How na�ve the glad and confident hope of a century ago, that
the advance of science and the general extension of education assured
the progressive perfection of society, seems to us today! Who can
still seriously believe that the translation of scientific triumphs
into still more marvelous technical achievements is enough to save
civilization, or that the eradication of illiteracy means the end of
barbarism! Modern society, with its intensive development and
mechanisation, indeed looks very different from the dream vision of
Progress! (Johann Huizinga, In the Shadow of Tomorrow,
1936)
Out of pure necessity or perhaps through some need to entertain a
rather obstinate audience, historians have often made the attempt to periodize history and
historical time. That is, historians are quick to label an age based upon one or more
characteristics which, to them, seem readily apparent. Don't for a moment get the
impression that historians do little more than sit in cramped offices with their papers,
books, maps, diplomas, artifacts and computers writing books and articles which
deliberately distort human memory of centuries to come. No, there is no conspiracy at work
here, my friends. In fact, the willingness of historians to place historical epochs and
happenings and individuals into neat little boxes is a hangover from the historical record
of the past five centuries. I would also suggest that mankind, at least those members of
the species who call themselves historians, have yet to emerge from this hangover . . . a
condition which was created well outside the 20th century itself.
 Sometime in
the year 1492, the Italian Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino
(1433-1499), sat at his desk in the
glorious city of Florence and wrote a letter to his friend, Paul of
Middelburg. Here is a
short extract from the text of Ficino's letter. Listen carefully to Ficino's words:
If then we are to call any age golden, it is beyond doubt that age which brings
forth golden talents in different places. That such is true of this our age few will
hardly doubt. For this century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts,
which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture,
music and all this in Florence. Achieving what had been honored among the ancients, but
almost forgotten since, the age has joined wisdom with eloquence, and prudence with the
military art. In you also, my dear Paul, this century appears to have perfected astronomy,
and in Florence it has recalled the Platonic teaching from darkness into light. In Germany
in our times have been invented the instruments for printing books.
As some of you may have guessed, Ficino had both feet firmly planted in the soil of the
Italian RENAISSANCE -- "and all this in Florence." The key phrase is, "For
this century, like a golden age." Ficino, in other words, recognized that his own age
was unlike the age which had preceded it in historical time. What Ficino has done, in
essence, is to say, "Here I am in Florence, the nerve center of this great moment of
rebirth. Not only am I different, I am also better than all those who came before me,
except of course, those noble Greeks and Romans of the Classical Age." So, what
Ficino has done is quite simple. He made a value judgment. That is to say, the period
before the Renaissance was qualitatively different. And so Ficino and other humanists
called it the media aetis -- the Middle Ages. Middle because it fell between
the golden age of the Classical world and the golden age of Renaissance Florence. Later
historians with the fresh experience of the Renaissance behind them, would dub the
media aetis with another label -- the Dark Ages, a label so inconsistent with
the historical record that it has only been quite recently that the label "Dark
Ages" has been dropped.
 Before we move on, there are a few things of which we should take
notice. Few Athenians in the 5th century B.C. would have been found to boast that their
age was Classical. Pericles or SOCRATES or Plato or Aristotle or Alexander never
would have said something like, "Ah, it's good to live in a classical age." You
might have found a few Romans who might have said this several centuries later, but they
were always aware that if it weren't for the Greeks, their civilization would not have
been what it indeed became. And the early Christians? Can you really imagine
St. Paul
calling his own age "golden"? Then again, do you think you'd find many people in
the tenth century saying things like, "Oh woe is me! We are living in a dark age. We
must have some light"? I think not. With the perception of history comes necessary
value judgments. Then again, almost 150 years before Ficino wrote his letter to his
friend, we find another Florentine scholar who had the intellectual burdens of the 14th
century upon his shoulders. His name was Francesco
Petrarcha (1304-1374), often called the father of the Italian
Renaissance. In one of his sonnets, he wrote:
Living, I despise what melancholy fate
has brought us wretches in these evil years.
Long before my birth time smiled and may again,
for once there was, and yet will be, more joyful days.
But in this middle age time's dregs
sweep around us, and we bend beneath a heavy
load of vice. Genius, virtue, glory now
have gone, leaving chance and sloth to rule.
Shameful vision this! We must awake or die.
Petrarch is a key figure in that he respected history. His respect for history is part
and parcel of what we would call the "Renaissance frame of mind." He knew, for
instance, that he was living in an age which was now different from the past. He also knew
that the distant past was somehow more glorious, more filled with light, more golden.
"Shameful vision this! We must awake or die."
 One more example should suffice to drive the point home. The 18th century
which, incidentally, began in 1687, or maybe it was 1714, has been frequently referred to
as the Age of Reason or the Age of ENLIGHTENMENT. Modern historians did not invent this
label. In fact, it was those powdered wigs of the 18th century Europe: men like John
Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and Jefferson, who determined that
lumiere, Aufklarung, illuminati or enlightenment was so widespread that they must have been living in the best of
all possible worlds. The truth is that it WAS a good time to live, but only if your name
was Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Smith, Paine or Jefferson. Here we go again -- another
value judgment.
What all these value judgments have done, and there are more besides those I have
mentioned, is distort the historical record. These judgments have taught us, since
childhood, that anything called a Renaissance or an Enlightenment must be good. Even the
Scientific Revolution falls into similar assumptions. Thinking in terms of boxes and
labels is easy in reality, thinking in such a manner is a short-cut to thinking. Why?
Because boxes and labels are clean and neat. There is only one problem -- not everything
can be easily placed in boxes.
There have only been two periods in human history in which thinkers have decided to
"box things up." The first occurred in the 12th century. Medieval Christianity
tried to define and describe the world as a matrix, as a grid in which everything you
knew, thought, felt, made love to, worked for or died for was placed in a little box on
the grid. The grid was held together by the logic of Aristotle and Christianity as
interpreted by the likes of popes, bearded philosophers and those roguish monks. Well, to
make a long story short, due to the pressures of urbanization, the influx of gold and
silver into Europe, heresy, foreign travel, the birth of the middle classes and their
handmaiden, capitalism, and a hundred other things, the medieval matrix fell apart. The
walls of the boxes became windows, then doors and finally, about three hundred years ago,
1687 to be exact, a man by the name of Isaac Newton destroyed the whole thing only to
replace it with a more reasonable and rational model he called natural philosophy which
today we call science or technology.
 The
other period of human history which has made successive attempts to place everything in
neat little boxes has been the twentieth
century. The general practitioner has been replaced by the specialist. The general,
widely-educated historian has been replaced by the historian of late-19th century Flemish
female wool-combers. We strive for excellence based on our expertise in a specific field
of endeavor. We trust those who share their expertise. Child psychologists from Benjamin
Spock to Penelope Leach are trusted. So too was ALBERT
EINSTEIN. He MUST have been brilliant, so
trust him! Just look him -- image him in your head. He MUST know. This is 20th century
stuff. Go to the resources of any university library. Go check out the Internet. How many
journals related to history exist? How many journals related to English history exist? How
many journals related to 18th century English history exist? How many journals related to
the history of agriculture in 18th century England exist? See what I mean? We like the
boxes, they make life easier to understand. And even if we do not want to understand it,
well, at least we know that there is somebody out there who does. Talk about smug
self-assurance! Perhaps we and Ficino are not that far apart.
The point is this: it is impossible to choose an expression for an entire historical
epoch and then hope that it defines that epoch. Most historians recognize this but they
rarely talk about it. It is one of those dirty little secrets that go along with the
profession. It is easy when you deal with some self-contained topic like the Civil War or
Watergate or the Kennedy assassination. Those are self-contained objects of study. But,
when you choose a larger topic like 20th century Europe, then the problems begin to
emerge.
 When Newton's Philosophie Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or The
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy hit the presses in 1687, the western
world underwent a profound shock whose results and ramifications we live with to this day.
The 18th century was most impressed with Newton's explanation of the physical world. When
Newton finally died in 1727, at the ripe old age of 85, it was left to Alexander Pope to
compose his epitaph. Pope, at this time, was working on a new translation of Homer's Iliad,
a task for which he was paid, by the public, a sum exceeding �9000. Pope's couplet was simplicity
itself:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
You may not think this very important, but I have always been taught that Pope's
couplet dramatizes the Newtonian achievement. Think about it: Newton invented the
calculus, ISAAC NEWTON coordinated his physics and mathematical calculations to coincide with
those of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Newton was an awful man, he had no friends, he
was the nerd's nerd. So what the heck did Pope know about calculus? or optics?
or Newton
the man? The answer is perhaps quite simple: nothing! I don't understand Newtonian physics
either. But what I do know is this, if Newton could use Human Reason to explain the
natural world, then it seemed clear to Pope, Voltaire and Smith and other powdered wigs
that the same methods used to determine Newton's laws of the universe could be used to
explain Man and Society. So, it's no accident that the majority of what are now modern
social sciences were founded in the 18th century: geography, anthropology, political
science, political economy, sociology, psychology and, of course, history. The 18th
century must have been an Age of Light.
 Newton's legacy is quite clear: Reason is good, Reason will solve
problems, Reason will make your life one of improvement and society is tending toward
perfection. Reason, that glorious word, so used and abused by the 18th century powdered
wig, became the general palliative, the antidote to all that was superstitious (the
Church), all that was full of enthusiasm and fanaticism (the Church) and all that smacked
of oppression and tyranny (the Church and the State). Enter 1789. Enter the FRENCH
REVOLUTION.
The French
people, at least some of them, guided by Reason and hunger, decided to form a new
government, thanks to the example of 1776, and in a way, to Isaac Newton. So, Rousseau was
invoked, so too was the liberalism of John Locke, and Thomas Paine became the champion of the
working man in England and France. What did the French end up with? Twenty years of war
and an emperor who seemed to be both rational and irrational at one and the same time. In
1796 at the age of 26, and while leading the French revolutionary army in Italy, Napoleon
would confide to his diary:
In Italy I realized that I was a superior being and conceived the ambition of
performing great things, which hitherto had filled my thought only as fantastic dreams.
 Nice ego! His superior being
mentality lasted until his final exile in 1815. NAPOLEON tried and succeeded in
overhauling almost every single vestige of the ancien regime, of the old order
represented by Louis XVI. He succeeded because he used Reason, tainted of course, with his
own brand of egomania.
While all this was going on, the British were having their own brand of revolution:
peaceful, bloodless and destined to make Britain the "Workshop of the World" by
1859. The Industrial Revolution was the tangible symbol of Newton's achievement in
astronomy. Machines and engines, pulleys and wheels, and the idea that power could be
harnessed by man-made devices made the toilsome labor of the past nearly obsolete. Well,
almost. The Revolution was built on the principles of natural philosophy, now recognized
as science. Science made dreams reality. And suddenly, the captains of
industry -- in the
case of England, the middle classes -- began to make a lot of money and dreamed up new ways
to spend it. Spend it rationally, however. And what of the drones who operated the
machinery? Make them work eleven hours a day, six on Saturday. Get their kids into the act as
well and force them to live in tenements twelve to a room. Who cared? Nothing ought to
stand in the way of profits.
By 1848, a revolutionary year throughout Europe, two exiled Germans by the name of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, discovered scientific laws, based again on the Newtonian
paradigm along with a dash of Hegelian philosophy, that determined that industrial
capitalism would, by historical necessity, cease to exist. An age of socialism in which
workers would own and control the means of production would appear and, incidentally, the
middle classes would disappear. Following this would come communism, each according to his
ability, each according to his need. How did Marx and Engels arrive at these conclusions?
Simple. They were heirs of the Enlightenment. They studied history, especially history.
But they also studied political economy, law, religion, in a word, society. They were
social scientists. Follow the laws and this WILL happen. How, of course, is something they
never really specified and socialists, communists and Marxists ever since, have been
trying to figure out the answer to this riddle. Of course, politicians on either
side of the Atlantic would have you believe that communism is dead. How wrong they are.
What's perhaps dead is Soviet communism.
 After all that has been said so far we can make the general
conclusion that up to about 1880, or let's say, between 1700 and 1880, the European mind
could be characterized by the word REASON. Man is rational, the world is rational, Nature
is rational, rational man can understand rational Nature by using REASON. But, between
1880 and 1920, a new world view took shape. It was during this period that philosophers,
sociologists, psychologists, physicists and biologists made revolutionary insights into
human nature and behavior and the physical world of nature. At the same time,
artists—and by artists I mean poets, dramatists, novelists, painters, sculptors,
dancers, composers, photographers and film makers—opened up new possibilities of
artistic expression. In general, the developments in philosophy, science, the social
sciences, literature and art produced a profound shift in European consciousness.
MODERNISM was born. For
example:
- the mechanical world of Newton was modified and then shattered by Max Planck and Niels
Bohr. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, according to one modern historian,
"formed a knife, inadvertently wielded by its author, to help cut society adrift from
its traditional moorings in the faith and morals of Judeo-Christian culture."
- this sense of being adrift was noticed in sociology when the French sociologist Emile
Durkheim coined the term "anomie," to describe modern man's sense of drift or
weightlessness. This sense of "anomie" would be called "alienation" by
a later generation of Marxists, existentialist and student radicals in the 1960s.
- And wasn't it the American psychologist, William James, who often spoke of the
"oceanic feeling" we sometimes feel when confronted with the perplexity of life
in the 20th century? The sense of being lost, adrift, weightless, aimless. It's all so
absurd, without meaning. We drift.
- And then there was Freud, ah Freud. What Freud did was nothing less than call the entire
foundation of western thought and behavior into question. Reason was now on trial. Where
the 18th century powdered wigs would sit back and smugly assert that "the rational is
real and the real is rational," Freud said no. Man is not an entirely rational
animal. He is irrational. Whether we accept it or not, we are all Freudians. We live today
with Freud literally breathing down our necks.
- And Nietzsche. With three simple words: "God is dead," Nietzsche sent his
readers into despair
- Lastly, the period 1880-1920 witness an artistic and cultural cataclysm which distorted
and then destroyed 500 years of artistic style and principle. The Renaissance was cast
aside. So too were its rules of artistic endeavor. What replaced it was accurately called
modernism.
 The period 1880-1920 is noted for its extraordinary imagination and
creativity in the arts and in human thought. Yet this period, a period now 100 years past,
also helped to create the notion that Europe was experiencing a distorted, fragmented and
troubled period in its history. Freud called it "neuroses," Durkheim called it
"anomie," James announced it as that "oceanic feeling," and Nietzsche,
the German philologist turned prophet simply remarked that "God is dead."
Western civilization, built upon the twin pillars of faith and reason, of Christianity and
Science, now faced its greatest challenge. The key point is this: late 19th century
intellectuals, thinkers and artists challenged the 18th century powdered wig and his
over-reliance on Human Reason. Instead of rationality, the late 19th century thinker
stressed irrationality and unreason. Whereas the 18th century philosopher saw Reason as
the mainspring of human endeavor and behavior, the late 19th century saw instincts,
impulses, drives and the will to power as the motive forces of the individual. It's no
wonder that most Europeans welcomed the outbreak of the GREAT
WAR in 1914. Here was
irrationality and Unreason for all to see. Here was a chance to either (1) re-affirm the
life-giving force of Human Reason and Progress or (2) embrace the will to power, after
all, to create, you must first destroy.
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