CHAPTER IX

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

We have seen that literature and sociology are mutually helpful to each other in their great and inspiring tasks. Sociology gives to literature facts concerning the social life of individuals and of classes, and in return literature gives to sociology a concrete and dramatic presentation of the condition and needs of the time it attempts to portray. The misapprehensions which literature creates, sociology corrects by a careful record of the results of scientific investigation into social realities. Literature gives life and power to facts which of themselves are inert and dead, and brings these facts to the knowledge of multitudes who would otherwise be ignorant of them. These two great departments of human effort are, therefore, partners and not antagonists, each rendering to the other a service that is of great significance and value.

Literature is, however, only one of many documents to which the student of society must give careful attention. It is the helper, but never the ruler, of the worker in the social realm. Only

as literature is true to the highest principles of its own art does it render a service for which the sociologist has any special reason to be grateful. When it attempts to "talk down," or becomes contented with slovenly homilies, it does nothing except degrade itself in the eyes of all beholders. It must study and reflect the past, giving vividness and reality to that which the chronicler coldly states. It must record the positive and the negative results of social experiments from which the principles of progress shall become more and more evident. It is a part of its mission to disclose tendencies which have not yet developed into recognized movements or alarming facts.

It is one of the special social functions of literature to call attention to existing wrongs and to disseminate intelligence concerning abuses. Thus it becomes an advance agent of reform; for no social wrong is ever righted until people are first made aware that a wrong exists, and made to feel the reality of the iniquity. It therefore does most effective work in the first stages of a reform, and often is forgotten by the time the labor it inspired has resulted in corrective legislation or a more righteous custom. breeze which fans the spark into flame is unremembered when the attention of men is engrossed

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brings to self-consciousness the torpid, dormant society of its own day, it is rendering a social service of great magnitude. It cannot be ignored in any careful study of social forces.

Perhaps, however, the greatest aid which literature gives to the progress of society consists in its embodiment of the highest individual and social ideals. Makers of literature are not, as a rule, successful makers of social programs. They are rather revealers of an idealism which may seem visionary and impracticable, but which is in reality a call to the noblest achievements. This call people cannot and will not ignore. This is a mighty force making for advancement in human society. By the artistic, imaginative presentation of facts, conditions, needs, and ideals, the writer of literature becomes a social educator and reformer of great importance in the society whose life he touches.

It is therefore natural to expect that the writings of Alfred Tennyson will have social as well as literary significance. He lived at a time when the changes in industry and society were many and great. The discovery of the motive power of steam was a prelude to social transformations that made the nineteenth century conspicuous in the history of the world. Factories were established, foreign and colonial commerce greatly in

which the franchise was extended and political tolerance gained for those of all religious faiths. Trades unions were organized and great co-operative schemes successfully launched. The age was marked by the growth of democracy, political liberty, and education. Our study reveals to us in part how the poet influenced, and was influenced by, this time of growth for the nation, of suffering for the poor, of marvelous change in social, industrial, and political life.

In any theory of society the conception of man is fundamental. To Tennyson man is a being whom God has made in his own image. He has a distinct personality, however, which is spiritual in its essential nature and is free in will. He dwells in a body through which he is related to the beasts and all the lower orders of creation. He has therefore a twofold possibility. He has angel instincts, which make him like to God, and he has possibilities of sin and degradation which are terrible to contemplate.

Man's duties and destinies are determined by his nature and his highest capacities. He has obligations to God, his Creator, and to man, his brother. Being true to these obligations, he moves toward the summit of his destiny, which is too high to be fully attained in one brief age, but demands an immortality. Man now is being

evolution of the past and the prophecies of the developments of the future. Such men as Prince Albert are actual illustrations of the practicability of these high ideals, and give to us a faith in "the growing purpose of the sum of life," the noble destiny of the individual and the race. This is the man who lives and aspires and achieves, who is the unit of the family, of the government, and of every social institution.

Special importance attaches to the conception of woman in the social system. The society that cherishes a low ideal of the worth and mission of woman cannot itself attain a high mental and moral level. No woman created wholly by the imagination of Tennyson stands out from the company of her sisters as absolutely ideal. The noblest types of womanhood portrayed in the poems are taken from life and not from fancy. It is a significant thing that the poet found such women as Isabel in the world of the actual. lays emphasis upon the fact that woman is not a lower species of man, but possesses her own nature and capacities, which should be developed in accordance with the laws of her own being. It is a mistake to speak of the man and the woman as either equals or unequals. They are diverse, and should have the education that will fit them to do in the best way the work to which they

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