The English were at one time not in the least Puritanical. They afterwards became moderately Puritanical in the upper classes and intensely so in the middle classes. They are now slowly but steadily passing out of Puritanism.
The English were at one time more European than insular. After that they became intensely insular, truly a peculiar people. Now, again, they are slowly becoming, chiefly through the influence of London, less insular and more European.
Artistic and Scientific Ideas.
The most powerful agents of change in recent times have been scientific and artistic ideas. These ideas are continuing their work unceasingly, and are even entering into the education of the young. To judge of their importance as new powers we have only to remember that artistic and scientific ideas formerly lay almost entirely outside of aristocratic and middle-class thinking, and were confined to persons specially devoted to artistic or scientific pursuits.
Extent of Scientific Influence.
Its Result.
The change may easily be under-estimated. The love of art and science may be called a taste for pictures or a fancy for shells and minerals, and so made to appear no better than an amusement. In reality, however, the change is most momentous. Science has taught a new way of applying the mind to everything. It has affirmed the right and duty of investigation and verification, it has set up a new kind of intellectual morality which has substituted the duty of inquiry for the duty of belief. The immediate result has been, in England, a sudden and amazing diminution of intolerance, a wonderful and wholly unexpected increase of mental freedom. The people of England have now become tolerant to a degree which could have been hoped for by no one who knew the formerly oppressive and aggressive character of religious majorities in that country. The boast of the national poet, that England was a country where men freely said their say, is now losing its apparently ironical aspect and may be true for the coming generation. The bigotry that still remains is only an inheritance of the past, it does not really belong to the present, still less to the more enlightened future.
The Influence of Art.
Art and Puritanism.
The influence of art is less visible than that of science, and seems inferior in this, that art is associated with ideas of pleasure and relaxation in the public mind, though it is more associated with ideas of study and hard work in the minds of artists. However this may be, the influence of art is important in England as one of the forces which are weakening the spirit of Puritanism. Art and Puritanism are antagonistic forces. The true Puritanical spirit always instinctively feels and knows this; for example, it shuts up the National Gallery on Sundays, and would shut up the Louvre if it could.