Occupy Wall Street protestors, 2011 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)  

The idea of democracy evolved until it asserted constitutionally that the protecting of the rights of every citizen is 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 scientific 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 still 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. 

   

                       Crewe locomotive works, England, c. 1890 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)