197 Turner. Ideology and (Jle I97

The empiricism of English social thought, the rejection idealism and grand theory meant that

a general theory of (English) society did not develop, because English intellectuals were not

called Upon to theorize an alternative social system, or to provide a defence of liberal

bourgeois democracy against a proletarian revolution or a fascist takeover. Intellectual life

was dominated by the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the empiricism of David Hume, the

political philosophy of Locke and, later, by the middle-class idealism of T.H. Green.

Although the Halevy thesis cannot be swallowed in its entirety, it is the case that Methodist

principles probably did more to shape the everyday world of the nineteenth-century working

class than either socialism or liberalism. Neither Hegelian nor Marxist grand theory acquired

a significant following among the intellectuals.

Intellectual life in England was, and to some degree remains, divided into two separate and

distinctive sectors. There it the tradition of the Oxbridge gentleman-academic, who is a

person of ‘independent means' and for whon the university functioned as a special club

within which one could undertake scholarly research and professional egagements. Within

this traditional setting, the gentleman-scholar was typically a writer of essays and articles

rather than of sytematic treatises, because the essay is more compatible with and symbolic of

leisure and the cult of the amateur. The general essay avoid any hint of scientific

specialization. The gentleman is independent, sekking no patronage from the state.

Occasionally the gentleman-scholar might combine these activities with an ecclesiastcal

living. This habitat produced the concept of a “fine mind', that is, an inetellectual for whom

brilliance comes naturally without effort, and whose talents might find expression

simultaneously in almost any field from patrstic theology to nuclear physics.

By contrast, there was the dissenting scientist of the provinces, whose academic interests

were often adjacent to employment in business or industry. They were often associated with

provincial scientific societies. These independent academies had often been created by

dissenting religious group (Baaptist, Methodists and Quakers). There was an important

cultural division between these provincial academies and the traditional elites in the Agalican

Church and the ancient universities. To some extent, the origin of English sociology were in

the dissenting, provicial milieu of the Midlands and northern England. Herbert Spenncer,

nonconformist,