The 18th century has been cause of much debate and interest due to the massive changes that occurred within the European societies. This essay will be looking into the advancement of science and technology during the 18th and 19th centuries, drawing parallels with the sense of disenchantment that that was present among the intellectuals and urban masses of the time and it will be shown that the cause of this spiritual malaise is not a simple cause at all - the cause is a complex and interesting algorithm encompassing many different variables. It will be shown that the spiritual malaise of the period was born out of the intense changes in the societies of the 18th and 19th centuries, the French revolution and the American revolution, but also, intertwined with these changes are persistent continuities such as the search for truth and beauty. Finally, we will see that the spiritual malaise of the 19th is inextricably linked with some of the major conflicts of the 20th century.

There is one single term that is constantly used as the answer to why things changed so much during the 18th and 19th centuries - the "industrial revolution" - what this term describes is correctly explicated by Hamish Graham, he points out that the "inexorable growth of cities, industrial production, and ever-faster forms of transport and communications" were some of the major factors of change in the 18th century. Without a doubt changes in the 18th century were massive. My research suggests to me that the changes occurred like this: Firstly, agricultural changes occurred - more food was produced - this then supported a larger population - and it was this larger population that allowed for people to move off their farms and into urban environments, the cities. Here, at the cities, people started to take the time to develop tools to help the farmers. They made farming life easier through their fabrications and as such less people needed to work on the farms. So, as more and more people made tools in the cities, more and more people could leave the farms and flock to the urban developments. Graham points out that "with more food available from fewer farmhands, rural labor was "released" for work in manufacturing and service occupations, especially in urban centers". As such, the countryside was turned into a source for more money. Farmers moved away from just making enough food to survive, they moved into the territory of being commercial farmers - owning decent sizes of land and making more than enough food to survive - they started making so much food that they had money to put away, or to invest, or to buy more land with after they sold their goods. As Graham states, "these new opportunities sparked changes in institutions, notably in the law (especially over landownership and tenancies)". And history will show us that landownership will play a large role in the coming conflicts of the 20th century, and in the persona of the modern man. The agricultural success of this time that allowed people to get away from the farm and to live in the city, is undeniable. This this success and change, however, was not without costs.

The massive emigration of people from the farmlands to the cities caused disastrous health problems for the people living in these urban environments. The cities could not handle the huge levels of people living their. Sanitary problems were rife, disease and sickness killed off huge amounts of people, both young and old. Even so, the population of mid eighteenth century Europe rose from approximately 144 million to 274 million in 1850 and 423 million by 1900. This population growth caused extensive industrialisation and urbanisation. It was thought that the population growth was the result of "modernisation" due to the improved living standards and better health care, however, it was the population boom that eventually caused a mortality rates to sky rocket once again. Robert Lee points out that the industrial changes promoted increased population density in places where adequate waste disposal and a higher risk of exposure to disease pathogens and as such the mortality rate, especially in infants, went up. He explains that the early modern towns were notoriously unhealthy and the urban mortality rate was very high during the early years of the industrial revolution. Robert Lee points out that the intense urban changes resulted in "deterioration in environmental conditions and rising mortality levels as the existing urban infrastructure was unable to respond to new pressures". These facts, I believe, are poignant with regards to the question of the spiritual malaise of the 20th century. It is highly likely that a large population of the people moving away from farms, during a time of prosperity, had goals and dreams that they would make it 'big' in the big city. However, upon arriving to the city, they found squalor, debauchery, death and poverty - their dreams would have been crushed. They would have wondered why so much natural destruction of the environment had to occur for such a destruction of mankind. Where once they would have been happy to cut down a forest to build a city - because they were naive to the true dark side of the city - now, after having experienced it, they wallow in their self pity that they have destroyed such natural beauty to create a dark, disease-ridden hole for mankind to leap into on their search for money, land and power. It is these thoughts that spurred on the Romantic thinking. Romanticism was a complex revolt against the social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and it was a reaction to the industrial revolution. The Romantics believed in the ideal that Nature is powerful and will eventually overcome the transient and poorly thought out creations of men. The Eighth edition of the Norton Anthology of English literature writes that "Wordsworth identified 'Lyrical Ballads' as his effort to counteract the degradation in taste that had resulted from "the increasing accumulation of men in cities". Wordsworth saw the harmful effects of urbanisation - they found beauty and inspiration in the natural world, away from the cities. One can easily imagine that the sight of many men and women coming to the city, searching for money and a new life, and then dying from disease and sickness, would be rather depressing and challenging. However, science soon became an extremely hot topic and it would prove to be useful in the near future for keeping the cities clean and for keeping the people healthy. However, it will be science in the mid-twentieth century that will enable man-kind to build a bomb big enough to destroy the world.

In the nineteenth century people turned to science to solve their pressing issues. Religion and faith fell into the background as beakers, vials and white-lab coats replaced the religious icons and priestly robes. As Kathryn M. Olesko points out, "the scientific persona in the form of the professional scientist emerged". As such, scientific clubs and institutions began to pop up as well. The scientific community embedded itself into every day life, including politics. The rise of the middle class that came about through the industrial revolution, along with higher literacy levels and schools that taught 'modern' education (such as technical education in the sciences and engineering) allowed for the emergence of science as a vocation (particularly for the middle class). Olesko sums up the cultural change when people stopped looking towards religion for answers and turned to science instead. Olesko states that the nineteenth century saw the rational discourses of the natural and social sciences redefined the body and mind as entities that could (and most likely should) be known through the specialised language of the scientific experts - as opposed to religion, which had been the norm for so long. Race and gender became the staple ways of identifying the self. Olesko also points out that numbers (statistics) also identified the self. The 'modern' man was born out of the statistics that were taken in the 19th century. The mean, the average, the most common traits became the 'modern' man. He was the essence of mass society, his tempered life was the answer that the people wanted - in an age where people were in constant fear of losing their bearings, the average, modern man, held all the answers.

As science developed further scientists started dabbling in the realms of eugenics. Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance (1900), produced an idea that suggested mankind should now use science to better itself via selective breeding. Olesko points out that "racial hygiene was also perceived as an effective antidote to social welfare because rather than protecting the weakest elements of society, it sought to eliminate them". Tie this notion in with a waning moral foundation due to the secularisation of society, along with scientific theories such as Darwinism - along with the unhappiness spawned from the failed dreams of modernisation and one can get a glimpse of the brooding, dark, powerful and hungry desires that were unleashed upon the world in the 20th century. The effect of science upon mankind at the end of the 19th century was difficult to pin point. Some scientists like Rudolf Virchow praised science for developing and modernising dialy life. Whilst others found science to be a suspicious and destructive element of man that could be used for great evil. Olesko interestingly points out that at the end of the 19th century, and the beginning of the 20th, there was a "general nervous temperament" that permeated throughout the whole society due to the inclusion of "precision clocks accurate to one minute" that were found in "in the marketplace and train station" and no doubt in the home and it was this "electrified urban environment that seemed out of control". These words are frightful in the sense that they describe an uneasiness that seems easy to pin point but difficult to control, just like an iceberg. Perhaps it was this uncontrollable notion that added to the angst of the century, and spurred on Nietzsche to write about the twilight of mankind that would give rise to the ubermensch. The superman. The one who rises above the confusion and the chaos - and finds some unequaled power, and peace, above the common society, above the common man. Finally, Olesko points out that there was not a fight between secularism and the bible so to speak, there was just a difference between religion and secularism. Secularism did not want to fight, secularists simply sought to find substitutes for the common religion. And Nietzsche's ubermensch, is a part of this search.

The search for substitutes to religion and faith spilled over into science. Social Darwinism and race ideals contain the same search for meaning and truth and reality that is found within religion. Religious people are always searching to attain that true happiness, the true humanity. Scientists interested in developing the perfect race have similar desires, however, their desires are fundamentally linked to the temporal. However, perhaps the most famous situation of a person aspiring to have a perfect race is Hitler and his dream of the Aryan race, this dream is intertwined with the eternal - as the foundations of the idea lie in myths and legends about aliens and gods. Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Social Darwinisnm is i