From Essays in Socialism New & Old (1907), pp.35-39.
THE observation is often made that the phrase “fin de siècle” is absurd since it implies a special character as attaching to an arbitrarily-fixed point of time. The truth of this proposition seems unimpeachable, since no reason can be assigned why the first or last decade of a century reckoned from such arbitrary point of time should mark an epoch more than any other decade. This may be so; yet by a possible coincidence, or owing to deeper causes, as yet imperfectly investigated, there does seem a certain definite period when the cycle of changes – the specifically new elements in life associated with a given century – do reach their given maturity and that this period is approximately the same in each century. The first half presents few prominent characteristics beyond those present in the second half of the preceding century. New developments and new tendencies are then germinating and have not as yet subjugated the old, the old are still dominant. It is about the middle of a century that they begin to acquire an independent life and to assert themselves at the expense of the old. They continue to expand and to deepen in intensity till the close of the century when they have attained their zenith.
The first fifty years of the succeeding century presents chiefly the “backwash” (as we may term it), or the settling-down, of the characteristics just spoken of. In some cases the backwash is so strong as to produce a temporary reaction. The forward wave of the previous fifty years is met by a counter-current which for the time being seems to annihilate it. But this is merely temporary and superficial. The new development receives a fresh impulse at or about the turn of the century and another wave of change, with its new developments and new tendencies, sets in. The dividing period of time is, I submit, in short, to be found at mid-centuries, rather than at the beginning or the end of centuries. The last and the first half of any two successive centuries, I contend, belong together and form a coherent cycle of time. But the first and the second half of the same century are sharply distinguished. When we speak of the characteristics of any particular century we usually have in our mind those of its second half.
The above will be found to hold good as regards all sides of social development – industrial, commercial, political, religious, artistic, literary or customary. It will be found to be true of almost every century respecting which we have sufficient information since the Christian era. A few instances will illustrate what is meant.
Beginning with the first century, we find Christianity entering the arena of history in the persecution of Nero, anno 64. It was at that time already a well-known sect of Rome, and the celebrated passage in Tacitus would point to its having been introduced, or at least become noticeable, a few years before. Thenceforward, during the next hundred years, took place that great development of the new faith which found its expression in the writings constituting our New Testament, the completion of which is placed by most critics somewhere about the year 150. The next hundred years of ecclesiastical history was occupied with the conflict between Catholic Christianity on the one side, and the various forms of Gnosticism, and of Manichaeism. About and after the year 250, an enormous material development took place in the Church, a development but little affected by the short periods of the Decian and Valerian persecutions; catacombs and private houses were abandoned as places of worship for the purpose corresponding to our churches began to spring up. The Church now distinctly assumes the character of a wealthy corporation. The old Gnostic and even the later Manichaean controversies quickly lost their importance before the new disputes concerning the nature of the Trinity. It is true that early in the next century took place the formal establishment of the Christian religion by Constantine, but this was only a stage in a success which reached its culmination in the second half of the fourth century. It is not till the time of Theodosius that the triumph of Christianity over Paganism became definite and assured.
A similar and synchronous line of epochs may be traced in the political development of the Roman Empire. With the reign of Nero, shortly after the middle of the first century, was struck the death-blow of the Imperial system in the form inaugurated by Augustus. As M. Gaston Boissier has shown, the opposition-movement, of which Seneca and Tacitus were representative, gained its great impetus from the fall of Nero, maintaining itself throughout all changes for the next hundred years, and achieving realisation during the second half of the second century under the Antonines. No essential change in the political condition of the Empire took place before the middle of the third century, when the true condition of things became apparent – the internal instability of the giant fabric and the first serious inroads of the Barbarians on its frontiers – which led to the reconstruction of Diocletian in the last decade of the century. The vast machine held together in its partitioned form after a fashion, but the turn of the following, viz., the fourth century, disclosed the barbarian with a firm footing inside the frontiers, as a staple element in the Roman armies, and even an important factor in court intrigues. As the century drew to its close all frontiers were threatened, and the incursions had begun on many sides. The great period of the barbaric inroads was of course the first half of the fifth century, but their result, i.e., the establishment of the Germanic kingdoms which formed the basis of mediaeval Europe, was marked by the dividing line of the century, which coincides within a few years with the establishment of the Vandalic Monarchy in Africa, the Visigothic in Spain, the Frankish settlement in Gaul, the Anglo-Saxon in Great Britain and, last but not least, the fall of the Western Empire and the Conquest of Italy by the Ostro-Goths. In short, the turn of the fifth century shows us distinctly the first beginnings of mediaeval Europe. The barbarian now is master everywhere throughout the West. The consolidation of the new Northern and Western nationalities proceeded apace during the first half of the sixth century, and these were not regained for the Empire, notwithstanding the brilliant reign of Justinian. The second half of the sixth century was signalised by the final extinction of the pagan religion, by the dissolution or transformation of the old classical forms in literature, art and architecture, even within the limits of the Eastern Empire. The Byzantine period now begins.
The few indications given from the later classical and early Christian world, which could be multiplied indefinitely by the industry of the reader, will be sufficient to illustrate the general meaning of the, point dealt with. Turning now to modern history we find the same tendency if anything still more strikingly exhibited. The turn of the thirteenth century saw the rise of corporate towns, the first great development of mediaeval industry, the success of the mendicant orders, and altogether the beginnings of what we may term the second period of the Middle Ages. The year 1350 and the subsequent decades saw mediaeval township, trade guild, mediaeval handicraft, mediaeval art at their zenith. In England the same period is remarkable for the Lollard movement, and the first serious blow struck at serfdom.
The principle or coincidence here dwelt upon is, of course, in no century more strikingly illustrated than in the fifteenth. With the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and the dispersal of the Byzantine scholars and artists, consequent thereupon, dates the period known as the Renaissance. A few years later saw the overthrow of the Old English nobility in the “Wars of the Roses,” and the beginning of the uprooting of the people from the soil in this country; in England (Edward IV), in France (Louis XI), and in Spain (Ferdinand and Isabella), the beginning of Absolutist Monarchy. It also saw the invention of printing and the earliest forms of modern commerce. In other words, the second half of the fifteenth century was distinctly the “beginning of the end” of the Middle Ages. The Reformation, the dramatic opening of which took place early in the sixteenth century might, at first sight, be supposed to contradict the point we are here insisting upon. But a closer view will show this to be a mistake. The outbreaks during the earlier part of the sixteenth century were really only the continuation of a movement which had begun in the latter decades of the fourteenth century with the English Lollards, which was carried on in the next century by the Hussites on the continent of Europe, and, at least, the negative side of which, i.e. the hatred of the Catholic hierarchy and contempt for the dogmas and rites it represented, had become common, one might almost say universal, amongst the educated classes of all countries. This movement, although the struggle was going on throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, was not in any sense completed before the Council of Trent – the definite establishment of the Protestant principalities in Germany, and the accession of Elizabeth in England. Not until the second half of the sixteenth century, therefore, was Mediaeval Europe noticeably giving place to the Bureaucratic Europe which lasted till Napoleon, and under cover of which the new middle classes, and with them the modern world of industry, commerce, and science grew up.
In England one of the most conspicuous products of the declining sixteenth century was the Puritan movement. This continued gradually to permeate the English middle-classes, till in the middle of the following century it overthrew the Monarchy. But underneath the Puritan movement, in truth the development of it, though in some respects antagonistic in its form, was the movement trending towards modern England. The victory of the Puritan was short-lived. Puritanism in its old form exhausted itself in the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth. The reign of Charles II (i.e., the declining century) is signalised by the birth of modern science in various departments, of modern commerce, and of modern finance. At this time the so-called “manufacturing system” became general in English industry. In place of the more simple methods of production, the combination of a number of workmen under one roof and the system of division of labour which accompanied the latter became now the rule, and formed the transition to the machine or “great” industry of modern times.
The political configuration of Europe, which lasted in its main features up to the end of the last century, was fixed by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. During the second half of the century, Louis XIV and Mazarin perfected that centralisation and bureaucratisation of France which held together for over a century, and which paved the way for the French Revolution and the Modern France which resulted from it. Finally, while the first half of the seventeenth century was conspicuous for its belief in magic and witchcraft, the second half saw the decline and practical extinction of that belief, among the governing and educated classes generally. The first half of the eighteenth century presents few prominent characteristics over and above those present in the later decades of the seventeenth century. On the other hand the undercurrents of a new thought and life and of new economic conditions were stirring.. But, as usual, they did not bear fruit until after the turning-point of the period in question. Taking France as an example, we find during the early part of the century the public mind occupied with controversies started in the preceding century, with disputes between Gallican and Jesuit, between Parlement and Court; we find the first crude forms of modern commercial finance developing into schemes like the “Mississippi,” which had its counterpart in England in the “South Sea Bubble.” But there are no essentially new developments. On the other hand, no sooner does the century pass its meridian than the doctrines of the Philosophes begin to pervade all classes of society. In England, where these doctrines had their source, but where they had no immediate practical effect on the public mind, we have, on the other hand, the beginning of machine-industry in the invention in 1760 of the spinning jenny. The rapidity in the progress of invention and improvement which succeeded and which by the end of the century had begun to transform the whole character of English industry, only requires to be barely mentioned. The French Revolution, occurring at the close of the century, was the summing up of the new conditions, intellectual and material, which had begun to manifest themselves three or four decades earlier. Their economic basis was, of course, the struggle of the new middle class – the third estate – to emancipate itself.
The early decades of the nineteenth century present, it is true, a vast undercurrent of new tendencies and ideas, but they were not yet recognised, the dominant tone was indeed, distinctly reactionary. Another half-century had to elapse before the middle-classes succeeded in completing as to essentials, the movement to conquer the political power, and even to emancipate industry from its remaining mediaeval trammels. The great inventions which had established in this country the modern phase of production – the machine-industry – before the close of the preceding century, increased in variety and in number at a prodigious rate. The typical achievements in invention of the nineteenth century are, of course, the Steam Engine and the Electric Telegraph; though strictly speaking they are merely special features of the general industrial development. In any case, steam as applied to locomotion on the railroad has, without doubt, directly tended to metamorphose human life more than any other single invention in the world’s history. But although the first short railroad was built in 1830, it was not until a quarter of a century later that the whole of even the main trunk lines of the European system were complete, and hence that mankind at large had begun to realise the enormous nature of the change in all human relations imported by the steam-engine and by the “great industry” generally. Until the fifties, the majority of mankind were still living, so to say, in a bygone age. Similarly in intellectual matters. The bulk of the thought of the first half of the century, its science, its philosophy, its art, its theology, its free-thought, were the “backwash” or the mere continuation of results and movements essentially belonging to the eighteenth century. Even the reactive elements saw their foes in the old eighteenth century theories. To take one example of the continuity of the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries from literature, the great German literary and philosophic development up to the forties was a direct development without a break of the movement associated with the names of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and above all Kant, dating from the previous century. Again, up to the middle of the century the middle-class parties led the advanced movement as in the previous century, in their opposition to the aristocratic and land-owning classes, but with the Revolution of 1848 a new element appeared distinct from, and even in antagonism to, the old Liberal and Radical factions. It was the party of the new proletariat which has to-day become the Social-Democratic party. As if to accentuate the position taken up in this essay, the Chartist movement, the product of an earlier period of the nineteenth century, not only proved abortive as regards its immediate ends, but died completely out. On the contrary, the corresponding proletarian movements initiated in the decline of the century are growing larger and more important day by day.
The foregoing illustrations are only culled at random from an indefinite number which might be taken. Perhaps they are sufficient, however, to make out a case for an “empirical law.” Any student of history who cares to take the trouble will find it easy to discover further facts to reinforce those given, to any extent he pleases. It is curious, if nothing more – this perpetual recurrence of a coincidence if, declining the hypothesis of the “empirical law,” we must perforce regard it as such. It seems, indeed, at first sight, absurd enough that human affairs should regulate themselves in any fixed manner, so as to coincide regularly with the arbitrarily fixed points of time we call the beginning, middle, and end of centuries. We must not forget, however, that the recurrence of periods of change at regular intervals may be traceable to some law of rhythmic motion in the manifestation of social, as of other classes of phenomena, notwithstanding the purely accidental nature of the particular relation they bear to our time-reckoning. If the arbitrary date fixed as the starting point of the latter had happened to have been made fifty years earlier or fifty years later, the periods of change referred to would have obviously fallen during the first half, and not the latter half, of the ensuing centuries dating therefrom.
If there be any truth in the theory of historic pulsation referred to, the implication as regards the future is plain enough. The great achievements of the nineteenth century, together with those impulses and movements connected with them which have given to that century its character as a time-marking epoch of historic evolution, will continue their development for the next fifty years or thereabouts on the lines they are now doing or may even in some departments succumb to a temporary movement of reaction, but the realisation of the ultimate issue of the changes now going on will not take place in the lifetime of the present, or hardly indeed that of the rising generation, though they will do so none the less surely and none the less fully in their own time. The earlier portion of the twentieth century will probably show us new developments and an accentuated character in the great class-struggle between capital and labour now going on. There may, and probably will, be many sharp conflicts and many subordinate crises. It may be that many will succumb on both sides, but if there is any truth in the assumption here suggested on the strength of the movement of past history, the final decision will not be taken, the new world will not be definitely entered upon till the twentieth century has passed its meridian and is beginning to descend into the place where all centuries (good and bad) go to when they die. Whether or not by that time we shall have acquired another time-reckoning starting from a more recent epoch than the so-called Christian era is a question which may be left for the reader’s imagination to decide.
Last updated on 13.1.2006