Born, in London, 10 Sept. 1834. Early education at a school at Stanmore, and at City of London School. Matric., Christ’s Coll., Camb., as Scholar, 1852; B.A., 1857; M.A., 1860. Fellow of Christ’s Coll., July 1858 to 1869. Assistant Master, City of London School, 1860–63. Prof. of Latin, University Coll., London, 1863–69. Prof. of Modern Hist., Camb., Oct. 1869. Married Mary Agnes Phillott, 1869. Professorial Fellow, Caius Coll., Camb., Oct. 1882. K.C.M.G., 1894. Died at Cambridge, 13 Jan. 1895. Works: “Three Essays on … King Lear” (by Seeley, W. Young, and E. A. Hart), 1851; “David and Samuel” (under pseud. “John Robertson”), 1859; “The Greatest of all the Plantagenets” (anon.), 1860 (new edn., called: “The Life and Reign of Edward I., 1872); “Classical Studies as an introduction to the Moral Sciences,” 1864 [1863]; “Ecce Homo” (anon.), 1866 (5 edn. same year); “An English Primer” (with E. A. Abbott), 1869; “Roman Imperialism,” 1869; “Lectures and Essays,” 1870; “English Lessons for English People” (with E. A. Abbott), 1871; “Life and Times of Stein” (3 vols.), 1878; “Natural Religion,” anon., 1882 (2nd edn. same year); “The Expansion of England,” 1883; “Short History of Napoleon the First,” 1886; “Greater Greece and Greater Britain,” 1887; “Goethe: reviewed after sixty years,” 1894. Posthumous: “The Growth of British Policy,” ed. by G. W. Prothero (2 vols.), 1895; “Introduction to Political Science,” ed. by H. Sidgwick, 1896. He edited: “The Student’s Guide to the University of Cambridge,” 1863; Livy, bk. i., 1871.

Personal

  If Seeley’s style was highly artistic, it was also highly artificial. The effects were consummate, but they were all carefully planned. His voice was never strong, but it was clear, and he managed it with the utmost ability, using all the delicate shades of emphasis. The lucidity of his arrangement seemed almost to communicate itself to his reading, and to find physical expression, as it were, in his modes of speech. His old pupils will recollect also with what infinite skill he utilised a slight cough, in order to point a sentence or emphasise a phrase. His use of quotations was masterly and suggestive in the highest degree.

  He did not avoid society, but he was no great lover of it. Not a voluble talker, he yet conversed readily with intimate friends or on topics in which he took interest. On such occasions his conversation was infallibly brilliant and epigrammatic, and abounding in apt and humorous illustration. When deeply interested, whether in conversation or on the platform, there shone forth a fire of enthusiasm, generally kept under close restraint or concealed in later years by a somewhat lethargic exterior. In University affairs of the ordinary kind he took little part; the routine of academic business, of syndicates, examinations and college meetings, was distasteful to him. As a young man he used to play racquets and cricket, and in his vacations he sometimes went on walking tours, in the Welsh mountains and Switzerland. But he had no natural fondness for athletic exercises: in later life his only form of physical recreation was a walk, and a solitary walk, he complained, afforded but little rest, for his mind was working all the time. It was his misfortune that he never acquired the art of lying fallow.

Ecce Homo, 1865

  Have been reading lately “Ecce Homo,” a book neither quite orthodox nor critical, but with many good points of reflection: a touch of a dry Robertson, and of my own sermons. It seems working up rather than down. Most of the orthodox journals most flattering to it, especially the Guardian, though similar but more ecclesiastical things said by me had been treated with offensive bitterness by them. The Quarterly Review falls on the book in its accustomed style, and with far more consistency, though less civility, than the complimentary critics.

  The book was published anonymously and was extraordinarily successful, something as “Robert Elsmere” has been, with a similar cause. It was full of eloquence and preached with much fervour the “Enthusiasm of Humanity” as a substitute for that love of God and of man which is the inspiration of Christianity. We believe that it has fallen almost completely into oblivion, and that few, at least of the younger readers of the day, would recognise the “Enthusiasm of Humanity” even as a name.

  “Ecce Homo” was, above all, an historian’s conception of Jesus. In fact, it was Seeley’s answer to Gibbon’s problem in the celebrated fifteenth chapter. Gibbon wished to explain the remarkable spread and success of the early Church; Seeley tried to trace it back to the personal influence of the Founder. In doing this he had naturally to lay stress on Jesus’s personal influence as man upon men, and thereby raised the ire of the Evangelicals. Curiously enough, it was on the historical side of his work that Seeley was most wanting. He failed to show from the Gospel records that the conscious aim of Jesus’s life was the formation of a Society of Humanity. He could find no text for his refrain “L’Église, c’est moi.” Yet his insistence on the social side of Jesus’s work has done more for Christian union than any theological utterance of the past third of a century.

  That book marks the appearance of the plain lay judgment upon a sphere which had been long monopolised either by the disciples of a pious ecclesiastical tradition, or by professed biblical scholars. It was inspired by a moral rather than by a strictly scientific interest…. It was a book which at any rate was not professedly unorthodox, and yet it invited the orthodox for a moment to discard the associations of divinity, and to concentrate their gaze upon the spectacle of a perfect human life passed upon earth. And it raised questions which had not been so clearly put before, precisely because those, for whom they were most interesting, had never considered them from an exclusively human standpoint, and they were fundamental questions.

Life and Times of Stein, 1878

  Unquestionably one of the most important contributions to the history of Germany ever placed before English readers. It is founded upon a long and arduous study of original materials, and it is a substantial contribution to the knowledge of the world…. The work has to do with the whole range of activity during the long period under review, and perhaps its most striking characteristic is that the author never for a moment allows himself to become the victim either of a prejudice or an enthusiasm. It may, perhaps, be said that the work lacks spirit; but it is so eminently judicial in tone that even when reason for a position taken is not given, the reader does not doubt that a good reason exists.

  If his biography of Stein fails to attract, it is mainly because Stein is not an attractive personality. The best parts of the book are where he is not dealing with Stein at all, but with some great movement of European feeling, like the national protest of Spain. What lends the book, however, an almost epic note, is the rôle played by Napoleon as the Satan of the action. This he also treated separately in his monograph on the great condottiere, as he regarded him.

  Seeley for the first time explained the Germany of the Napoleonic period to Englishmen…. The “Life and Times of Stein” is the only book of Seeley’s which lacks unity. But what it lacks in unity it gains in interest and in instructiveness. Who would willingly miss the vigorous sketches of Dalberg and Humboldt, and Niebuhr and Scharnhorst? They are essential to the real understanding of the period. And there is another feature in the book which adds to its value. The German history is constantly illustrated by the better-known history of England and of France, the author is always careful to guard us against such misconceptions as may naturally arise in English minds. When he is describing Stein’s municipal reforms he warns us against misinterpreting the spirit of the law. It was indeed a measure of self-government; but the people were not allowed but commanded to govern. The book appears to me to be in many ways a model of the way in which foreign history should be written for English readers; and to confirm a thesis, for which may be said, that the best history of any land is generally the work of a foreigner.

Natural Religion, 1882

  “Natural Religion” is not (it may be said at once) a book which attempts to deal with the speculative points at issue among the schools or the churches. Still less does it profess to cast any fresh light on the old problems of whence and whither, or to supply to morality that independent standing-point for which she still is vainly feeling in the void. The task which it attempts is a lesser one, but great nevertheless, and within the power of man. It is to prove to the earnest, but divergent, schools of modern thought, to the artist, the Positivist, the man of science, the orthodox Christian, that their agreement lies deeper than their differences, that the enemy of all is the same; that for the most part they are but looking at different sides of the shield, whether they worship the Unity of the Universe by the cold silver light of His power and reality, or in the golden radiance of His love. And thus the author claims for all forms of enthusiastic admiration of truth, beauty, goodness, the title of religion, which he deems theirs by right both of logic and of history…. Whether we call our author’s utterances by the name of religion or philosophy, they contain, at any rate, sublime ideas, vast generalizations, far-reaching hopes. As a mere model of simple and noble style this work is likely to be widely studied and to be remembered long.

  “Natural Religion” cannot yet claim to be classical work, but this at any rate can be said of it,—that the appreciation of it is likely to furnish a decisive test, by which an interest in religion itself may be distinguished from an interest in some particular set of religious or anti-religious ideas. No one who has the cause of religion at heart, no one who, however orthodox or however unorthodox he may be, believes religion to be the best thing in the world, will fail to be affected by it or to learn something from it…. The greatest service that the remarkable book before us will render to those who honestly and patiently study it, comes from the fact that in it, perhaps for the first time in England, the question is raised and answered in a way that must compel attention:—Granting the infinite value of religion, what kind of religion is possible apart from certain beliefs, apart from all “supernaturalism?” It is a question that concerns every one interested in religion, and not those alone who are compelled to reject a part or the whole of the received theology.

  In “Natural Religion” we have the philosophy of Goethe subordinated to the strong practical interests of the English historian…. Seeley’s special form of culture was history, and I doubt whether any English historian has cast so many valuable historical truths into a portable form.

General

  Everyone who has read “Ecce Homo” with any degree of care must have felt that the author was a man capable of strong, close, consecutive thinking, however much they may have disapproved of his standpoint or disagreed with his conclusions. And the continued demand for the book—it has already gone through sixteen editions—would a priori be sufficient evidence, were other proof wanting, that a fresh work coming from the same author would be certain to bring with it the weight of authority for many, the expectation of originality for others, and the hope of novelty for not a few. “Natural Religion” quickly reached a second edition, and the authorised publication of a private letter from the author in The Spectator not long since, as well as frequent allusions to it, show that the interest in the book is not ephemeral.

  Seeley’s light was a dry one, I have said, but it was pure and steady, and illumined every branch of thought on which he turned it. There are those who prefer this species of illumination to the more iridescent glare and more fantastic shadows cast by the feu follet of imagination. Truth has its triumphs no less than Fancy, and of these were Seeley’s. The votaries of Veracity need, above all things, restraint and repression; Imagination must be their servant, not their master. Throughout Seeley’s work, so original in so many directions, one feels that he never brought out all that was in him. Of Gray—another Cambridge man, and Seeley’s predecessor in his chair—it was said that he never spoke out. May we not say of Seeley that he never let himself go? Yet in this restraint and repression Seeley was English of the English. I have called his a Cambridge mind. Should I not supplement this by saying that the Cambridge mind, in all its strength, with all its limitations, is the characteristic English mind?

  One very important aspect of Seeley’s work has been left untouched—his work as one of the most stimulating and inspiring of Cambridge teachers…. The posthumous work on “The Growth of British Policy,” still in the press, is based on forty manuscript volumes of extracts copied from the Record office and other sources. Critics who read his finished work, and talk of “hasty generalisation,” fail to appreciate the laborious process by which the finished work was produced. This habit of thoroughness Seeley communicated insensibly to his pupils. He never preached it to them, but it soon came to influence unconsciously the standard of criticism which they were accustomed to apply to what they wrote for him…. It will be doubted by some whether Seeley’s view of history is one that can be maintained in the present imperfect state of human knowledge. His critics may be disposed to regard his use of the terminology of science as somewhat misleading; they may urge that the concessions made to them are so great as to involve a practical surrender of the whole position; the fact remains that for five-and-twenty years an acute subtle thinker invested this view with an irresistible fascination. And there can be no doubt that for the purposes of education it possessed great practical value.

  What was most remarkable in his teaching of history was its suggestive and stimulative character, and the constancy of its scientific aim. The facts which Seeley mentioned in his lectures were, as a rule, well known; it was the use he made of them that was new. Historical details were worth nothing to him but as a basis for generalisation; the idea to which they pointed was everything. In dealing with history he always kept a definite end in view—the solution of some problem, the establishment of some principle, which would arrest the attention of the student, and might be of use to the statesman. History pure and simple, that is narrative without generalisation, had no interest for him: it appeared trivial, unworthy of serious attention. With this habit of mind, it was inevitable that his conclusions should sometimes appear disputable, but in any case they were thoughtful, bold and original. Except perhaps in his “Life of Stein,” he added little to the sum of historical knowledge, if by that is meant the knowledge of historical events. But he pointed out a further aim, to which the mere acquisition of knowledge is subsidiary. Taking facts as established, he insisted on thinking about them, and on deducing from them the main lines of historical and political evolution.

  In the line of great English teachers Sir John Seeley will assuredly hold a most honourable place. I question whether we fully appreciate either the amount or the value of his influence and instruction. And yet even from an external point of view there is something extraordinary in his literary career. Twice he took the English reading world by storm, once by a book on religion, and again by a book on politics; and each book, in its own sphere, may be held to mark an epoch in the popular education of the Anglo-Saxon race…. He always treated large themes, and he treated them with enthusiasm, and with power and with originality. He was all his life a professed teacher, with a creed of his own to impart, and he gloried in the office. Few men have devoted to the cause of national education a purpose so widely conceived, so seriously and nobly sustained. He had the opportunity of giving oral instruction, and he must have been an ideal lecturer, with that refined and concentrated ardour glowing through those lucid, those severe, those cogent demonstrations. He had, too, one of the essential talents of a teacher, the gift of saying common things in a memorable way; and even when he issues upon a familiar conclusion, the route by which the conclusion is reached is so new, so full of fresh incident, of surprising turns, of enchanting glimpses into the animating landscape of possibility, that we are easily tempted to forget that we knew anything about it before.

  In the space of thirty years German critical ideas have made great progress in England, and nowadays it is hard to understand how such a moderate book as “Ecce Homo” could have caused such deep offence, even to ignorant pietists…. Yet “Ecce Homo” left one side of the question unanswered, and many looked forward to the promised sequel. But it did not appear for sixteen years, and dealt with different problems. I have heard admirers of “Ecce Homo” speak disparagingly of “Natural Religion,” as though the writer’s religious faith or literary power had receded in the interval. But though it appeals less to ordinary minds, it is in no way inferior to its more exoteric forerunner. The distinctively Christian enthusiasm of his earlier years is supplemented by another view of life, principally derived from the study of Goethe’s writings…. His knowledge of modern literature was enormous. Not only the well-kept high-roads, but even the moon-lit by-paths in the forests of German thought, had become familiar ground to him. French and Italian writers always occupied his attention. No one knew the English classics better.