Culture and biology: Perspectives on the European Modern Age

Von Richard Nate und Bea Klüsener

R. Nate: The ’New Man’: Historical Perspectives – N. Hagen / B. Isenberg: The Manifestation of Modernity in Genetic Science – M. Schwartz: Sozialistische Eugenik im 20. Jahrhundert – A. Gerstner: A Paneurope of Supermen: Coudenhove-Kalergi’s European Vision – S. Schieren: Die autokratische Versuchung: Britischer Imperialismus, Buren- Krieg, ’Effi ciency‘ und Staatsreform in Großbritannien zur Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert – J. S. Partington: H. G. Wells and Population Control: From a Eugenic Public Policy to the Eugenics of Personal Choice – A. Laukötter: Theoretisieren, Sammeln, Ausstellen: Techniken der Völkerkundemuseen zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts – V. Gutsche: Kulturpessimismus und Geschichtstheorie: Oswald Spengler und Eduard Spranger – R. Nate: Fears of Degeneracy: Paul Rohrbach and the‚ ‘Menace of the Under-Man‘ – B. Klüsener: Biological Theories of the Criminal and Their Impact on British 19th- Century Novels – S. Lampadius: The World State as a Superhuman Organism, from H. G. Wells to Aldous Huxley – V. Shamina: Eugenics in Russia and Its Refl ection in Literature

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: Königshausen u. Neumann
• Erscheinungsdatum: 30. Sept. 2014
• ISBN: 9783826080050

Buchvorschau

Contributors

Preface

This volume originated in a series of papers given at an international conference on Biologie, Anthropologie und Kulturkritik in der europäischen Moderne / Biology, Anthropology, and Cultural Criticism in the European Modern Age, organised by the European Studies programme of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in June 2009. The conference highlighted the manifold connections which existed between biological, anthropological and cultural discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In line with the interdisciplinary character of the European Studies programme, it included contributions from the fields of sociology as well as historical, political, literary and cultural studies. Conference languages were English and German.

Our first note of thanks goes to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), to the Maximilian-Bickhoff-Universitätsstiftung, and to the Alumni des Eichstätter Europstudiengangs e.V. for their financial support. The Maximilian-Bickhoff-Universitätsstiftung funded not only the conference but also its proceedings. We would also like to thank Sonja Becker for organising the Academic Project within European Studies of which the conference was a part. Anja Eckelt and Jasmin Dennig who participated in the Academic Project chaired the various sections throughout the conference. Our further thanks go to Ulrike Wiehr for formatting a number of articles, and to Cornelia Barth for checking and completing the bibliographies. Andrew Pickering took a critical look at some of the texts and made some very helpful comments. Norma Berr and Andrea Graf have contributed to the completion of this volume through a careful reading of the articles of which it is comprised. Last, but not least, we would like to thank our publisher Königshausen & Neumann for including this publication in the series Eichstätter Europastudien.

Introduction

RICHARD NATE / BEA KLÜSENER

In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the application of biological theories to the analysis of social and cultural problems was widespread. Concepts such as natural selection or race, which were borrowed from evolutionary theory and from a biologically informed anthropology, seemed to offer a new direction for the understanding of social and cultural processes. Since biological explanations of human behavior had the semblance of modernity, they were taken up with great enthusiasm. While Thomas Henry Huxley and Ernst Haeckel were busy popularising evolutionary theory in their own countries, England and Germany, advanced networks of communication, such as scientific societies and their associated journals, contributed to the establishment of an international discourse of biologism the impact of which could be felt in political theory, sociology, ethnography, medicine, pedagogy as well as in the interpretation of culture.

What made biological theories so attractive, was the fact that they seemed to offer a scientific explanation for phenomena which had formerly been a subject of political or moral philosophy. What has been noted about the concept of race, namely that it purports to offer a natural foundation for ideological concepts,¹ can be applied to other sociobiological categories as well. Thus, the traditional idea of a body politic assumed a pseudoscientific quality once it was reconceptualised in terms of a social organism. Like other organisms, it could fall ill and recover. Most importantly, it served as a vehicle for strategies of inclusion and exclusion. If the social organism was to stay in good health, the argument ran, it had to be defended against alien forces such as bacteria or parasites. On this basis, distinctions were introduced between those elements which genuinely belonged to the social community and those which were regarded as threats from outside.

In order to illustrate the close links which existed between biology and the cultural sphere, the history of eugenics provides a good example. Intended by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton as a method of improving the biological constitution of humanity, it quickly attracted disciples not only in England but also in Germany, where it became known as Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene), in the Scandinavian countries, and in the United States.² Since eugenics seemed to offer a scientifically founded solution for a vast range of social problems, it had followers in the teaching profession, in psychology, in medicine, and in the arts. Although eugenics has often been associated with right-wing ideologies, recent publications have demonstrated that it cannot be restricted to any particular political camp.³ Although Nazi politics revealed to what extremes eugenic programmes could be carried when humanist principles were sacrificed to a biologist creed, they represented only one variant of eugenic discourse. In the early twentieth century, the science of eugenics had such a wide appeal that it was embraced by representatives of various political groups, including conservatives, liberals, and socialists.

Another discipline which claimed to have a scientific foundation and also had an international following was racial anthropology. Although many different classifications of human races were suggested, some constructs proved to have a far-reaching impact. One was the hierarchical distinction between civilized peoples, barbarians, and savages which often carried racial undertones. Another one was the Aryan hypothesis, which the French writer Arthur de Gobineau had developed from a mixing of linguistic and ethnological criteria. It rapidly developed into an Aryan myth which attracted followers in Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as well as in the United States.⁴ Other racial constructs were invented to satisfy the needs of smaller communities. While a Germanic race was mainly propagated in Germany, the promoters of Anglo-Saxonism chiefly came from Great Britain and the United States.⁵ It is significant in this context that in some early twentieth century texts, the term native Americans was used, not to designate the indigenous population of the American continent but Americans of the old Anglo-Saxon stock.⁶ If from a present perspective the years around 1900 signify the beginning of modern internationalization and globalization,⁷ it is clear that many contemporary authors would not have approved of these developments. When H. G. Wells stated in 1920 that, above all, the history of the world had demonstrated a mingling of races and peoples, an instability of human divisions and a swirling variety of human groups and human ideas of association,⁸ his universalist attitude stood in sharp contrast to the dominating climate of polarization.

In order to understand the readiness with which categories such as natural selection or race were applied to the analysis of cultural phenomena, it is necessary to take into account the intellectual, social and political conditions of modern Europe. The years at the turn of the twentieth century were a period of transition in more than one respect. Not only had the theory of evolution led to fundamental changes in the understanding of man’s place in nature, but the Industrial Revolution had also created social tensions of an entirely new kind. The fact that the population of industrialized countries such as Germany or Great Britain had multiplied in the second half of the nineteenth century can help explain why social programmes based on Malthusian principles were increasingly called for. Fears of being overrun by so-called inferior masses, whose exceptionally high birthrate was frequently pointed out, were particularly strong in the middle classes and among intellectuals.⁹ Last, but not least, more and more Europeans became aware of the fact that the period of imperialism had reached its peak and they felt that an age of crisis was approaching. Influenced by the Social Darwinist principle of a survival of the fittest, fears spread that the world would soon be facing an increasing competition between the races. Thus, it is not by accident that theories of biological and cultural degeneration sprang up in the 1890s when the scramble for Africa had already signified the limits of territorial expansion and the American frontier was declared closed. A contemporary term like yellow peril indicates that the alleged superiority of the European race was not taken for granted but rather portrayed as being in constant jeopardy of getting lost.¹⁰

In this general atmosphere of anxiety, Social Darwinism offered itself as a tool for identifying and excluding that which was supposed to represent the cultural or racial other. While in foreign policies the struggle for existence was used as a justification for living out existing racial prejudices, in domestic policies it was employed to warn against an alleged process of counter selection.¹¹ In eugenics, both aspects played a role. In primitive societies, it was argued, the process of natural selection was generally intact while civilized societies suffered from the fact that, due to improved living conditions and advanced health care, so-called inferior individuals had a chance to survive and to propagate. In order to save their country from falling behind in the ongoing competition between nations and races, eugenicists demanded an elimination of the unfit through marriage restrictions or through sterilisation programmes.¹² When the unfit were ascribed the characteristics of primitive races, as was the case in Cesare Lombroso’s concept of the born criminal and in Max Nordau’s theory of cultural degeneration, internal and external strategies of exclusion reinforced each other: the enemy from within was described in terms of the enemy from without and vice versa.

The fact that a number of different trends were detected as counter selective processes indicates that biological categories were applied to the analysis of social phenomena often in a very arbitrary manner. An advanced level of technology, for instance, could either be taken to prove the superiority of the European races, or it could be identified as the main cause of their degeneration. Sometimes it depended only on the rhetorical context, which of the two factors was highlighted by an author. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the biological explanations of war. If, in 1914, it was still popular to argue that war represented a perfect instrument of natural selection since it proved which of the competing countries was the fittest, the rising body counts of World War One soon encouraged the opposite argument that war had a counter selective quality since the first ones to be sacrificed were always the bravest warriors who would leave behind only cowards and inferiors.¹³ The biological effects of civilization could also be interpreted in more than one way. While most authors argued that social welfare encouraged counter-selective processes by giving inferiors a chance to survive and propagate, Edward Bellamy tried to demonstrate in his utopian novel Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) that a genuine natural selection could only be guaranteed in a society with a high standard of social security. Since in such a society social rank and other non-biological factors no longer played a role in choosing a mate, it was only here that an improvement of the race could be expected.¹⁴

In contrast to progressivist writers such as Bellamy, those authors who warned against a racial or cultural degeneration were generally driven by nostalgic desires. In these cases biological categories mainly served to reinforce a pre-established set of values. From a present perspective it is not difficult to see that descriptions of the Aryan, Nordic or Caucasian race owed more to received cultural stereotypes than to scientific principles. If Thomas Carlyle’s glorification of medieval heroism provided one source of inspiration, classicist ideals of beauty and proportion were another.¹⁵ It goes without saying that in such descriptions the fittest organisms were not those which were best adapted to a specific environment but those which perfectly fitted long-lived cultural ideals. Behind the veil of scientific arguments there often lurked concepts which were deeply rooted in European mythical lore.

The articles collected in this volume approach the complex relationship between culture and biology in the European modern age from different perspectives. They are concerned with developments in countries such as Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the United States. They present analyses of various textual sources, ranging from philosophical tracts and political pamphlets to parliamentary acts, museum catalogues, utopian writings and novels.

Richard Nate begins by focusing on the experience of a cultural crisis in the late nineteenth century which was answered by calls for a radical renewal including proclamations regarding the new man. Rooted in the New Testament, the idea of a new man underwent several metamorphoses. While in the early modern period it was connected to the prevalent scientific utopianism, in the nineteenth century it can be detected in Romantic visions of a cultural renewal as well as in eugenic programmes. Combining the perspectives of geneticist and sociologist, Niclas Hagen and Bo Isenberg trace the manifestation of modernity in genetic science. Starting from a characterisation of modernity as motivated by the experience of contingency, they present early developments of genetics as science and as social practice. Not only can genetics be regarded as expressing contingency, but it also enables modernity to modernise itself.

The next group of articles shed light on specific historical and national contexts. Michael Schwartz regards eugenics as part of the secular process of rationalisation and discusses the emergence and practice of a socialist eugenics in Britain, the United States, Germany and Scandinavia. Stefan Schieren focuses on ideas of state reform in Great Britain which were influenced by Darwinist, Social Darwinist and even racist views. Driven by a desire to increase national efficiency in the context of British imperialism, programmes of state intervention were intended to limit equality and democracy to a considerable degree. Anja Laukötter’s article deals with anthropological concepts behind ethnological museums. While in the nineteenth century such institutions served the dual function of exhibiting cultural artefacts from exotic countries and of coping with the experience of cultural otherness, in the early twentieth century, they were increasingly influenced by eugenic ideas. The important role which colonialism played in the formation of these museums is stressed, and their development before and after Word War I is traced. Alexandra Gerstner concentrates on the works of Richard Count Coudenhove-Kalergi who initiated the Pan-European Movement of the interwar period and is therefore characterized by some as belonging to the founding fathers of the European Union. Gerstner presents a hitherto neglected aspect of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s work by showing how deeply his ideas were involved in the eugenic discourse of his age. In his view, it was a new aristocracy based on biological criteria which was to form the ruling elite of a united Europe.

Verena Gutsche traces variants of cultural pessimism in the works of Oswald Spengler and Eduard Spranger by concentrating on their use of biological metaphors. While Spengler’s prophecy of European degeneration was rooted in a view of history inspired by Vico, Herder and Goethe, Spranger critized Spengler’s morphological theory of history as scientifically unfounded. As can be shown, however, Spranger himself was also indebted to some of the traditions which Spengler drew from. John Partington demonstrates how in the works of H. G. Wells eugenics developed from a public policy to a matter of personal choice. In particular, he focuses on Wells’s ideas on population control, on his changing attitude towards eugenics, and how his views may have contributed to a modern eugenics of personal choice.

The four remaining essays can be attributed to the field of literary studies. Richard Nate shows how early twentieth century fears of degeneracy are reflected in the works of the German journalist Paul Rohrbach, especially in his novel Der Tag des Untermenschen (The Day of the Under-Man) from 1929. Rohrbach was indebted to a racist kind of cultural criticism which the American writer Lothrop Stoddard had formulated in his book The Revolt Against Civilization (1922). Stoddard belonged to a group of American nativists who combined their opposition to the ongoing immigration of aliens with the eugenic idea of an elimination of the unfit. Bea Klüsener’s article deals with biological theories of the criminal as reflected in British novels. Following a discussion of theoretical concepts such as moral insanity, phrenology, and Cesare Lombroso’s criminal anthropology, presentations of criminal characters in the novels of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker are shown to either anticipate or reflect contemporary anthropological views of evil.

Stefan Lampadius looks at ideas of the World State as an organism in the utopian writings of H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster and Aldous Huxley. After presenting a historical sketch of organicist views of the state, the dystopian and utopian qualities of these authors’ visions of the state as a superhuman organism are discussed. Vera Shamina’s article closes the volume by showing how the theme of eugenics was reflected in Russian literary texts of the twentieth century. A brief survey of the history of eugenics in the Soviet Union is followed by analyses of the literary works of writers such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Alexander Belyaev, Boris Akunin, and Henry Lion Aldee.

References

Adams, Mark B. (1990). The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bellamy, Edward (2007). Looking Backward 2000-1887. Ed. Matthew Beaumont. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.

Carey, John (1992). The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939. London: Faber and Faber.

Carlson, Elof Axel (2001). The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart (1915). Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts. 11th ed. 2 vols. Munich: Bruckmann.

Farrall, Lyndsay Andrew (1985). The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1865-1925. New York / London: Garland.

Geulen, Christian (2002). Identity as Progress: The Longevity of Nationalism, in: Friese, Heidrun (ed.). Identities: Time, Difference and Boundaries. New York /Oxford: Berghahn, 222-240.

Grant, Madison (1924). The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History. 4th ed. London: Bell & Sons.

Hall, Stuart (1980). Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance, in: Unesco (ed.). Sociological Theories, Race and Colonialism. Paris: Unesco, 305-345.

Horsman, Reginald (1981). Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Mehnert, Ute (1995). Deutschland, Amerika und die gelbe Gefahr: Zur Karriere eines Schlagworts in der Großen Politik, 1905-1917. Stuttgart: Steiner.

Mosse, George L. (1978). Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. New York: Fertig.

Osterhammel, Jürgen (2009). Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. 4th ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.

Poliakov, Léon (1974). The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe.

Trans. Edmund Howard. New York: Basic Books. Turda, Marius (2010). Modernism and Eugenics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wells, Herbert G. (1920). The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. 2 vols. London: George Newnes.

¹Hall (1980: 342).

²For other countries see the articles in Adams (1990) which cover eugenics in France, Brazil, and Russia. Turda (2010) refers to Romania, Turkey, and China.

³Turda (2010: 1).

⁴Poliakov (1974).

⁵For the Germanic race see Chamberlain (1915), for Anglo-Saxonism Horsman (1981).

⁶See for instance Grant (1924: 263).

⁷Osterhammel (2009: 13, 249 ff.).

⁸Wells (1920: 666).

⁹Carey (1992).

¹⁰ On the history of the phrase yellow peril see Mehnert (1995). Geulen (2002: 230 ff.) describes the idea of an endangered community as a typical element of racist ideologies.

¹¹ For a distinction between an internal and external Social Darwinism, cf. Farrall (1985: 296).

¹² Cf. Carlson (2001: 159 ff.).

¹³ For various Social Darwinist interpretations of the First World War see the articles published between 1914 and 1918 in the American Journal of Heredity , the British Eugenics Review , and the German Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie .

¹⁴ Bellamy (2007: 156 f.).

¹⁵ Mosse (1978: 21).

Visions of a New Man: A Historical Survey

RICHARD NATE

It is known that the years around 1900, when modernism began to take shape, were experienced by many contemporaries as a time of crisis.¹ Several factors contributed to this. One was the loss of traditional anthropological beliefs in the wake of the Theory of Evolution. When H. G. Wells stated in his Anticipations (1901) that throughout the nineteenth century there ha[d] been a shattering and recasting of fundamental ideas, of the preliminaries to ethical propositions, as the world ha[d] never seen before,² he had in mind the cultural impact of the Darwinian world view. A second factor was a general uneasiness in political and social spheres. In Great Britain, the expectations which had been raised in the mid nineteenth century seemed a thing of the past. If the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its Crystal Palace had signified the triumphs of both British imperialism and Western technology, towards the end of the century the feeling spread that the country could be facing a decline.³ In the field of literature, a mood of fin-de-siècle was dominant. Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde are frequently cited authors in this context, but H. G. Wells’s early narratives also provide good examples.⁴ In The Time Machine (1895), Wells presented a future Britain in which the former social elite had degenerated into child-like creatures being preyed upon by underground monsters who turn out to be descendants from the former proletariat. In The War of the Worlds (1898), Wells described how the capital of the British Empire was invaded by a superior race from outer space. In the course of the narrative, the war of extermination which the Martians wage upon the Londoners is repeatedly linked with British imperialism: while the Martians have taken the role of the conquerors, the Londoners suffer a fate similar to that of the Tasmanians for whom the encounter with Europeans a few decades earlier had proved fatal.⁵ Although Wells’s narratives belong to the realm of science fiction, it is clear that they also reflected a general anxiety. At the end of the century, the fear arose that European countries might be forced to give up the political and cultural hegemony they had acquired in the preceding centuries of territorial expansion.

However, fears of degeneration represented but one side of the overall picture. If there was a general feeling of crisis, it provoked not only prophecies of doom but also an increasing search for panaceas. The fin-de-siècle mood had its counterpart in calls for a radical renewal. The Austrian playwright and critic, Hermann Bahr, expressed the general wavering between despair and hope as follows: It is possible that we are facing the end, the death of an exhausted humanity, and that these are merely the final spasms. It is also possible that we are facing the beginning, the birth of a new humanity, and that these are but the avalanches of spring.⁶ With these words, Bahr referred to the idea of a new man which was deeply embedded in the European tradition, although it had received different interpretations in the course of the preceding centuries.⁷ In the years around 1900, the birth of a new man was announced in various fields, ranging from romantically inspired criticisms of European civilization to biologically oriented programmes of social reform. The former branch comprised a number of middle-class subcultures such as theosophy, Eastern spiritualism, vitalism, vegetarianism, teetotalism and return-back-to-nature schemes; the latter included the increasing numbers of Social Darwinists and eugenicists. Within the philosophical syncretism which marked the turn of the century, the prophetic gestures of cultural critics and the scientific spirit of the followers of Darwin did not necessarily exclude each other. A romantic critique of modern civilization could thus be underpinned with biological assumptions about the nature of humanity and vice versa. If romantic writers held that the fatigue of European civilization could be overcome only by a revival of medieval heroism, Social Darwinists stated that the counter-selective forces allegedly at work in the industrial societies must be held in check through an artificial selection of the fittest. Given these correspondences, it is not surprising that visions of a new man sometimes represented a strange mixture of medieval chivalry and scientific experimentalism.

Although the new man would gain a special significance in the European modern age, its biblical roots should not be forgotten. Several passages of the New Testament include the promise that, through Christ’s grace, human beings will overcome their state of sinfulness and experience a spiritual rebirth. In Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians we read: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."⁸ In the Epistle to the Colossians, the idea of leaving behind the old Adam is extended to the entire Christian community. Faith will help the followers of Christ to establish a new kind of brotherhood transcending all existing ethnic or geographical boundaries:

Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.⁹

While the letters of Paul were addressed to the Christian communities of the Roman Empire and often related to their particular problems, other New Testament writings are dominated by eschatological themes. Here, the new man is placed within a new age promised for the end of all times. Thus, Peter’s Second Epistle includes the prophecy that in the future new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness will appear,¹⁰ and the Book of Revelation concludes with an eschatological vision in which human beings find an eternal home in a new heaven and a new earth.¹¹

Once separated from their original context, however, the biblical visions of a new man and a new earth were employed to express anthropological concepts and utopian visions of an often divergent character. When the idea of a new man was revived within the biologically inspired cultural criticism around 1900, it had already undergone a long process of secularization. Important stages in this development were the scientific and political utopias of the early modern period, the various political visions and secular prophecies which sprang up in the early nineteenth century, and the new biological anthropology of the late nineteenth century. Taken together, these traditions provided the background for visions of a new man formulated at the turn of the century.

1. Early Modern Ideas

In the early modern period, an inner-world utopianism and religious chiliasm often went hand in hand. While utopian writing had been revived with the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), the biblical history of salvation was also received in a new light. The discovery of a new world beyond the Atlantic ocean played an important role in this context.¹² When in Shakespeare’s Tempest (c. 1611), Prospero’s daughter Miranda exclaims: O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ‘t!,¹³ this has to be taken with a pinch of salt, since the characters she refers to represent the old world rather than the new. Still, her words reflect a general tendency to project traditional ideas of an earthly paradise onto the newly discovered territories. The same holds true for Gonzalo’s Utopian vision in the same play. Had I plantation of this isle, he fantasizes, […] all things in common Nature should produce, without sweat or endeavour,¹⁴ thus evoking the image of an earthly paradise.

Beginning in the early seventeenth century, utopian writings increasingly functioned as blueprints for a better society in which human beings could overcome their self-inflicted misery by means of their own rationality. No longer dependent on divine grace alone, a better social reality came to be viewed as something which human beings could achieve through their own means.¹⁵ Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (1920) is a typical example of the rhetoric of newness emerging in the seventeenth century.¹⁶ This work, in which the modern ideology of progress found an early expression, shows that the concept of the future underwent a significant change. In Bacon’s writings, the future ceases to be a divine mystery and becomes something which can be planned methodically. Rather than speaking as a divinely inspired prophet, Bacon’s aim was to anticipate what human beings could achieve through their own collective will.

However, if Bacon intended his experimental philosophy to replace an older, mythical understanding of nature, he never questioned the biblical historical record. Although he described the Great Instauration as the result of human endeavours, he also presented it as the fulfilment of a biblical prophecy. In a passage which deals with the impact that recent discoveries had on the advancement of learning, Bacon cited the Old Testament in order to show that his plans were in perfect line with the biblical record:

Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten, touching the last ages of the world: – Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased; clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by Divine Providence, to meet in the same age.¹⁷

Other seventeenth-century reformers would take a similar course. In his book Via Lucis (1641), Jan Amos Comenius explained that the history of the world was marked by an ever-increasing distribution of human knowledge. The printing press and the compass represented the most recent stages of this process, since they had made possible a coming together of the peoples of the Earth. The final stage was to be the millennium which Comenius envisioned as a period of universal light.¹⁸

Bacon’s and Comenius’s views on the advancement of learning demonstrate the strange mixture between utopia, prophecy and activism which characterized seventeenth century thought.¹⁹ If a millennium was predicted, it no longer depended on divine grace alone.²⁰ Bacon’s Valerius Terminus (c. 1603) reveals that human beings were now believed to overcome the consequences of the fall by themselves:

[…] it is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of honour or fame, nor inablement for business, that are the true ends of knowledge […]; it is a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names he shall again command them) which he had in his first state of creation.²¹

In his utopian narrative, New Atlantis (1627), Bacon anticipated the Great Installation within a fictional framework. Since the text represents a fantasy as well as a call to action, it can be regarded as an early instance of what Reinhart Koselleck has termed the temporalization of Utopias.²² Its reception in seventeenth century England, especially among the members of the Royal Society, proves that Bacon’s text was primarily viewed as a blueprint for scientific reform. With respect to modern eugenics, it is interesting to note that, apart from technical inventions such as submarines or flying-machines, Bacon’s narrative also depicted methods of improving the human physique. Not only have the scientists of Solomon’s House discovered ways of prolonging their lives, they are also capable of resuscitating parts of the body which were already dead in appearance.²³ When viewed against the background of religious orthodoxy, such attempts at expanding the average lifespan of human beings had an ambivalent quality. Although Bacon was eager to attribute the prolongation of life to the framework of Christian charity,²⁴ it could also be interpreted as an act of revolt against divine providence.

In the seventeenth century, the social hierarchies which had long been thought to reflect an eternal cosmic order also became a subject of debate. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) is a prominent example. Although its title indicates the author’s indebtedness to biblical symbolism, Hobbes’s Leviathan no longer functioned as an image of God’s infinite power but was presented as a human creation. When Hobbes quoted a line from the Book of Job: Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei. (There is no worldly power comparable to him.),²⁵ this was merely meant to illustrate the claim that a sovereign installed through a public contract assumed the status of a mortal god. Even more significantly, Hobbes conceptualized his ideal commonwealth as an artificial man.²⁶ The "sovereignty, he noted, was but an artificial soul, the pacts and covenants which constituted the political body resembled that fiat, or the let us make man, pronounced by God in the creation.²⁷ Although such a description still drew on the traditional idea of a body politic", which was based on the assumption that there existed a natural correspondence between the organization of the human body and that of a kingdom,²⁸ Hobbes interpreted this concept in an entirely new way when he declared his commonwealth to be the product of human creative powers. His reference to the divine fiat is significant in this respect. In Hobbes’s political theory, human beings were ascribed a status which hitherto had been restricted to God.

During the eighteenth century, the confidence in the perfectibility of the human condition gained further momentum. Convinced that the revolutionary spirit of the age would lead to the development of a new social reality, Thomas Paine declared in the second part of his Rights of Man (1792) that the people of his time would appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.²⁹ While most writers restricted themselves to the spheres of education and learning when they wrote about the idea of human progress, some also dedicated their thoughts to a possible improvement of humanity’s physical state. Although the title of Antoine Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind) (1795) suggests that its author restricted himself