ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century was a century of conflicts and its conflicts are our conflicts. The Industrial Revolution brought unparalleled material progress and tremendous urban poverty. Religious revival was widespread, even as the foundations of belief were steadily eroded by science. People were inculcated with acute and ferocious sexual morality, while allowing, or causing, prostitution and crime to be endemic. The sciences and humanities flourished as never before, but the practical businessman sneered at the ivory tower intellectual. Pessimism and optimism mixed in the same mind. Central to the nineteenth century was the conflict between the new scientific naturalism and the older beliefs in a transcendent spiritual reality. Naturalism, product of the Enlightenment, occasioned both hope and despair. It held out the hope of perpetual progress, of the perfectibility of humanity, of useful and profound knowledge of the universe.
