Chapter 12.                                             (continued) 

Lesser sideshows in the swirls of history happen. These are analogous to similar sideshows that have happened in the biological history of this planet. Species and subspecies meet, compete, mingle, and then thrive or die off. But the largest trends are still clearly discernible. The dinosaurs are long gone, and so it also goes in human history. A viable new species of society keeps emerging in what can properly be called a synthesis. In a compromise, two opposing parties each give a bit of what they like in order to get a bit more of what they want. What happened at the end of the Romantic upheaval was like what Hegel called a synthesis, a melding between a thesis and its antithesis, but it was also something more. As conditions changed and old cultural ways became obsolete, the synthesis that arose was a new species of society: industrialized, modern, representative democracy. A new life form, vibrant and unique.

   

                                                                              Occupy Wall Street protesters 

The idea of democracy evolved until it saw the protecting of the rights of every individual citizen as the most important reason for its existence. All of this came about from the melding of Christian respect for the value of every single human being, Roman respect for order and discipline, and Greek love of the abstract thinking that questions the forces that be, even those in the physical world. Representative democracy based on universal suffrage was the logical goal of the Renaissance and Enlightenment world views when they were applied by human societies to themselves. The Romantic Age simply showed that the adjusting and fine-tuning takes a while. And it continues.

In the meantime, what of the Enlightenment world view? Inside the realm of science, the Enlightenment was still entirely in place and, in fact, was getting stronger. The Romantic revolt left it untouched, even invigorated. Science came to be envisioned, by scientists, as the best way to fix the ills of society.

Under the Enlightenment world view, as Newton and Laplace had said, all events were to be seen as results of previous events that had been their causes, and every single event and object became, in an inescapable way, like a link in a chain that went back to the start of the universe. The giant universal machine was ticking down in a mechanical way, like a giant clock.

While the Romantic revolt ran its radical course, governments, industries, businesses, armies, schools, and nearly all of society’s other institutions were quietly being organized along the lines suggested by the Enlightenment world view. The more workable of the Romantic ideals (e.g., relief for the poor, protection of children) were absorbed into the Enlightenment worldview as it kept spreading until it reigned, first in the West, then gradually in more and more of the world.

   

                                                         McConnell and Co. cotton mill (circa 1820)