The Romantic Spencerian

Abstract

by MARC L. RATNER 8 The Romantic Spencerian One thought of the during strongest the late influences nineteenth affecting century American came thought during the late nineteenth century came from the natural sciences. Discoveries and theories in geology and organic evolution undermined the strong religious beliefs of many, affected the idealistic philosophy of romantic transcendentalism, and encouraged a greater interest in the ethical and social implications of man's place in society.1 In the work of Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Norwegian-American critic and novelist, we can observe the development of a writer who began in the tradition of the European romantic evolutionist and was influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer toward a new view of evolution. Boyesen was interested in a number of specific social and literary problems, viz., education in a militant or industrial society, heredity and race, woman's place in the new society, political forces, and last, though not in importance, the rise of realism in literature. Because of Boyesen's significance as a critic, interest in his contribution to American culture 1 Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought , 1860-1915 (Philadelphia, 1945) . On page 22 Hofstadter says, "Herbert Spencer, who of all men made the most ambitious attempt to systematize the implications of evolution, . . . was far more popular in the United States than he was in his native country." 204 THE ROMANTIC SPENCERIAN through his literary and social criticism has increased in the last few years.2 At the root of much of Boyesen's thinking was the theory of evolution, which he and many of his contemporaries associated with progress. J. B. Bury distinguished between these two concepts: "Evolution itself, it must be remembered, does not necessarily mean, applied to society, the movement of a man to a desirable goal. It is a neutral, scientific conception, compatible either with optimism or pessimism." 3 The fact is, though, that Darwin often struck a note of optimism in his writings and this led to an association between progress and evolution. He wrote that "natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being" and leads to "progress towards perfection," and he suggested that further development of his theory would lead to a law of progress.4 Herbert Spencer, however, became the foremost interpreter of the new theory and developed the concept of progress through his extension of the tenets of Darwinian evolution to the fields of sociology and ethics. Not all that Spencer drew from evolutionary theory was derived from Darwin, for Spencer was also influenced by the classic economists, Malthus and Ricardo. Making use of the analysis by these thinkers of the effects of severe competition on the economic survival of man, Spencer aimed at joining the ideas of physics and biology and then applying them to man's situation, individual and social. Out of his speculations, he developed the ideas of the persistence of force which conserves energy and the evolutionary process wherein all forms of matter progress from simple to complex forms. He wrote in First Principles: "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, co2 The outstanding publication on the subject is Clarence A. Glasrud's Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (Norwegian- American Historical Association, Northfield, 1963) . 3 J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress , 335 (London, 1920) . 4 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 305 (New York, 1884) . 205 Marc L. Ratner herent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." In the human and social field, the laws of nature, as everywhere, are inescapable and unrelenting, though demonstrating a beneficent necessity seen by Spencer as "equilibration," a state where evolution can end only in the establishment of the greatest perfection and the most complete happiness.5 Spencer's appeal to the postwar generation was influential in all areas of thought. The writers and thinkers who found support in his philosophy were often the men who were to lead the rebellion against the genteel tradition that had become for them a faded faith. In designing a sociology based on natural development which formed individual man for a...