The Personalization of Intellectual Combat

James Fitzjames Stephen—prominent barrister, prolific journalist, pugnacious polemicist, and older brother of Leslie Stephen—was elected a member of the Metaphysical Society in 1873. He presented seven papers between his election and his last appearance in 1879, making him one of the Society’s most active members. Alan Brown, in his monograph on the Metaphysical Society, says that Stephen’s papers ‘are the most coherent, consistent, and closely reasoned body of opinion contributed by a single member’. This coherence and consistency, this chapter argues, stem from the identity of those Stephen considered his intellectual adversaries within the Metaphysical Society, adversaries whose views he deemed badly flawed and utterly repugnant. These were its Catholic members, whom Stephen did not regard as true Englishmen. The chapter explains Stephen’s animus and analyses the means he employed to demonstrate the faulty nature of the beliefs held by those he chose to attack. It also examines the impact of his conduct on the health of the Metaphysical Society. Brown asserts that Stephen ‘was in many ways the dominating figure in the latter half of the Society’s history’. This domination, the essay contends, had as much to do with the manner of his doing battle as with the substance of the arguments he set forth. Stephen’s impact, on balance, was harmful, his belligerence discouraging rather than aiding the exchange of ideas and spirit of inquiry the founding members of the Metaphysical Society had sought to foster.