mysteries of thorough bass, and during the first six months of 1870 he taught himself Spanish in addition to the numerous dead and living languages which he then knew. In the summer of 1870 he had an attack of small pox, and it has always appeared to me that he never quite got over it although he was never, I believe, dangerously ill. I was not living in Eyder Street at the time, but I used to see him every day, and he was always cheerful and in good spirits, but the illuess appeared to me to leave a lassitude, which united with Ms natnral distaste for Law to turn him away from it. He gave me the impression that he learnt Law because he thought it Ms duty, not because he liked it ; his real devotion was to Philosophy. I always thought him a master of legal principles ; Ms great mental powers were admirably adapted for the study of Law, and his marvellous memory was as retentive of cases as of other things ; hut his heart was never in it. I have heard Mr. Horace Davey, with whom he read, say that Alfred Barratt was the best pupil he ever had, and that his faculty of getting into the heart of a mass of papers and discriminating between the relevant and irrelevant was remarkable, and I am confident that if he had desired success at the Bar, he would have commanded it. But he never did become engaged to any extent in practice, and the ordinary routine

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XIX of a conveyancer and equity draftsman’s life gives no scope for incidents worth relating.

At Rugby lie had formed a great friendship with Richard Hart-Davis, now Vicar of Dunsden, near Reading. They were in the same house, and afterwards both at Oxford, and frequently went abroad and on walking-tours together. They always looked upon one another as brothers ; and this they were destined afterwards to become, by the marriage of Alfred with his friend’s youngest sister, whom he had known since she was a child of five years old. We were married in May, 1876, and spent together five years of happiness, having one child (a daughter) born in 1878.

It is impossible in a few words to give any adequate idea of the charm of his character, but one special point ought to be noticed. This was his great humility. With all his intellectual ability and extraordinary knowledge, there was something so wonderfully gentle and unassuming in his manner that he won the confidence of all, and made everyone feel at their ease with him. He always entered into the things that interested others, while it was almost impossible to get him to talk of himself Perhaps it was this rare forgetfulness of self and ready sympathy that endeared him so universally : there are few men who have made such a large number of great personal friends. He was a delightful companion, full of life and energy, insensibly influencing others with his bright cheerfulness ; always simply and easily amused, and enjoying fun with the heartiest laughter.

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His tastes were extremely varied, but, while alive to beauty in all things, he cared most for the works of the older masters of painting, music, and poetry. He went several years in succession to Dresden, where he enjoyed the life to the full, and began the study of musical composition, which was afterwards a source of great pleasure to him. Then he became very fond of Italy, rambling about in out-of-the-way places, and discovering everywhere fresh delights and treasures. A beautiful view (especially of mountains) gave him intense pleasure, and he would often make small pencil sketches, most elaborate in detail and carefully finished, which give a very true and exact impression of the place. Indeed he was remarkably neat in everything, and his many note-books are filled with very minute but perfectly clear handvTiting, without a blot and hardly an erasure.

His philosophical studies obliged him thoroughly to understand German, and he was also able to enjoy reading French, Italian, and Spanish books. He never left home without some favourite Greek or Latin author for a companion.

In politics his sympathies were liberal and wideminded. His religion, though of a difierent t}'pe from what is generally accepted, was real and deep ; and it bore the fruit of a blameless, true, and loving life, devoted to the advancement of thought and the patient untiring search after truth.