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(MUSIC) WILLIAM WALTON:
Symphony In B Flat Minor

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Dorothy Wordsworth said about the view
of London from Westminster Bridge,

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that "It was like one of Nature's
own grand spectacles."

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Well, nature is violent and brutal

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and there's nothing we can do about it.

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But New York?
After all, New York was made by men.

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It took almost the same time
to reach its present condition

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as it did to complete the Gothic cathedrals.

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At which point, a very obvious, reflection
crosses one's mind

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that the cathedrals were built to the glory of God,
New York was built to the glory of mammon,

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money, gain,

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the new god of the 19th century.

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So many of the same human ingredients
have gone into its construction

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that, at a distance
it does look rather like a celestial city.

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At a distance.

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Come closer and it's not so good.

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(MUSIC) WILLIAM WALTON:
Symphony In B Flat Minor

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Behind this grim uniformity
lurks an even grimmer poverty

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and problems that seem almost insoluble.

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One sees why heroic materialism
is still linked with an uneasy conscience.

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It has been from the start.

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I mean, that, historically,

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the first discovery and exploitation of those
technical means which made New York possible

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coincided exactly with the first
organised attempt to improve the human lot.

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The first large iron foundries in England,

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like the Carron Works or Coalbrookdale

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date from round about 1780.

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Howard's book on penal reform
was published in 1777

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and Clarkson's Essay On Slavery in 1786.

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Clarkson laid the foundations
of the antislavery movement

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and painstakingly discovered
all the horrifying evidence.

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The political side was the life, work
of William Wilberforce

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in whose house in Hull I'm now standing.

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I've often heard it said
by people who want to seem clever,

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that "Civilisation can exist only
on a basis of slavery"

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and, in support of their thesis,

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they point to the examples of 5th-century
Greece, or of the antique world in general.

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If one defines civilisation
in terms of leisure and superfluity,

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there is a grain of truth in this repulsive doctrine,

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but I have tried throughout this series

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to define civilisation in terms of creative power
and the enlargement of human faculties,

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and from that point of view,
slavery is abominable.

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Well, so, for that matter, is abject poverty.

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Poverty, hunger, plagues, disease,

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they were the background of history
right up to the end of the 19th century,

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and most people regarded them as inevitable,
like bad weather.

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Nobody thought they could be cured.

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All that was required
was an occasional act of charity.

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This pretty scene is entitled Rustic Charity

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and under it are written the lines

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"Here, poor boy without a coat,
take this ha'penny."

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Not an indication of very serious concern.

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But slaves and the trade in slaves
that was something different.

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It was esoteric.

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It wasn't something that surrounded one
like the air, as homemade poverty did,

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and the horrors it involved
were far more horrible.

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Even the unsqueamish stomachs
of the 18th century

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were turned by accounts
of "the middle passage".

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(Creaking timbers)

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This is one of the irons
used for branding the slaves

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on chest and back with the proprietor's initials.

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This is the actual model of a slave ship,

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which Wilberforce produced
in the House of Commons

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to show how the slaves were crammed together.

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It's reckoned that over nine million slaves

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died from heat and suffocation
in those holds on the way to America.

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A remarkable figure, even by modern standards.

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The antislavery movement

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became the first communal expression
of the awakened conscience

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but it took a long time to succeed.

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The trade was prohibited in 1807

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and, as Wilberforce lay dying in 1835,

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slavery itself was abolished.

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Well, one must regard this
as a step forward for the human race,

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and be proud, I think,
that it happened in England.

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But not too proud.

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The Victorians were very smug about it

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and they chose to avert their eyes

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from something almost equally horrible
that was happening to their own countrymen.

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England had entered the war against Napoleon

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in the first triumphant consciousness
of its new industrial powers.

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After 20 years, England was victorious,

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but, by failing to control
her industrial development,

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she'd suffered a defeat, in terms of human life

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far more costly than any military disaster.

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I needn't remind you of how cruelly

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the Industrial Revolution degraded and exploited
a mass of people for 60 or70 years.

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After about 1790

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there appeared the large foundries and mills,

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which dehumanised life.

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Arkwright's spinning frame,
invented in about 1770

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is always quoted as the beginning
of mass production. On the whole, rightly.

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There he is, faithfully recorded for us
by Wright of Derby,

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typical of the new man who was to dominate
industry until the present day.

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He and his like gave England a flying start
in the economy of the 19th century,

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but the result of their inventions
was a dehumanisation

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that obsessed almost every great
imaginative writer of the time.

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From the start, poets had recognised
the nature of the "satanic" mills.

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00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:13,428
Robert Burns
passing the Carron Iron Works in 1787,

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scratched these lines on a windowpane.

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"We cam na here to view your works,

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In hopes to be mair wise,

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But only, lest we gang to hell,

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It may be nae surprise."

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This new religion of gain
had behind it a body of doctrine,

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without which it could never have maintained
its authority over the serious-minded Victorians.

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Its sacred books

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the works of Malthus on population

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and Ricardo on economics

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were taken as gospels by pious men,

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who used them to justify actions

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they would never have thought of defending
on human grounds.

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Hypocrisy?

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Well, hypocrisy has always existed.

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Where would the great comic writers have been
without it, from Moliere downwards?

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But in the 19th century,

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with its insecure middle class
dependent on an inhuman economic system,

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there was mass hypocrisy
on an unprecedented scale.

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For the last 40 years or so,

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the word "hypocrisy" has been a sort of label
attached to the 19th century,

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just as "frivolity" was attached to the 18th century
and with about as much reason.

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The reaction against it continues.

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Although it is a good thing
to have cleared the air

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I think that the reaction has done harm

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by bringing into discredit all professions of virtue.

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The very words "pious", "respectable", "worthy"
have become joke words, used only ironically.

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Much as one hates the inhuman way
in which the doctrines of Malthus were accepted,

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the terrible truth is

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that the rise of population did nearly ruin us.

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It struck a blow at civilisation more ominous
than anything since the barbarian invasions.

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First, it produced the horrors of urban poverty

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and then the dismal countermeasures
of bureaucracy and regimentation.

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It must have seemed, may still seem, insoluble.

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Yet this doesn't excuse the callousness

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with which prosperous people
ignored the conditions of life among the poor

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on which, to a large extent,
their prosperity depended.

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And this in spite of the most detailed
and eloquent descriptions

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that were available to them.

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I need mention only two:

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Engels's Conditions Of The Working Class,
written in 1844

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and the novels written by Dickens

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between 1838 and 1854

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between Nicholas Nickleby and Hard Times.

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Engels's book is presented as documentation,

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but it is, in fact
the passionate cry of a young' social worker

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and, as such, it provided
and has continued to provide,

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the emotional dynamo of Marxism.

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Marx read Engels.

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I don't know who else did. That was enough.

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But everybody read Dickens.

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The pictures you're looking at
are by the French artist Gustave Doré,

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whose illustrated books on London
appeared in 1872.

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You see, things hadn't changed much
since the '40s.

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Perhaps it took an outsider
to see London as it really was,

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and it needed someone
of Doré's marvellous graphic skill

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to make this great slice
of human misery credible.

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I think that Dickens did more than anyone
to diffuse an awakened conscience

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but one mustn't forget the practical reformers
who preceded him.

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At the beginning of the period,
the Quaker, Elizabeth Fry,

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who, in an earlier age,
would certainly have been canonised,

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because her spiritual influence on the prisoners
of Newgate was really a miracle.

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And in the middle of the century,
Lord Shaftesbury,

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whose long struggle to prevent the exploitation
of children in factories

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puts him next to Wilberforce,
in the history of humanitarianism.

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It's an almost incredible fact

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that, in the middle of the 19th century,
there was no children's hospital in London

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and children weren't taken into ordinary
hospitals for fear that they might be infectious.

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Shaftesbury was one of the founders
of the Hospital For Sick Children.

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Dickens helped to raise the money for it.

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There is its first ward in Great Ormond Street.

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Here is its successor today.

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And, as I look at it

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I'm more than ever convinced
that humanitarianism

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was the great achievement of the 19th century.

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We're so much accustomed
to the humanitarian outlook

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00:14:05,509 --> 00:14:09,980
that we forget how little it counted
in earlier ages of civilisation.

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00:14:10,080 --> 00:14:13,389
Ask any decent person
in England or America today

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what he think matters most in human conduct

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00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:19,350
five to one, his answer will be "kindness".

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00:14:20,389 --> 00:14:25,330
It's not a word that would have crossed the lips
of any of the earlier heroes of this series.

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If you'd asked St Francis what mattered in life,
he would, we know, have answered

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"Chastity, obedience and poverty."

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00:14:32,440 --> 00:14:36,389
If you'd asked Dante or Michelangelo,
they might have answered,

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"Disdain of baseness and injustice."

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00:14:39,149 --> 00:14:41,298
But kindness? Never.

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00:14:42,360 --> 00:14:47,190
Nowadays, I think we underestimate the
humanitarian achievement of the 19th century.

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00:14:47,269 --> 00:14:51,620
We forget the horrors that were taken
for granted in early Victorian England.

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The hundreds of lashes

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00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:57,990
inflicted daily on perfectly harmless men
in the Army and Navy.

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00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:00,149
The women chained together in threes,

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rumbling through the streets in open carts,
on their way to transportation.

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00:15:04,600 --> 00:15:07,750
These and other
even more unspeakable cruelties

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were carried out by agents of the establishment,
usually in defence of property.

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00:15:15,120 --> 00:15:18,350
Some philosophers tell us that humanitarianism

195
00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:20,389
is "a weak, sloppy,

196
00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:22,629
self-indulgent condition,

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00:15:22,720 --> 00:15:26,259
spiritually much inferior to cruelty and violence".

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00:15:27,320 --> 00:15:30,190
This point has been eagerly accepted
by novelists,

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00:15:30,269 --> 00:15:32,500
dramatists and theatrical producers.

200
00:15:33,548 --> 00:15:38,490
Of course, it's true that kindness is
to some extent, the offspring of materialism

201
00:15:38,600 --> 00:15:42,629
and this has made antimaterialists
look at it with contempt,

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00:15:42,720 --> 00:15:48,269
at the product of what the German philosopher
Nietzsche called "a slave morality".

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00:15:48,360 --> 00:15:52,110
He would certainly have preferred
the other aspect of my subject,

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00:15:52,200 --> 00:15:56,470
the heroic self-confidence of the men
for whom nothing was impossible,

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00:15:56,548 --> 00:15:59,700
the men who forced
the first railways over England.

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00:15:59,788 --> 00:16:01,058
(Whistle)

207
00:16:01,149 --> 00:16:04,418
(MUSIC) JOHANN STRAUSS:
Tales From The Vienna Woods, "Bahn Frei"

208
00:16:21,908 --> 00:16:25,658
The railway engine created a situation
that was really new,

209
00:16:25,750 --> 00:16:28,418
a new basis of unity,
a new concept of space,

210
00:16:28,509 --> 00:16:30,580
a situation that is still developing.

211
00:17:07,509 --> 00:17:11,420
The 20 years after Stephenson's Rocket
had made its momentous journey

212
00:17:11,509 --> 00:17:13,740
along the Manchester-Liverpool railway

213
00:17:13,828 --> 00:17:15,858
were like a great military campaign.

214
00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:19,868
The will, the courage, the ruthlessness,

215
00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:21,910
the unexpected defeats,

216
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:23,950
the unforeseen victories.

217
00:17:24,028 --> 00:17:28,858
The Irish navvies who had built the railway
were like a "grande armée",

218
00:17:28,960 --> 00:17:33,028
ruffians, who yet had a kind of pride
in their achievement.

219
00:17:33,108 --> 00:17:35,058
(MUSIC) Tales From The Vienna Woods

220
00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:53,750
Their marshals were the engineers.

221
00:17:57,548 --> 00:18:04,140
The strongest creative impulse of the time
didn't go into architecture, but into engineering,

222
00:18:04,240 --> 00:18:06,190
partly because, at this date,

223
00:18:06,269 --> 00:18:10,338
it was only in engineering
that men could make full use of the new material

224
00:18:10,440 --> 00:18:13,470
that was going to transform
the art of building - iron.

225
00:18:15,509 --> 00:18:21,259
The first iron bridge in the world was built
at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire in 1779.

226
00:18:22,480 --> 00:18:24,430
Almost archaic.

227
00:18:24,509 --> 00:18:30,769
By 1820, Telford could build the Menai Bridge,
the first great suspension bridge,

228
00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:35,230
an idea that combines beauty
and function so perfectly

229
00:18:35,308 --> 00:18:39,778
that it's hardly been varied, only expanded,
down to the present day.

230
00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:45,430
Here's the Clifton Bridge, begun in 1836,
although not completed till long after,

231
00:18:45,509 --> 00:18:49,048
still one of the most beautiful
suspension bridges in the world.

232
00:18:53,440 --> 00:18:57,990
It was designed by a man who deserves to, rank
with the earlier heroes in this series

233
00:18:58,068 --> 00:19:00,019
Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

234
00:19:01,348 --> 00:19:03,298
He was a born romantic.

235
00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:08,868
Although the son of a distinguished engineer,

236
00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:12,548
brought up in a business
that depended on sound calculations,

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00:19:12,640 --> 00:19:15,828
he remained, all his life
in love with the impossible.

238
00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:20,910
In fact, as a boy, he fell heir to a project
which he himself believed to be impossible,

239
00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:24,910
his father's plan for the construction
of a tunnel under the Thames.

240
00:19:25,960 --> 00:19:28,470
At 20, his father put him in charge of the work

241
00:19:28,548 --> 00:19:34,220
and thus began the sequence of triumphs and
disasters that were to mark his whole career.

242
00:19:35,269 --> 00:19:37,220
Here's one of the triumphs.

243
00:19:37,308 --> 00:19:40,740
A grand dinner held in the tunnel
when it was halfway across.

244
00:19:40,828 --> 00:19:43,858
On the left, Father Brunel congratulating his son.

245
00:19:43,960 --> 00:19:46,230
Behind them, a table full of notables.

246
00:19:47,269 --> 00:19:50,220
It's typical of Brunel
that, in the next bay of the tunnel,

247
00:19:50,308 --> 00:19:53,180
there was an equally grand dinner
for 150 of his miners.

248
00:19:54,240 --> 00:19:58,990
Two months later, the shield collapsed
and the water poured in for the third time.

249
00:20:00,028 --> 00:20:02,019
In the end, the tunnel was completed.

250
00:20:02,108 --> 00:20:04,220
That was the way with Brunel's designs.

251
00:20:04,308 --> 00:20:07,700
They were so bold that shareholders
were frightened and withdrew,

252
00:20:07,788 --> 00:20:09,858
sometimes, I'm bound to say, with reason.

253
00:20:09,960 --> 00:20:15,108
But one thing he did push through and complete
and that was the Great Western Railway.

254
00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:17,630
Every bridge, every tunnel was a drama,

255
00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:21,910
demanding incredible feats of imagination,
energy and persuasion

256
00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:24,430
and producing works of great splendour.

257
00:20:24,509 --> 00:20:27,140
The greatest drama of all was the Box Tunnel,

258
00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:30,348
two miles long, on a gradient,
half of it through rock,

259
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:33,548
which Brunel, against all advice,
left unprotected.

260
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:35,588
How on earth did they do it?

261
00:20:35,680 --> 00:20:38,990
By men with pickaxes, working by torch light,

262
00:20:39,068 --> 00:20:41,298
and horses to pull away the debris.

263
00:20:41,400 --> 00:20:43,348
There were floods, collapses.

264
00:20:43,440 --> 00:20:45,670
It cost the lives of over 100 men.

265
00:20:46,720 --> 00:20:48,470
But, in 1841

266
00:20:48,548 --> 00:20:50,500
a train steamed through

267
00:20:50,588 --> 00:20:53,538
and from that day forward, for over a century,

268
00:20:53,640 --> 00:20:57,150
every small boy dreamt of becoming
an engine driver.

269
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:03,750
Brunel, by his dreams,

270
00:21:03,828 --> 00:21:07,778
no less than by his practical application
of engineering techniques,

271
00:21:07,880 --> 00:21:09,828
is the ancestor of New York.

272
00:21:09,920 --> 00:21:11,868
And, I must say, he looks it.

273
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:13,910
There he is, complete with cigar,

274
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:17,588
the first hero in this series
of whom we have a photograph.

275
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:21,150
He's standing in front of the chains
used in launching,

276
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:23,190
or rather in failing to launch,

277
00:21:23,269 --> 00:21:26,019
his vast steamship, the Great Eastern.

278
00:21:27,068 --> 00:21:29,019
This was his most grandiose dream.

279
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:35,828
The first steamship to cross the Atlantic in 1838
had been only 700 tons.

280
00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:39,108
Brunel's Great Eastern was to be 24,000 tons

281
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,150
a floating palace.

282
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:44,950
The amazing thing is that he got it built at all,

283
00:21:45,028 --> 00:21:48,298
but, no doubt
he had taken too big a leap forward.

284
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:52,950
Although the Great Eastern ultimately floated
and crossed the Atlantic

285
00:21:53,028 --> 00:21:56,940
the delays and disasters it had involved
killed its designer.

286
00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:01,390
But the transatlantic liner was one more way

287
00:22:01,480 --> 00:22:05,548
in which the 19th century
created its new world of shape,

288
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:07,588
its architecture.

289
00:22:11,108 --> 00:22:13,058
"The shapes arise",

290
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,720
said Walt Whitman, writing in the 1860s,

291
00:22:15,788 --> 00:22:20,140
"Shapes of factories, arsenals,
foundries, markets;

292
00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:23,750
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads;

293
00:22:23,828 --> 00:22:26,288
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges,

294
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:29,548
vast frameworks, girders, arches."

295
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:34,940
This is our own style,
which expresses our own age,

296
00:22:35,028 --> 00:22:37,700
as the baroque expressed the 17th century,

297
00:22:37,788 --> 00:22:40,858
and it's the result of 100 years of engineering.

298
00:22:41,920 --> 00:22:44,670
It's a new creation, but it's related to the past

299
00:22:44,750 --> 00:22:48,420
by one of the chief continuous traditions
of the Western mind

300
00:22:48,509 --> 00:22:50,460
the tradition of mathematics.

301
00:22:54,108 --> 00:22:59,460
In the middle of the 19th century, it might well
have looked as if art that set out to be artistic

302
00:22:59,548 --> 00:23:01,500
had much better all be scrapped.

303
00:23:02,548 --> 00:23:04,618
Think of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

304
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:08,548
It was contained in a building,
the so-called Crystal Palace,

305
00:23:08,640 --> 00:23:12,108
but was a piece of pure engineering
on Brunel's principles,

306
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:14,230
and, in fact, greatly admired by him.

307
00:23:14,308 --> 00:23:18,618
Dateless and impressive,
in a somewhat joyless style,

308
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:22,190
but inside this piece of engineering was art.

309
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:25,868
Well, funny things happen in the history of taste,

310
00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:29,990
but I doubt very much if many of these objects
will ever come back into favour

311
00:23:30,068 --> 00:23:32,818
the reason being that they are a giant spoof,

312
00:23:32,920 --> 00:23:34,868
not responding to anything new

313
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,519
or controlled by any stylistic impulse.

314
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:43,308
But in France

315
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:45,348
at exactly the same time,

316
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:47,390
there emerged two painters

317
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:51,430
whose social realism
was in the centre of the European tradition,

318
00:23:51,509 --> 00:23:54,460
Jean François Millet and Gustave Courbet.

319
00:23:55,720 --> 00:23:57,670
They were both revolutionaries.

320
00:23:57,750 --> 00:24:00,019
In 1848, Millet was probably a Communist,

321
00:24:00,108 --> 00:24:02,538
although when his work became fashionable,

322
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,348
the evidence for this was rather hushed up.

323
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,390
Courbet remained a rebel

324
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,430
and was put in prison for his part
in the Commune, very nearly executed.

325
00:24:11,509 --> 00:24:14,578
In 1849, he painted a picture
of a stone-breaker

326
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,710
Alas, destroyed in Dresden during the last war.

327
00:24:17,788 --> 00:24:21,740
He intended it as a straightforward record
of an old neighbour,

328
00:24:21,828 --> 00:24:24,098
but it was seen by a Communist friend,

329
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:28,868
who told him that it was the first great monument
to the workers, et cetera, et cetera.

330
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:31,868
Courbet was delighted by this idea

331
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:36,710
and said that the people of Ornans wanted
to hang it over the altar in the local church.

332
00:24:36,788 --> 00:24:39,538
This, if it were true, which I very much doubt,

333
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:43,509
would have been the beginning
of its status as an "objet de culte",

334
00:24:43,588 --> 00:24:45,940
which it has retained to the present day.

335
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:51,670
It's the indispensable picture
to all Marxist art historians.

336
00:24:51,750 --> 00:24:55,940
The following year, Courbet painted
an even more impressive example

337
00:24:56,028 --> 00:24:58,298
of his sympathy with ordinary people,

338
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:02,910
his enormous picture of a funeral
in his native town of Ornans.

339
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:07,348
By abandoning all pictorial artifice,

340
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:13,190
which must inevitably involve
a certain amount of hierarchy and subordination

341
00:25:13,269 --> 00:25:15,700
and standing his figures in a row,

342
00:25:15,788 --> 00:25:21,140
Courbet achieves a feeling of equality
in the presence of death.

343
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:26,308
How seriously he's accepted
the truth of each head.

344
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:33,028
But I mustn't leave you with the notion

345
00:25:33,108 --> 00:25:37,778
that the relationship between art and society
is as simple and predictable as this.

346
00:25:38,828 --> 00:25:43,769
A pseudo-Marxist approach works fairly well
for the decorative arts

347
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:45,828
and for mediocrities.

348
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:50,190
But artists of real talent
always seem to slip through the net

349
00:25:50,269 --> 00:25:53,019
and swim away in the opposite direction.

350
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:08,588
I'm standing in front of
one of the greatest pictures of the 19th century,

351
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,630
Seurat's Baignade in the National Gallery.

352
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,348
Although it contains factory chimneys

353
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,588
and a bowler hat and proletarian boot tabs,

354
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:22,108
it would be absurd to speak of it
as a piece of social realism.

355
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:25,990
The point of the picture is not its subject,

356
00:26:26,068 --> 00:26:31,298
but the way in which it unites the monumental
stillness of a Renaissance fresco

357
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,670
with the vibrating light of the Impressionists.

358
00:26:34,750 --> 00:26:37,180
It's the creation of an artist

359
00:26:37,269 --> 00:26:39,980
independent of social pressures.

360
00:26:40,068 --> 00:26:43,180
All the greatest pictures of the late-19th century

361
00:26:43,269 --> 00:26:47,460
are quite different in subject and mood
from what one might expect.

362
00:26:47,548 --> 00:26:51,578
And, before one makes gloomy generalisations
about the period,

363
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:55,910
the miseries of the workers
the oppressive luxury of the rich and' so forth,

364
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:59,950
it's as well to remember that
among its most beautiful productions

365
00:27:00,028 --> 00:27:02,380
are these paintings by Renoir.

366
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:07,430
No awakened conscience.
No heroic materialism.

367
00:27:07,509 --> 00:27:10,068
No Nietzsche. No Marx. No Freud.

368
00:27:11,108 --> 00:27:14,700
Just a group of ordinary human beings
enjoying themselves.

369
00:27:15,750 --> 00:27:17,700
(MUSIC) OFFENBACH: La Belle Hélene

370
00:28:52,108 --> 00:28:55,420
The Impressionists didn't set out to be popular.

371
00:28:55,509 --> 00:28:57,778
The only great painter of the 19th century

372
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:01,420
who longed for popularity
in the widest possible sense

373
00:29:01,509 --> 00:29:03,460
was, ironically enough,

374
00:29:03,548 --> 00:29:08,490
the only one who achieved
absolutely no success in his lifetime,

375
00:29:08,588 --> 00:29:10,538
Vincent Van Gogh.

376
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:19,588
In its earlier phase, the awakened conscience
had taken a practical, material form,

377
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:24,670
even Elizabeth Fry, with her powerful
religious gifts, had lots of common sense,

378
00:29:24,750 --> 00:29:26,778
but in the later part of the 19th century,

379
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:30,950
the feelings of shame
at the state of society became more intense.

380
00:29:31,028 --> 00:29:35,098
Instead of benevolent action
there arose a need for atonement.

381
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:39,230
No-one expressed this more completely
than Van Gogh

382
00:29:39,308 --> 00:29:41,538
in his pictures, his drawings,

383
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:43,588
his letters and his life.

384
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:49,910
For the first part of his working life, he was torn
between two vocations, painter and preacher,

385
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:53,068
and for some years
the preacher was in the ascendant.

386
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:57,788
Preaching wasn't enough. Like St Francis,
he had to share the poverty of the poorest

387
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:00,230
and most miserable of his fellow men.

388
00:30:01,068 --> 00:30:04,690
It wasn't the hardships
that made him give up this way of life,

389
00:30:04,788 --> 00:30:08,019
it was his unconquerable need to paint.

390
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:16,670
Van Gogh's hero, the hero of almost all
generous-minded men in the late-19th century,

391
00:30:16,750 --> 00:30:18,500
was Tolstoy.

392
00:30:18,588 --> 00:30:20,538
There he is, sawing wood,

393
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:24,588
expressing the feeling that one must share
the life of working people,

394
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:27,710
partly as a sort of atonement
for years of oppression,

395
00:30:27,788 --> 00:30:32,500
partly because that life was nearer
to the realities of human existence.

396
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,910
Tolstoy towered above his age,

397
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:46,348
as Dante and Michelangelo
and Beethoven had done.

398
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,910
His novels are marvels
of sustained imagination.

399
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:52,990
His doctrines are full of contradictions.

400
00:30:53,068 --> 00:30:58,220
He wanted to be one with the peasants,
yet he continued to live like an aristocrat.

401
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:01,828
He preached universal love,

402
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:05,868
but he quarrelled so painfully
with his poor demented wife

403
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:08,519
that, at the age of 82, he ran away from her.

404
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:17,788
After a nightmare journey,
he collapsed at a country railway station.

405
00:31:19,028 --> 00:31:21,980
He was laid out on a bed
in the stationmaster's house.

406
00:31:23,028 --> 00:31:25,180
Almost his last words were

407
00:31:25,269 --> 00:31:27,220
"How do peasants die?"

408
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:30,348
There he died

409
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:35,028
with all the horrors of modern publicity
stewing outside the station.

410
00:31:36,348 --> 00:31:39,778
After his death
when the peasants were singing a lament,

411
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:42,630
soldiers were sent in with drawn swords

412
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:46,259
to stop them from mourning
the subversive infidel.

413
00:31:47,588 --> 00:31:50,538
However, there was no way
of preventing the funeral.

414
00:32:22,108 --> 00:32:24,460
That scene took place in 1910.

415
00:32:24,548 --> 00:32:29,490
Within two years, Rutherford and Einstein
had made their first discoveries

416
00:32:29,588 --> 00:32:31,818
so a new era had begun

417
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:34,150
even before the 1914 war.

418
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,430
It's the era in which we're still living.

419
00:32:43,068 --> 00:32:45,098
The radio telescope at Jodrell Bank.

420
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,990
Of course, science had achieved
great triumphs in the 19th century,

421
00:32:50,068 --> 00:32:54,500
but nearly all of them had been related
to practical or technological advance.

422
00:32:54,588 --> 00:33:00,140
For example, Edison, whose inventions did as
much as any to add to our material convenience,

423
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:03,548
wasn't what we should call a scientist at all

424
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:06,098
but a supreme do-it-yourself man.

425
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:11,750
But from the time of Einstein, Niels Bohr
the Cavendish Laboratory,

426
00:33:11,828 --> 00:33:16,338
science no longer existed to serve
human needs, but in its own right.

427
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:20,630
When scientists could use a mathematical idea
to transform matter

428
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:26,670
they'd achieved the same quasi-magical
relationship with the material world as artists.

429
00:33:28,028 --> 00:33:32,578
In this series, I've followed the ups and downs
of civilisation historically,

430
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,240
trying to discover results as well as causes.

431
00:33:36,269 --> 00:33:38,940
Well, obviously, I can't do that any longer.

432
00:33:39,028 --> 00:33:41,778
We have no idea where we are going

433
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:44,950
and sweeping, confident articles on the future

434
00:33:45,028 --> 00:33:49,858
seem to me the most intellectually disreputable
of all forms of public utterance.

435
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,990
Scientists who are really qualified to talk
have kept their mouths shut.

436
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,348
JBS Haldane summed up the situation
when he said

437
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,990
"My own suspicion is that the universe
is not only queerer than we suppose,

438
00:34:04,068 --> 00:34:07,019
but queerer than we can suppose."

439
00:34:07,108 --> 00:34:09,489
TANNOY: Three, two, one,

440
00:34:09,590 --> 00:34:11,260
Zero,

441
00:34:19,150 --> 00:34:22,768
(MUSIC) BENJAMIN BRITTEN: Shine Out, Fair Sun
From The Spring Symphony

442
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:54,820
(MUSIC) Shine out

443
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:59,820
(MUSIC) Shine out

444
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,510
(MUSIC) Fair Sun

445
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:15,500
(MUSIC) The stars in icicles arise

446
00:35:16,550 --> 00:35:20,090
(MUSIC) Shine out

447
00:35:21,510 --> 00:35:24,460
(MUSIC) Shine out

448
00:35:26,510 --> 00:35:29,460
(MUSIC) Fair sun

449
00:35:32,110 --> 00:35:37,659
(MUSIC) And make this winter...

450
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:41,230
However, in the world of action
a few things are obvious,

451
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:43,780
so obvious that I hesitate to repeat them.

452
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:47,989
One of them is our increasing reliance
on machines.

453
00:35:48,070 --> 00:35:50,530
They have really ceased to be tools

454
00:35:50,630 --> 00:35:53,260
and have begun to give us directions.

455
00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:57,940
Unfortunately, machines
from the Maxim gun to the computer

456
00:35:58,030 --> 00:35:59,980
are, for the most part,

457
00:36:00,070 --> 00:36:05,010
means by which an authoritarian regime
can keep man in subjection.

458
00:36:05,110 --> 00:36:07,059
(Computers whir)

459
00:36:50,110 --> 00:36:55,050
(MUSIC) The grey wolf howls

460
00:36:55,150 --> 00:36:57,980
(MUSIC) He does so bite

461
00:36:58,070 --> 00:37:00,420
(MUSIC) The grey wolf howls...

462
00:37:14,230 --> 00:37:16,179
(Engines roar)

463
00:37:47,070 --> 00:37:50,380
Our other speciality is the urge to destruction.

464
00:37:58,150 --> 00:38:03,820
With the help of machines, we did our best
to destroy ourselves in two wars

465
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,349
and, in doing so, we released a flood of evil.

466
00:38:08,190 --> 00:38:10,139
(Explosions)

467
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:22,268
(Air-raid siren)

468
00:38:35,110 --> 00:38:39,820
Add to this, the memory of that shadowy
companion who is always with us,

469
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,670
like an inverted guardian angel,

470
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:45,110
silent, invisible

471
00:38:45,190 --> 00:38:47,539
almost incredible

472
00:38:47,630 --> 00:38:50,579
and yet unquestionably there...

473
00:38:52,110 --> 00:38:56,659
..and one must concede that the future
of civilisation doesn't look very bright.

474
00:38:56,760 --> 00:38:58,710
(Soundless)

475
00:39:14,110 --> 00:39:17,650
(MUSIC) Shine Out, Fair Sun

476
00:39:36,110 --> 00:39:40,260
And yet, when I look at the world about me
in the light of these programmes,

477
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:44,309
I don't at all feel that we're entering on
a new period of barbarism.

478
00:39:45,150 --> 00:39:47,780
The things that made the Dark Ages so dark,

479
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:49,909
the isolation, the lack of mobility,

480
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:52,349
the lack of curiosity, the hopelessness,

481
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:54,389
don't obtain at all.

482
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,949
I'm at one of our new universities
the University Of East Anglia.

483
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:04,349
Well, these inheritors of all our catastrophes
look cheerful enough

484
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:08,059
and not at all like the melancholy late Romans
or pathetic Gauls,

485
00:40:08,150 --> 00:40:10,219
whose likenesses have come down to us.

486
00:40:10,320 --> 00:40:16,420
In fact, I should doubt if so many people
have ever been as well fed, as well read

487
00:40:16,510 --> 00:40:21,179
as bright-minded, as curious and as critical,
as the young are today.

488
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,389
Of course, there's been a little flattening
at the top,

489
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,349
but, you know, one mustn't overrate the culture

490
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,949
of what used to be called "the top people"
before the wars.

491
00:40:40,030 --> 00:40:43,860
They had charming manners,
but they were as ignorant as swans.

492
00:40:44,920 --> 00:40:48,150
They knew a little about literature,
less about music

493
00:40:48,230 --> 00:40:51,659
nothing about art
and less than nothing about philosophy.

494
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:56,070
The members of a music group or an art group
at a provincial university

495
00:40:56,150 --> 00:40:59,380
would be ten times better informed
and more alert.

496
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:01,429
(MUSIC) BENJAMIN BRITTEN: The Driving Boy

497
00:41:01,510 --> 00:41:04,579
(MUSIC) And chop-cherry, chop-cherry ripe within

498
00:41:04,670 --> 00:41:07,619
(MUSIC) Strawberries swimming in the cream

499
00:41:07,710 --> 00:41:10,900
(MUSIC) And schoolboys playing in the stream

500
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:13,510
(MUSIC) Strawberries swimming in the cream

501
00:41:13,590 --> 00:41:16,300
(MUSIC) And schoolboys playing in the stream

502
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:23,710
(MUSIC) Then, O then, O then, O my true love said

503
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:25,550
(MUSIC) Till that time come again

504
00:41:25,630 --> 00:41:29,409
(MUSIC) She could not live a maid

505
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:32,710
(MUSIC) When as the rye reach to the chin

506
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:36,150
(MUSIC) And chop-cherry, chop-cherry ripe within...

507
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:51,389
Well, naturally,
these bright-minded, young people

508
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:53,780
think poorly of existing institutions

509
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:55,829
and want to abolish them.

510
00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:59,789
One doesn't need to be young
to dislike institutions.

511
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:03,400
But the dreary fact remains

512
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:06,230
that, even in the darkest ages,

513
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,860
it was institutions which made society work.

514
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:13,670
And if civilisation is to survive

515
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,710
society must, somehow, be made to work.

516
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:22,030
At this point, I reveal myself in my true colours,

517
00:42:22,110 --> 00:42:24,059
as a stick-in-the-mud.

518
00:42:25,110 --> 00:42:30,539
I hold a number of beliefs that have been
repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time.

519
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,429
I believe that order is better than chaos...

520
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:38,550
..creation better than destruction.

521
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:43,268
I prefer gentleness to violence,

522
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:45,309
forgiveness to vendetta.

523
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:51,389
On the whole, I think that knowledge
is preferable to ignorance,

524
00:42:51,480 --> 00:42:53,429
and I am sure

525
00:42:53,510 --> 00:42:57,050
that human sympathy
is more valuable than ideology.

526
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:03,469
I believe that, in spite of
recent triumphs of science,

527
00:43:03,550 --> 00:43:07,250
men haven't changed much
in the last 2,000 years.

528
00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:12,510
And, in consequence,
we must still try to learn from history.

529
00:43:12,590 --> 00:43:14,739
History is ourselves.

530
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:21,750
I also hold one or two beliefs
that are more difficult to put shortly.

531
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:24,190
For example, I believe in courtesy,

532
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:30,869
the ritual by which we avoid hurting other
people's feelings by satisfying our own egos.

533
00:43:32,110 --> 00:43:37,050
I think we should remember
that we are part of a great whole,

534
00:43:37,150 --> 00:43:40,420
which, for convenience, we call Nature.

535
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:45,018
All living things are our brothers and sisters.

536
00:44:00,230 --> 00:44:06,980
Above all, I believe in the God-given genius
of certain individuals

537
00:44:07,070 --> 00:44:11,018
and I value a society
that makes their existence possible.

538
00:44:11,110 --> 00:44:14,059
(MUSIC) TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA:
Responsories For Tenebrae

539
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:22,268
These programmes have been filled
with great works of genius.

540
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:25,670
In architecture, sculpture and painting.

541
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:27,710
In philosophy, poetry and music.

542
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:29,750
In science and engineering.

543
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:33,268
There they are. You can't dismiss them.

544
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:40,268
And they're only a fraction of what Western Man
has achieved in the last 1,000 years,

545
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:43,150
often after setbacks and deviations

546
00:45:43,230 --> 00:45:46,768
at least as destructive as those of our own time.

547
00:45:48,110 --> 00:45:52,539
Western civilisation has been
a series of rebirths.

548
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:57,030
Surely, this should give us
confidence in ourselves.

549
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:00,469
I said, at the beginning of the series,

550
00:46:00,550 --> 00:46:05,179
that it's lack of confidence
more than anything else, that kills a civilisation.

551
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:09,389
We can destroy ourselves
by cynicism and disillusion,

552
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:12,550
just as effectively as by bombs.

553
00:46:14,070 --> 00:46:19,219
50 years ago, WB Yeats, who was more like
a man of genius that anyone I've ever known,

554
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:22,070
wrote a prophetic poem and in it he said...

555
00:46:24,590 --> 00:46:28,699
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

556
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:32,110
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

557
00:46:32,190 --> 00:46:36,860
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed
and everywhere

558
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,389
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

559
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:46,110
The best lack all conviction, while the worst

560
00:46:46,190 --> 00:46:48,750
Are full of passionate intensity."

561
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:56,150
Well, that was certainly true between the wars
and it damn nearly destroyed us.

562
00:46:57,480 --> 00:46:59,429
ls it true today?

563
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:05,820
Not quite, because good people
have convictions, rather too many of them.

564
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:10,150
The trouble is that there is still no centre.

565
00:47:11,190 --> 00:47:14,460
The moral and intellectual failure of Marxism

566
00:47:14,550 --> 00:47:18,500
has left us with no alternative
to heroic materialism

567
00:47:18,590 --> 00:47:20,539
and that isn't enough.

568
00:47:22,110 --> 00:47:24,059
One may be optimistic,

569
00:47:24,150 --> 00:47:29,900
but one can't exactly be joyful
at the prospect before us.

570
00:47:42,110 --> 00:47:44,139
(MUSIC) IGOR STRAVINSKY: Apollon Musagete