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THE LITERATURE OF THE VICTORIAN ERA
by Hugh Walker (1910)
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...took its rise from the speculations of Malthus, and the classical economists were
all in more or less intimate relation with the Utilitarians. Further, the agnostic
tendencies of the biological evolutionists are in harmony with the scepticism of the
school of Mill. On the other hand, however, the fundamental conception of evolution
has no place at all in the earlier phases of the utilitarian system, while it is the
master-thought of the other great school which struggled with the Utilitarians and their
allies for the allegiance of thinking men; and so supremely important is this conception
in the thought of the century that disagreement with regard to it is of more moment than
agreement in all other respects.
The greatest of the opponents of Utilitarianism went back for their
inspiration to Germany. Not Hume but Immanuel Kant, the great thinker who was roused by
Hume from his "dogmatic slumber," was their spiritual father. To describe them we must
discard the adjective "utilitarian" and substitute for it "transcendental." The word is
probably most familiarly known from the works of Emerson, but the thing it signifies
inspires also the prose of Coleridge and of Carlyle. This too lets in once more that
sense of mystery which is scarcely consistent with a conception of life as made up of
pleasures and pains capable of being weighed and numbered, added, multiplied and divided.
Through their transcendentalism the philosophers share, with the poets, the architects,
the painters and the Catholic party, that very complex thing which we call the spirit
of romance. So powerful, indeed, is the romantic strain that Hoffding in his History of
Modern Philosophy calls Hegel and the Hegelians "the romantic school." They,
however, make a momentous addition to transcendentalism, the addition of the conception
of development, which, more than anything else, has made modern thought what it is.
Like all great conceptions it has a long history and springs from many roots; but,
except Darwin, no single man has done so much as Hegel to establish its authority over
the human mind. Hence in part the immense significance of that intellectual affiliation
to Germany which must be discussed in the next chapter.
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