ABSTRACT
Early in the nineteenth century there was a hopeful mood in Western Europe. The spread of industrialization and scientific advance had created a new confidence in human ability. The defeat of French expansionism and the apparent concert of European powers at Vienna in 1814 led to new hopes for international co-operation. The spectre of war created by religious or political fanaticism was diminishing. The power of human understanding seemed to be fulfilling the hopes expressed for it by Immanuel Kant, who in 1784 had described Enlightenment as ‘man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another… Sapere audere! [Dare to know]—that is the motto of enlightenment’ (Kant 1959:85). Yet in the early nineteenth century a darker mood was also discernible. The industrial revolution seemed to be pursuing its course with the cunning of a logic that ignored the consequences. Among the poor, especially in the teeming cities, the price was plain to see. There was also a growing feeling that industrial progress had meant ugliness and alienation from nature.
