MISS WEDGWOOD ON THE LIST HALF- CENTURY.
TN the profoundly interesting paper by Miss Wedg- wood in the September number of the Contemporary Review on the changed order which has marked the course of the last half-century of English life, she appears to us to attach a slightly exaggerated importance to the effect of the development of Mr. Darwin's theory of evolution on the mental and moral nature of our people. It may be true that on the continent of Europe that doctrine has worked in a much more revolutionary fashion, though even there its impact on the intellect and conscience of man is now, we think, much less potent than it was at first. But in England we doubt whether it has ever produced quite so startling an intellectual and moral crisis as Miss Wedgwood appears- to assume. We hardly think that Mr. Darwin's great hypothesis as to the origin of species has ever been generally accepted here as accounting satisfactorily even for the evolution of man's body, and certainly not for that of his mind and con- science, which many earnest evolutionists,—Miss Wedgwood, of course, amongst them,—regard as testifying as clearly to the evolution of an organic relation with the divine mind, as even the most conspicuous of Darwin's facts testify to the evolution of some species out of the lower species most closely related to them in the organic world. And though we agree with hex that the result of Mr. Darwin's theory has been to remove the golden age from the far past to the far future, because it is usually held that evolution is at present tending to the moral elevation of our race, even this conclusion has not ex- tinguished the belief in some catastrophe such as is symbolised in the second chapter of Genesis, since the higher the con- science of man rises, the more evident it becomes that there
must have been a time when the lower instincts of our nature rebelled against the guidance of the primitive conscience, and so implanted in the human family a fatal tendency to evil from which the degeneracy of so many branches of our race has since proceeded. Without an original conscience the history of human nature could never have been what it has been ; and granting such an original conscience, it would be impossible to explain the conflict which has always raged, —and often raged disastrously,—between our higher and our lower nature, except by admitting that the rebellious elements in us have often gained and held the victory for which they struggled. No theory of the steady evolution of our moral nature towards any ideal standard, will account for the many outbursts of degeneracy of which we have always had, and in recent days have again had, the most conspicuous proof. We doubt, indeed, whether, in spite of the doctrine of evolution, there is not at the present time a deeper though a more reasonable belief amongst us in original sin, than there ever was in the most Calvinistic eras of the most Calvinistic Churches.
We are inclined to think that at no period in our history has the danger of a decay of the forces tending to moral progress been more keenly felt than at the present time. The rapid growth of population which has so greatly increased the com- plexity and the number of threatening elements in the problem of civilisation, has had much to do with the growing apprehen- sion of a retrograde movement in human history. We can all see that modern science is not by any means; an unadulterated good. Though it puts large powers into our hands, it puts them into our hands for evil as well as for good, and it inten- sifies that disposition towards subservience to Destiny which the mere effect of the crowding of our race on this little planet does so much to disseminate. Miss Wedgwood. thinks that the doctrine of evolution has disposed the latest-born of the generations to look down with a certain disdain on their fore- fathers who bad not the newest discoveries at their disposal, as the new-comers have had during their education and training for their work. But in the first place, that is no new phenomenon. Even in the age of Homer the young
generation "boasted to be better than their fathers." And in the second place, the impression that the individual
dwindles while the collective character grows more and more dominant, does a great deal, in our belief, to neutralise, or more than neutralise, the confidence of our children in their own strength and wisdom. The loss of the restraining principle of authority tends rather to the sense of helplessness and chaos than to the waxing of conceit. The confused gropings of modern democracies bewilder much more than they stimulate the development of individual purpose. As the complexity of life increases, as the multiplicity of its cares and interests become more and more overwhelming, human culture tends more and more to hesitation if not to impotence.
Miss Wedgwood more or less admits this, for she speaks as follows towards the end of her very remarkable paper :—
"To discern that whatever may be the disadvantages of orthodoxy, it supplies a valuable fence for the growth of originality ; that the assumptions of authority shelter and foster that development of character which withers under the breath of mere criticism; this is no doubt to confess a certain divergence from that full adherence to the ideal of progress which, in the second half of our century, succeeded to the vacant throne of belief. It is to doubt whether that premium which an ideal of progress and a theory of natural selection unite to set on all eccentricity, does not to some extent defeat its own object."
Bat though Miss Wedgwood concedes this to her readers, her main line of thought certainly assumes that evolution will on the whole increase the confidence with which individual man, no less than social man, conducts the straggle of life. And that we doubt. We are disposed to think that in Homer's time the new generation had more confidence in itself, than it has in our own.
We sincerely hope it may not be so, but for our own part we anticipate that the doctrine of evolution will not result in any- thing like that unquestionable triumph of the modern intellect over the old traditions and habits of our forefathers, which
many thinkers seem to expect. Doubtless, as Miss Wedgwood very finely says, the sympathies of man are always widening, and we are sure that they not only "widen downwards," but that they widen upwards also, and gradually disclose to us, as Miss Wedgwood expresses it, the growth of a "sympathy with God." We may in our day, she declares, "discern the working of what is called evolution in those very channels which the idea of evolution at first appeared to close. We may recognise that what we have called Revelation is but one aspect of the perennial widening of man's horizon which belongs to his slow descent. We had been accustomed to look on Revelation, like Creation, as confined within a narrow enclo- sure of the world's history; and then again perhaps we swung back, in both cases, to an opposite error, and refused to recog- nise eras which concentrated the slow processes of ordinary development, and simulated in their intensive force, the work of ages." Further, Miss Wedgwood holds that the modern work of evolution is to be done in bringing the average man,—Carlyle's "dim common populations,"—up to the higher standard not only of the thoughtful, but of the spiritual, man. In that case,—and we sincerely hope that she is right,—" science" will require quite as much transfiguration and illumination as morality itself. To spiritualise science may perhaps prove a more herculean task, than even to heave up to a higher plane the habitual level of ordinary human purpose and conduct.
We do not, however, agree with Miss Wedgwood that this can be accomplished without the aid of at least genuine moral genius. She seems to think that the absence of men of genius may facilitate a dead heave of this kind. But judging from the past, this is what we should hold to be impos- sible. Even in the fifty years under her review surely a great deal more has been done by men of genius to in- tensify our sympathy with the "dim common populations" than by any other ameliorating cause whatever. If "sym- pathy with God" is to be the inner motive and inspira- tion of the new progress, as Miss Wedgwood justly enough maintains, has not the higher temper of the present genera- tion owed a great deal more to the spiritual passion of the genius in individuals than to any other influence at work amongst us P Men like Tennyson, Carlyle, Raskin, Chalmers, Maurice, Kingsley, Newman, Manning, and to mention men less brilliant, but not less powerful conductors of higher sympathy and energetic beneficence amongst us, men like Edward Denison and Toynbee, with the other various pilots of the movement for bringing the East-End of London into closer relations with the culture of the Univer- sities, have all in their way done a vast deal more to elevate the aims and popularise the moral and spiritual activity of the age, than any other kind of agency known to us. Of course, they would have been comparatively power- less had they not had the greater example of the Church in former ages to fall back upon, but still sympathies of this kind do not spread as contagion spreads from one patient to another, but are diffused as the warmth of suns is diffused from fixed centres of moral light and heat. We have always needed moral genius at least to diffuse the higher moral and spiritual sympathies, and it is not easy to find moral genius in any large quantity without a considerable share of in- tellectual genius too. If ever the intellect should strike work on behalf of the conscience, the conscience would get on very badly without it; nor can we remember any movement that raised the whole level of any great society, without the help of a potent personality of some kind. Miss Wedgwood's striking article will do a good deal to put the gospel of " evolution " in its true relation to the century through which we are passing,—though we think she attributes to it a more potent undermining influence on the Christian creeds than it ever exerted, even during the first few years of its ascendency. But we think she is quite too optimistic when she is disposed to regard the dying out of men of genius, as in any way favourable to the elevation of the masses of our people. No one really reaches the heart of a multitude without some genius, of whatever kind ; and without a good share of intellectual force, genius even of the purely moral kind is apt to miss its mark. A certain amount of stored enthusiasm is essential for the humblest propaganda, and you can hardly get stored enthusiasm of a useful kind without a good deal of luminous insight and concentrativeness of purpose.
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