Chapter Summary
Friedrich Nietzsche aptly characterized Europe in the late nineteenth century when he wrote, "Disintegration characterizes this time, and thus uncertainty: nothing stands firmly on its feet or on a hard faith in itself; one lives for tomorrow as the day after tomorrow is dubious. Everything on our way is slippery and dangerous, and the ice that still supports us has become thin: all of us feel the warm, uncanny breath of the thawing wind; where we still walk, soon no one will be able to walk." His prophetic words seem to highlight the increasingly apparent limitations of Western civilization, especially in terms of its materialism, hypocrisy, and rationality. Centuries of human thought had elevated reason as the great remedy of humanity's problems. And now, at the end of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche summarized the great crisis facing humanity in its relentless path toward progress. Perhaps that quest was little more than an illusion.
The truth of Nietzsche's prophecy was played out in late-nineteenth-century European life at all levels of society. Old truthscall them nineteenth-century Victorian valueswere called into question and vigorously debated by socialists, feminists, psychologists, artists, and writers of all stripes. Nothing was certain, so it seemed, new social groups found their voice towards the end of social reform and change. Perhaps the record of the age of improvement was not an unmitigated success. There was little doubt that material wealth had increased. But what of morality or human happiness? Artists, writers, and composers turned their backs on the "Beethoven century" and began to experiment with new forms of expression that portrayed another side of human endeavor: the subjective side. Space and time were distorted as well, thus signifying the general decline in certainty that had been so characteristic of the past few centuries. Indeed, uncertainty and anxiety came to illustrate the new age. It is no accident that Freud hoped to make irrationality an object of scientific study or that he developed psychoanalysis at this very moment in time.
The late nineteenth century also witnessed the consolidation of the spheres of influence of the great powers: Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the United States. Of course, there were problems on the domestic front, including anti-Semitism, revolution, and general strikes. The structure of Victorian values was no longer a match for this changed world. Something had to give. And while most of Europe clung to the last vestiges of nineteenth-century comfort and control, a Great War was about to transform the old world into the new world of the twentieth century. There seemed to be no turning back.