Thomas Day - Man of Feeling

Thomas Day ((22 June 1748 – 28 September 1789)

I came across this painting by Joseph Wright (1734-1797) on a recent visit to Beningborough Hall in Yorkshire. It was commissioned by Thomas Day's life-long friend, Richard Lovell Edgeworth who called Day 'the most virtuous human being he had ever known'. The composition is intended to portray Day as a man of feeling, with a meditative and melancholy air.

Richard Edgeworth was a progressive educator inspired by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and through his influence Thomas Day became equally enthralled by his ideas. Rousseau's philosophy of education is not concerned with imparting information and concepts but with bringing about certain qualities in a young person. The aim is to develop character and moral sense so that a person may be his or her own master and uphold virtue even in the unnatural and imperfect society that he or she will have to live in.

After failing to find the perfect wife (several women turned down his proposals of marriage), he decided to adopt two foundlings from orphanages and, using Rousseau's maxims, educate them to be the perfect wife (two would ensure that one of them worked out). This illustrates one of the liberal themes of creating human perfection through education.

He adopted a 12-year-old and an 11-year-old whom he renamed Sabrina and Lucretia and took them to France to educate them in isolation. Unfortunately, the girls became ill and "squabbled" and he decided to give up on Lucretia, whom he did not think could satisfy him intellectually. Sabrina he felt was still a possibility, but her character had to be further strengthened. After dropping hot wax on her arms and hearing her scream, though, he gave up in despair.

Day did finally meet his "paragon" of a woman in Esther Milnes (1753–1792). They were married on 7 August 1778. They lived a very ascetic lifestyle and Esther was never allowed to contact her family.

In 1780, the couple moved to Anningsley in Surrey, when Day bought a new estate there. It was a philanthropic project for both husband and wife and they laboured to improve the conditions of the working classes around them. Here are the liberal themes of philanthropy and Care for the poor and needy.

In 1773, Day published his first work-"The Dying Negro," a poem he had written with John Bicknell that tells the horrifying story of a runaway slave; it was a best seller. Here is the liberal theme of concern for the Oppressed.

When the United States Declaration of Independence was first published, Day pointed out the contradiction between the claim that "all men are created equal" and the existence of American slavery. There were also members of Congress who owned black slaves. In 1776, Thomas Day wrote:

"If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves."

This illustrates another liberal theme of striking blows at inequality and standing up for those Oppressed by the social order. It also shows the role of reason in pointing out inconsistencies between principles and behaviour.

Day argued for the rights of the American colonists in his poem "The Devoted Legions" (1776) and in 1780 he argued in Parliament for an early peace with the revolutionaries as well as parliamentary reform. Here we see liberal support for those Oppressed by the "home team" (in this case the nascent United States of America seeking independence from the British Empire). Also, a familiar liberal position of suing for peace earlier rather than later and, in parliamentary reform, the search for a fairer distribution of power.

It was as a writer for children that Day made his reputation. The History of Little Jack (1787) was extremely popular, but it could not match the sales of The History of Sandford and Merton (1783, 1786, 1789) which was a best seller for over a hundred years. Embracing Rousseau's dictates in many ways, it narrates the story of the rich, noble but spoiled Tommy Merton and his poor but virtuous friend Harry Sandford. Through trials and stories, Harry and the boys' tutor teach Tommy the importance of labour and the evils of the idle rich.

Imagine the thousands of young minds that Day was able to influence through this story! Again, liberal themes emerge: Care for the young; education as the route to a better society; the superior virtue of the Oppressed; the evils of being rich.

Day was thrown from his horse while trying to break it using kindness on 28 September 1789 and died almost instantly.

There were many admirable qualities in Thomas Day, as there are with many liberals, but practicality is not usually one of them (in my experience). Here we see that Day was trying to apply Rousseauian principles to the training of a horse and the result was a collision with reality. I would be the last person to advocate cruelty in dealing with animals but perhaps sensibility has its limits?

This episode with the horse reminds me of how liberals are trying to come to terms with Islam, though the discrepancy between the strength of Thomas Day and his horse, shrinks into insignificance compared to the discrepancy between the power of Islam and the liberals of this world.

Liberals tend to have a strong caring side. Many of the liberals I know or have known certainly share this quality. They do not want to cause harm - to other people, to animals, or to the environment. They usually have a strong empathising tendency and they feel dismay at what they see as other people's disregard for these feelings. They abhor suffering and do not want to be the cause of it. Thomas Day is a good example of these character traits.

Where perhaps they tend to go wrong is in seeing those with less preoccupation with Care than themselves as completely without feeling. It's as if they project the Harm aspect of the Care/Harm dimension onto those they identify as uncaring. This can quickly lead to demonisation of their political opponents. Even though they are engaging in behaviour which from the outside they would condemn (e.g. when Jews were demonised by Nazis) they feel so much self-righteousness with regard to their own causes that they feel justified in behaving this way. They also see their political opponents as being powerful and privileged and deserving targets of any amount of venom.

But what they do is nonetheless dehumanising and infantile.

Thomas Day, and those like him, have done a lot to extend the sphere of compassion in liberal society. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Where conservatives are apt to feel rather exasperated with liberals today is really related to what they see as a dereliction of duty. Why are liberals not doing what they usually do and get out and protest about the incursion into liberal society of Islamic mores, Islamisation? This is the phenomenon that I call Malsi-tung: the liberal surrender to Islam. Not only are liberals not protesting the sexism, racism, and oppression that Islam brings to liberal societies, they are demonising anyone who does stand up to it. This is what is so bizarre.

But the reason for it may be found in the sphere of compassion that I've mentioned above. Liberals have extended their sphere of compassion so far out that they now feel only compassion for those who would kill and enslave them.

Liberal Idea #1 - Human Nature is Infinitely Malleable

Liberalism believes human nature to be not fixed but changing, with an unlimited or indefinitely large potential for positive (good, progressive) development. This is contrasted with the traditional theological doctrines of Original Sin in which our nature was seen to have a permanent unchanging essence; that we are partly corrupt and limited in our potential. In the late 17th C. John Locke formulated the idea that we are born as tabula rasa (blank slates) and that we learn everything that constitutes our character. Any flaws in our character are therefore the product of our upbringing and environment and therefore subject to amelioration. In the 18th C., Rousseau, Condorcet, Diderot and other French philosophers promoted this view and taught that human beings are innately good, they have un-limited potential, and are perfectible.

Modern liberalism is more cautious: our nature is neither good nor bad; we are "plastic" in the sense that we can develop in almost any direction; there may be some limit to our potential but there is no limit we can specify in advance. As Burnham says, "Modern liberalism...holds that there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of man that makes it impossible for human society to achieve the goals of peace, freedom, justice and well-being".

This outlook is extremely optimistic and one of the reactions we get from liberals when we question an assumption of theirs like this one is that we're being mean and bigoted and trying to spoil things. It has been a tough job during the last 50 years of social science research to propose theories or produce evidence which throws doubt on the tabula rasa belief. One very notable example was E.O. Wilson, who became a figure of hatred for liberals when he published his ground-breaking book Sociobiology. This book explored how natural selection, which undoubtedly shaped animal bodies, had also shaped animal behaviour. That was not controversial but he then went on to suggest that the same processes had shaped human behaviour. He believed there was such a thing as human nature and that it constrains the range of what we can achieve when raising our children or designing new social institutions.

As Jonathan Haidt explains in The Righteous Mind,

Wilson used ethics to illustrate his point. He was a professor at Harvard, along with Lawrence Kohlberg and the philosopher John Rawls, so he was well acquainted with their brand of rationalist theorizing about rights and justice. It seemed clear to Wilson that what the rationalists were really doing was generating clever justifications for moral intuitions that were best explained by evolution. Do people believe in human rights because such rights actually exist, like mathematical truths, sitting on a cosmic shelf next to the Pythagorean theorem just waiting to be discovered by Platonic reasoners? Or do people feel revulsion and sympathy when they read accounts of torture, and then invent a story about universal rights to help justify their feelings?

Wilson charged that what the moral philosophers were really doing was fabricating justifications after "consulting the emotive centers" of their own brains.

Obviously, liberals were incensed by this idea and immediately pronounced Wilson to be a "fascist" which justified the charge for some that he was a "racist" which  justified that he be stopped from speaking in public. (sound familiar?)

Protesters who tried to disrupt one of his scientific talks rushed the stage and chanted:

"Racist Wilson, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide."

This is depressingly familiar behaviour from the liberal guardians of our morals. First the leap from hurt feelings to damning label (fascist); then, on the basis of the first damning label, a leap to the next (racist); then, on the basis of that damning label, he is accused of "genocide"; and then the boycotts, the sit-ins, the campaigns to isolate the heretic and destroy his career and social standing. Such behaviour is reminiscent of witch trials and the Inquisitions. How demonic the angelic liberals can be! But they are in the matrix and they can't see themselves for what they are.

The research by Tajfel on minimal groups points to something in human nature which is both very deep-seated and unchangeable. We coalesce into groups very readily and on the basis of our group membership we make judgements about the superiority of our own group. We even do this when the group we are assigned to is based on trivial, arbitrary, and random criteria.

Confirmation bias is another universal in psychological research. We are very good at finding and remembering information which confirms our beliefs but absolutely terrible at seeking or remembering information which contradicts them. This behaviour is found across all cultures, it is not limited to the New York Times. We are cognitive misers who find the quickest route to the conclusions we want to reach and we apply different tests to information depending on whether it supports our beliefs or contradicts them: for the former we ask Can I believe it? and for the latter we ask Must I believe it? We are biased by nature. We also continue to cling to beliefs even when presented with strong evidence that those beliefs are false. Liberals will read this and continue to believe that human nature is perfectible - given the right social conditions.

One of the things that has made science so successful is that the scientific method is a procedure which enables us to circumvent the natural human tendency to seek information confirming our beliefs. In science, we can formulate a hypothesis which is a clear statement about the world that can be subjected to a confirming or falsifying test (a falsifiable hypothesis may be preferable). The test can be designed so that it is a fair and objective test of the hypothesis. Arriving at a conclusive true or false test is obviously much easier with respect to physical phenomena than it is with psychological and social questions and there is therefore much less wiggle room when results contradict a pet belief. Many scientific facts are neither pleasant nor unpleasant to know; they are simply useful. When they do have more emotional impact they become controversial and hotly contested - think of evolution for example.

Psychological and social information does generally have an emotional impact; there is a basic like or dislike response to it. This necessarily engages the mechanism of affective priming and the powerful forces of the emotional centers of our brains. Try as you might, you cannot prevent this. (The liberals attacking Wilson certainly didn't even try.)

Moral Foundations Theory indicates that we are born with a number of inherited moral foundations. These moral foundations are the result of evolution. Different cultures (and social environments) develop these structures in different ways and to different degrees. Nevertheless it is these moral foundations which underlie moral responses in all of us, they are part of our nature.

These examples should be sufficient to show that human nature is not infinitely malleable nor inherently good or perfectible. Liberals will look for flaws in the arguments that will enable them to wriggle off the hook of Must I believe it? I can't do anything about that, it's just human nature.

workshop

to be continued...

liberals fought against conservatives as embodiments of entrenched interests and the view that things could not change as they were God-ordained;  aligned with the emerging sciences and seen to be from the same stable; Newton's Principia Mathematica and Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (took him 17 years to write it so very much a product of the 17th C) - Ed mentioned another book? Glorious Revolution 1688;  Christian charity never very far away - social reformers; as Science and Commerce combined to unleash the forces of the Industrial Revolution, the Liberal Care foundation was more and more aroused to action, first through charitable works and increasingly through social reform; helping the poor has a long-standing position within Christian civilisation as the good thing to do; where Care is lacking Harm is perceived; liberalism always retained a pluralistic consensus view of the social world. it was socialism and especially Marxism that introduced the conflict perspective; Marx attempted to show that this conflict was an inescapable feature of capitalist societies and would through the dynamics of dialectical materialism lead to the overthrow of liberal capitalist societies. Thomas Day is an interesting example of an early progressive and one who exemplifies a lot of what is good about progressivism - its clear intolerance of slavery in various forms. What modern progressivism is now guilty of is a failure to face the reality of a vastly greater manifestation of slavery. Islam reduces its followers to slavish automatons willing to kill people for non-obedience; it condones slavery and has never renounced the acceptance of slavery in its doctrines; how could it, for Muhammad himself kept slaves, took slaves in war and used women slaves for sex; if he did it how can any Muslim object to it? This has to be one of the best ways of getting liberals to oppose Islam - its relationship to slavery.If they fail to do this they are Betraying their movement. Thomas Day was an abolitionist. The Left likes to see itself as on the side of the abolitionists in contrast to the conservatives who owned slaves in some cases. Note his intervention on the American Declaration of Independence; the abolitionist theme is founded on Care. Thomas Day is very good example of what's best and most ridiculous in progressives: not afraid to point our hypocrisy; kindness to all sentient beings; kindness especially to children; died after being thrown from a horse which he was trying to train with kindness;

the cult of sensibility in 18th C is an important social current; it pushes the Care foundation into its dominant position that we see in liberals today; feeling above reason; weeping at the sight of a poor beggar became a mark of moral respectability and higher moral development; whereas early liberal society had been acutely aware of the dangers of strong passions, as exemplified in the 16th and 17th century wars of religion and civil disorder and the measures necessary to prevent anarchic passions getting out of hand, the cult of sensibility and the romantics; the romantic view of the poor begins and extends into the romanticism of the proletariat (at least for some); the poor are without sin and if they wrong things it's because of their terrible circumstances; the movement for penal reform to reflect this view; the glorification of revolt against ones origins; also seen in the middle class hippies of the 1960s; the purity of love theme in Jane Austen and other novelists; marrying for love not family requirements; marrying above or below one's social class in accordance with the dictates of the heart; (is this a Sanctity foundation?) ; Romanticism dominated the culture of the 19th C.

Liberalism was given a loose-knit theoretical foundation in the work of John Locke. His approach was pragmatic rather than dogmatic; he did not attempt to provide a coherent rational system but rather a new temper of thought which sought to reform society on the principles of personal liberty, the enjoyment of private property, freedom of conscience, rationality, a system of checks and balances in government to forestall the creation of tyrannies, and an empirical approach to knowledge which would seek progress through science, based on observation, and its application to human affairs. Its recipe for social change was not wholesale revolution but incremental changes that would be broadly agreed upon at each step. Its byword was tolerance and its most powerful weapon was freedom of speech, most famously expressed by Voltaire when he said, “I disapprove of what you say but will fight to the death to defend your right to say it.” In fact, Voltaire was responsible for taking Locke's ideas to France where he championed them.

In the first half of the 18th C. liberal society consolidated the gains of the Glorious Revolution and held back any resurgence of Catholicism in the form of the Jacobites (those still loyal to the catholic James II), culminating in the decisive defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Notable during this period was a group known as the Kit-Cat Club. This was a group of influential Whigs who were determined to see the fruits of the Glorious Revolution realised. The Hanoverian Protestant kings (George I, II, III, IV) were also key agents in seeing the Protestant hold on power maintained.

Liberals in this early phase were acutely aware of the perils of religious fanaticism and unreason, as played out during the previous century, and therefore strove to build a social order based on rationality and tolerance.

The Industrial Revolution and The Romantic Reaction

The advent of the Industrial Revolution saw a new phase of liberal society. The empirical methods of science were beginning to bear fruit in the form of new techniques of production, the extraction of new materials, the development of new products, and above all the use of mechanical power. Factories, mines, and commercial towns grew and brought both wealth and hardship. People could be subjected to extremely long hours in harsh conditions with absolutely no protection for their immediate or long-term welfare. Those born with wealth to invest or with entrepreneurship and luck could become extremely wealthy and powerful. A new class of wealthy entrepreneurs was born. There were plenty of stories about rags to riches and many of these were certainly true but for the most part, if you were poor you stayed poor and your vulnerability to the vicissitudes of life was very high.

The Romantic movement was a corrective to the rationality and the harshness of liberal industrial society. Certainly society was freer but it was a lot freer for some than for others. Those at the bottom of the social order had little freedom to speak of and were more or less forced to endure whatever conditions the owners of businesses saw fit to offer.

But romanticism went a lot deeper than compassion for the poor and compassion was arguably not its primary motive. Rousseau's famous dictum, "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains." sounds like a cry from the heart for the plight of the oppressed masses and it certainly became a mark of elevated moral sentiment to weep openly at the sight of a vagabond. But romanticism was aiming deeper still. It was not at ease in the rational order of liberal society; it sought to release the "hearts affections". Sensibility became a counterpoint to sense. It was a counter-culture. It wanted feeling to replace reason as the principle of order. Romanticism was also not keen on scientific empiricism. Science not only had a tendency to lead to the development of ugly industries that scarred the landscape and transformed idyllic peasants into oppressed proletarians, it also broke many comforting illusions and myths. It seemed to unveil an increasingly desolate view of reality. One that was entirely indifferent to the fate of the individual. We will see this again in the counter-culture of the 1960s.

Societies built on scientifically rational principles were also portrayed in novels like Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". These were rationally ordered and conflict-free societies in which all were happy with their lot. But, they are morally repulsive because they lack freedom and the ability, or even the desire, to question.

Romanticism in one form or another continued to be a dominant cultural force throughout the 19th C. and into the 20th.

Liberalism and Socialism

During the 19th C. liberalism, true to its word so to speak, continued to offer reform as the best way of mitigating the harshest effects of industrialisation. The Reform Acts of the period are testament to a determination to improve the lives not just of the winners but of those bearing the negative aspects of industrial development. The Abolition of Slavery stands as one of liberalism's great triumphs. In this it signalled a refusal to allow an institution that stood in direct contradiction to the principle of equality of all men - though it hadn't got as far as extending this women. What liberals stand guilty of today is a refusal to confront a vastly more complex system of slavery in the religio-political totalitarian system of Islam. Islam reduces its followers to slavish automatons willing to kill people for non-belief; it condones slavery and has never renounced the acceptance of slavery in its doctrines. How could it? Muhammad himself kept slaves, took slaves in war and used captive women as sex slaves; if he did it how can any Muslim object to it? This could be one of the best avenues for getting liberals to realise the real nature of Islam and how it stands in opposition to all that they claim to espouse. If they fail to stand up to the slavery inherent in Islam they are Betraying their principles.

Still, the procedure was clear enough: we'll continue to improve the lives of everyone by gradually reforming the system whilst not trampling on the rights of those already enjoying the fruits of the system to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

"Not good enough" replied the socialists. Whereas liberalism maintained a pluralistic model of society that could be gradually improved for the benefit of everyone, socialism introduced the idea that the system would never work to the benefit of everyone because it was inherently conflictual. As long as there were owners of businesses who could hire and fire as they pleased and those who had only their labour to sell would have to accept on the terms offered, the system was rigged heavily in the interests of one side. The liberal capitalist order was therefore seen as inherently exploitative, as being predicated on exploitation. How was such a system ever going to produce a just society? It wasn't, concluded the socialists.

In one form or another, liberal capitalist society now had to contend with an increasingly organised force of opposition within it. Trade unions, Chartists, agitators, political parties, as well as artists, writers, and philosophers were all working to radically alter or overthrow the liberal order. Marx tried to show that liberal capitalist societies were destined to be torn apart through increasing polarisation. Liberal society generally remained tolerant of these developments, seeing them as aspects of the broad movement for reform, as voices that could be accommodated to varying degrees within the great liberal tent, which was after all in favour of free speech and differences of opinion. Liberal reforms continue to provide hope that lives will improve bit by bit and if not for me then for my children.

An aspect of liberal reform is the tendency of the state to take on greater responsibility for the care and protection of those rendered more vulnerable: the sick, the young, the elderly, the poor. The provision of universal education begins at the end of the 19th C. and at the beginning of the 20th C. the Liberal government of Lloyd George institutes the first national pension scheme for men over 70 years of age. (This was not a huge financial commitment at the time)

The threat of revolutionary forces gaining ground becomes an important spur for further reforms.

The World Wars and The Welfare State

World War I did a great deal to undermine confidence in the inevitability of scientific and social progress. Mechanised warfare showed the horrific scale of destruction that was possible on the battlefield. The war provided the perfect model of senseless destruction as millions of men fought and died in the mud in order to gain a few yards of mud from the enemy. The whole tragedy sent the message that we are irrational rather than rational and that the fruits of reason, in the form of advanced weapons, can turn against us in the most barbaric manner.

It seemed as if the prophets of sensibility had been right. This whole enterprise of scientific progress was an illusion. We would have been better off creating an idyllic pastoral society rather than an industrial nightmare.

The carnage of the First World War lingers in our memories to this day, as it should. But hot on the heels of the First World War came the Second. Throughout the 1930s pacifists and appeasers were keen to refer to the horrors of the earlier war and the wisdom of avoiding any involvement in another. We had plenty of scars, both physical and psychological, to back this assertion. Liberals were at the forefront of the campaign to deny the threat existed. Churchill was vilified as a war-monger. This label was designed to trigger the Harm aspect of Care/Harm and thus to bring about his condemnation. We have seen liberals engaging  in this tactic with respect to George W. Bush (successfully as it turned out). It was hoped that Hitler would turn his attention on the Russians and thereby deal with another threat that we would rather not have to deal with ourselves.

Nevertheless, wars are not chosen by us, they are often foisted on us. It was fight Nazism or live under its jackboot and wave goodbye to liberal society. Fortunately for the generations since, Churchill rallied the country to mount a defence and with America joining the effort in 1941 liberal society with its plucky ability to create surprises eventually prevailed.

After the war, the nation's masses were full of expectation for a greater role of government in ameliorating their lives and thus was born the Welfare State. The National Health Service, the National Insurance Scheme, and various changes to education were principal among these changes. The idea sprung up of a "cradle to grave society" in which the protective role of the state would ensure all were fairly treated and none would suffer too greatly. The five evils of Squalor, Ignorance,Want, Disease, and Idleness would be fought on our behalf.

Once the austere post-war era was over in 1950, we began to see a general uplift in the living conditions of the masses. We approached full employment, so much so that business leaders started to look abroad for immigrant labour. The conservative government of Harold Macmillan was the first to propose and execute this strategy.

The Cold War

There was of course a shadow cast across this welfare paradise by the threat of nuclear war. This concern would grow during the 1960s and continue until the 1980s.

Again, the threat of advanced weapons undermines faith in liberal society and scientific progress. What could be done to realise the benefits of science whilst removing the threat of war?