Abstract
In 1972 Philip C. Ritterbush closed his survey of the various influences which had historically shaped the concept of organic form by calling for a wider range of interpretations of the concept than that which could be provided by the history of aesthetics or science on their own.1 Since then, as if in answer to his call, detailed studies of the cultural role of organicism as a resource of conservative ideology in nineteenth-century Britain have been produced in two highly influential, discrete but in many respects complementary areas of the academy. Terry Eagleton’s Criticism and ideology (1976) sought to demonstrate the theoretical shortcomings of the “Culture and society tradition” of Raymond Williams by locating its humanism and idealism in what was essentially a nineteeth-century “radical-conservative” critique of industrial society. This was based on an appeal to organic and corporate notions of community.2 In the work of the Edinburgh University “strong programme” for the sociology of knowledge, most particularly that of David Bloor, the “styles of thought” ascribed by Karl Mannheim to early-nineteenth century German conservatism have been used to set up a model of “conservative-Romantic” ideology which is opposed to another model, a “radical-Enlightenment” ideology.3
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Notes
Philip C. Ritterbush, “Aesthetics and objectivity in the study of form in the life sciences” in G. S. Rousseau (Ed.), Organic form. The life of an idea (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972) pp. 25–60. In connection with the present study see also in the same volume, W. K. Wimsatt, “Organic form: some questions about a metaphor”, pp. 61–82.
Terry Eagleton, Criticism and ideology. A study in Marxist literary theory, London: Verso, 1976
Raymond Williams, Culture and society 1780–1950, London: Chatto and Windus, 1958 (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1963).
David Bloor, “Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the sociology of mathematics”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 4, pp. 173–191 (1973) and Knowledge and social imagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976)
Barry Barnes, Scientific knowledge and sociological theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974) and Interests and the growth of knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977).
Bloor (1976), n. 3 above, p. 55.
Eagleton, n. 2 above, pp. 119 ff
David Bloor Knowledge and social imagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976) Bloor (1976), n. 3 above, p. 55.
Sally Shuttleworth, George Eliot and nineteenth-century science. The make-believe of a beginning (Cambridge: University Press) 1984.
Allon White, The uses of obscurity. The fiction of early modernism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1981.
Perry Anderson, “Origins of the present crisis”, New Left Review, 23, pp. 26–53 (1964). Anderson developed the argument further in “Components of the national culture”, New Left Review, 50, pp. 3–57 (1968); E. P. Thompson, “The peculiarities of the English”, The Socialist Register, pp. 318–319 (1965)
Eagleton, note 2 above.
Ibid. Cf. Sam Rhodie, “Review: Movie reader, Film as film”, Screen, 13 (4), pp. 135–145 (1972–3) for a more or less contemporary critique of Leavisite, organic holism in British film criticism: “This view of the art work as an ‘organic’ whole, expressing important truth.... connects back to Romantic aesthetics and to its heir, Realist aesthetics.” (p. 138).
For Rhodie’s work in relation to Anderson’s national culture debate see Kevin McDonnel and Kevin Robins, “Marxist cultural theory: the Althusserian smokescreen” in Simon Clarke et al., One-dimensional Marxism. Althusser and the politics of culture (London and New York: Allison and Busby, 1980) pp. 157–231.
Terry Eagleton, The function of criticism. From ‘The Spectator’ to post-structuralism (London: Verso, 1984) p. 109.
Terry Eagleton, Literary theory. An introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983).
Francis Mulhern, The moment of ‘Scrutiny’ (London: Verso, 1979)
Peter Widdowson (ed.) Re-reading English (London and New York: Methuen, 1982)
Raymond Williams, “Cambridge English past and present” and “Beyond Cambridge English” in Writing in society (London: Verso, 1984) pp. 177–191.
Raymond Williams, “Cambridge English past and present” and “Beyond Cambridge English” in Writing in society (London: Verso, 1984) pp. 212–228.
Jonathan Rée, “The anti-Althusser bandwagon”, Radical Science Journal, 11, pp. 81–100, (1980–81), reviewing Clarke, n. 9 above.
For an example of recent work combining cultural studies and social history see John Seed, “Unitarianism, political economy and the antinomies of liberal culture in Manchester, 1830–50”, Social History, 7, pp. 1–25 (1982).
Cf. Gareth Stedman Jones, “Utopian socialism reconsidered” in Raphael Samuel (ed.), People’s history and socialist theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981): “A reconsideration of ‘utopian socialism’ involves the removal of the teleological and reductionist presupposition that characterised Engels’s approach. Rather than pick out certain elements of interest to a later quite different theorisation of socialism.... an attempt should be made to re-establish the integrity of ‘socialist’ discourse in its initial phase” (p. 138). See also the same author’s “Re-thinking Chartism” in Languages of class. Studies in English working class history 1832–1982 (Cambridge: University Press, 1983) pp. 90–178. As a contemporary analogy with Criticism and ideology I am thinking especially of the vogue for the concept of “social control” amongst social historians and educationalists in the 1970s.
Two important examples are A. P. Donajgrodzki (ed.), Social control in nineteenth-century Britain (London: Croom Helm, 1977)
Michael F. D. Young (ed.) Knowledge and control: new directions for the sociology of education (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971). For the use of “social control” by the strong programme see n. 26 below.
Cf. Criticism and ideology, pp. 104—107 on Mathew Arnold, p. 130 on Dickens compared with George Eliot. It should be noted that in his “Towards a science of the text” chapter Eagleton specifically discounts any directly reflective relationship between textual and ideological structures. He writes of the inter-relationship in terms of “a ceaseless reciprocal operation of text on ideology and ideology on text…. The structure of the text is then the product of this process, not the reflection of its ideological environs.” This structure is “a particular ‘ideology of the text’, reducible to rather ‘general’ or ‘authorial’ ideologies” (Ibid., p. 99). My main concern, however, is less with the highly stimulating use by Eagleton of the theoretical work of Pierre Macherey (A theory of literary production, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), on internal dissonances and encodings within texts, or with his more recent acknowledgement of the uses of Michel Foucault’s discourse theories as a means for “the reinvention of rhetoric” Terry Eagleton, Literary theory. An introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983) (Eagleton, n. 11 above, pp. 205–10), than with the history of Eagleton’s discursive space at a particular stage in its history; above all, with the use made by liberal humanists of images of the organic at that particular conjuncture.
This essentially involves filling out some of the fine details of the problematic in the way that Sally Shuttleworth has already done for George Eliot Sally Shuttleworth, George Eliot and nineteenth-century science. The make-believe of a beginning (Cambridge: University Press) 1984. (Shuttleworth, n.6 above).
Eagleton, n.10 above, pp. 64. For the concept of the public sphere as applied to eighteenth-century England see ibid., pp. 12–30.
See n.3 above and also, for example, Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979.
Like Terry Eagleton, proponents of the strong programme have denied that their approach involves hyper-reflexivity of social interest. On this especially see Barry Barnes, T. S. Kuhn and social science, London: MacMillan, 1982, esp. p. 101.
Barry Barnes, T. S. Kuhn and social science, London: MacMillan, 1982, esp. p. 102–107.
See also, however, the following: Steven Yearley, “The relationship between epistemological and sociological cognitive interests: some ambiguities underlying the use of interest theory in the study of scientific knowledge”, Studies in the history of philosophy of science, 13, pp. 357–361 (1982)
Steven Yearley, “The relationship between epistemological and sociological cognitive interests: some ambiguities underlying the use of interest theory in the study of scientific knowledge”, Studies in the history of philosophy of science, 13, pp. 377 (1982)
Hilary Rose, “Hyper-reflexivity: a new danger for the counter-movements” in Helga Nowotny and Hilary Rose (eds.), Counter-movements in the sciences: the sociology of the alternatives to big science (Dordrecht, Boston and London, Reidel, 1979) pp. 277–289.
An overview of the debate is provided by Donald MacKenzie, “Notes on the science and social relations debate”, Capital and class, 14, pp. 46–60 (1981).
Barry Barnes, “On the conventional character of knowledge and cognition” in Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay (eds.), Science observed. Perspectives on the social study of science (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1983) p. 47.
Barry Barnes, Scientific knowledge and sociological theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974) Barry Barnes (1974) in n.3 above, pp. 18–19.
Cf. David Bloor, “Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the sociology of mathematics”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 4, pp. (1973)David Bloor (1973) in n.3. above, pp. 173–175.
See also Barry Barnes and Donald Mackenzie, “On the role of interests in scientific change”, in R. Wallis (ed.), On the margins of science: the social construction of rejected knowledge (Keele: University of Keele, 1979) pp. 49–66. A primary theoretical resource of the strong programme is the work of Mary Douglas, most particularly Implicit meanings: essays in anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1975): “Apprehending a general pattern of what is right and necessary in social relations”: this apprehension generates whatever a priori or set of necessary causes is going to be found in nature” (p. 281),
cited Brian Wynne, “Physics and psychics: science, symbolic action and social control in late Victorian England” in Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979 Barnes and Shapin, n.15, above, p. 168.
Barnes (1977), n.3 above, p. 5.
Ibid.
Bloor (1973), n.3 above, p. 174.
Ibid., p. 175
citing Karl Mannheim, Ideology and utopia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1936) p. 240, n.5.
Karl Mannheim, “Conservative thought” in Essays on sociology and social psychology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953) p. 80. Cf. Anthony Quinton on the “three comparatively specific conservative principles that follow from the thesis of man’s intellectual imperfection” characteristic of British conservative thought: “traditionalism, organicism and political scepticism”. Of these, organicism, “takes a society to be a unitary, natural growth, an organized, living whole, not a mechanical aggregate”. (The politics of imperfection: the religious and secular traditions of conservative thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott, London: Faber and Faber, 1978, pp. 16–17.) For an extended application of organicism as conservatism see
William Coleman, “Bateson and Chromosomes: conservative thought in science’’, Centaurus, 15, pp. 228–314 (1970)
together with the recent critique of Coleman in A. G. Cock, “William Bateson’s rejection and eventual acceptance of chromosome theory”, Annals of Science, 40, pp. 19–59 (1983).
Bloor (1976), n.3 above, p. 59.
Barnes (1977), n.3 above, pp. 60.
Barnes (1977), n.3 above, pp. 62.
Brian Wynne, “Physics and psychics: science, symbolic action and social control in late Victorian England” in Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979. Barnes and Shapin, n.15 above, p. 169.
ibid., p. 172.
Brian Wynne, “Physics and psychics: science, symbolic action and social control in late Victorian England” in Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979 Ibid., pp. 175–6. Oliver Lodge cited, ibid., p. 172.
Brian Wynne, “Physics and psychics: science, symbolic action and social control in late Victorian England” in Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979 Ibid., pp. 180. Oliver Lodge cited, ibid., p. 172.
For scientific naturalism see L. S. Jacyna, “Scientific naturalism in Victorian Britain: an essay in the social history of ideas”, Unpublished Edinburgh University Ph.D. thesis, 1980.
L. S. Jacyna, “Science and social order in the thought of A. J. Balfour”, Isis, 71, p. 22 (1980).
Ibid., p. 15; Michael Oakeshott, title essay in Rationalism in politics (London: Met-huen, 1962).
David Bloor, “Durkheim and Mauss revisited: classification and the sociology of knowledge”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 13, p. 283 (1982).
Eagleton, n.2 above, p. 111
Jacyna, n.28 above, p. 20
Wynne, n.26 above, pp. 175–6.
Keith Tribe, “On the production and structuring of scientific knowledges”, Economy and Society, 2, pp. 465–478 (1973), and “Afterthoughts on Kuhn”, Economy and Society, 11, pp. 86–7 (1982).
Cf. Keith Tribe, Land, labour and economic discourse (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978) p. 133
Steven Yearley, “The relationship between epistemological and sociological cognitive interests: some ambiguities underlying the use of interest theory in the study of scientific knowledge”, Studies in the history of philosophy of science, 13, (1982) Steven Yearley, n.16 above, p. 377.
Roger Chartier, “Intellectual history or sociocultural history? The French trajectories” in Dominick La Capra and Steven L. Kaplan (eds.), Modern European intellectual history. Reappraisals and new perspectives (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982) pp. 43–44.
Keith Tribe, Land, labour and economic discourse (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978) Cf. Tribe, n.33 above, p. 23: Specific discursive conditions are required for these terms to flow freely together in the manner so often taken for granted in the writing of a history. Tribe is referring to Georges Canguilhem’s “exemplary discursive history” wherein the structure within which concepts and explanations are formed is foregrounded “without at any point it being necessary to construct a unity or assess the forms of explanation according to some externally derived philosophical source” (p. 22).
Michel Foucault, The archaelogy of knowledge (London: Tavistock Publications, 1972) p. 183.
See also Foucault’s The order of things. An archaelogy of the human sciences (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970) and The history of sexuality, Volume I: an introduction (London: Allen Lane, 1979).
Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979 Barry Barnes, n.16 above, p. 24; Gillian Beer, “The language of discovery”. Times Literary Supplement, p. 1255 (2 November 1984).
For an extended account of the surplus potential of words and their concomittant duplicity see Jacques Derrida, The archaelogy of the frivolous: reading Condillac (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1980).
Eagleton, n.2 above, pp. 112
Terry Eagleton, Criticism and ideology. A study in Marxist literary theory, London: Verso, 1976 117
Terry Eagleton, Criticism and ideology. A study in Marxist literary theory, London: Verso, 1976 119. On textual ideology see ibid., Chapter 3 (“Towards a science of the text”), pp. 64–101, esp. pp. 98–101. See also Eagleton’s reply to Francis Mulhern’s criticisms, New Left Review, 92, p. 108 (1975).
Eagleton, n.2 above, p. 122. On authorial ideology see ibid., chapter 2 (“Categories for a materialist criticism”), pp. 44–63, esp. pp. 58–60. For the concepts of displacement and determining absences see Eagleton on Pierre Macherey, ibid., pp. 89–96.
Ibid., p. 112.
See Hayden White, Metahistory. The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press) 1973.
Shuttleworth, n.6 above, pp. X–XI.
Cf. Ibid., p. XII The methods of natural history are replaced by those of experimental physiology. No longer a passive observer but now an active participant, George Eliot actively creates the experiment of her novel. (Ibid. p. XII)
On Claude Bernard see P. Q. Hirst, “Claud Bernard’s epistemology”, Economy and Society, 2, pp. 431–464 (1973).
Ibid., p. XII. See also the essays by Ritterbush and Wimsatt in n.l above.
Shuttleworth, n.6 above, pp. 204–205
Sally Shuttleworth, George Eliot and nineteenth-century science. The make-believe of a beginning (Cambridge: University Press) 1984. esp. p. 204:
The dynamic model of the organism to which she eventually turned.... disturbed the delicate balance between holism and individualism which the organic metaphor had originally sustained in social ideology. See also P. Q. Hirst, “Claud Bernard’s epistemology”, Economy and Society, 2, pp. 431–464 (1973).Hirst, n.42 above.
Cf. Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983, pp. 181–209.
Shuttleworth, n.6 above, p. xiii.
Brian Wynne, “Physics and psychics: science, symbolic action and social control in late Victorian England” in Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin, Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1979 See especially Wynne, n.26 above
L. S. Jacyna, “Science and social order in the thought of A. J. Balfour”, Isis, 71, p. 22 (1980). Jacyna, n.28 above.
But cf. J. R. Durant, “Scientific naturalism and social reform in the thought of Alfred Russel Wallace”, British Journal for the History of Science, 12, pp. 31–58 (1979).
Peter Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge: University 1978)
Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: an ideology of social reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)
Stefan Collini, Liberalism and sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and political argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: University Press, 1979).
See also Melvin Richter, The politics of conscience: T. H. Green and his age (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964);
Andrew Vincent and Raymond Plant, Philosophy, politics and citizenship: The life and thought of the British Idealists (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975).
See Clarke, n.48 above, p. 50.
For the historical relationship between the New Liberalism and the development of an English tradition of social historiography see the following: Peter Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge: University 1978) Clarke, n.48 above
Raphael Samuel, “British Marxist Historians I”, New Left Review, 120, p. 37 (1980)
David Sutton, “Radical liberalism, Fabianism and social history” in Richard Johnson et al. (eds.), Making histories: studies in history writing and politics (London: Hutchinson in association with University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, p. 1982) pp. 15–43.
See R. M. Young, “Natural theology, Victorian periodicals and the fragmentation of a common context” in Colin Chaunt and John Fauvel (eds.), Darwin to Einstein. Historical studies on science and belief (Harlow, Essex: Longman in association with the Open University Press, 1980) pp. 69–106
T. W. Heyck, The transformation of intellectual life in Victorian England, (London: Croom Helm, 1982)
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983, pp. 181–209.Beer, n.45 above.
Francis Mulhern, “Ideology and Literary form’: a comment”, New Left Review, 91, p. 82 (1975)
Michel Foucault, “Truth and power” in Power/Knowledge. Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980) pp. 131–133
Edward Said, “The world, the text and the critic” in Josue V. Harari (ed.), Textual strategics: Perspectives in post-structuralist criticism (New York: Cornell)
Barry Barnes, T. S. Kuhn and social science, London: MacMillan, 1982 Barry Barnes, n.16 above, p. 24.
Noel Annan, “The intellectual aristocracy” in J. H. Plumb (ed.), Studies in social history (London: Longmans, 1955), pp. 21–43.
Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Fontana Paperbacks) 1981, p. 80. Williams is referring here to “Bloomsbury”, the second generation of the cultural formation with which I am concerned:The professional and administrative sectors of the new dominant social class (itself a fusion of the high bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy) had become increasingly important in the new social order of liberal imperialist England: indeed the educational system had been reformed, at its highest levels, primarily for their production. The cultural interests of this general sector, defined by specific kinds of educational achievement, can be clearly distinguished from those of the directly industrial and commercial sectors of the same dominant class. Thus they are a fraction of the ruling class in the sense both that they belong to it, directly serving the dominant social order, and that they are a constant division of it, defined by the values of a specific higher education.”(pp. 79–80)
For a more detailed study of Bloomsbury by Raymond Williams see “The Bloomsbury fraction” in his Problems in materialism and culture (London: Verso) 1980, pp. 148–169.
John Seed, “Unitarianism, political economy and the antinomies of liberal culture in Manchester, 1830–50”, Social History, 7, pp. 1–25 (1982) John Seed, n.12 above, looks at an earlier cultural formation.
The genesis and the social history of the intellectual culture of the period from the 1860s to the 1890s has been dealt with by Noel Annan, “The intellectual aristocracy” in J. H. Plumb (ed.), Studies in social history (London: Longmans, 1955), pp. 21–43. Annan, n.53 above
Sheldon Rothblatt, The revolution of the dons. Cambridge and society in Victorian England (London: Faber and Faber, 1968)
Christopher Harvie, The lights of liberalism. University liberals and the challenge of democracy, 1860–86 (London: Allen Lane, 1976)
Christopher Kent, Brains and numbers: Elitism, Comtism and democracy in mid-Victorian England (Toronto: University Press) 1978.
Christopher Butler, Interpretation, deconstruction and ideology. An introduction to some current issues in literary theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press) p. 88
John Burrow, A liberal descent: Victorian historians and the English past (Cambridge: University Press, 1981) p. 5
Steven Shapin, “The history of science and its sociological reconstructions”. History of Science, 20, pp. 157–211 (1982).
Cf. the following articles by Quentin Skinner: “The ideological contexts of Hobbes’s political thought”, Historical Journal, 9, pp. 286–217 (1966) “Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas”, History and Theory, 8, pp. 3–53 (1969); “Motive, intentions and the interpretation of texts”, New Literary History, 3, pp. 399–408 (1972); “Hermeneutics and the role of history”, New Literary History, 7, pp. 209–32 (1975–6).
Herbert Spencer, Principles of psychology (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855) Wp. pp. 445
Herbert Spencer, Principles of psychology (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855) 506–7
Herbert Spencer, Principles of psychology (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855) 520.
Cf. G. H. Lewes: “All the complex organisms are evolved from organisms less complex, as these were evolved from simpler forms; the link which unites all organisms is not always the common bond of heritage, but the uniformity of organic laws acting under uniform conditions.” [“Mr. Darwin’s hypotheses]”, Fortnightly Review, n.s.3, p. 373 (1868).]
See also E. R. Lankester, Degeneration: a Chapter in Darwinism (London: Macmillan, 1880) pp. 28–29.
Darwin himself refers to “The complex and little known laws governing variation”, The origin of species (London: John Murray, 1859; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) p. 445.
For the concept of complexity in the German Naturphilosophie tradition see J. E. Chamberlin, “An anatomy of cultural melancholy”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42, p. 695 (1981), and Philip C. Ritterbush, n.l above.
For Spencer generally see Geoffrey Hawthorn, Enlightenment and despair. A history of sociology (Cambridge: University Press, 1976) pp. 90–100
and in relation to Darwin and the inter-related Victorian concepts of complexity and transformation see Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983, pp. 181–209.Beer, n.45 above, pp. 139–141.
Walter Pater, The Renaissance. Studies in art and poetry (hereafter referred to as Ren.) (London: Macmillan, 1873 (1910) p. 237
Pater, “A novel by Mr. Oscar Wilde”, The Bookman, 1, p. 59 (1891)
J. E. Chamberlin, “An anatomy of cultural melancholy”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42, (1981) cited Chamberlin, n.56 above, p. 696.
Ren., p. 237; Henry Sidgwick, “The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough”, in E. M. and A. Sidgwick (eds.), Henry Sidgwick. Miscellaneous essays and addresses (London: MacMillan, 1904) pp. 69
Henry Sidgwick, “The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough”, in E. M. and A. Sidgwick (eds.), Henry Sidgwick. Miscellaneous essays and addresses (London: MacMillan, 1904) pp 88 (originally published in 1869) and “The prophet of culture”, loc. cit., p. 45 (originally published in 1867).
See R. M. Young, “Natural theology, Victorian periodicals and the fragmentation of a common context” in Colin Chaunt and John Fauvel (eds.), Darwin to Einstein. Historical studies on science and belief (Harlow, Essex: Longman in association with the Open University Press, 1980) pp. 69–106 Young, n.51 above
Christopher Harvie, The lights of liberalism. University liberals and the challenge of democracy, 1860–86 (London: Allen Lane, 1976) Rothblatt and Harvie, n.54 above.
For particular facets of the attempt to maintain and extend the public sphere see Deborah Wormell, Sir John Seeley and the uses of history, (Cambridge: University Press, 1980) on the University Extension Scheme and the “colonization” by Oxbridge dons of the history departments of the new
civic universities; on Christian Socialism see Peter d’A. Jones, The Christian socialist revival, 1877–1914 (Princeton, University Press, 1968); for the public activities of Oxford idealists and their New Liberal associates see n.48 above. One can, of course, bracket all of these enterprises under “social control”.
See James R. Moore, The post-Darwinian controversies: a study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America (Cambridge: University Press, 1979)
R. M. Young, “Natural theology, Victorian periodicals and the fragmentation of a common context” in Colin Chaunt and John Fauvel (eds.), Darwin to Einstein. Historical studies on science and belief (Harlow, Essex: Longman in association with the Open University Press, 1980) pp. 69–106 Young, n.51 above.
Henry Sidgwick, “The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough”, in E. M. and A. Sidgwick (eds.), Henry Sidgwick. Miscellaneous essays and addresses (London: MacMillan) Sidgwick (1867), n.58 above, pp. 42
Henry Sidgwick, “The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough”, in E. M. and A. Sidgwick (eds.), Henry Sidgwick. Miscellaneous essays and addresses (London: MacMillan) Sidgwick (1867), n.58 above, pp. 45
Sidgwick, The pursuit of culture as an ideal. An inaugural lecture delivered to the students of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth on 13 October, 1897 (Aberystwyth; University College of Wales, 1897), pp. 10, 11.
Sidgwick, The pursuit of culture as an ideal. An inaugural lecture delivered to the students of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth on 13 October, 1897 (Aberystwyth; University College of Wales, 1897), pp.11.
See Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen: The godless Victorian (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984).
For metropolitan literary culture and the periodicals see Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff (eds.), The Victorian periodical press: samplings and soundings (Leicester: University Press, 1982).
Parallels with the earlier part of the century can be found in Jon Klancher, “Reading the social text: power, signs and audience in early-nineteenth century prose”, Studies in Romanticism, 23, pp. 183–204 (1984).
Leslie Stephen, “The religion of all sensible men” in An agnostic’s apology and other essays (London: Smith, Elder, 1893) p. 362.
Leslie Stephen, “The religion of all sensible men” in An agnostic’s apology and other essays (London: Smith, Elder, 1893). Leslie Stephen, title essay in n.63 above, p. 40.
Leslie Stephen, “Are we Christians?” in Essays on freethinking and plainspeaking (London: Longmans Green, 1873) pp. 137–8.
U. C. Knoepflmacher, Religious humanism and the Victorian novel: George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler, Princeton: University Press, 1965, pp. 14–16
Frank Miller Turner, Between science and religion: The reaction to scientific naturalism in late Victorian England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974
A. Dwight Culler, cited John W. Bicknell, “The unbelievers” in David J. DeLaura (ed.), Victorian prose; A guide to research, New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1973, p. 471.
Allon White, The uses of obscurity. The fiction of early modernism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 1–3.
Allon White, The uses of obscurity. The fiction of early modernism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981 Ibid., pp. 4–9
Allon White, The uses of obscurity. The fiction of early modernism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981 Ibid., pp. 163
Terry Eagleton, Criticism and ideology. A study in Marxist literary theory, London: Verso, 1976 n.l. Cf. Eagleton, n.2 above, pp. 64–101
Terry Eagleton, Criticism and ideology. A study in Marxist literary theory, London: Verso, 1976 and n.ll above, pp. 151–193.
See Beer, n.45 above, pp. 5–7.
Allon White, The uses of obscurity. The fiction of early modernism, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 1–3. White, n.67 above, p. 163
Terry Eagleton, Criticism and ideology. A study in Marxist literary theory, London: Verso, 1976 referring to Eagleton, n.2 above, pp. 162–187 (“Marxism and aesthetic value”).
See also Roland Barthes, The pleasure of the text, New York: Hill and Wang, 1975.
Ren., pp. 234–235.
Cf. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of things past. Swann’s Way: Combray, (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1914; London: Chatto and Windus, 1981), p. 201: When, on a summer evening, the melodius sky growls like a tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it is the memory of the “Méséglise way” that makes me stand alone in ecstacy, inhaling, through the noise of falling rain, the lingering scent of invisible lilacs.
Ren., p. 235.
Sidgwick (1867), n.58 above, pp. 43 n.61 above, p. 10.
Sidgwick (1869), n.58 above, pp. 69
Henry Sidgwick, “The poems and prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough”, in E. M. and A. Sidgwick (eds.), Henry Sidgwick. Miscellaneous essays and addresses (London: MacMillan, 1904), 88.
Ibid., p. 60.
“A bad five minutes in the Alps” in Leslie Stephen, “Are we Christians?” in Essays on freethinking and plainspeaking (London: Longmans Green, 1873)Stephen, n.65 above, pp. 176–177
Leslie Stephen, “Are we Christians?” in Essays on freethinking and plainspeaking (London: Longmans Green, 1873) 197.
G. H. Lewes, Problems of life and mind. First series. The foundations of a creed, Volume 1 (London: Triibner, 1874) pp. 121
G. H. Lewes, Problems of life and mind. First series. The foundations of a creed, Volume 1 (London: Triibner, 1874) pp. 123.
On the writing of Problems of life and mind, especially the collaboration between Lewes and George Eliot see K. K. Collins, G. H. Lewes revised: George Eliot and the moral sense”, Victorian Studies, 21, pp. 463–492 (1978).
Beer, n.45 above, pp. 47–48.
Ren., pp. 228–230.
Ibid., pp. 230, 228, 231–232; Darwin himself refers to “The complex and little known laws governing variation”, The origin of species (London: John Murray, 1859; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) Darwin, n.56 above, pp. 458–459.
Ren., pp. 124–125, 231.
Eagleton, n.2 above, p. 120.
Darwin, n.56 above, p. 415
cited Beer, n.45 above, p. 167
Beer, loc. cit., pp. 171–172
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983, pp 180
George Eliot, Middlemarch. A study in provincial life (London: William Blackwood, 1872; Cabinet Edition, London: William Blackwood, 1878), Volume 1, p. 214
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983 cited Beer, loc. cit., p. 171.
Ren., pp. 231–232; Darwin himself refers to “The complex and little known laws governing variation”, The origin of species (London: John Murray, 1859; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) Darwin, loc. cit., p. 171
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983 cited Beer, loc. cit. p. 170.
Darwin, loc. cit., p. 415
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983 cited Beer, loc. cit., p. 169; Ren., pp. 231, 233–234. Cf. Lewes’ own use of the thread in this context: It is the greatness of Science that while satisfying the spiritual thirst for knowledge, it satisfies the pressing desire for guidance in action: not only painting a picture of the wondrous labyrinth of Nature, but placing in our hands the Ariadne-thread to lead us through the labyrinth. (no. 78 above, Volume 1, p. 26). My meaning is, that every single phenomenon being a complex of many, a resultant of various conditions, Science endeavours to explain it by separating these and estimating each for itself, and each in conjunction (by analysis and synthesis, therefore), thus unravelling the tangled web thread by thread. Every thread has its law; every law its general expression connecting it with all similar threads.(loc. cit., Volume 2, p. 36)
Lewes, n.78 above, Volume 2 (1875), p. 123. Cf. Volume 1, p. 26. On this and the use of the web by T. H. Huxley and John Tyndall see Beer, loc. cit., pp. 168, 283, n.29.
Lewes, loc. cit., Volume 1, pp. 109
G. H. Lewes, Problems of life and mind. First series. The foundations of a creed, Volume 1 (London: Triibner, 1874) 114. Cf. his “Mr. Darwin’s hypotheses III”, Fortnightly Review, 4, n.s., p. 62 (1868): even as an element of a higher organism, it preserves its own individuality; it is born, is developed, and decays; it runs its own course, irrespective of associates.
G. H. Lewes, “Mr. Darwin’s hypotheses I”, Fortnightly Review, 3 n.s., pp 372–373 (1868); second part of same article, loc. cit., p. 628; third part, loc. cit., 68, 74.
G. H. Lewes, Problems of life and mind. First series. The foundations of a creed, Volume 1 (London: Triibner, 1874) Lewes, loc. cit., pp. 75, 78 cf. fourth part, loc. cit., p. 500, 494, 501. For discussions of the reservations about determinism discussed by Lewes (and George Eliot)
see Gillian Beer, “Beyond determinism: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf” in Mary Jacobus (ed.), Women writing and writing about women (Croom Helm, 1979) pp. 80–99
George Levine, “George Eliot’s hypothesis of reality”, Nineteenth Century Fiction, 35, pp. 1–28 (1980–81).
See also William Coleman, Biology in the nineteenth century: problems of form, function and transformation (Cambridge: University Press, 1977)
Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and phylogeny (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977).
Lewes, n.89 above, p. 353 and n.78 above, Volume 1, p. 144.
Lewes, n.78 above, pp. 144–145.
Ren., pp. 30, 33, 34.
Ibid., pp. 34, 125, 33, 35, 49.
Ibid., p. 41; T. H. Huxley, “On improving natural knowledge” in Collected Essays. Volume 1: Method and results (London: Macmillan, 1893) p. 37.
Ren., p. 150; Marius and Epicurean. His sensations and ideas (London: Macmillan, 1885 (1910)) Volume 2, 128; Appreciations, with an essay on style (London: Macmillan, 1889 (1910)) p. 11; Plato and Platonism: A series of lectures (London: Macmillan, 1893 (1910)) pp. 175–176. For Pater’s appropriations and elusions of Hegel and Darwin see Anthony Ward, Walter Pater: The idea in nature (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1966) esp. pp. 43–51.
Pater (1885), n.96 above, p. 14; Pater to Viola Paget, 22 July 1883 in Lawrence Evans (ed.), Letters of Walter Pater (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970) p. 79. Pater, Essays from “The Guardian” (London: Macmillan, 1901 (1910)) pp. 57–58, 67.
See Michael Wheeler, The art of allusion in Victorian fiction (London: Macmillan, 1979) pp. 117–119
William J. Peterson, Victorian heretic. Mrs. Humphry Ward’s “Robert Elsmere” (Leicester: University Press, 1976) pp. 61–84
Peter Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge: University 1978)
Peter Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge: University 1978) Peter Clarke, n.48 above, pp. 19–22. For the question of Robert Elsmere (London: Smith, Elder; 1888)
and its readership see Mrs. Humphry Ward, A writer’s recollections (London: Collins, 1918) pp. 229–233
Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (London: A. and C. Black, 1970) Volume 2, p. 141
Wheeler, n.98 above, pp. 116–136.
see Mrs. Humphry Ward, A writer’s recollections (London: Collins, 1918) Ward (1918) n.98 above, pp. 229–230
W. E. Gladstone, “Robert Elsmere: The battle for belief”, in Further gleanings (London: John Murray, 1898) pp. 78–97.
W. E. Gladstone, “Robert Elsmere: The battle for belief”, in Further gleanings (London: John Murray, 1898) Gladstone, n.99 above, pp. 78
W. E. Gladstone, “Robert Elsmere: The battle for belief”, in Further gleanings (London: John Murray, 1898) 79
W. E. Gladstone, “Robert Elsmere: The battle for belief”, in Further gleanings (London: John Murray, 1898) 87
Henry James, “Mrs. Humphry Ward”, English Illustrated Magazine, 9, p. 401 (1891–92)
William J. Peterson, Victorian heretic. Mrs. Humphry Ward’s “Robert Elsmere” (Leicester: University Press, 1976) cited Peterson, n.98 above, p. 167.
Mrs. Humphry Ward, A writer’s recollections (London: Collins, 1918) Ward (1918), n.98 above, p. 229. The precedents she gives are J. A. Froude, The nemesis of faith (1849); K. J. Newman, Loss and gain; Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke (1850).
Geoffrey H. Hartman, Criticism in the wilderness. The study of literature today (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980) pp. 14–15
Geoffrey H. Hartman, Criticism in the wilderness. The study of literature today (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980)192–193.
Mrs. Humphry Ward, “The literature of introspection: Part 1: Two recent journals; Part 2: Amiel’s Journal intime”, Macmillan’s Magazine, 49, pp. 191 (1884)
Mrs. Humphry Ward, “The literature of introspection: Part 1: Two recent journals; Part 2: Amiel’s Journal intime”, Macmillan’s Magazine, 49 192 (1884)
Mrs. Humphry Ward, “The literature of introspection: Part 1: Two recent journals; Part 2: Amiel’s Journal intime”, Macmillan’s Magazine, 49 278 (1884).
Frank Miller Turner, Between science and religion: The reaction to scientific naturalism in late Victorian England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974 Cf. Turner, n.66 above.
Oscar Wilde, An ideal husband in Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Collins, 1948) p. 487.
Herbert Spencer, “Mr. Balfour’s dialectics”, Fortnightly Review, 17 n.s., p. 873 (1895)
Hugh Mortimer Cecil, Pseudo-philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century. An irrationalist trio: Kidd—Drummond—Balfour (London: The University Press, 1897) pp. 208–209.
Arthur Balfour, The foundations of belief. Being notes introductory to the study of theology (London: Longmans Green, 1895), p. 30.
Havelock Ellis, The dance of life (London: Constable, 1923) p. 199
Arthur Balfour, The foundations of belief. Being notes introductory to the study of theology (London: Longmans Green, 1895) Balfour, n.105 above, p. 134.
Walter Pater, Miscellaneous Studies (London: Macmillan, 1895 (1910)) p. 84
Perry Meisel, The absent father: Walter Pater and Virginia Woolf (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980) pp. 137–139. Cf. Derrida’s “frivole” of metaphysics (n.36 above).
George Levine, “George Eliot’s hypothesis of reality”, Nineteenth Century Fiction, 35, Cf. Levine, n.90 above, p. 5, on Lewes’ Problems of life and mind as “an effort of reconstruction and reconciliation of religion and science, within a central tradition of nineteenth-century philosophy”.
Stephen, n.65 above, p. 137
G. H. Lewes, “Spiritualism and materialism”, Fortnightly Review, 19 n.s., p. 479 (1876)
Cf. George Levine, The realisnc imagination. English fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterly (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981) p. 19, on the characteristic Victorian fear of a mechanical reading of the organs. See also Moore, n.60 above.
On science and philosophy annexing the religious kingdom for themselves see Frederic Harrison, “Mr. Lewes’ Problems of life and mind”, Fortnightly Review, 16 n.s., p. 89 (1874).
For the concept of the “myth of concern” see Northrop Frye, “The critical path: an essay on the social context of literary production” in Morton W. Bloomfield (ed.), In search of literary theory (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972) pp. 105
Northrop Frye, “The critical path: an essay on the social context of literary production” in Morton W. Bloomfield (ed.), In search of literary theory (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972) pp.112
Northrop Frye, “The critical path: an essay on the social context of literary production” in Morton W. Bloomfield (ed.), In search of literary theory (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972) pp.142.
On myth in its more general applications to this context see Paul Bohannan’s introduction to his edition of Edward Tylor, Researches into the early history of mankind and the development of civilization (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1964) pp. xvi–xvii
K. K. Collins, “Questions of method: some unpublished late essays”, Nineteenth-century Fiction, 35, pp. 397–400 (1980) for Lewes and George Eliot
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s plots. Evolutionary narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and nineteenth century fiction (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) 1983, Beer, n.45 above, pp. 104–148 for “Darwinian myths”.
Cf. Stedman Jones, n.12 above, p. 138.
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McGeachie, J. (1987). Organicism, Culture and Ideology in Late Victorian Britain: The Uses of Complexity. In: Burwick, F. (eds) Approaches to Organic Form. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 105. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3917-2_8
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