Studies in Contemporary BiographyBryce, James Bryce, Viscount
History
Studies in Contemporary Biography
Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount
Great Britain -- Biography
The obscure problems of psychology had a great attraction for him, and
he spent much time in investigating them, being one of the founders,
and remaining all through his later life a leading and guiding member,
of the Society for Psychical Research, which has for the last twenty
years cultivated this field with an industry and ability which have
deserved larger harvests than have yet been reaped. Two remarkable
men, both devoted friends of his, worked with him, Edmund Gurney and
Frederic Myers the poet, the latter of whom survived him a few months
only. It was characteristic of Sidgwick that he never committed
himself to any of the bold and possibly over-sanguine anticipations
formed by some of the other members of the Society, while yet he never
was deterred by failure, or by the discovery of deceptions, sometimes
elaborate and long sustained, from pursuing inquiries which seemed to
him to have an ultimate promise of valuable results. The phenomena, he
would say, may be true or false; anyhow they deserve investigation.
The mere fact that so many persons believe them to be genuine is a
problem fit to be investigated. If they are false, it will be a
service to have proved them so. If they contain some truth, it is
truth of a kind so absolutely new as to be worth much effort and long
effort to reach it. In any case, science ought to take the subject out
of the hands of charlatans.
The main business of his life, however, was teaching and writing. Three
books stand out as those by which he will be best remembered--his
_Methods of Ethics_, his _Principles of Political Economy_, and his
_Elements of Politics_. All three have won the admiration of those
who are experts in the subjects to which they respectively relate, and
they continue to be widely read in universities both in Britain and in
America. All three bear alike the peculiar impress of his mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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