ABSTRACT
Henry Sidgwick’s interest in the phenomena of Spiritualism was not a new one. When Sir William Crookes’ experiments were first published, Sidgwick was preparing his Methods of Ethics; he was worried by the fact that an individual’s duty and his happiness seem inevitably to diverge and doubted whether a reasoned moral code could be established on the basis of merely mundane sanctions. Sidgwick and Myers had by then been acquainted for several years; in fact Sidgwick had coached Frederic Myers in classics during the latter’s first year at Cambridge. Sidgwick was at that time intensely shy—the social gifts which he later displayed were the result of painful self-discipline—and he was not popular with the undergraduates. Myers made occasional attempts to lure Sidgwick into Mrs. Buder’s fold; though it is hard to imagine anyone less likely than Sidgwick to be captured by that perfervid prophetess.
