The New Renaissance; or, The Gospel of Intensity [pp. 453-460]

THE NE W REN1AISSA.NCE.
THE NE W RE.NAISSANCE,, OR, THE GOSPEL OF
INTENSITY
OME apology is due to readers for the title
chosen for this paper. " Renaissance" is
perhaps too inclusive a word to be used, as we
intend to use it here to signify the new birth of
certain phases of art and literature. Attention
is naturally directed to the great Italian revival
of learning generally denoted by our title, and
we hesitate to admit its significance as applied to
the ephemeral changes of fashion which mark
the present time.
Nevertheless, there may be rebirths of every
variety of magnitude, and one such has begun in
England during the last thirty years. During
that time there has hardly been one belief, however firmly held, which has not been severely
questioned; one habit of life which has not been
altered or swept away; or any department of
art, science, or literature which has not undergone the most vital changes. One result of these
changes is undoubtedly a sense of uncertainty
and unrest-a disposition to hesitate in the formation of beliefs, and to give to them, not an
absolute, but a provisional, assent; to maintain,
or at all events feel, that we are doing, not the
best, but the best under present circumstances.
The notion of development, snatched hastily from
its first province of natural science, has quickly
overspread the whole field of thought and action,
and opens out, to us all, vistas of possible glory,
as beautiful, and perhaps as unsubstantial, as the
lands of purple and gold which we see "... beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars."
We travel sixty miles an hour instead of six;
we speak by electricity across the globe, and have
the voices of our friends passed to us through an
interval of two or three hundred miles as we sit
by our own fireside; we have magnified sound
till by its means we can detect disease, and imprisoned it till we can reproduce a lost voice
years after its accents have faded; every power
of earth, air, and water has been pressed into
our service, and analyzed by our ingenuity; nay,
even the last great problem has found claimants
for its solution-and there be those who believe
that means have been found to generate life itself.
At the very moment in which I write these
lines a scientific Englishman, by a fast of forty
days, is engaged in demonstrating that it is possible for a man to live without eating, and almost
without drinking; and probably ere long sleep
will be eliminated from the catalogue of indispensables, and it will be shown to have been
only a vulgar error which has made us pass a
third of our lives in dull oblivion.
But if the conquests and discoveries of science
have been fruitful of change, a no less wonderful
transformation has taken place in the region of
the mind; though here, from the very nature of
the case, the effects are not so clearly evident at
first sight. If the whole field of the physical
universe has been thrown open to science, the
whole field of the mental universe has likewise
been attacked. In philosophy, in morality, and
in religion, the movement of the century has
stirred the depths to an almost unparalleled extent; beliefs, the inheritance of ages, seem to
have grown old, withered, and vanished almost
in a day, and, instead of the calm, and perhaps a
little unthinking, belief of our fathers, we now
hear on every side "Obstinate questionings
Of self, and outward things";
and, as one of the most typical of present writers
once said, there is "no child now but can throw
stones at the windows which Colenso has broken."
What the world has been for ages before our
chronology takes it up; what it will be for ages
after our race has done its work and gone its
way; the evolution of mind from matter, of life
from lifelessness-the great doctrine of the conservation of energy, and the still greater theory
of evolution-all these speculations, theories, discoveries (call them by what name we will, according as we accept or dispute the grounds upon
which they rest) have terribly shaken the old
formulas of life. Every day a fresh attack seems
to be made upon some hitherto secure position
of thought, and the air is filled with the din, as
the earth is covered with the ruins, of falling
temples.
It is not my purpose here to enter upon any
discussion as to the endurance or the ultimate
result of the state of things which has been
briefly indicated above; indeed, such a discussion would be premature and certainly futile.
We are at present, to use the old simile, as
soldiers in a hand-to-hand conflict, hearing the
noise and seeing the dust of the battle, striking
perhaps a hard blow now and then (we hope
upon our rightful enemy), but getting no clew to
the general issue, much less the purpose, of our
combat. The question asked so frequently now,
453