ABSTRACT
Returning to the London of the eighties, there were other Glasgow and Balliol men who had found settlement there, and who shared the interest in the approach to the social and religious questions with which these years were seething from the side of idealist philosophy. Toynbee Hall was the centre which brought us together. But we were not altogether satisfied with its apparent absorption in practical activities to the neglect of the philosophical view of the nature and ends of human life which Arnold Toynbee himself had learned from Green. Neither Samuel Barnett nor his gifted and energetic wife were specially interested in this side of its work. But there were several of the residents and visitors besides myself, among them Bolton King, James Bonar and J. Murray Macdonald, who were, and it was not long before some of us got together with the idea of in some degree remedying this defect. “English people,” wrote Seeley, “have an irrepressible habit of forming societies.” Barnett seemed to think that the Scottish people were even more addicted to this vice when he asked in his genial way about us, “Did you ever hear of three Scotsmen getting together without forming a society?” As the society that was then formed was the first of its kind in England and, short though its own life was, had interesting sequels, it may be worth while to recall the particular circumstances that led to the adoption of its name.
