The Longest Journey: E. M. Forster’s Refutation of Idealism

Too much has been made of the influence of the philosopher G. E. Moore on E. M. Forster, according to Forster’s authorised biographer, Mr P. N. Furbank. Forster never read Moore, a cardinal tenet of whose ethics Furbank says was ‘that the only things in the world possessing intrinsic value were good states of mind….’ And though he was a member of the Apostles during the period that Moore dominated the Society,

he was not, however, a Moore-ite. In fact he always believed himself incapable of abstract thought; and so far as the actual discussions were concerned, he usually found them extremely tedious. Indeed he often didn’t listen very closely — which helps to explain, what might appear puzzling, how it is that the problem which Ansell and his friends are discussing in that opening scene [of The Longest Journey]—about the cow in the field, and whether it is there when no one is looking—seems to belong more to the age of Berkeley than to that of Rusell and Moore.¹