The Pursuit of Certainty

27. A New Climate of Opinion

CHAPTER 27 A New Climate of Opinion The New Science When Mill pleaded at St. Andrews for the liberally educated gentleman, he was defending a losing cause. Faith in science had triumphed to a degree he had not dreamt of even in The Spirit ofthe Age. Public school masters agreed with scientists that the school curriculum must be revised to make room for science, even at the expense of classics.1 Mere men ofletters who moved easily between history, philosophy, science, and poetry could no longer count on public esteem. The universities came under attack not only for indolence but for their failure to live up to the continental pattern that had already formed the Scottish universities, for concentrating on a few, unconnected and outmoded branches of learning and turning out nothing but gentlemen and public officials. Faculties were consequently reorganized, a number of professorships added, and vaguely defined subjects divided up into independent disciplines. Mid-Victorian culture was separating into distinct strands. It was no longer enough to be cultivated and original; the specialized professional and, above all, the scientist were coming into their own. Religion, once the great source of opposition to science, had lost its force. The age of the great doubters-Froude, Tennyson, Francis Newman, Hale White, George Eliot-who had been so tormented by their first suspicions of their faith, was well over. The storm raised by the Origin ofSpecies marked the climax of several decades of religious controversy and soul-searching, which, for all its severity, died quickly. Even before the Origin of Species was published, the work of Hutton and Lyell had led students in University Col1 . Cf. F. W. Farrar (ed.), Essays on Liberal Education; T. H. Huxley, A Liberal Education and Where to Find It. 352 Beatrice Webb lege, London, to discuss "the manner in which the innumerable races of animals have been produced," and the seventeen-year-old Stanley Jevons noted in his journal that he firmly believed "all animals have been transformed out of one primitive form by the continued influence for thousands, perhaps millions of years of climate, geography, etc...."1 Mark Pattison was not exaggerating very much when he declared that Oxford had been altogether converted as early as 1850: "Theology was totally banished from the Common Room, and even from private conversation," and replaced by "very free opinions on all subjects."2 In 1862, when the British Association of Science accepted a eulogy of Darwin without a murmur, Huxley, who was leading the battle for evolution, began to complain that "Darwinismus" was creeping up everywhere, insinuating itself even into a lecture on Buddhist temples. The works of Darwin, Lyell, and Huxley, the Daily Telegraph reported in 1863, were being torn from the hands of Mudie's shopmen as if they were novels.3 By the 'seventies, Darwin was beginning to fear that his theory had become so orthodox it would inspire a reaction. The Athenaeum felt it couldwithdraw its opposition "without doing violence to anyone's antipathies"; the Metaphysical Society brought together scientists and churchmen for discussions of the current scientific theories; and the question began to be not whether such opinions were wicked, but whether from the point of view of scientific method they were undeniably true. When in 1874, the British Association of Scientists heard its new president almost directly deny creation, the Spectator commented that "Professor Tyndall will be much less persecuted for denying the existence of God than he would be for denying the value of Monarchy." One could no longer be radical by opposing an entrenched religious orthodoxy . Having made its peace with religion, science had to contend only with art or "culture"; and the problem of the relation between science and art, that had so absorbed John Mill in his early years, became a general social concern. There were still those like Matthew Arnold who insisted that science was not culture. The study of nature, he said, although it should be included in education , was the study of "the operation of non-human force, of human limitation and passivity." The study of letters, however, was "the study of human 1. Stanley Jevons, Letters and Journals (London, 1886), p. 23. 2. Mark Pattison, Memoirs (London, 1885), pp. 244-45. 3· T. H. Huxley, Life and Letters (London, 1900), val. I, p. 202. A New Climate of Opinion 353 force, of human freedom and activity...."In order to use science...