Nineteenth Century Thought (3 page)

In the early years of the nineteenth
century, England as a social structure had become a great beneficiary of the
hard productive
labour
done by the masses. Money, in
fact, flowed into England in the last decades of the eighteenth century as a
result of the English investments in faraway lands. I refer to the resources
used by the English rich in agricultural production on the strength of slaves
in distant islands. The non-European men and women as slaves from 'uncivilized
inferior nations' - (that is what the rich and privileged in Europe considered
the rest of the world) were subjected to ruthless exploitation on an
unprecedented scale. They were at the receiving end of the English upper classes
who merrily presided over the process of economic gain.

Of course, the highly profitable game
based on the
labour
of slaves had begun as early as
in the reign of Elizabeth in the sixteenth century when young able-bodied men
from across the shores entered England to augment production at a place run on
principles of exploitation and profit-making. The slaves in question had their
bodies to sell on account of which the English masters were entitled to use
them in agriculture and such other areas of productive activity. This was in
the sixteenth century. However, in the latter half of the eighteenth century,
the phenomenon had assumed horrendous proportions. It is possible that
Romanticism, by clearly siding with the poor and innocent in society, paved the
way for this awareness. Remember the value Wordsworth assigned to the simple
ways of life in the countryside and William Blake before him introduced in
literature the concerns of the helpless and destitute. Thus, the Romantic poets
proved to be the conscience keepers of the nation through the stand they took
on the burning questions of the day. None could be a stronger humanist voice
than Romanticism at the time.

Romanticism was itself an expression
of discontented psyche of
the English people in an era when
progress meant an increase in monetary resources of the traders and merchants.
These traders were highly motivated to increase their economic and political
clout and continuously used the English Parliament to promote their narrow
interests. The trading and manufacturing sections hardly minded the fact that a
social movement driven by the principle of selling and buying distorted
priorities and willfully ignored the needs of the common masses, rural or
urban. In the traders' scheme of things, society was an extended market of
suppliers and consumers. Read the celebrated works produced in the neoclassical
period in the eighteenth century and see that the main worry or concern in
them
 
(Alexander Pope's poems easily come
to mind) is a thing like etiquette, good breeding, elegance, virtue or
'genuineness' evolved within the parameters of tradition. Actually, these were
not values but mere cultural attributes one could acquire through social
training. We should bear in mind the fact that the concerns of the ordinary
masses could not remain confined to a wisdom that tradition was supposed to
carry. We know how tradition is understood and maintained by social systems
generally.
 
As a matter of fact,
tradition is a set of principles culled from the past from the point of view of
the haves. In the nineteenth century England, the productive
labour
of the masses was harnessed in such a way by the
ruling sections that times moved inevitably towards an era of 'plenty' for only
one social group - middle class or the
bourgeoisie.

This gives us some clue to what
Romanticism stood for. To say that the English Romantics swore by the common
people and their ways is to state the obvious. What is to be noted particularly
is that in their poetry, they carefully avoided the theme of etiquette and
manners at the far end of which they saw nothing more than narrow
individualism. Can we quarrel with this? More, the Romantics insisted on the
depiction of simple and spontaneous ways of life (this the Romantics saw
outside the competitive world of the city) in literature which alone could,
according to it, ensure an expression of genuine human concern in poetry. In
one sweep, literature came to be defined as incorporating the whole society,
not just the influential section of the haves. The love for nature and
innocence had inspired the

Romantics to feel
one with the deprived and underprivileged, an aspect of literature that had no
parallel in the writing of the past centuries. And Romantics provided an
unmistakably clear backdrop to the nineteenth century, the subject of our
discussion here.

Apart from what we noted earlier, the
first two decades of the nineteenth century also saw the dismantling of old
feudal structures such as land relations and the patriarchal family as' well as
the legal system under which the society operated. In the new context, the
individual enjoyed better freedoms than before. This change was effected partly
by the English establishment in view of the momentous happenings in France
around this period. Voices of dissent in England in the first two decades of
the nineteenth century became stronger with more and more people propagating
the vision of a just and humane order.

England's war with France in the
early years of the nineteenth century was interpreted by a number of thinkers,
reformers and writers as a conflict between the French masses on the one side
and English traders on the other. These highly sensitive and socially conscious
individuals in England came out courageously in support of the French masses.
Byron, the great Romantic poet, noted the defeat of France with pain. We should
not, therefore, be surprised to see the forces of social awareness, modernism
and progress taking root at this time.

England had to develop a new war
machinery and a new social set up to cope with the power of France and other
nations in Europe at this time. Conflict based on competition became the issue
of the day. English society had to modernize itself to contend with the ideas
of freedom and equality spreading amongst its own people and in the
neighbouring countries. If that did not happen or was not taken up consciously,
England would lag behind in influence, clout and prestige in Europe and the
world.

We see this complex process at work
in the novels of Jane Austen where the author takes a witty cognizance of the
changing social scenario in her time and presents things extremely
perceptively.
 
It is difficult to
overlook the ridiculous figure of Lady Catherine de
Bourgh
in
Pride and Prejudice
or the pompous character of Sir Bertram in
Mansfield
Park.
As Lady Catherine de
Bourgh
is gradually
sidelined in the former novel, Sir Bertram has the 'shock of recognition' to
find on corning back from foreign lands that his whole family has lost its
moorings in his absence. His pursuit of material affairs away from England in
Antigua was perhaps the culprit. It would also be useful to keep in mind that
as far as Jane Austen's writing is concerned, the new times clearly belong to
persons such as Elizabeth
Bennet
and Fanny Price,
both from lower middle class. They not only face the confusing scenario but
have also their interests deeply inlaid in the effort to
read
the nature
of their times. If they seem to adjust and compromise in the novel, they only
reflect the social insecurities active in their psyche. But their perspective
is of the future.

Also, look at the 'society' closely
in
Pride and Prejudice
and you will find the affairs of home,
neighbourhood
and country in disarray. This is a precursor
to what emerged in England in the corning decades with cities expanding to the
extent of becoming unrecognizable. Yes, problems multiplied and cried for an
answer. The answer, as we shall see, carne in the form of a new attitude to
reality- scientific, objective and
 
rational,
 
unrestrained
 
by
 
bias
 
and
 
accepted
 
preferences.

Let us take up here the rise of the
materialist thought in the nineteenth century. More than ever before,
materialism at the time signified acceptance of the real world as the sole
point of reference, a world with which human beings were linked on both
physical and 'spiritual' planes. In fact, the
 
'physical'
 
and
 
'spiritual'
 
were seen as existing together as two facets of life in society, where
the spiritual aspect denoted and thus reinforced the substance of the physical,
it was only a 'reflection' of the real. After all, points of spirit draw their strength
from the world of matter. Principles of soul and mind, howsoever complex,
emanate from actual human existence. It was also stated categorically in the
nineteenth century materialist discussions that consciousness was in fact
matter, something tangible and influential in the area of life. One can name
materialism the atheistic doctrine under which primacy was accorded to the
socio-historical phenomenon.

When Darwin defined humankind's
ancestor tongue-in-cheek as a "less than highly organized form," he
dealt a severe blow at the idea of The Supreme Being determining and ordering
life in the universe. The implication was unmistakable. In the chain of
evolution, the human being constitutes the most developed and
organised
species, with a brain whose capacity is to be
truly
marvelled
at. In comparison, the earlier forms
of life, in the beginning of which supposedly stood the First Life-Giving
Agency, would be primitive or in Darwin's words "less than highly
organised
."

Apparently an innocuous hypothesis
but actually cutting at the root of religious belief, the evolution theory
recognized the validity of 'facts' alone. On their side, 'facts' were stated to
belong to the realm of verifiability, under which their character could be
examined objectively. If on verification, you found something actually existing
and happening, you called it a fact and thought of using it in your analysis of
ideas and belief sys ems.

Darwin called himself a naturalist,
one who observes nature in the process of its evolution or decay and studies
the phenomena from an objective scientific angle. According to the naturalist,
happenings in nature can be traced to a cause at a particular point in the
chain and their role can be examined scientifically. Biology can be said, in
this sense, to be a branch of 'naturalism.'

More important in naturalism is the
identification as well as application of scientific methods of study. Such an
attitude freed the scholar in the nineteenth century from empty speculation
about happenings in nature and enabled the study of nature to move unhindered
towards what could be called meaning or truth which itself would be incomplete
and ever-evolving. Darwin's job was, as he saw it, to study life-details in
their specificity, correspondence and regular occurrence. In themselves, these
terms sound heavy and rather incomprehensible but Darwin saw specificity,
correspondence and regular occurrence as methodological tools enabling the
analyst to see the working of rules in the middle of
happenings
and processes. Allowing him the freedom to explore long chains of phenomena
objectively, this preoccupation with nature offered to Darwin ever new
challenges, compelling him to change or modify conclusions arrived at earlier.

This made the research undertaken by
Darwin extremely fascinating. Closing in upon the category of human life as
part of the existence of life on the earth, Darwin considered humankind to be
not a 'creation' (since that implied the presence of a 'creator') but a species
in a long chain of evolution. As mentioned, Darwin kept his conclusions
tentative and open-ended, since the scientific method of enquiry is averse to
any kind of finality or fixity.

Compare Darwin to the twentieth
century philosophers on the human beings' status in the world. We shall find
that Darwin is far too modest, tentative and earnest than they are. Unlike
Darwin, the typical twentieth century thinker is arrogant and conceited, not
knowing that most intellectual activity going on around us today is a sponsored
one, supported by those who have wrongfully acquired resources and who stand to
gain from theories of permanence, fate and universalism. One can assess the'
worth of the typical twentieth century thinker by looking at the role
contemporary thought-trends play vis-a-vis existing power structures. These
trends have reduce d the human being to the level of a helpless, servile
creature. They attribute no dynamism and strength to the human being today.
Darwin's view of man was totally different, a view that
recognised
in man such noble qualities as "sympathy which feels for the most
debased, ...
benevolence which extends not only to other men
but to the humblest living creature, ... his godlike intellect which has
penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system."

Darwin turned the whole notion of the
Supreme Being or perfection upside down and compelled the
philosophical-scientific discourse of his time to take a new radical
materialist direction. If today, we assert circularity, changelessness and a
certain fixity, we arbitrarily and irrationally move out of the 'chain' of human
study in history. Darwin's basic contribution lay in showing the
untenability
of belief systems, such as religion,
transcendence and tradition all of which resist change, progress and true
modernity in social vision. He found that knowledge about nature (this was ·the
area of study to which he primarily belonged) is deepened as scholars gather as
well as examine more and more information about happenings in the evolution of
life on the earth.