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Philosophy has a way of moving slowly, so theories that come forth take years to bear fruit. Nietzsche wrote in 1883 and sold perhaps one book. He died insane and unknown. Nevertheless, by 1900, people began to notice his ideas and the brutal future of which he wrote. Mill’s Utilitarianism, published in 1863, espoused the “greatest happiness to the greatest number” as the definition of morality, but it too foresaw a world where decisions had to be based on something other than religious grounds. By 1900, this philosophy was also gaining adherents.[163]

Another art was coming of age, and it combined art and science; it was photography. I can hear what you are thinking now . . . so what? Why does photography matter? If you have never seen a Mathew Brady photograph of an American Civil War battlefield you have not fully experienced the impact of photography. These photographs are simply statements of what was in front of the lens at the time of exposure. It is art by a machine. The man places the camera (that is the art part), but the scene is the scene and cannot be altered from its basic truth (at least in 1864); and that is the science part.[164] The photos of the battlefields of the 1860s are a blunt statement of death or life. They are stark and plain, almost without a soul. I will name this “harsh truth.”

Compare these photos with the many drawings or paintings of the age. Battlefield artists painted and drew much of the Civil War action. In comparison with the photographs the drawings, even those made on the scene, depict a different nuance or feel even though very accurate. Comparing the drawings to the photographs, rather than paintings, is interesting because both creations took place on the spot during the event. Paintings were finished back at a studio far away from the event. The drawings (or paintings) show what I will name “heroic truth.”

Figure 46 Drawing of Pickett’s Charge, Gettysburg

Note that both are “truth,” but truth seen through the eyes of science and truth seen through the eyes of a human are different. The photographs have no “heroic” sense about them. Men are lying dead in the fields or roads with little around them except more dead. The men seem part of the landscape. The figures are unmoving, unknown, and without a higher purpose. That is the view of science, rather harsh but blunt, plain and very straightforward. The drawings have a heroic sense to them. Men seem to move, waving hats and sabers, falling in battle while smoke fills the air, and horses thunder toward waiting masses of men. A higher purpose screams from the artist’s paper. These men have purpose, because they are defending the rights of other men or their homeland, and showing courage in fierce combat. It is humanity at its highest, sacrificing for God and country, family and friend, wife and child.

Figure 47 Photograph of Confederate Dead at Antietam

War is much more like the harsh photograph than the heroic drawing. Therefore, here is the contradiction; the photograph is as real as it can be given the state of science at the time, but it adds to the philosophy of chaos and meaninglessness because it displays the human being in a mechanical way. Nothing is special about the humans in the photographs because they end up as objects, like all other objects in the photograph. Nothing moves, even the men lay still, their color and the color (shade is more like it) of the surrounding objects nearly the same (1864, all black and white). Of course, in 1864 photographs remained silent again reducing the humanity.

Nonetheless, the photographs were striking. They brought the war home to the civilians left behind with a gruesome truthfulness. Photographs were nothing like the heroic battle drawings of men pushing forward for the cause. Photographs of dead men refuse to look like much, but they reveal a startling fact; these men were once alive. Now they lay lifeless in a mechanical picture. The impact of photography