1848-1948: WORLD HOPES A CENTURY DEFERRED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 447, 16 January 1948, Page 6

1848-1948: WORLD HOPES A CENTURY DEFERRED

OR a century 1848, the "Year of Revolutions," has been a symbol in European history: it has stood for a great and hopeful programme damaged perhaps beyond repair by spectacular disaster at the moment of greatest opportunity; a sovereign remedy for human ills tried, and found wanting. The remedy thus discredited was the message of 18th Century progress: the confidence in human intellect that had been the sharp spear-head of attack against decadent monarchy in the critical years leading up to 1789. That was an age when science and reason were triumphantly unravelling the secrets of nature, yet human society remained afflicted by bitter and apparently removable evils. At their root, so ran the argument, there lay mere stupidity, of the kind which in a previous age had retarded the march of science itself: stupidity which was the fruit of an outworn tradition. Humanity, being the issue of God (or if one preferred it, of a deified? Nature) was axiomatically good; and God (or Nature) had planted in man the incomparable instrument of reason. Therefore, let the human mind, permitted at last to reach its full development, apply to all the relics of the past a simple rational test. In the place of the lumber thus condemned to destruction let it build a scientific human organisation which could be as securely based as chemistry or mathematics. Happiness for all mankind could be planned as scientifically and confidently @s one drew designs for a bridge. Bitterness and Disillusion This line of thinking proved magnificently successful in the detection of hypocrisy and incompetence and in the

destruction. of institutions that had outlived their vital functions; but it was less convincing when it came to building anew. The glorious morning of the Revolution gave way through bitterness and disillusion to Napoleonic dictatorship, when a soldier of genius synthesised the most vital elements of the old and the revolutionary regimes. In turn his "New Order" collapsed, to be followed by thirty years of reaction based on the principle that men were neither particularly good nor intelligent, but resembled sheep for whom a_ benevolent Deity had eternally provided shepherds in the unlikely persons of the 19th Century kings. Under their relatively gentlemanly repression however the spirit of 18th Century optimism lived on, summed up in certain broad concepts: Freedom, nationalism, and above all constitutionalism. Mechanical devicessuch as frequent Parliaments, elected on universal suffrage with secret ballot, payment of members, and guaranteed human rights for all citizens-would ensure that the people’s will was accurately and continuously reflected in its government. By such devices, said these

heirs of the Age of Reason, the goodwill and the intelligence of the masses would be released, man’s wordly problems solved, and _ his spiritual powers relieved from the burden of avoidable suffering’ and restraint. The ideal was ~ not ignoble or «(granted its premises) beyond reasonable hope; and, early in 1848, there came the chance for which idealists had’ so ardently prayed and worked and suffered. Within a few weeks every despot in Europe save only the Tsar bowed to a storm as impersonal and irresistible as tempest or earthquake. In Germany and Italy, in France and among the many nations of the Austrian Empire, reaction was repudiated, and constitutions hurriedly drafted or granted by frightened kings to their enthusiastic peoples. There could be no resistance. Men of faith and hope eagerly

seized the symbols of power, and resumed the interrupted task of the great days of the French Revolution; all over Europe liberals_prepared a happy future for mankind, Conservatism Was Rooted Deep But the moment passed, for the roots of conservatism were deep in the soil. Kings and soldiers realised that after all the instruments of material power were still safe in their keeping. Peoples turned aside from visionary enthusiasms, and by plodding on with daily tasks, resigned political power into familiar hands. In a matter of months Austrian miliary power had _ restored "order" in Bohemia, Italy, in Vienna

itself, and, with Russian help, in Hungary. The French used the apparatus of democracy to install in power an adturer with a magical name, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. In Germany men of intelligence and goodwill were thrown into’ utter confusion by the problems of the Czechs and the Poles, and spoke language worthy pe Hitler before sinking ‘into political oblivion. Within months the period of wild hopes had become part of history, ennobled here and there by individual heroism, but bare of practical results save for the Austrian peasants who had /een bought for conservatism by the belated grant of elementary rights. When in Britain as on the Continent the great effort failed, many freedomloving people felt. that in Europe there was no chance left. After 1848, as in Hitler’s time, very many of them found their way to the New World, there to ‘build in relative freedom along lines apparently blocked in Europe itself. In the homelands they had left the story ‘was more complex. There the future lay not With the visionaries of the resistance movements, nor with unimaginative kings, nor even with philosophical conservatives like Metternich, who in his own phrase spent splendid talents in propping up a mouldering edifice. The successful leaders of the next phase ‘were men like Bismarck and Cavour

(should one add Disraeli?) who fought for great causes with hard-headed ability and the freedom of action given by complete lack of scruple. The new age was not one of reaction, or even of standstill; and the :slynamism of the next 60 years carried through to achievement a large part of the liberal programme. Partly through heroic struggle from below and partly by gift from double-dealing autocrats like Bismarck most of Europe had by 1914 attained to constitutions which were not so very different from those demanded by the liberals of 1848. Even Russia seemed to have entered on the path from which there was no"turning, back. Must History Forget Reason? It may be argued, then, that the disasters of 1848 did not defeat the liberal programme but merely transferred its realisation to leaders more wordlywise. Yet it was a world equipped with 19th Century liberties, themselves the

fruit of heroic struggles, that plunged headlong into total war. Does the disaster of 1914, confirming that of 1848, carry utter condemnation of the ideaiism of the 19th Century, and of 18th Century rationalism that underlay it? Must those who would learn from history discard reason? The diagnosis is superficial. For one thing, faith in constitutions as a panacea was, only one expression of the broad 18th Century confidence in the capacity of the unaided intellect to solve the problems of human society. Yet the persistent question arises as to whether any material progress, however desirable in itself, really goes to the root of human happiness or suffering. Were some factors of the first importance left out of the calculation, not only by the men of 1848, but by the confident and untried intellectuals of the late 18th Century? Here, it may be suggested, lies the root of the matter. These men, from whom so much derives, had fallen into one of the more subtle of those innumerable traps threatening the feet of men. They found to hand in scientific method a magnificent instrument which was being shamefully neglected, and with it they produced astonishing results. What more natural than that they should follow the same technique (continued on next page)

(continued .from previous page) into still wider fields, even to an arrogdnt claim for universality? Yet those who took this fatal step cut themselves off both from the vast masses of their contemporaries and from the root principles of the science in’ whose mame they spoke. Belief in the goodness and intelligence of mankind was an act of faith, not the fruit of rational enquiry. Political scientists who worked on the wildly unscientific axiom that man is an essentially rational animal were disciplined by the pressure of hard facts. The Moral ; The moral, if moral one seeks, is so obvious as to be trite. The sovereign remedy of 1848 was indeed a delusion. There are no short cuts to universal happiness, no set formulae, and no adaptation of the British Constitution which can be administered like a modern miracle-drug to disordered societies. That which was discredited in 1848, however, was not human intellect, but the false claims made in reason’s name. It is a matter of mere scientific fact | that man is not the intellectual animal of 18th Century vision; as indeed Burke sharply pointed out during the very height of revolutionary optimism. Rea- son itself must insist that there be brought into the calculation forces which are not of its own essence. It is not surprising that a. troubled world finds itself drawn once more towards philosophies which seem to recognise and come to terms with the challenging complexity of mankind; towards mysticism of the East as well as of the West, and the magnificent Thomist reconciliation of reason with faith.