Between Intuition and Empiricism

William Benjamin Carpenter was a central figure in the Metaphysical Society. Aware of the tensions between the theists and the scientific naturalists in the Society he offered a middle ground. Although his early work in physiology had led him to doubt his own Unitarian faith, his mentor James Martineau had reassured him. However, as his studies in science developed, Carpenter found physiological evidence to underpin his faith. Although Carpenter failed to convince the most extreme among his friends in the Society; namely, Richard Holt Hutton and Thomas Huxley, or his lifelong mentor, Martineau, his ideas were attractive to many others. Henry Edward Manning adopted Carpenter’s ideas in defence of his own theism, for instance, and his ideas were publicized and appreciated in the wider scientific community.

Kiyozawa Manshi and the Spirit of the Meiji

Seishinshugi 精神主義, a term associated with the work of Meiji Buddhist reformer Kiyozawa Manshi 清沢満之 (1863–1903), is often read as exemplifying a spiritual turn in mid-Meiji Japan, centering an inner realm of private experience in a reaction against the rationalization of the early Meiji period. This paper considers the use of the term seishin in Kiyozawa’s early work. It finds him treating seishin in two distinct but connected contexts: as a psychological term, influenced particularly by his reading of English physician William Benjamin Carpenter (1813–1885), and as a philosophical term, in conversation with Hegel’s philosophy of spirit. It suggests that an understanding of seishin as developing progressively toward more and more complex forms of consciousness or self-awareness found in both Kiyozawa’s psychological and philosophical writing sheds new light on other aspects of Kiyozawa’s early career.

Basil and No Name

Basil’s Robert Mannion, and No Name’s Magdalen Vanstone are both subject to monomaniacal impulses. In Basil, Collins draws on early-nineteenth-century theories of insanity and moral management, promoted by “alienists” such as John Connolly and J. C. Prichard, which warned of domination by unruly passions. Mannion allows himself to be swept away by his uncontrolled emotions, and therefore contributes to his own mental deterioration. In No Name, Collins makes use of mid-Victorian theories of the will, developed by mental physiologists such as William Benjamin Carpenter, to depict Magdalen as someone who has not been trained to manage her willpower correctly and is therefore overwhelmed by a monomaniacal urge when faced with sudden tragedy. Unlike Mannion, Magdalen also possesses intrinsic reserves of moral strength and endures a series of internal conflicts between her monomania and her ‘better’ nature. In his contemplation of the different aspects which comprise the individual personality, Collis asserts (and so counters mid-century associationist psychology as propounded by men like Alexander Bain) that we are not ‘born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper’, but also insists that our inborn traits may be cultivated for better or for worse.

Society's notes

Obituary (continued from page 128) 1949. 25 October . . . Joseph Edwin Barnard 23 December . . . Clifford Dobell 1950. 16 February . . . William Palmer Wynne 19 March . . . Sir Norman Haworth 20 March . . . Frederick William Twort 24 March . . . Charles Stanley Gibson Gift Professor G. D. Hale Carpenter has presented a silver replica of the Royal Medal awarded to his grandfather, William Benjamin Carpenter, in 1861.