Victorian Thinkers: The Victorian Sage

Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and William Thackeray are among the Victorian thinkers to earn the title of “sage.” To some degree, the Victorian sages were respected and enjoyed by people from all social classes. They were certainly considered intellectuals and trailblazers of alternative viewpoints. They passed their message through public speaking, periodic columns in newspapers, poetry, and in novel-form. It is a difficult task to describe them as a group because they were each so unique in their style and beliefs. Yet, their focus and aims had much in common.

The sage’s general purpose was to express notions about the world and people’s situation in it, in order to promote the discovery of a righteous lifestyle (Holloway 1). The industrial civilization in which they existed was a popular topic of the time. They denounced the industrial civilization for its social injustices, its aesthetic shoddiness and its moral and cultural emptiness. The sages each had their own prescriptions for the world, but the common ideology was that human life should be happier, more valuable and more fulfilling than the conditions of 19th century England (Thomas v).

A majority of their ideas can be categorized as dogmatism: they offered little proof for their claims because like religion, they considered their philosophies to transcend logical arguments. Logic was too coarse a vehicle for their type of argument (Holloway 3-6). As a result of influences like the Bible, the Classics, and the Romantic movement, the sages’ underlying convictions and beliefs came through in their works. “There is an immense fund of unconscious Christianity underlying the undefinable, and to express in finite language the infinite that reveals itself ...

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...leviate the problems. This analysis suggests that the closest parallels that presently exist are morally-righteous public servants and leaders of various civil rights efforts.

Works Cited

Collini, Stefan. Arnold. 1988. Ed. Keith Thomas. Victorian Thinkers. Great Britain: Oxford U Press. 1993.

Grieg, J.Y. T. Thackeray: A Reconsideration. Great Britain: Oxford U Press. 1950. Rpt. in USA: Archon Books. 1967.

Holloway, John. The Victorian Sage: Studies in Argument. Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1953. Rpt. in USA: Archon Books. 1962.

Kelman, John. Prophets of Yesterday and Their Message for Today. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U Press. 1924.

Landow, George P. Ruskin. 1985. Ed. Keith Thomas. Victorian Thinkers. Great Britain: Oxford U Press. 1993.

Thomas, Keith. Foreword. Victorian Thinkers. Ed. Keith Thomas. Great Britain: Oxford U Press. 1993.