The Condition of England
9781465678003
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
What will the future make of the present? That is a question which opens a wide field for speculation, but secures no certain reply. There is difficulty from two causes. The one is the imperfection of contemporary record, with its distortions or exaggerations of the life of to-day. The other is the inability of the life of to-day to picture its own appearance, even if accurately delineated, when set in historic background. So much of the future becomes then read into the present that (for example) altogether divergent elements in national life will be emphasised if that life be on the highway toward success, or hovering on the brink of calamity, or a cross section only of progress towards a national decay. The reconstruction of the past has been largely effected from the testimony of contemporary documents, each author setting out to write of his own personal experience. Yet with all the material at our disposal, the vision of it is still fluctuating and changing; varying in the estimate of individuals, and from decade to decade. To some the days of declining Rome represent a period of tranquillity and human enjoyment; to others they appear as a tremendous warning of the triumph of the deadly sins. The Middle Age stands for one set of historians as a period of gold and innocence; with stately purposes, solemn processions, and widely diffused, if frugal, comfort; the whole illuminated by great dreams of adventure and aspiration. To another it presents itself as a prolonged delirium in which men wrestled in the darkness with fear and torment. To-day, perhaps too complacently, we assume that history will sharply distinguish our particular period of security from such troublous upheavals of Birth or of Death. We see ourselves painted as a civilisation in the vigour of early manhood, possessing contentment still charged with ambition; a race in England and Europe full of energy and of purpose, in which life, for the general, has become more tolerable than ever before. We would confess that we had not been able to “still the old sob of the sea,” or compel Time to stand still in his courses, or abolish altogether those “two black birds of night,” sighing and sorrow. But we would exhibit a people labouring and enjoying, more secure from plague, pestilence, and famine than in former ages, so accustomed to carry out unimpeded the labours of the day as almost to have forgotten the experience of a time when life itself was precarious and hazardous, and every morning an adventure into the unknown. We would defend our Literature, our Art, our Architecture, as, if not indubitably inspired, yet respectable if judged by any but the highest standard; with an intelligence ever more widely diffused, much reading, some thought, even an original, or, at least, a courageous outlook towards the bigger problems of human existence and human destiny. Condemn our poverty, we confront it with our charity. Reveal the ravages of disease, cancer, appendicitis, complaints of the brain, nerves, and stomach, we retort with the revelation of our warfare against disease, maintained with a devotion and a determination unparalleled in all the past. If we have Atheisms, here are all our Churches; if Social Maladies, our Social Reformers. That any future estimate should associate us even in thought with the dying days of Rome or the delirium of the medieval twilight seems to us a proposition obviously incredible.
