Alexander Faulkner Shand (1858–1936)

Alexander Faulkner Shand was born in London in 1858, the son of Hugh Morton Shand and Edrica Faulkner. He was educated at Eton College, and subsequently at Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating in the Moral Sciences Tripos in 1881. While at Cambridge, he was President of the University Swimming Club. In 1887, he became a barrister, although he never practised. Shand lived from graduation, and for the rest of his life, in Edwardes Place, Kensington.

From the late 1880s onwards, Shand contributed articles to Mind on subjects including the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and psychology – especially the psychology of feeling. He was a founding member, in October 1901, of the British Psychological Society; one of a group of ten which also included the mathematician, teacher, and ethical society member Sophie Bryant. Shand became the Psychological Society’s first secretary and treasurer. In 1907, he was appointed to the British Association subcommittee on psychology, and in 1914 published The Foundations of Character: Being a Study of the Tendencies of the Emotions and Sentiments. An approving review in The Scotsman that year described this as a ‘learned, interesting, and thoughtful’ attempt to ‘found a science of character’, building on John Stuart Mill’s concept of ‘ethology’. The reviewer added that Shand’s treatment of the subject was made much more appealing ‘for its material being largely and happily drawn from poets and from fables, proverbs, and maxims’. This brought ‘Mill’s method down from the nebulous regions of abstract speculation into touch with plainer principles’ (The Scotsman, 20 April 1914).