Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1882-05-09
The Age of Great Expectations
London Saturday Reuiero.

1t is perfectly true that our age has 8
thousand times the resources of any that
preceded it, but the question still re-
mains. docs it use them to thousand
times better purpose2" He must be in
deed sturdy optimist who can bring
himself to answer that question In the
affirmative. That it is an age of great
opportunities there can be no doubt;
that tbs not simply what critics like
Carlyle and Mr.. Ruskin have represented
it to be. 1.-THE age of money bags and
cant, SCOT, hubbub, and ugliness," may
be granted; nor need it be denied that
in such high matters as science, re-
ligion and social organization "great
things are in the air." But in these
respects it can only be called al
best 1.-THE age of great expectations, and
great expectations are sometimes very
slow in getting realized, after the prece
dent of Mr.. Micawber. We may, per.
haps, be on the eve of the millennium,
but as yet we discern no signs of the
dawn. There is one very simple way OF
testing the comparative moral value OF
our progress. OF the sudden aud enor
nous change in our external and mate
rial life between 1882 and 1882, a change
beyond all example, or idea, or expecta
ton of any previous period in the worlds
history, there can be no manner of doubt.
But it may well be questioned if England
was not as much wiser, stronger, and
botsor in 17ea th0ra in 1900, and in 1eel
than in 1889, as it is better now than in
1882; and if we were to go further back
the change in these respects would be
still more noticeable. Oragain, compare
England with other European countries
the material progress has been very much
more rapid here than anywhere else.
while in some countries like Spain, there
has been hardly any at all. HAS the
relative position of these nations in the
scale of true civilization altered so very
much? Not at ALL" If from moral We
pass to scientific progress, it is obvious
that to place the marvellous tools of
modern science beside those used by
Copernicus or Calico would be like put.
ting a modern irOnclad by the side of q
Chinese junk. But will it be pretended
that in scientific genius the age even OF
Faraday and Darwin towers above that
of Newton and Herschel, or of Bacon,
Leibnltz, and Descartes2" "You
may raise your mechanical ap-
paratus of science a thousandfold, you
do not double you scientific genius
once" Still less could it be plausibly
maintained that we have advanced IN
philosophy or art, or in the quality OF
our literature, immense as is the increase
in quantity, when the press turns out
more matter in legible type every day
than in DR.. Johnson's time it turned out
in year, or in Shakespeare's time in a
century. We have not excelled Mozart
or Beethoven in music, or Reynolds OF
Gainesborough in painting, not to speak
of the great painters of an earlier age.
eve are as much superior in material
appliances to the men of Millions day
and Newton's day, as they were to AT
ghans or Zulus. Are we equally superior,
in cultivation of brain, heart or charac-
ter to the contemporaries of Milton and
NewtonY
1t may perhaps be argued that, if no
serious claim can be preferred to any
moral superiority at all corresponding to
our huge material advance, we have at
least gained much in all that adds to the
grace and charm, 'the bloom of social
life" But such a claim is hardly more
admissible than the other. Can it really
be maintained that life hundred or two
hundred years ago, before steam, cleo
tricity, or photography existed. was so
cramped and helpless thing, so borne
and i'll provided2 Somehow it was
not" In some ways, indeed, this very
same material advance, with all the
hurry and skurry of modern life-if
such a phrase may be allowed-has
served to rub off the bloom, as Mr.. w.
r. Greg was never tired of reminding us.