Hardy-Loss of Faith

The Literary Imagination and the Victorian Crisis of Faith: The Example of Thomas Hardy
Author(s): Nathan A. Scott, Jr.

Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct., 1960), pp. 267-281
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1200786
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THE LITERARY IMAGINATION AND THE VICTORIAN
CRISIS OF FAITH: THE EXAMPLE OF
THOMAS HARDY
NATHAN A. SCOTT, JR.*
that we thereby won to a deeper grasp

T IS a happy custom that we have in
of the immediate issues of our age that
the academic community of periodi-
cally arranging to notice in a made
for- these occasions notable.
mal way, as this symposium is designed And now, at the end of the fifties,
to do, some of the great milestones ourof
historical imagination tells us that
cultural history. The disaffiliated intel- be profitable for us to remember
it may
lectual who, as a matter of principle, another birthday, not of a man but
views the institutionalism of academic rather of a book. For it is just a hun-
life as a threat to genuine freedom of dred years that have elapsed since the
the mind will doubtless find a good deal quiet, at first unobtrusive, appearance
of pious humbug in these liturgical rites on the British scene of Charles Dar-
and observances-and so, in fact, there win's Origin of Species. The book was
may on occasion be. But very often published on November 24, 1859, and
these are moments in which a carefully on that day the entire first edition of
performed act of remembrance assists 1,250 copies was exhausted. By the
us toward some deeper understanding seventh day of the new year a second
of ourselves; and when, in 1947, we edition of 3,000 copies had been is-
celebrated the four hundredth birthday sued, and the career of one of the great
of Cervantes or when, two years later, classics of modern intellectual history
we celebrated the two hundredth birth- was well under way.
day of Goethe, it was surely the access At the time of his book's first ap-
pearance,
* Nathan A. Scott, Jr., is associate professor of Darwin was, of course, a
theology and literature in the Divinity School mature and seasoned scholar whose
of the University of Chicago. He attended the
previous scientific work had won him
University of Michigan (B.A.), Union Theologi-
cal Seminary (B.D.), and Columbia University the respect and friendship of such dis-
(Ph.D.). He has contributed chapters to Reli- tinguished men as Sir Joseph Hooker
gious Symbolism, ed. F. Ernest Johnson (Harper,and Alfred Russell Wallace and Sir
1955); Literature and Belief, ed. M. H. Abrams
(Columbia, 1958); and Symbolism in Religion Charles Lyell and T. H. Huxley. So it
and Literature, ed. Rollo May (Braziller, 1960). is not surprising that the Origin should
He edited and contributed to The Tragic Vision have been accorded an initially respect-
and the Christian Faith (Association Press, 1957);
and he is the author of two books---Rehearsals of ful, if cautious, reception in places like
Discomposure: Alienation and Reconciliation in the Saturday Review and the London
Modern Literature (Columbia, 1952) and Mod- Times. But, by the spring of 1860,
ern Literature and the Religious Frontier (Har-
per, 1958). Professor Scott's essays have ap- though the steady growth of its reputa-
peared in the Review of Metaphysics, the Jour- tion had become a cultural event of
nal of Religion, the Christian Scholar, Cross Cur-major proportions, its success was in-
rents, Religion in Life, the Chicago Review, the
creasingly proving to be a succas de
University of Kansas City Review, and Christianity
and Crisis and numerous other journals. scandale, and the controversy over
267
268 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION
what the Germans were to call Dar- for the intellectual historian is that,
during the past century, not a single
winismus had already, as the Saturday
Review remarked, "passed beyond thebit of evidence has been adduced in
contradiction of Darwin's central the-
bounds of the study and lecture-room
sis, that all living things have devel-
into the drawing-room and the public
street."' In journals like the British oped out of earlier and simpler forms.
Quarterly and the Edinburgh Review So, since it was in the Origin of Spe-
and Blackwood's Magazine, both sci- cies that the nineteenth century found
entists and laymen were by this time the most massive summary of the evi-
resisting with a remarkable animus dence establishing the fact of organic
what they felt to be a dangerous sub- evolution, it is not surprising that this
version of the premises of traditional is the book which both its friends and
thought, and the two old ladies who, in its foes came to regard as the focal
speaking of Darwin, said, "Let's hope text of the age: in a deep sense, it was
it's not true, and if it is, let's hush felt
it to have altered the fundamental
up!"2 were speaking for a very con- scene of human life.
siderable body of opinion. For the purposes of this essay, a
brief notation of what was spiritually
There are, of course, those historians
entailed in this revolution will suffice.
who occasionally like to pretend be-
And, what ought, perhaps, first of all
musement by the prestige that the Ori-
to be remarked is that, over and above
gin so quickly won and that it has con-
the metaphysical immanentism that
sistently retained throughout the last
hundred years. They remind us that Darwinian biology appeared to require
and quite apart from the flat contradic-
the indea of evolution was by no means
an invention of Darwin but that it had
tion between this immanentism and the
itself been gradually evolving in the
account of the ultimate origins of ex-
course of the previous century through istence which orthodox Christianity
had drawn from the Book of Genesis,
the researches of such early naturalists
as Buffon and Lamarck, and Darwin's it was Darwin's apparent subversion of
grandfather Erasmus and the anatomist traditional teleology that had the most
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and through thedistressing effect of all upon Victorian
work of his friends Lyell and Wallace; intellectuals. For, prior to the middle
and we are also reminded of Darwin's years of the nineteenth century, had
great indebtedness to this whole tradi- you asked even a typical rationalist or
tion. Nor can this kind of historical freethinker of the period what he con-
witness easily be gainsaid. But surely sidered to be the cardinal tenet of
what is of the highest importance whatever
is he took to be the philosophia
that, though Darwin did not representperennis of the Western tradition, he
the kind of absolute originality which,
would doubtless have said something to
the effect that he considered it to con-
apparently, these historians are alone
sist in the notion of a creative intel-
prepared to honor, it was he who can-
vassed more thoroughly than had any ligence operative behind the phenome-
of his predecessors all the evidencenal world, and to which was to be
then accessible which pointed to theascribed such order and design as
fact that species have developed in could be empirically observed. Even
time. And the primary consideration the great Romantics, for all of their
THE VICTORIAN CRISIS OF FAITH 269
Upon
heterodoxy and heresy, had notthe world's
called altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
this primary tenet into question, on the
contrary, they had often wanted tohands
I stretch lame in-of faith, and grope
And gatherspirit
sist upon the presence of a divine dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel
in all things, shaping and guiding themis Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
toward their destined end. But, with
the appearance, first, of Lyell's Princi-
And Tennyson wonders if we
ples of Geology (1830-33), then
Who trusted God of
was love indeed
Chambers' Vestiges of Creation
And love (1844),
Creation's final law-
Tho' Nature,
and, finally, of Darwin's Origin of Spe-red in tooth and claw
With ravine,
cies, the modern mind was confronted shriek'd against his creed-
by a plausible and a most cogently
are destined for some grim and futile
elaborated doctrine thatend:
pictured na-
ture as a kind of besieged arena in What hope of answer, or redress?
which survival of the processes ofveil,
Behind the "nat-
behind the veil.
ural selection" was a victory to be won
only by those individuals "It
andis an awful moment," said Fred-
species
that could manage so to deviate from
erick Robertson, "when the ,soul begins
to find thatadapt-
their kind as to win the necessary the props on which it has
blindly rested
ability to their environment. Indeed, by so long are, many of
just the slightest imaginative stretching begins to suspect
them, rotten, and
them
of the Darwinian scheme, all; whenap-
it could it begins to feel the
nothingness
pear that ours is a universe of many of the traditionary
adrift,
without guiding purposeopinions which have been received with
or principle
and utterly indifferent toimplicit
moral confidence,
values.and in that horrible
insecurity begins
Or, if the theistic premise were still also to doubt whether
there one
clung to, it then seemed that be any thing to believe at all. It
must
posit some deep and tragic dissonance him who has
is an awful hour-let
between God and the created passed through it say how awful-
universe.
Here, for example, is how whenTennyson
this life has lost its meaning, and
raises the issue in In Memoriam seems shrivelled into a span; when the
(which, though published nine yearsappears to be the end of all, hu-
grave
man goodness nothing but a name, and
before the appearance of the Origin,
the sky above this universe a dead ex-
yet expresses many of the perplexities
that were being aroused by the new black with the void from which
panse,
geology and biology): God himself has disappeared."3 And
Are God and Nature then at strife,
Robertson was here speaking not only
That Nature lends such evil dreams? for himself but for all his contempo-
So careful of the type she seems, raries-for men like Arnold and
So careless of the single life, Clough, Sterling and Mill, Carlyle and
That I, considering everywhere Kingsley. For all these men faced that
Her secret meaning in her deeds, "brainless Nature" of which Tennyson
And finding that of fifty seeds spoke-that "brainless Nature" who,
She often brings but one to bear, in Darwin's disclosure of her, "knew
I falter where I firmly trod, not / that which she bore!" Ours is a
And falling with my weight of cares generation, said W. K. Clifford, which
felt
has seen "the spring sun debilitated
shine out ofby their vertigo and
then
an empty heaven, to light upyearned for someone who might
a soulless
earth; we have felt with commiserate
utter with them over the unfor-
loneli-
ness that the Great Companion tunateness of theiris condition. And, in
dead."'4 What had been lost was the this respect, I suppose, they are not
one meaning that gives meaning to "modern";
all that is, they do not have
other meanings, and the anxiety that that fierce, reckless bravery, that stern
was felt, as a consequence, was what and uncalculating courage, which has
Paul Tillich calls "the anxiety of emp-
so often been a distinguishing feature
tiness and meaninglessness."5 And, of the great heroes of the intellectual
and spiritual life in this century. And
thus, men like Kingsley, Tennyson, and
Arnold were driven to that same abyssthere is, I suppose, a sense in which
of meaninglessness over which the
John Stuart Mill would be no match for
modern existentialist voyager so often Heidegger, or Arnold for the early El-
hovers. The difference, however, be- iot, or Hardy for Faulkner. And yet it
tween the great Victorians and a con- may well be that, if we want to under-
temporary existentialist like Camusstand is these heroes of our own time,
that they had not, perhaps, lived long we had better, first of all, seek an un-
enough with despair to be able to com- derstanding of the great Victorians: for
mand what Tillich calls "the courage they were among the first agonists of
of despair," and so they often simply our modern crisis of faith, and, without
wriggled in their unhappiness and, fac- them, we might not have the more ex-
ing "a universe of frozen apathy," were perienced and competent directeurs de
chilled into "an apathy of their own."6 conscience who figure so prominently
Pascal says: "The greatness of man in the literature of this century.
is great in that he knows himself to be Before turning, however, to a major
miserable. A tree does not know itself strategist of the poetic imagination in
to be miserable. It is then being misera- the Victorian age and to the expres-
ble to know oneself to be miserable; sion that he gives to the temper of the
but it is also being great to know that time, it should be remarked that, when
one is miserable. ... All these same men like Robertson and Clifford spoke
miseries prove man's greatness. They of the awful hour in which the heavens
are the miseries of a great lord, are of discovered
a to be empty and when
deposed king."7 And this, I take it,
Arnold spoke of the recession of the
moves somewhat in the direction of the "Sea of Faith" in "Dover Beach," they
kind of courage Tillich is speaking of,were responding to a crisis of which the
but this is a calm, a serenity, that oneDarwinian revolution was not the sole
does not often come upon in Victorianprecipitant. Indeed, we shall fail to
literature. Its great masters did oftentake the fullest measure of what was
look into a deep chasm, the same chasm critical and unsettling in the idea of
into which Baudelaire and Nietzsche evolution if we do not take account of
peered, the same chasm into which
the respects in which its impact upon
Kafka and Camus have peered; but,
the last decades of the nineteenth cen-
when they looked down into it, tury
theywas in part a consequence of the
were not thrilled or exhilarated:extent
no, to which it co-operated with
they looked down into it and simply
still another revolutionary movement-
namely, the new Higher Criticism in the widest popular-

JIsus, who gained
the study of the Bible. We ity.have here,
And this whole body of literature,
of course, two separate traditions of
in its christological reconstruction, in
nineteenth-century thought, and of
its notation yetinternal discrepancy and
there is at least one important sense in
inconsistency in the biblical narrative,
in itsdevelop-
which they constitute a single questioning of traditional theo-
ment, for the rise of the ries
modern his- and miracle, and in
of inspiration
torical study of the Bible isitssomething
derogation of the historical authen-
that was closely linked with ticitythe pre-
of the biblical record itself, had
dominance of the idea of evolution. a most profoundly unhinging impact
That is to say, not only was the im-upon the European religious situation
pulse to apply historical method to
in the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
biblical study born out of a culturaltury.
ethos very largely shaped by Darwin- Nor were British theological schol-
ian thought, but, once this method was ars at all slow in responding to these
so applied, the results co-operated (ornew developments: indeed, there soon
were felt to co-operate) with Darwin- occurred first one explosion after an-
ian science in the disablement of Chris-
other, as they began to produce their
tian orthodoxy. For both the new bib- own versions of the Higher Criticism,
lical criticism and the new natural sci-and of at least one of these commotions
ence had the effect of calling into ques-
some notice should be taken. It got un-
tion the conventional belief that the der way in 1860, after the publication
Scriptures present an infallible revela-in March of that year of a little book
tion of absolutely reliable truth even entitled Essays and Reviews, written
with respect to matters now regardedby six clergymen and one layman. The
as falling within the domain of natural editor of the volume was the classicist
science itself. and Master of Balliol College, Benja-
Ever since the time of Schleierma- min Jowett, and his colleagues included
cher, radical Continental scholarship such men as Frederick Temple, head-
had in various ways been undertaking to master of Rugby and later Archbishop
make the literature of the Bible accept- of Canterbury, and Mark Pattison,
able to what Matthew Arnold called rector of Lincoln College, and Rowland
"the hard-headed modern multitudes." Williams, vice-principal of St. David's
The widely influential Tiibingen schoolCollege, Lampeter. Their intention was
of Baur and Strauss gave the most ef- the "free handling, in a becoming spir-
fective publicity to the notion that the it, of subjects peculiarly liable to suf-
New Testament narrative is a tissue of fer by the repetition of conventional
myths originating in early Christian language, and from traditional methods
communities, "a wreath of adoration of treatment." Their essays dealt with
woven round the Master's head by various issues in apologetics and bibli-
worshipping fancy."8 Numerous Dutch cal interpretation, and, of the seven, it
scholars, from the fifties on, advancedwas Jowett's "On the Interpretation of
various versions of the Christ-myth Scripture" that was perhaps the most
theory9 which had originated in France, significant and that indicates very well
where, of all the avant-garde mytho- the general tone of the book as a whole.
logues, it was Renan, with his Vie de His contention was that, "although the
interpretation of Scripture
contrarequires
Christum," "the ... Seven against
at least a moral and religious interest
Christ," their book symbolizing to the
which is not needed in the
rank andstudy of a in the hetero-
file everything
Greek poet or philosopher,
doxyyet,
of theinage what
that was undermining
traditionalof
may be termed the externals belief.
inter-
pretation, that is to say, Now
thethe meaning
Origin of Species and Es-
of words, the connexionsaysofand sentences,
Reviews are, perhaps above
all others,
the settlement of the text, the two texts, especially
the evidence
of facts, the same rules apply
when to the
taken together, which lead us into
Old and New Testaments, as center
the very to other
of what was problemat-
books." Which was in effect for
ic in the Jowett
spiritual situation of the Eng-
to insist that the Bible must be "inter-
lish-speaking world a hundred years
preted" like any other ancient book,ago. Here we encounter the perspec-
with a proper regard for the original
tives that were radically transforming
meaning of the texts. And he assumedthe soulscape of nineteenth-century
that traditional methods of exegesis,
man, and we might well say that, on
with their woodenheaded theories of the English scene, it was the influences
verbal inspiration, rendered such anemanating from the two revolutions in
approach impossible. He reminded histhought symbolized by these books that
readers of the variety of literary formsled John Ruskin to declare: "There
in biblical literature-myth, legend, never yet was a generation of men
proverb, law, etc.-and he maintained(savage or civilized) who . . . so woe-
that to be inattentive to this various- fully fulfilled the words, 'having no
ness was to confuse poetic imageryhope, and without God in the world,' as
with statements of historical fact and the present civilized European race."10
to land in a disastrous literalism. And it was these same influences that
led Matthew Arnold to declare:
There is not room, even with respect
to Jowett's essay, to recapitulate theThere is not a creed which is not shaken,
argument in any great deail, but not an accredited dogma which is not shown
enough has been said to indicate the to be questionable, not a received tradition
general line that Essays and Reviews which does not threaten to dissolve. Our re-
ligion has materialized itself in the fact, in the
was taking. Judged in terms of its in-
supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to
trinsic merits, it is not a great book,
the fact, and now the fact is failing it.11
and it brought forward little, if any-
It is no wonder that James Anthony
thing at all, that scholars might have
Froude, in looking back upon the mid-
regarded as fresh or new. Yet it trig-
gered an explosion that is among the years of the century, recalled that
dle
fiercest ever detonated in British cul- for himself and his friends "the lights
tural life. The authors were denounced[were] all drifting, the compasses all
in the press and from the pulpit; theyawry. . ... All round us," he said, "the
were condemned by the bishops of theintellectual lightships had broken from
Church of England; the Court of their moorings. . ...l12
Arches and the Judicial Committee of So the image of the Victorian emi-
the Privy Council were even called into nence that was created by the genera-
session, and the seven contributors tion of its students most popularly rep-
were finally anathematized as "Septem resented perhaps by Lytton Strachey is
thatto
an image that is quite false men had then
what the to endure, the ac-
count
actuality really comprised. Andthat what
most nearly
is achieves the di-
central in our new grasp mensions
of the of tragic
great grandeur is that
Victorians is the realization
which we that
get inthey
the writing of Thomas
were far from being a Hardy.
people In his
inyoung
the manhood, when
he came and
grip of a sluggish certitude to London
com-in 1862 from his
placency. It is, on the contrary,
little provincialtheir
town in Dorset to serve
desperate uncertainty andas antheir
apprentice in a prominent archi-
grim,
black doubt that makes their most
tectural firm, sen-
Hardy had not, of course,
sitive representatives the kinds of
speak social
so connections with
rele-
Victorian intellectual
vantly today to a generation whose life that were the
sense of reality gains its most
privilege of charac-
many of his contemporaries
terilstic expression in the melancholy
in their youth. George Eliot, for exam-
existentialist language of
ple, anxiety and
as an assistant editor of the West-
dread. And many of our minster
mostReview and as a close friend of
recent
researches into the Victorian
people likeexperi-
the Hennells and Herbert
ence have begun to make us was
Spencer, feel this of many of the
a habitude
and to be alive to "that inexhaustible
most important drawing-rooms and was
familiar with much of the most ad-
discontent, languor, and home-sickness,
that endless regret, the chordsvanced
of thought of her time. Or, again,
which," as Walter Pater said, "ringMatthew
all Arnold, as the son of the dis-
through ... [the] literature [of the tinguished
pe- Thomas Arnold of Rugby,
riod]."'3 Indeed, when we turn to thethough he had his own career to make,
Carlyle of Sartor Resartus and the was
Es- on terms of intimacy from child-
says, to the Mill of the Autobiography,
hood on with many of the most impor-
to the Tennyson of In Memoriam,tant to intellectuals in British life of his
the poetry of Arnold and Clough, orfather's
to generation; and, in his under-
the George Eliot of Cross's Life, graduate
we years at Balliol College, by
feel that the impressiveness of these way of friendships with such men as
Froude and Clough, he soon became a
people is in large part a consequence of
the extent to which they mirror their respected figure among the circle of his
age in the modes of their responseown to contemporaries who were destined
what Arnold in his "Memorial Verses" for intellectual and cultural leadership.
But Hardy, when he came to London
called "this iron time / Of doubts, dis-
putes, distractions, fears." They had
at the age of twenty-two, was a half-
known something of what Nietzsche's educated provincial from a remote cor-
madman announced in Die Friihliche ner of southern England, and what Ar-
Wissenschaft-long before he ran nold called "the tone of the center"
through the streets of his town crying was, therefore, something to which his
out that "God is dead!" And it is this whole background and early experience
that makes them for us a people to of un-life did not give him easy access.
derstand whom is to understand some- And, though the moral and religious
certitudes with which he was early
thing essential about the self-prehen-
sion of modern man. equipped by his High Church' upbring-
Now, among all the versions in Vic- ing in Dorset were in time corroded by
the acids of modern skepticism, he
torian literature of the spiritual losses
never changed altogether,rience was very

perhaps even much "of the center,
could not have changed,for, the spiritual
as was true in the case of so many
tenor of his mind. It is true,
other of course,
young men in the sixties, the two
that the boy who taught books
Sunday which played the most decisiv
School
in the parish church of role in the shaping
Stinsford and of his mind wer
who for a time dreamedtheof Origin
taking of Or-
Species and Essays and
Reviews,
ders did, after the London of whose
years, de- readers he was
velop into a man whose agnosticism
among the earliest. Though we know
was of a piece with thethat,
mainin thehetero-
years following his arrival
doxies of his time. But, in
in London,
the spacious-
he became familiar with the
ness of his imaginative work of men
scope, in like
the Huxley, Mill, and
passion with which he brooded uponmeasure with any
Spencer, we cannot
the ultimate issues of life and deathgreat precision the effect that the new
iconoclasm generally had upon him.
and eternity, in the whole sweep of his
vision, we feel-particularly in the But entries in the Notebooks and nu-
great Wessex novels and in many of merous other testimonies which he
the poems-that here is no self-assured,himself made clearly indicate that it
complacent secularian of the sort thatwas Charles Darwin and Benjamin
we meet, say, in Meredith or, later on,
Jowett's collaborators who conveyed to
in Shaw and H. G. Wells. In 1915 he him, more effectively than anyone else,
wrote to a friend: "You must not thinkthe full impact of the period's recon-
me a hard-headed rationalist for all struction of traditional belief.
this. Half my time ... I 'believe' . . In
. the Essays Hardy encountered,
in spectres, mysterious voices, intui-
for example, by way of Frederick Tem-
tions, omens. . . ." Which confirms, in
ple's chapter, the notion that the Bible
might be viewed as a kind of history
a way, one of our most abiding impres-
sions of Hardy's fundamental position
book, merely recording the most sig-
-that here was a mind divided be- nificant religious developments that
tween two worlds and torn by thewere
kinds
contemporaneous with the time in
of conflicts that made Tennyson, which it was written. Or, again, C. W.
Clough, Arnold and many of the Goodwin,
rep- in his essay, opened up
resentative figures of the age feelHardy's
that mind to the conflict between
they were "here as on a darkling the Mosaic cosmogony and modern sci-
plain." And it is the primitive simplic-
ence. And Baden Powell, in his chapter
ity, the stern, valorous passion,
onthe
"Evidences of Christianity," not
onlyhe
solemn, majestic beauty, with which was putting forward the notion
dramatizes this plight in books like
that miracles must be adjudicated in
The Return of the Native, Tess the
of the
light of our best scientific knowl-
d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure
edge but also was suggesting that Dar-
win's
that make him, in many ways, the researches had rendered untena-
rich-
est and most resonant exemplar bleofthe
a account that is given in the
time when a full acceptance of Booktheof Genesis of the origination of
claims of the Christian faith was theper-
forms of life. And so on, through-
haps more difficult than it hasout ever
Essays and Reviews, Hardy was
been. exposed to the kind of shock that the
In at least one respect Hardy's new
expe-radicalism was administering to
the traditionally oriented imagination
tiges of the religious faith in which he
of the time. had been nurtured. And his conclusion
It was, however, his reading of Dar- seems to have been that, even if the
win that most deeply unsettled him. theistic premise is to be retained, God
For, far from providing him with any cannot be assumed to have any real
confirmation of his early belief that concern for man's welfare. Hardy's was
"love alone had wrought" the web of not a mind that had any inclination
life, it did instead suggest a view of the toward systematic formulations, and
world as caught in the violent, brutal this metaphysical pessimism was never
struggle of individuals and species for deliberately elaborated into any highly
survival-a struggle the gratuitousness coherent world view. As he remarked in
of whose cruelty allowed nothing other the Preface to a volume of his poetry
than absolute anarchy to be the reign- that appeared in 1901: "Unadjusted
ing principle of life. He doubtless impressions have their value, and the
quickly perceived what was also a ma- road to a true philosophy of life seems
jor implication of Darwin's whole po- to lie in humbly recording diverse read-
sition-namely, that by reference to ings of its phenomena as they are
processes immanent within existence, forced upon us by chance and change."
one could satisfactorily account for Indeed, throughout his life he seems to
whatever a transcendent principle had have had this kind of skittishness
previously been invoked to explain. about committing himself to strict,
But one suspects that that by which measured statement on the ultimate
Hardy was most deeply shaken was the quandaries that baffle human thought,
very strong unlikelihood that was im- and about all he could do was to ac-
plied by the new biology, of life's being knowledge his own inability to see as
providentially ordered by any gracious final anything other than "crass Casu-
Deity. Indeed, the law of natural se- alty" and "purblind Doomsters."
lection seemed actually to indicate that Which is to say that Hardy would have
the processes of nature and the desti- agreed with Melville that "though in
nies of men were governed ultimately many of its aspects this visible world
by nothing but "lawless caprice." So, seems formed in love, the invisible
at the age of twenty-six, we find Hardy spheres were formed in fright."
writing in the poem called "Hap": It is true, of course, as the Norwe-
Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, gian scholar Georg Roppen has recent-
And dicing Time for gladness casts a ly reminded us, that, increasingly
moan. ....
through the eighties and nineties, Har-
These purblind Doomsters had
dy, as readily
perhaps under the new influences
strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

of Von Hartmann and Schopenhauer,
was envisaging a co-ordinating but un-
It was, then, very probably in theconscious Immanent Will that is op-
years immediately following his arrival erative in and through natural law.
in London-the period extendingThis is a tendency that is particularly
roughly from 1862 to 1866-that, as aevident in much of his poetry of this
result principally of his reading of Dar-period, and, finally, it gains its con-
win and of the contributors to Essayssummate expression in the great lum-
and Reviews, Hardy lost the last ves-bering epic drama The Dynasts, which
he has returned
appeared late in 1914. But even to his mother's house
Rop-
pen, who wants very much to scene
and the stressof histhis
early years, hoping
aspect of Hardy's mature and
to find a way ripened
of setting up a school on
vision (with its tacit reinstatement
the Heath and of serving
of a its people as a
teacher.
melioristic teleology), has Soon after
finally tohisad-
return he meets
mit that, this notwithstanding, Hardy Eustacia Vye, a
and falls in love with
never managed wholly to beautiful
resistand the tempestuous
im- woman,
pulse "to see human destiny
whose greatas a 'pal-
desire is to get away from
pable dilemma,' ruled by inescapable
her lonely, isolated home on Egdon and
forces, and Nature as a
to process
go precisely gov-
to that place of imag-
ined elegance
erned by Chance. Even in Tke and splendor
Dy- from which
nasts," he says, "published
Clym hashalf a cen-
just fled. So she accepts his
tury after the Origin proposal
of Species ap-
of marriage, believing, despite
peared, the influence of his announced
Darwin isintention
still of remaining
evident, and the worldonwhichthe Heath, Hardy
that in him she will have
deplores to the end, with
a connection
the Spiritwith and
ofa way of getting
the Pities, is one of natural
to the larger
selection,
world of her long-cher-
ished dream.
of fortuitous variations, and fierce
struggle.""4 A world whose "invisible
Eustacia has, of course, had a secret
affair with Damon Wildeve, the hus-
spheres were formed in fright."
Now this is (in Rudolfband of Clym's cousin Thomasin; and
Bultmann's
after Clym's eyes
phrase) the "sense of existence" that are is
badly damaged
to be found controlling as aHardy's most
result of excessive reading in prep-
characteristic books, and,aration
when for his
itteaching
is hismission and he
goes out
role as novelist (rather than to work
his roleon asthe Heath as a
poet) that is primarilyfurze-cutter
in view, in order
itnotisto exhaust his
surely The Return of the Native
savings, that
Eustacia feels that perhaps she
must be held up-above haseven
chosenFar
badly.from
This reversal of sen-
the Madding Crowd ortimentJude the
in her Ob-
becomes particularly em-
phatic after Damonor
scure or The Mayor of Casterbridge inherits a sizable
Tess of the d'Urbervilles-as
legacy thatthegivescen-
him independence;
tral example of his art: here
then, indeed,we get
it does appear to Eusta-
what is undoubtedly our richest
cia that im-
it is he, not Clym, who holds
forterrain
pression of the spiritual her the chanceinof ahis
more abundant
major fiction. life, and, since Damon has never lost
Like so many of Hardy's novels,
his affection forThe
her, they begin to meet
Return of the Native is again.a tragic love
story, and, taken merely at Now this
Mrs. Yeobright,
level,Clym's
it moth-
presents us with an extraordinarily af- Eustacia,
er, having always distrusted
fecting drama. Clym Yeobright
had never approved of hasher son's mar-
been away from his home riage, and on Egdon
it is many months before she
Heath for several years, can bring
and, herself to call on them at
during
this long period, he has been steadily
their little cottage on the Heath. But
rising to success in theatdiamond
last, one day, shetrade
does visit them.
in Paris. But, having grown
Thinking that weary ofWildeve
Clym is absent,
the frivolous easiness ofhad
his life there,
just called, but Clym is asleep in
the cottage; and, on seeing ing

Mrs.and Yeo-
power is chiefly borne by Clym
bright through a window,and
Eustacia
Eustacia. In her we meet a pure
takes Wildeve to the garden behind
instance the
of that romantic imagination
cottage, confident that Clym will
whosehear a
history has been so brilliantly
second knock. But Mrs. Yeobright, analyzed in our time by Denis de
having detected Eustacia peering Rougemont in his great book Passion
through the window, takes her andfailure
Society:15 "To be loved to mad-
to admit her to be a deliberate snub ness," says Hardy, "-such was her
and, feeling that she has been turned
great desire. Love was to her the one
away from the house of her son, does
cordial which could drive away the eat-
not knock again; instead, she turns
ing loneliness of her days . . . she
homeward and, in the course of the
seemed to long for the abstraction
long journey back across the Heath,
called passionate love more than for
collapses and dies. any particular lover." And Clym, who
Clym later discovers what transpired "had reached the stage in a young
on the last day of his mother's life, and
man's life when the grimness of the
his anger at Eustacia results in a sep-general human situation first becomes
aration. Freed at last from her mar- clear"-Clym is one in whom there is
"the ache of modernism":
riage, but to a desperate kind of free-
dom, she and Wildeve plan to leave the In Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly
Heath together. But, in the end, Da-
seen the typical countenance of the future.
mon is not "great enough for her de-
Should there be a classic period to art here-
after,
sire," and, on a dark, rainy November its Pheidias may produce such faces.
The view of life as a thing to be put up with,
night, unhinged by her despairing un-
replacing that zest for existence which was so
happiness, she leaps into the black pool
intense in early civilizations, must enter so
of the whirling current that drives thethoroughly into the constitution of the ad-
Egdon mill wheel. Damon loses his life
vanced races that its facial expression will be-
in the effort to save her, and Clym,come accepted as a new artistic departure.
People already feel that a man who lives with-
who is very nearly drowned in the same
out disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a
effort, alone survives. But, when we
mark of mental concern anywhere upon him-
leave him at the close of the action, he
self, is too far removed from modern percep-
has lost the resolution and the energy tiveness to be a modern type. Physically beau-
that he had brought back to Egdontiful a men-the glory of the race when it was
year ago, and now, spent and somehowyoung-are almost an anachronism now; and
shattered, he goes about the Heath as we
a may wonder whether, at some time or oth-
er, physically beautiful women may not be an
lay preacher, expounding to the be-anachronism likewise.
musement of the Egdon peasantry a
simple, Tolstoyan gospel of love for Yet, internally complicated as these
man and for God. two people are, their personal story is,
This is, of course, but the merest in a way, subdued and subordinated by
sketch of the action, and, in hewing the world of Egdon Heath itself-
close to the central narrative line of the whose function in the novel is well de-
novel, it takes no account of many per- fined by Walter Allen as that of de-
sonages who are memorable elements scribing "the real circumstances in
of Hardy's total design. But unques- which man lives." Hardy offers the
tionably the freight of its main mean- Heath, Allen suggests, as "an extended
image of the nature ofreign

which man
of this orthodox beautyis
is not approach-
ing its last
part, in which he is caught, whichquarter. The new Vale of Tempe
con-
may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls
ditions his very being, and which cares
may find themselves in closer and closer har-
nothing for him."'6 And from
mony with the
external things wearing a sombre-
Heath, Hardy never allows us to
ness distasteful disso-
to our race when it was young.
ciate his central characters. The late The time seems near, if it has not actually
Joseph Warren Beach suggested many arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a
moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of na-
years ago in his fine book on Hardy
ture that is absolutely in keeping with the
that it may well have been just for themoods of the more thinking among mankind.
sake of Eustacia that he took such
So, believing a barren waste to be the
pains in producing the rich and moving
evocation of night upon the Heathappropriate
in image of what life in the
modern world is like, Hardy makes this
the first book of the novel:" she is the
"figure against the sky," the "Queenobscure,
of isolated country of Egdon
Night," and never do we lose a senseHeath, in all its "ancient permanence,"
of deep affinity between the harsh, the scene within whose horizon the en-
craggy magnificence of Egdon andtire thedrama of Clym Yeobright and Eu-
dark tower of the spirit in which stacia
this Vye runs its course. And he does
this because the Heath is intended to
passionate woman lives with such irre-
be the type of that blind, massive iner-
pressible and turbulent independence.
As for Clym, he is "inwoven with tia
thein things whose indifference to all
the great aspirations of the human spir-
heath . . . permeated with its scenes,
with its substance . . . his estimateitof
is the proof of the frailty and im-
life had been coloured by it." It re-potence of man-who, when he appears
minds him of "the arena of life": upon
it the scene, appears (as we are told
in the title of the second chapter of the
gives him "a sense of bare equality
with, and no superiority to, a single first
liv- book) "hand in hand with trou-
ble."
ing thing under the sun," and the dead
flatness of it sometimes overpowers Nor is the tonal unity established by
him. the Heath in any way broken by the
Indeed, the Heath's dark, gloomy, large role that is played in the action
threatening presence is the dominating by the undesigned and fortuitous, by
force in the novel. Its "Titanic form" "crass Casualty." It is a sheer accident
seems always to be awaiting something,
that Diggory Venn should misunder-
and it is "full of a watchful alertness": stand Mrs. Yeobright's direction as to
all the significant characters and ac- how the money is to be divided between
tions of the novel are held within its Clym and Thomasin; and it is out of a
situation arising from this accident that
compass, and its massive, brooding fix-
ity everywhere emphasizes the insig- the misunderstanding between Eustacia
nificance of its human denizens. "Hag- and Mrs. Yeobright develops-which
gard Egdon," says Hardy, in turn leads to the quarrel between
Clym and his mother. Or, again, it is a
appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a
more recently learnt emotion, than that which
sheer quirk of fate that, on the occa-
responds to the sort of beauty called charming sion of Mrs. Yeobright's visit to Clym's
and fair. cottage, he should have called out
Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive "Mother" in his sleep and that Eusta-
cia, on hearing him, should have

a kind sup- which exists today
of anguish
posed that he was awake and was
solely as an object of historical study.
greeting his mother. And Its
how utterly
present vocabulary is, of course, not
fortuitous that Clym's letter which
one which was familiar to the great
might have repaired the Victorians,
ruptureand be-its immediate irritants
tween himself and Eustacia should
in the world ofby scholarship and culture
her go unopened and that, maybelieving
to some extent have changed. But,
when Camus
herself to be cast off by her tells us that in this mute
husband,
she should have gone out into the
and abandoned universe of ours there
storm on that last fatal night. And
is nothing so
by which we can be nour-
ished but
on it goes not only throughout The"theRe-
wine of the absurd and
turn of the Native but throughout the
the bread of indifference,"8 we are re-
minded wheth-
whole world of Hardy's fiction, that the world of the modern
er one turns to Tess or to Jude or to
imagination may still be the world of
The Mayor of Casterbridge: the deci-
Hardy's "Hap"-a world, that is (as
Bertrand Russell said many years
sive event is always the utterly gratui-
tous event, and we feel that we are in,
ago), of "secular hurryings through
as indeed we are in, that modern uni- S.. space."'1
verse of absurdity with which writers Yet, despite all the brilliance of his
like Gide and Kafka and Camus have little book on the Victorians, surely
long since made us familiar. The trulyG. K. Chesterton quite failed deeply to
executive powers are "purblind Doom- understand Hardy's position, when he
sters" against whom man is withoutdisposed of him as merely a "village
any protection at all-and, given his atheist."20 In this instance, as in oth-
infirmity and the bleak, wintry empti-ers, Chesterton gave way to what was
ness of the heavens that gaze disconso- occasionally for him a great besetting
lately down upon him, it is, therefore,temptation, of a kind of sharp, ungen-
simply futile to hope that goodness anderous, carping malice-and thus his
mercy, or even justice, will ultimately own self-indulgement in temperament
prevail. The time is out of joint, andmade, in this case, for a failure in criti-
the world is incomprehensible. And,cal and theological discrimination. For
though this metaphysic of ambiguityhis epithet connotes a mean, narrow,
may seem to depart very considerably unimaginative kind of rationalism and
from the primacy in Darwin's thought "free thought" than which nothing
of the idea of orderly processes ofcould be further removed from the
causation, it is, nevertheless, a charac-qualities of mind that we meet in
teristic expression of the kind of meta-Hardy's major work. Indeed, it was
physical anguish that was suffered byF. A. Hedgcock who brought us very
many sensitive men in the late years ofmuch nearer the fundamental truth
the nineteenth century as a result ofabout Hardy, when he said: "C'est ce
the profound dislocations following pouvoir de suggerer le mystere meta-
upon the intellectual movement with physique, si nous pouvons parler ainsi,
which Darwinism was affiliated. Nor
derriere les actes les plus ordinaires,
does it appear, when we read booksqui donne aux oeuvres de M. Hardy
like Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausde orleur cachet particulier et distingue leur
Albert Camus's L'Atranger, that this is auteur des autres romanciers de son
the "harshnesses
epoque."21 And this is precisely it: norof mankind are ten-
need it be for any other reason
derness than
itself when compared with the
this that we should wince at the heavy
universal harshness out of which they
condescension of those who follow grow." Yet there is no cynicism in the
Henry James in regarding him as "the creatures of his imagination: Tess and
good little Thomas Hardy." Jude and Clym have "the sort of worn,
It is true, of course, that, when hedeeply engraved dignity that is given to
was most acutely perturbed by the those who know only that they are
pressure of the metaphysical crisis, doomed to face in one direction and
Hardy tended to reach for a grandness never another,"23 and, though unsup-
of rhetorical gesture that often tripped
ported by any great hope, they face
him up and led him to write "badly"- the inexhaustible mystery of the world
as, for example, in the familiar last with a kind of reverential amazement
paragraph of Tess in which we are told-an amazement that "rushes back at
that " 'Justice' was done, and the Pres-
us with a sound primitive, innocent,
ident of the Immortals (in Aeschylean and grand, like man's first discovery of
phrase) had ended his sport with
the nature of his existence."24
Tess." And it is also true that, in hisIn Hardy, then, we encounter an ex-
approach to his craft, he never revealed
treme instance in Victorian literature
the kind of technical sophistication of
ofthe maladie du si&cle: he was a mar-
which criticism in our time has made tyr of that "iron time / Of doubts, dis-
so great a fetish: the art of fiction was putes, distractions, fears"-and, in his
something that he somehow stumbled books, we have an important index of
into, and he never won the kind of self- the cost to the spirit that it entailed.
conscious expertise that was the pride And, not only does he lead us back into
of a James or a Conrad. Yet, with the that trauma in the nineteenth century
natural fabulism of the born storytell- out of which the modern existentialist
er, in figures like Tess Durbeyfield and imagination was born, but he also
Michael Henchard, Eustacia Vye and brings us forward into our own time
Clym Yeobright, and Sue Bridehead and to that anxious perplexity for
and Jude Fawley, he created a gallery which so many of the great writers of
of characters in whom there is pre- this century (Kafka, the early Eliot,
served (as Alfred Kazin has observed Malraux, Camus, to mention only a
of the not too dissimilar case of Drei- few) have been major spokesmen. To
ser's characters) "a certain wonder, a reread his books is to be reminded that,
forgotten, provincial detachment from as Paul Tillich says, "the decisive event
the brutalities around them, that gives which underlies the search for meaning
them the quality of contemplatives in and the despair of it in the twentieth
a world they no longer hope to master. century is the loss of God in the nine-
They have that brooding attachment to teenth century."25 Yet, though Hardy
strange new forces in life that we find thought that he had attended God's
in old sagas ... they are like figures in funeral and that he crept toward the
a dream that they are astonished to be myth's oblivion "Sadlier than those
weaving around themselves."22 who wept in Babylon, / Whose Zion
The great characters in Hardy's nov- was still abiding hope," he was no "vil-
els live in a world in which, as he says, lage atheist."
Thomas is
In attempting to define what Hardy-like
cen- that of many of
tral in the thought of one of Hardy'swho somehow sur-
his contemporaries
not so distant heirs, Ernest Heming-
vived such events as the Origin of Spe-
way, Robert Penn Warren suggests
cies and Essays and Reviews-is a pro-
that, in A Farewell to Arms, the
foundly story
religious testimony, even if it
that lies beneath the story ofnot
does Frederic
offer a conventional and "or-
Henry and Catherine Berkley is to
thodox" solution a the religious prob-
story of "the quest for lem. meaning and
Indeed, one suspects that none of
certitude in a world that seems to offer
the "solutions" to that problem which
nothing of the sort. It is, in a sense, a
may be fashioned in our own day will
religious book; if it does not offer a re-
be relevant to the spiritual ordeals of
ligious solution it is nevertheless condi-
tioned by the religious problem.""6 And
modern man, if they are uninformed
it is precisely in the same vein that itby a deep knowledge of what the world
must be affirmed against the witness of appeared to be like to the author of
G. K. Chesterton that the testimony The Return of the Native and Jude the
that is formed by the writings of Obscure.
NOTES
1. Saturday Review, IX (May 5, 1860), 573. (London and New York: Macmillan & Co.,
2. Quoted in H. G. Wood, Belief and Unbelief 1889), pp. 105-6.
since 1850 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 14. Georg Roppen, Evolution and Poetic Be-
1955), p. 50. lief: A Study in Some Victorian and Modern
3. Stopford Brooke, Life and Letters of Fred- Writers (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1956), p.
erick W. Robertson (New York: Harper & Bros.. 315.
1870), p. 86. 15. See Denis de Rougemont, Passion and So-
4. W. K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, ed. Les- ciety, trans. Montgomery Belgion (London: Fa-
lie Stephen and Frederick Pollock (London: Mac- ber & Faber, Ltd., 1940).
millan & Co., Ltd., 1901), p. 250. 16. Walter Allen, The English Novel: A Short
5. Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (New Ha- Critical History (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.,
ven: Yale University Press, 1952), chap. v. Inc., 1957), p. 293.
6. Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold (New York: 17. Joseph Warren Beach, The Technique of
Columbia University Press, 1949), p. 82. Thomas Hardy (Chicago: University of Chicago
7. Blaise Pascal, Pensdes, trans. William Fin- Press, 1922), p. 103.
layson Trotter ("Everyman's Library" [New York: 18. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1943], Fragments 397 Other Essays, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York:
and 398, p. 107. Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), p. 52.
8. Hugh Ross Mackintosh, Types of Modern 19. Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship,"
Theology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell (New York:
1939), p. 118. Modern Library, n.d.), p. 3.
9. See Eldred C. Vanderlaan, Protestant Mod- 20. G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in
ernism in Holland (London: Oxford University Literature (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1913),
Press, 1924). p. 143.
10. John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. III 21. F. A. Hedgcock, Thomas Hardy: Penseur
(New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1857), chap. xvi, et artiste (Paris: Librairie Hachette & Cie, 1911),
p. 258. p. 172.
11. Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry," 22. Alfred Kazin, The Inmost Leaf (New York:
Essays in Criticism, Second Series (London: Mac- Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955), p. 239.
millan & Co., Ltd., 1896), p. 1. 23. Ibid., pp. 239-40.
12. James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: 24. Ibid., p. 241.
A History of His Life in London, 1834-1881, Vol. 25. Tillich, op. cit., p. 142.
I (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1884), chap. 26. Robert Penn Warren, "Ernest Hemingway,"
xi, p. 248. Selected Essays (New York: Random House,
13. Walter Pater, "Coleridge," Appreciations 1958), p. 107.

Hardy-Loss of Faith

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The Literary Imagination and the Victorian Crisis of Faith: The Example of Thomas Hardy

Author(s): Nathan A. Scott, Jr.

NATHAN A. SCOTT, JR.*

that we thereby won to a deeper grasp

namely, the new Higher Criticism in the widest popular-

never changed altogether,rience was very

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

the cottage; and, on seeing ing

image of the nature ofreign

cia, on hearing him, should have

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