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24 THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
AN INQUIRY INTO ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH
BY
J. B. BURY
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY, AND FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Dedicated to the memories of Charles Francois Castel de Saint-
Pierre, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, Auguste
Comte, Herbert Spencer, and other optimists mentioned in this
volume.
Tantane uos generis tenuit fiducia uestri?
PREFACE
We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in
either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and
trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to
be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling
idea of western civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity
is the general test to which social aims and theories are submitted
as a matter of course. The phrase CIVILISATION AND PROGRESS has
become stereotyped, and illustrates how we have come to judge a
civilisation good or bad according as it is or is not progressive.
The ideals of liberty and democracy, which have their own ancient
and independent justifications, have sought a new strength by
attaching themselves to Progress. The conjunctions of "liberty and
progress," "democracy and progress," meet us at every turn.
Socialism, at an early stage of its modern development, sought the
same aid. The friends of Mars, who cannot bear the prospect of
perpetual peace, maintain that war is an indispensable instrument of
Progress. It is in the name of Progress that the doctrinaires who
established the present reign of terror in Russia profess to act.
All this shows the prevalent feeling that a social or political
theory or programme is hardly tenable if it cannot claim that it
harmonises with this controlling idea.
In the Middle Ages Europeans followed a different guiding star. The
idea of a life beyond the grave was in control, and the great things
of this life were conducted with reference to the next. When men's
deepest feelings reacted more steadily and powerfully to the idea of
saving their souls than to any other, harmony with this idea was the
test by which the opportuneness of social theories and institutions
was judged. Monasticism, for instance, throve under its aegis, while
liberty of conscience had no chance. With a new idea in control,
this has been reversed. Religious freedom has thriven under the
aegis of Progress; monasticism can make no appeal to it.
For the hope of an ultimate happy state on this planet to be enjoyed
by future generations--or of some state, at least, that may
relatively be considered happy--has replaced, as a social power, the
hope of felicity in another world. Belief in personal immortality is
still very widely entertained, but may we not fairly say that it has
ceased to be a central and guiding idea of collective life, a
criterion by which social values are measured? Many people do not
believe in it; many more regard it as so uncertain that they could
not reasonably permit it to affect their lives or opinions. Those
who believe in it are doubtless the majority, but belief has many
degrees; and one can hardly be wrong in saying that, as a general
rule, this belief does not possess the imaginations of those who
hold it, that their emotions react to it feebly, that it is felt to
be remote and unreal, and has comparatively seldom a more direct
influence on conduct than the abstract arguments to be found in
treatises on morals.
Under the control of the idea of Progress the ethical code
recognised in the Western world has been reformed in modern times by
a new principle of far-reaching importance which has emanated from
that idea. When Isocrates formulated the rule of life, "Do unto
others," he probably did not mean to include among "others" slaves
or savages. The Stoics and the Christians extended its application
to the whole of living humanity. But in late years the rule has
received a vastly greater extension by the inclusion of the unborn
generations of the future. This principle of duty to posterity is a
direct corollary of the idea of Progress. In the recent war that
idea, involving the moral obligation of making sacrifices for the
sake of future ages, was constantly appealed to; just as in the
Crusades, the most characteristic wars of our medieval ancestors,
the idea of human destinies then in the ascendant lured thousands to
hardship and death.
The present attempt to trace the genesis and growth of the idea in
broad outline is a purely historical inquiry, and any discussion of
the great issue which is involved lies outside its modest scope.
Occasional criticisms on particular forms which the creed of
Progress assumed, or on arguments which were used to support it, are
not intended as a judgment on its general validity. I may, however,
make two observations here. The doubts which Mr. Balfour expressed
nearly thirty years ago, in an Address delivered at Glasgow, have
not, so far as I know, been answered. And it is probable that many
people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or
break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic
forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost
fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the
fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league
of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many
high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long
stride forward on the road to Utopia.
The preponderance of France's part in developing the idea is an
outstanding feature of its history. France, who, like ancient
Greece, has always been a nursing-mother of ideas, bears the
principal responsibility for its growth; and if it is French thought
that will persistently claim our attention, this is not due to an
arbitrary preference on my part or to neglect of speculation in
other countries.
J. B. BURY. January, 1920.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND
LE ROY
CHAPTER II UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON
CHAPTER III CARTESIANISM
CHAPTER IV THE DOCTRINE OF DEGENERATION: THE ANCIENTS AND
MODERNS
CHAPTER V THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE
CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE
CHAPTER VII NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE,
TURGOT
CHAPTER VIII THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS
CHAPTER IX WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX
CHAPTER X THE YEAR 2440
CHAPTER XI THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: CONDORCET
CHAPTER XII THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER XIII GERMAN SPECULATIONS ON PROGRESS
CHAPTER XIV CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XV THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: I. SAINT-SIMON
CHAPTER XVI SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE
CHAPTER XVII "PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
(1830-1851)
CHAPTER XVIII MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851
CHAPTER XIX PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX: NOTES TO THE TEXT
[Proofreaders note: these notes have been
interspersed in the main text as Footnotes]
INTRODUCTION
When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power
in history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express
human aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such
as liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism. Some of
these have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of
them should not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if
it were the united purpose of a society or of the world to realise
it. They are approved or condemned because they are held to be good
or bad, not because they are true or false. But there is another
order of ideas that play a great part in determining and directing
the course of man's conduct but do not depend on his will--ideas
which bear upon the mystery of life, such as Fate, Providence, or
personal immortality. Such ideas may operate in important ways on
the forms of social action, but they involve a question of fact and
they are accepted or rejected not because they are believed to be
useful or injurious, but because they are believed to be true or
false.
The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it
is important to be quite clear on the point. We now take it so much
for granted, we are so conscious of constantly progressing in
knowledge, arts, organising capacity, utilities of all sorts, that
it is easy to look upon Progress as an aim, like liberty or a world-
federation, which it only depends on our own efforts and good-will
to achieve. But though all increases of power and knowledge depend
on human effort, the idea of the Progress of humanity, from which
all these particular progresses derive their value, raises a
definite question of fact, which man's wishes or labours cannot
affect any more than his wishes or labours can prolong life beyond
the grave.
This idea means that civilisation has moved, is moving, and will
move in a desirable direction. But in order to judge that we are
moving in a desirable direction we should have to know precisely
what the destination is. To the minds of most people the desirable
outcome of human development would be a condition of society in
which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly
happy existence. But it is impossible to be sure that civilisation
is moving in the right direction to realise this aim. Certain
features of our "progress" may be urged as presumptions in its
favour, but there are always offsets, and it has always been easy to
make out a case that, from the point of view of increasing
happiness, the tendencies of our progressive civilisation are far
from desirable. In short, it cannot be proved that the unknown
destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The
movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction
and therefore not Progress. This is a question of fact, and one
which is at present as insoluble as the question of personal
immortality. It is a problem which bears on the mystery of life.
Moreover, even if it is admitted to be probable that the course of
civilisation has so far been in a desirable direction, and such as
would lead to general felicity if the direction were followed far
enough, it cannot be proved that ultimate attainment depends
entirely on the human will. For the advance might at some point be
arrested by an insuperable wall. Take the particular case of
knowledge, as to which it is generally taken for granted that the
continuity of progress in the future depends altogether on the
continuity of human effort (assuming that human brains do not
degenerate). This assumption is based on a strictly limited
experience. Science has been advancing without interruption during
the last three or four hundred years; every new discovery has led to
new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields
for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to
halt, they have always found means to advance further. But what
assurance have we that they will not one day come up against
impassable barriers? The experience of four hundred years, in which
the surface of nature has been successfully tapped, can hardly be
said to warrant conclusions as to the prospect of operations
extending over four hundred or four thousand centuries. Take biology
or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress may not come
to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our
resources for investigation are exhausted--because, for instance,
scientific instruments have reached the limit of perfection beyond
which it is demonstrably impossible to improve them, or because (in
the case of astronomy) we come into the presence of forces of which,
unlike gravitation, we have no terrestrial experience? It is an
assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not soon reach a
point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is
unqualified to pass.
But it is just this assumption which is the light and inspiration of
man's scientific research. For if the assumption is not true, it
means that he can never come within sight of the goal which is, in
the case of physical science, if not a complete knowledge of the
cosmos and the processes of nature, at least an immeasurably larger
and deeper knowledge than we at present possess.
Thus continuous progress in man's knowledge of his environment,
which is one of the chief conditions of general Progress, is a
hypothesis which may or may not be true. And if it is true, there
remains the further hypothesis of man's moral and social
"perfectibility," which rests on much less impressive evidence.
There is nothing to show that he may not reach, in his psychical and
social development, a stage at which the conditions of his life will
be still far from satisfactory, and beyond which he will find it
impossible to progress. This is a question of fact which no willing
on man's part can alter. It is a question bearing on the mystery of
life.
Enough has been said to show that the Progress of humanity belongs
to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It
is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either
true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith.
The idea of human Progress then is a theory which involves a
synthesis of the past and a prophecy of the future. It is based on
an interpretation of history which regards men as slowly advancing--
pedetemtim progredientes--in a definite and desirable direction, and
infers that this progress will continue indefinitely. And it implies
that, as
The issue of the earth's great business,
a condition of general happiness will ultimately be enjoyed, which
will justify the whole process of civilisation; for otherwise the
direction would not be desirable. There is also a further
implication. The process must be the necessary outcome of the
psychical and social nature of man; it must not be at the mercy of
any external will; otherwise there would be no guarantee of its
continuance and its issue, and the idea of Progress would lapse into
the idea of Providence.
As time is the very condition of the possibility of Progress, it is
obvious that the idea would be valueless if there were any cogent
reasons for supposing that the time at the disposal of humanity is
likely to reach a limit in the near future. If there were good cause
for believing that the earth would be uninhabitable in A.D. 2000 or
2100 the doctrine of Progress would lose its meaning and would
automatically disappear. It would be a delicate question to decide
what is the minimum period of time which must be assured to man for
his future development, in order that Progress should possess value
and appeal to the emotions. The recorded history of civilisation
covers 6000 years or so, and if we take this as a measure of our
conceptions of time-distances, we might assume that if we were sure
of a period ten times as long ahead of us the idea of Progress would
not lose its power of appeal. Sixty thousand years of HISTORICAL
time, when we survey the changes which have come to pass in six
thousand, opens to the imagination a range vast enough to seem
almost endless.
This psychological question, however, need not be decided. For
science assures us that the stability of the present conditions of
the solar system is certified for many myriads of years to come.
Whatever gradual modifications of climate there may be, the planet
will not cease to support life for a period which transcends and
flouts all efforts of imagination. In short, the POSSIBILITY of
Progress is guaranteed by the high probability, based on astro-
physical science, of an immense time to progress in.
It may surprise many to be told that the notion of Progress, which
now seems so easy to apprehend, is of comparatively recent origin.
It has indeed been claimed that various thinkers, both ancient (for
instance, Seneca) and medieval (for instance, Friar Bacon), had long
ago conceived it. But sporadic observations--such as man's gradual
rise from primitive and savage conditions to a certain level of
civilisation by a series of inventions, or the possibility of some
future additions to his knowledge of nature--which were inevitable
at a certain stage of human reflection, do not amount to an
anticipation of the idea. The value of such observations was
determined, and must be estimated, by the whole context of ideas in
which they occurred. It is from its bearings on the future that
Progress derives its value, its interest, and its power. You may
conceive civilisation as having gradually advanced in the past, but
you have not got the idea of Progress until you go on to conceive
that it is destined to advance indefinitely in the future. Ideas
have their intellectual climates, and I propose to show briefly in
this Introduction that the intellectual climates of classical
antiquity and the ensuing ages were not propitious to the birth of
the doctrine of Progress. It is not till the sixteenth century that
the obstacles to its appearance definitely begin to be transcended
and a favourable atmosphere to be gradually prepared.
[Footnote: The history of the idea of Progress has been treated
briefly and partially by various French writers; e.g. Comte, Cours
de philosophie positive, vi. 321 sqq.; Buchez, Introduction a la
science de l'histoire, i. 99 sqq. (ed. 2, 1842); Javary, De l'idee
de progres (1850); Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et
des Modernes (1856); Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie
cartesienne (1854); Caro, Problemes de la morale sociale (1876);
Brunetiere, La Formation de l'idee de progres, in Etudes critiques,
5e serie. More recently M. Jules Delvaille has attempted to trace
its history fully, down to the end of the eighteenth century. His
Histoire de l'idee de progres (1910) is planned on a large scale; he
is erudite and has read extensively. But his treatment is lacking in
the power of discrimination. He strikes one as anxious to bring
within his net, as theoriciens du progres, as many distinguished
thinkers as possible; and so, along with a great deal that is useful
and relevant, we also find in his book much that is irrelevant. He
has not clearly seen that the distinctive idea of Progress was not
conceived in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, or even in the
Renaissance period; and when he comes to modern times he fails to
bring out clearly the decisive steps of its growth. And he does not
seem to realise that a man might be "progressive" without believing
in, or even thinking about, the doctrine of Progress. Leonardo da
Vinci and Berkeley are examples. In my Ancient Greek Historians
(1909) I dwelt on the modern origin of the idea (p. 253 sqq.).
Recently Mr. R. H. Murray, in a learned appendix to his Erasmus and
Luther, has developed the thesis that Progress was not grasped in
antiquity (though he makes an exception of Seneca),--a welcome
confirmation.]
I
It may, in particular, seem surprising that the Greeks, who were so
fertile in their speculations on human life, did not hit upon an
idea which seems so simple and obvious to us as the idea of
Progress. But if we try to realise their experience and the general
character of their thought we shall cease to wonder. Their recorded
history did not go back far, and so far as it did go there had been
no impressive series of new discoveries suggesting either an
indefinite increase of knowledge or a growing mastery of the forces
of nature. In the period in which their most brilliant minds were
busied with the problems of the universe men might improve the
building of ships, or invent new geometrical demonstrations, but
their science did little or nothing to transform the conditions of
life or to open any vista into the future. They were in the presence
of no facts strong enough to counteract that profound veneration of
antiquity which seems natural to mankind, and the Athenians of the
age of Pericles or of Plato, though they were thoroughly, obviously
"modern" compared with the Homeric Greeks, were never self-
consciously "modern" as we are.
1.
The indications that human civilisation was a gradual growth, and
that man had painfully worked his way forward from a low and savage
state, could not, indeed, escape the sharp vision of the Greeks. For
instance, Aeschylus represents men as originally living at hazard in
sunless caves, and raised from that condition by Prometheus, who
taught them the arts of life. In Euripides we find a similar
recognition of the ascent of mankind to a civilised state, from
primitive barbarism, some god or other playing the part of
Prometheus. In such passages as these we have, it may be said, the
idea that man has progressed; and it may fairly be suggested that
belief in a natural progress lay, for Aeschylus as well as for
Euripides, behind the poetical fiction of supernatural intervention.
But these recognitions of a progress were not incompatible with the
widely-spread belief in an initial degeneration of the human race;
nor did it usually appear as a rival doctrine. The old legend of a
"golden age" of simplicity, from which man had fallen away, was
generally accepted as truth; and leading thinkers combined it with
the doctrine of a gradual sequence of social and material
improvements [Footnote: In the masterly survey of early Greek
history which Thucydides prefixed to his work, he traces the social
progress of the Greeks in historical times, and finds the key to it
in the increase of wealth.] during the subsequent period of decline.
We find the two views thus combined, for instance, in Plato's Laws,
and in the earliest reasoned history of civilisation written by
Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle. [Footnote: Aristotle's own view
is not very clear. He thinks that all arts, sciences, and
institutions have been repeatedly, or rather an infinite number of
times (word in Greek) discovered in the past and again lost.
Metaphysics, xi. 8 ad fin.; Politics, iv. 10, cp. ii. 2. An infinite
number of times seems to imply the doctrine of cycles.] But the
simple life of the first age, in which men were not worn with toil,
and war and disease were unknown, was regarded as the ideal State to
which man would lie only too fortunate if he could return. He had
indeed at a remote time ill the past succeeded in ameliorating some
of the conditions of his lot, but such ancient discoveries as fire
or ploughing or navigation or law-giving did not suggest the guess
that new inventions might lead ultimately to conditions in which
life would be more complex but as happy as the simple life of the
primitive world.
But, if some relative progress might be admitted, the general view
of Greek philosophers was that they were living in a period of
inevitable degeneration and decay--inevitable because it was
prescribed by the nature of the universe. We have only an imperfect
knowledge of the influential speculations of Heraclitus, Pythagoras,
and Empedocles, but we may take Plato's tentative philosophy of
history to illustrate the trend and the prejudices of Greek thought
on this subject. The world was created and set going by the Deity,
and, as his work, it was perfect; but it was not immortal and had in
it the seeds of decay. The period of its duration is 72,000 solar
years. During the first half of this period the original uniformity
and order, which were impressed upon it by the Creator, are
maintained under his guidance; but then it reaches a point from
which it begins, as it were, to roll back; the Deity has loosened
his grip of the machine, the order is disturbed, and the second
36,000 years are a period of gradual decay and degeneration. At the
end of this time, the world left to itself would dissolve into
chaos, but the Deity again seizes the helm and restores the original
conditions, and the whole process begins anew. The first half of
such a world-cycle corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in which
men lived happily and simply; we have now unfortunately reached some
point in the period of decadence.
Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political
communities. [Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history. In the myth
of the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic. The best
elucidation of these difficult passages will be found in the notes
and appendix to Book viii. in J. Adam's edition of the Republic
(1902).] He conceives his own Utopian aristocracy as having existed
somewhere towards the beginning of the period of the world's
relapse, when things were not so bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places
the ideal society which he describes in the Critias 9000 years
before Solon. The state which he plans in the Laws is indeed
imagined as a practicable project in his own day, but then it is
only a second-best. The ideal state of which Aristotle sketched an
outline (Politics, iv. v.) is not set either in time or in place.]
and exhibits its gradual deterioration, through the successive
stages of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism. He
explains this deterioration as primarily caused by a degeneration of
the race, due to laxity and errors in the State regulation of
marriages, and the consequent birth of biologically inferior
individuals.
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