Among the younger generation there was a firm belief in the progress and the betterment that the future would bring. Looking outwards they could see their whole age in perpetual forward motion, in progression. Nineteenth-century England understood time in the sense of "speed and direction of human development". It was the linear time model that structured social life on the island. ' The scientific intellect,' commented Matthew Arnold, could accept ' the idea that the world is in a course of development, of becoming, towards a perfection infinitely greater than we now can even conceive, the idea of a tendance à l' ordre present in the universe groaning and travelling in pain together,' and could ' willingly let the religious instincts and the language of religion gather around it' (Arnold, 83.).
The metaphoric poem The Upward Line (Andrews, 42-4.), which combines the ideas of technical progress and an eschatological model, illustrates the way in which social progress influenced the idea of personal life. It compares life' s pilgrimage with a railway journey:
The line to Heaven by us is made,
With heavenly truth the rails are laid;
From Earth to Heaven the line extends
And in eternal life it ends.
' Repentance' is the station where the passengers embarked, ' God' s word' is the first engineer, God' s love the fire and his grace the steam, and although there are many dark tunnels, all passengers on the ' glory ride' are sure that they will reach their ultimate destination.
Progress, speed, acceleration, time structured by the clock -- these were the milestones which constructed the powerful theoretical time model of the nineteenth century. The linear awareness of history developed throughout the decades to become the leading idea of the twentieth century.
Andrews, Cyril B., The Railway Age. London: Country Life, 1937.
Arnold, Matthew, Theodore Parker (1867).
Last modified 2001