The ‘Great Adjustment’: Evolutionary Meliorism in The Dynasts

Abstract

Many a bourgeois sensibility was offended by Hardy’s ruminations concerning the nature of God. While it might seem unlikely that he could further alienate the reading population, the speculations offered by his third voice achieved just that. At least fifty modern meanings attach to the word ‘God’, this voice suggests, and it is therefore deceptive to ‘call any force above or under the sky by the name of “God” — and so pass as orthodox cheaply, and fill the pocket’.² Never one to economise by filling his pocket with ersatz happy endings, Hardy argues that the only reasonable translation of the term for and concept of ‘God’ is ’the Cause of Things, whatever that cause may be’.³ His implication that all modern thinkers are necessarily ‘atheists in the ancient and exploded sense’⁴ caused his critics to bristle at such audacity. G. K. Chesterton counter-accused Hardy of being a disillusioned, depressed, blasphemous ‘village atheist’ who invented the First Cause in order to ‘give it a piece of his mind’;⁵ Carl Van Doren concurred that ‘Whatever Mr. Hardy’s conceptions, he demands some responsible deity upon whom he can lay the blame for the crass casualties which he encounters’.⁶

The old theologies may or may not have worked for good in their time. But they will not bear stretching further in epic or dramatic art. The Greeks used up theirs; the Jews used up theirs; the Christians have used up theirs. So that one must make an independent plunge, embodying the real, if only temporary, thought of the age. But I expect that I shall catch it hot and strong for attempting it!¹