Background
Gardiner was born on November 6, 1855 in Norwich, England, the only son, of Hezekiah and Sophia (Savage) Gardiner. When he was nine years old the family moved to Bristol. His father was a wood-carver who took great pride in his craftsmanship, examples of which were to be seen in churches in and around Bristol. He was also a great reader and an enthusiastic admirer of John Bright, Abraham Lincoln, and Henry Ward Beecher. The son came to share his father's admiration for these men but was especially influenced by the sermons of Beecher.
Education
Gardiner he had the good fortune to spend the next five years of his life at the famous Bristol Grammar School, where he laid the foundation of the exact and thorough scholarship which was to characterize all of his later work. Compelled by lack of funds to break off his formal schooling at this point, he was apprenticed for four years to a bookseller and stationer of Bristol, receiving as wages a shilling a week - raised to seven shillings and sixpence in his fourth year of service. He continued his studies in his spare hours, however, under the guidance of a friend at Trinity College, Cambridge, who sent him books from time to time and helped him plan his course of study. He received his bachelor's degree in 1878 (A. M. in 1885).
Career
Gardiner was influenced by the sermons of Beecher. Religious interests became dominant. With a small group of friends who used frequently to foregather to discuss the serious problems of life he formed the Bristol Itinerant Society. Half a dozen of these youths would meet early Sunday morning and drive out into the country to hold religious services in small chapels in nearby villages. His ambition now was to enter the ministry, and, thinking that America might offer a better opportunity to earn his living while continuing his studies, he took his problem to Beecher. After some correspondence, he was encouraged to make the venture, and on August 26, 1874, he sailed from Liverpool by steerage. Upon arriving in America he went directly to Amherst, where he succeeded in working his way through college, rising every morning between five and six o'clock, tending furnaces and doing odd chores, and tutoring when opportunity offered. But he did not allow these occupations to interfere with his full enjoyment of the zest of college life. After graduation he taught English for a year in the Academy of Glens Falls, New York, and then entered the Union Theological Seminary where he spent three years. Gardiner was awarded at the end of his course a traveling fellowship which enabled him to spend the following two years studying in Germany. He went first to Göttingen to study Sanskrit and Hebrew and to work under the Assyriologist Paul Haupt. But the spirit of Lotze still hovered over Göttingen and Gardiner came under its spell. He went to Heidelberg to study philosophy under Kuno Fischer, and to Leipzig to study psychology with Wundt. He decided, not without a struggle, to give up his plan for entering the ministry, and to devote his life to the study of philosophy. Upon his return to America in 1884 he was called to Smith College to occupy the chair in philosophy left vacant by the death of Prof. Moses Stuart Phelps, and there he taught for forty years. After his retirement from active teaching he lived on in Northampton in his modest bachelor quarters, pursuing his studies with undiminished zeal, and enjoying the companionship of his many friends both within and without the academic circle. Three years later, in December 1927, as Gardiner was crossing a street in Northampton, he was struck by an automobile and killed. Throughout most of his professional life he was at work on a book which was to give a complete history of theories of the affections from the time of the early Greek philosophers to the present day. The first three chapters, which carry the story down to the patristic writers, were published during his lifetime. After his retirement, he devoted the better part of his leisure to the fulfilment of this task, and he had succeeded in bringing the history almost to the end of the eighteenth century when his work was brought to a sudden end by his untimely and tragic death. His last chapter was completed, and the manuscript revised for publication, by his pupil and former colleague, Ruth Clark Metcalf. The book was published in 1937 under the title, Feeling and Emotion - A History of Theories. It is a most comprehensive and authoritative work on this subject and is of equal importance to philosopher and to psychologist.
Membership
President of the American Philosophical Association (1907)
