Matthew Arnold, "soon passes on from any Rabbi,"[1] and Tolstoi,[2] in one of his vivid sentences, says, "The king is the slave of history."[3]
(3) A third and perhaps the chief effect of evolution upon history is the view that mankind is gradually approaching what is true and good. In the place of the pessimist view, that things are as bad as they can be, and of the optimist view, that this world is the best of all possible worlds, has arisen the meliorist view, that things are slowly but surely mending; the golden age is in the future. But just as the prime cause of any modification of an organism is said by scientists to be not in the organism by itself, but in nature as a whole, so here it is affirmed that the final cause of the progress of mankind lies not in human efforts, which may be all awry, but in something variously named, Nature by Darwin, so far as he has touched the question, the Unknowable by Mr. Spencer, the Unconscious by von Hartmann, the Eternal not-ourselves by Matthew Arnold, and the Invisible Hand by Tolstoi. Not all these thinkers are agreed, it may be, that the car of this concealed power is transporting its occupants to a better land; but all are agreed that the real explanation of the actions in which man has taken part since the dawn of history, lies beyond his conscious agency. So Matthew Arnold writes:
"We stem across the sea of life by night,"[4]
and again, addressing Nature:
"Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone."[5]
- ↑ Culture and Anarchy, p. 41.
- ↑ War and Peace, vol. III, pt. I, chap. i.
- ↑ This is, I am aware, not a full statement of the relation of the present to the past, since it may be argued that it is not possible to understand completely the needs and aspirations of our own time, except by being brought into contact in some way with the realized aspirations of our immediate predecessors. That point, so far as I know, is not taken by the writers from whom I have quoted, and, indeed, would appear to fall outside the usual application of evolution to history. The question will come up again.
- ↑ From the poem "Human Life."
- ↑ From the sonnet "Quiet Work."
