Dickens was a tool of the enemy
Posted by davidncl on January 14, 2009
Yet another wonderful article (from a man I used to hold in little regard).
Charles Darwin reminds us not to squander the great legacy of the Victorians
No wonder we cannot understand these people, with their heroic endeavour based on learning and scholarship. Neither heroism nor learning is valued in our society. Why else are those who would spend 17 years writing a book (like Darwin) seen as merely eccentric? Why are our great universities starved of money, and the standard qualifications of our school system diluted almost to worthlessness? Can we imagine a great and properly informed debate on questions such as faith, democracy or the individual today? If we cannot, it is because while the Victorians might have shaped how our world looks and the bases of the way in which we now think, we continue to squander our pervasive inheritance from them because of our refusal to rise to their awesome standards.
Charles Darwin reminds us not to squander the great legacy of the Victorians
Two point aside from two things, both crucial:
“we continue to squander our pervasive inheritance from them because of our refusal to rise to their awesome standards.” It’s not that. It’s the deliberate focused actions of a relatively small group of committed counter-enlightenment forces who, bizarrely, appear to be progressive, even scientific, to the naive.
And the other point. Dickens was a tool of such forces, even if his words were pretty.
