Title: Thinking Technology: William Golder and Samuel Butler in the pre-history of New Zealand as a modern technological society

Author: Brian Opie

Publication details: Victoria University of Wellington Library, 2014, Wellington

Part of: William Golder Electronic Edition

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Reports about and commentary on the Great Exhibition were published in New Zealand newspapers. Three in particular capture its extraordinary significance, which is similarly registered in Golder’s poem ‘The Crystal Palace of 1851’ although I have no evidence that he had read them all (but he clearly read the papers published in Wellington).

The extraordinary effect and meanings of the Great Exhibition are captured in different ways in three articles published in New Zealand papers after it closed and before Golder had dated his poem. While differing in their specific interests, they have a common theme: ‘this glorious Palace’ generates wonder and new knowledge as it collapses space and time, bringing the arts of the whole world, past and present, together in one place and encouraging new insight into human capabilities and accomplishments.

In "The General Bearing of the Exhibition on the Progress of Art and Sciences", the inaugural lecture of a course of lectures on the Exhibition put on by the Society of Arts, Rev. Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, used the example of a new technology to express this inclusiveness: ‘It was as if a skilful photographer could bring within the range of his solar spheroscope the whole globe, with all its products. But more, it enabled us to achieve the wish of an ingenious speculative writer in our own day, and tracing every step of human development, be actual spectators, and, as it were contemporaneous witnesses, of every artistic event of note that had occurred since the existence of man on the earth.’ He refers to the Crystal Palace as ‘That mighty theatre … [in which] were collected a vast number of expositions, not of words or letters, but things, and a man might wander amidst its glories day by day.’ This contemplative wandering is, however, highly purposeful; because it permits analysis of ‘how man could act by his operating power on the brute matter and the raw substance, and how in the finished products were shown forth his thoughts, activity and power … a great collection of the works of art might be expected to be the forerunner of great scientific progress.’ Whewell celebrates the coming of age of the arts, not only in the ‘unexampled abundance of novel forms of art’ created by the interaction of matter and mind, but as the ‘origin and subject’ of ‘the work of science’, which is ‘to discover the laws of physical power, as exemplified in material products.’¹⁹

But the Crystal Palace’s transforming power on the minds of visitors is more fully evoked in the opening words of ‘A Vision in the Crystal Palace’:

For many hours I had wandered through its gorgeous mazes, till my mind felt nearly as bewildered under the excitement of scenes so novel and splendid, as my limbs were weary. It was with a feeling of inexpressible satisfaction, that I at length dropped into a seat within sight of those green, ancient elms, so still above the moving throng … the swelling tones the magnificent organs added to the fascinating influences of the place, rose and fell on my senses like the songs of distant angels. I thought upon all the wondrous works of art which I had beheld throughout that long day, and felt that man had indeed richly availed himself of the bountiful gifts of the great Creator.

Unlike the others, this response becomes replayed in a dream vision: ‘the silvery walls of the Palace, with its arched transept, glittered round and above me; but, as I gazed, to what an extent — to what a height — did they spread out! Even while mine eyes were looking on them, the more and more the expanse grew. 'Twas all dreamy, vast, and solemn!’ The palace is emptied of its human productions and expands to include all of God’s handiwork in his creation; the dream vision ends after ‘I passed out in thought into the cool fresh air: millions of worlds, visible and invisible, were rolling on in their silent courses; all, all, doubtless, as full of life as this sphere below; all as radiant with glory and beauty; and my heart felt awed within me.’²⁰

Both of these responses find strong echoes in Golder’s poem and his thought more generally, but the report which most fully elaborates a comparable conception of the present and future social importance of the Great Exhibition is of a lecture given by W. Gisborne at the Auckland Mechanics' Institute²¹ on May 10, 1852 and entitled "The Age We Live In." The principal conception informing the whole lecture serves as a reminder that present debates over copyright in contrast to open access principles, and current conceptions of the knowledge society, have long histories and could benefit from revisiting the much more generous and humane frame of reference which writers like Gibson bring to their thinking about the role of knowledge and knowledge creation in advanced societies. For Gibson, the discussion has not contracted to the economy, but instead is about advancing civilisation:

One of the great characteristics of the present age is the strenuous effort made to disseminate knowledge among the masses of the human race, and to facilitate their mutual intercourse… Learning, wealth, and power may nourish for a time among nations where knowledge is confined to a few,— where the flow of its living waters is artificially banked up, but I hold it impossible for such nations long to remain prosperous, and long to keep the lead in the course of civilisation. This system of mental restriction is essentially false, and carries in itself the cause of its fall. The pyramid rests upon its apex, and not upon its base… As the commerce of nations creates material wealth, so are the treasures of learning best secured by the free commerce of mind and mind. Knowledge ought to know no monopoly… It is no longer attempted to make knowledge valuable by making it scarce, but to make it useful by making it common.²²

This democratic and public conception of the creation and circulation of knowledge for general social betterment informs Golder’s and Butler’s²³ thinking at every point, and it is the ground on which Gibson evaluates the Great Exhibition, which ‘directly tended to the moral elevation and the social welfare of mankind … Altogether wonderful as the spectacle must have been, the suggestions and associations it gives rise to are not its least wonderful incidents. Few, I should imagine, could pace those galleries, in which all the treasures of nature and art, elicited by human skill, were displayed, without feelings of admiration at the successful power of the human intellect, and of reverential gratitude to the Infinite Source from which it sprang… Viewed in this light, the Crystal Palace — the moral Koh-i-noor of this age — was indeed inexpressibly glorious, not only for the precious treasures it contained; but as a proof of the great advance made by the nations of the world in the knowledge of true civilization.’ Unlike the other two writers, Gibson’s phrasing shows that he, like Golder, could not have personally experienced the wonder generated by the Crystal Palace. But the principles which animate his thought and sustain his energies as a colonist are powerfully confirmed and exemplified by the Crystal Palace, here represented as a pivotal project in the scientific, technological, moral and social evolution of humanity.²⁴