Books: The Idea of Progress
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J.B. Bury >> The Idea of Progress
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It is not to our present purpose to comment on this plan which the
author with his characteristic simplicity seriously pressed upon the
attention of statesmen. It is easy to criticise it in the light of
subsequent history, and to see that, if the impossible had happened
and the experiment had been tried and succeeded, it might have
caused more suffering than all the wars from that day to this. For
it was based on a perpetuation of the political status quo in
Europe. It assumed that the existing political distribution of power
was perfectly satisfactory and conformable to the best interests of
all the peoples concerned. It would have hindered the Partition of
Poland, but it would have maintained the Austrian oppression of
Italians. The project also secured to the sovrans the heritage of
their authority and guarded against civil wars. This assumed that
the various existing constitutions were fundamentally just. The
realisation of the scheme would have perpetuated all the evils of
autocratic governments. Its author did not perceive that the radical
evil in France was irresponsible power. It needed the reign of Louis
XV. and the failure of attempts at reform under his successor to
bring this home. The Abbe even thought that an increase of the
despotic authority of the government was desirable, provided this
were accompanied by an increase in the enlightenment and virtue of
its ministers.
In 1729 he published an abridgment of his scheme, and here he looks
beyond its immediate results to its value for distant posterity. No
one, he says, can imagine or foresee the advantages which such an
alliance of European states will yield to Europe five hundred years
after its establishment. Now we can see the first beginnings, but it
is beyond the powers of the human mind to discern its infinite
effects in the future. It may produce results more precious than
anything hitherto experienced by man. He supports his argument by
observing that our primitive ancestors could not foresee the
improvements which the course of ages would bring in their
rudimentary arrangements for securing social order.
3.
It is characteristic that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's ideas about
Progress were a by-product of his particular schemes. In 1773 he
published a Project to Perfect the Government of States, and here he
sketched his view of the progressive course of civilisation. The old
legend of the golden age, when men were perfectly happy, succeeded
by the ages of silver, bronze, and iron, exactly reverses the truth
of history. The age of iron came first, the infancy of society, when
men were poor and ignorant of the arts; it is the present condition
of the savages of Africa and America. The age of bronze ensued, in
which there was more security, better laws, and the invention of the
most necessary arts began. There followed the age of silver, and
Europe has not yet emerged from it. Our reason has indeed reached
the point of considering how war may be abolished, and is thus
approaching the golden age of the future; but the art of government
and the general regulation of society, notwithstanding all the
improvements of the past, is still in its infancy. Yet all that is
needed is a short series of wise reigns in our European states to
reach the age of gold or, in other words, a paradise on earth.
A few wise reigns. The Abbe shared the illusion of many that
government is omnipotent and can bestow happiness on men. The
imperfections of governments were, he was convinced, chiefly due to
the fact that hitherto the ablest intellects had not been dedicated
to the study of the science of governing. The most essential part of
his project was the formation of a Political Academy which should do
for politics what the Academy of Sciences did for the study of
nature, and should act as an advisory body to ministers of state on
all questions of the public welfare. If this proposal and some
others were adopted, he believed that the golden age would not long
be delayed. These observations--hardly more than obiter dicta--show
that Saint-Pierre's general view of the world was moulded by a
conception of civilisation progressing towards a goal of human
happiness. In 1737 he published a special work to explain this
conception: the Observations on the Continuous Progress of Universal
Reason.
He recurs to the comparison of the life of collective humanity to
that of an individual, and, like Fontenelle and Terrasson,
accentuates the point where the analogy fails. We may regard our
race as composed of all the nations that have been and will be--and
assign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is ten
thousand years old a century will be what a single year is in the
life of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. The
mortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through the
enfeeblement of his bodily machine; whereas the human race, by the
perpetual and infinite succession of generations, will find itself
at the end of ten thousand years more capable of growing in wisdom
and happiness than it was at the end of four thousand.
At present the race is apparently not more than seven or eight
thousand years old, and is only "in the infancy of human reason,"
compared with what it will be five or six thousand years hence. And
when that stage is reached, it will only have entered on what we may
call its first youth, when we consider what it will be when it is a
hundred thousand years older still, continually growing in reason
and wisdom.
Here we have for the first time, expressed in definite terms, the
vista of an immensely long progressive life in front of humanity.
Civilisation is only in its infancy. Bacon, like Pascal, had
conceived it to be in its old age. Fontenelle and Perrault seem to
have regarded it as in its virility; they set no term to its
duration, but they did not dwell on future prospects. The Abbe was
the first to fix his eye on the remote destinies of the race and
name immense periods of time. It did not occur to him to consider
that our destinies are bound up with those of the solar system, and
that it is useless to operate with millennial periods of progress
unless you are assured of a corresponding stability in the cosmic
environment.
As a test of the progress which reason has already made, Saint-
Pierre asserts that a comparison of the best English and French
works on morals and politics with the best works of Plato and
Aristotle proves that the human race has made a sensible advance.
But that advance would have been infinitely greater were it not that
three general obstacles retarded it and even, at some times and in
some countries, caused a retrogression. These obstacles were wars,
superstition, and the Jealousy of rulers who feared that progress in
the science of politics would be dangerous to themselves. In
consequence of these impediments it was only in the time of Bodin
and Bacon that the human race began to start anew from the point
which it had reached in the days of Plato and Aristotle.
Since then the rate of progress has been accelerated, and this has
been due to several causes. The expansion of sea commerce has
produced more wealth, and wealth means greater leisure, and more
writers and readers. In the second place, mathematics and physics
are more studied in colleges, and their tendency is to liberate us
from subjection to the authority of the ancients. Again, the
foundation of scientific Academies has given facilities both for
communicating and for correcting new discoveries; the art of
printing provides a means for diffusing them; and, finally, the
habit of writing in the vulgar tongue makes them accessible. The
author might also have referred to the modern efforts to popularise
science, in which his friend Fontenelle had been one of the leaders.
He proceeds, in this connection, to lay down a rather doubtful
principle, that in any two countries the difference in enlightenment
between the lowest classes will correspond to the difference between
the most highly educated classes. At present, he says, Paris and
London are the places where human wisdom has reached the most
advanced stage. It is certain that the ten best men of the highest
class at Ispahan or Constantinople will be inferior in their
knowledge of politics and ethics to the ten most distinguished sages
of Paris or London. And this will be true in all classes. The thirty
most intelligent children of the age of fourteen at Paris will be
more enlightened than the thirty most intelligent children of the
same age at Constantinople, and the same proportional difference
will be true of the lowest classes of the two cities.
But while the progress of speculative reason has been rapid,
practical reason--the distinction is the Abbe's--has made little
advance. In point of morals and general happiness the world is
apparently much the same as ever. Our mediocre savants know twenty
times as much as Socrates and Confucius, but our most virtuous men
are not more virtuous than they. The growth of science has added
much to the arts and conveniences of life, and to the sum of
pleasures, and will add more. The progress in physical science is
part of the progress of the "universal human reason," whose aim is
the augmentation of our happiness. But there are two other sciences
which are much more important for the promotion of happiness--Ethics
and Politics--and these, neglected by men of genius, have made
little way in the course of two thousand years. It is a grave
misfortune that Descartes and Newton did not devote themselves to
perfecting these sciences, so incomparably more useful for mankind
than those in which they made their great discoveries. They fell
into a prevailing error as to the comparative values of the various
domains of knowledge, an error to which we must also ascribe the
fact that while Academies of Sciences and Belles-Lettres exist there
are no such institutions for Politics or Ethics.
By these arguments he establishes to his own satisfaction that there
are no irremovable obstacles to the Progress of the human race
towards happiness, no hindrances that could not be overcome if
governments only saw eye to eye with the Abbe de Saint-Pierre.
Superstition is already on the decline; there would be no more wars
if his simple scheme for permanent peace were adopted. Let the State
immediately found Political and Ethical Academies; let the ablest
men consecrate their talents to the science of government; and in a
hundred years we shall make more progress than we should make in two
thousand at the rate we are moving. If these things are done, human
reason will have advanced so far in two or three millenniums that
the wisest men of that age will be as far superior to the wisest of
to-day as these are to the wisest African savages. This "perpetual
and unlimited augmentation of reason" will one day produce an
increase in human happiness which would astonish us more than our
own civilisation would astonish the Kaffirs.
4.
The Abbe de Saint-Pierre was indeed terribly at ease in confronting
the deepest and most complex problems which challenge the intellect
of man. He had no notion of their depth and complexity, and he
lightly essayed them, treating human nature, as if it were an
abstraction, by a method which he would doubtless have described as
Cartesian. He was simply operating with the ideas which were all
round him in a society saturated with Cartesianism,--supremacy of
human reason, progressive enlightenment, the value of this life for
its own sake, and the standard of utility. Given these ideas and the
particular bias of his own mind, it required no great ingenuity to
advance from the thought of the progress of science to the thought
of progress in man's moral nature and his social conditions. The
omnipotence of governments to mould the destinies of peoples, the
possibility of the creation of enlightened governments, and the
indefinite progress of enlightenment--all articles of his belief--
were the terms of an argument of the sorites form, which it was a
simple matter to develop in his brief treatise.
But we must not do him injustice. He was a much more considerable
thinker than posterity for a long time was willing to believe. It is
easy to ridicule some of his projets, and dismiss him as a crank who
was also somewhat of a bore. The truth, however, is that many of his
schemes were sound and valuable. His economic ideas, which he
thought out for himself, were in advance of his time, and he has
even been described by a recent writer as "un contemporain egare au
xviii siecle." Some of his financial proposals were put into
practice by Turgot. But his significance in the development of the
revolutionary ideas which were to gain control in the second half of
the eighteenth century has hardly been appreciated yet, and it was
imperfectly appreciated by his contemporaries.
It is easy to see why. His theories are buried in his multitudinous
projets. If, instead of working out the details of endless
particular reforms, he had built up general theories of government
and society, economics and education, they might have had no more
intrinsic value, but he would have been recognised as the precursor
of the Encyclopaedists.
For his principles are theirs. The omnipotence of government and
laws to mould the morals of peoples; the subordination of all
knowledge to the goddess of utility; the deification of human
reason; and the doctrine of Progress. His crude utilitarianism led
him to depreciate the study of mathematical and physical sciences--
notwithstanding his veneration for Descartes--as comparatively
useless, and he despised the fine arts as waste of time and toil
which might be better spent. He had no knowledge of natural science
and he had no artistic susceptibility. The philosophers of the
Encyclopaedia did not go so far, but they tended in this direction.
They were cold and indifferent towards speculative science, and they
were inclined to set higher value on artisans than on artists.
In his religious ideas the Abbe differed from Voltaire and the later
social philosophers in one important respect, but this very
difference was a consequence of his utilitarianism. Like them he was
a Deist, as we saw; he had imbibed the spirit of Bayle and the
doctrine of the English rationalists, which were penetrating French
society during the later part of his life. His God, however, was
more than the creator and organiser of the Encyclopaedists, he was
also the "Dieu vengeur et remunerateur" in whom Voltaire believed.
But here his faith was larger than Voltaire's. For while Voltaire
referred the punishments and rewards to this life, the Abbe believed
in the immortality of the soul, in heaven and hell. He acknowledged
that immortality could not be demonstrated, that it was only
probable, but he clung to it firmly and even intolerantly. It is
clear from his writings that his affection for this doctrine was due
to its utility, as an auxiliary to the magistrate and the tutor, and
also to the consideration that Paradise would add to the total of
human happiness.
But though his religion had more articles, he was as determined a
foe of "superstition" as Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest. He did not
go so far as they in aggressive rationalism--he belonged to an older
generation--but his principles were the same.
The Abbe de Saint-Pierre thus represents the transition from the
earlier Cartesianism, which was occupied with purely intellectual
problems, to the later thought of the eighteenth century, which
concentrated itself on social problems. He anticipated the
"humanistic" spirit of the Encyclopaedists, who were to make man, in
a new sense, the centre of the world. He originated, or at least was
the first to proclaim, the new creed of man's destinies, indefinite
social progress.
CHAPTER VII
NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, TURGOT
The theory of human Progress could not be durably established by
abstract arguments, or on the slender foundations laid by the Abbe
de Saint-Pierre. It must ultimately be judged by the evidence
afforded by history, and it is not accidental that,
contemporaneously with the advent of this idea, the study of history
underwent a revolution. If Progress was to be more than the sanguine
dream of an optimist it must be shown that man's career on earth had
not been a chapter of accidents which might lead anywhere or
nowhere, but is subject to discoverable laws which have determined
its general route, and will secure his arrival at the desirable
place. Hitherto a certain order and unity had been found in history
by the Christian theory of providential design and final causes. New
principles of order and unity were needed to replace the principles
which rationalism had discredited. Just as the advance of science
depended on the postulate that physical phenomena are subject to
invariable laws, so if any conclusions were to be drawn from history
some similar postulate as to social phenomena was required.
It was thus in harmony with the general movement of thought that
about the middle of the eighteenth century new lines of
investigation were opened leading to sociology, the history of
civilisation, and the philosophy of history. Montesquieu's De
l'esprit des lois, which may claim to be the parent work of modern
social science, Voltaire's Essai sur les moeurs, and Turgot's plan
of a Histoire universelle begin a new era in man's vision of the
past.
1.
Montesquieu was not among the apostles of the idea of Progress. It
never secured any hold upon his mind. But he had grown up in the
same intellectual climate in which that idea was produced; he had
been nurtured both on the dissolving, dialectic of Bayle, and on the
Cartesian enunciation of natural law. And his work contributed to
the service, not of the doctrine of the past, but of the doctrine of
the future.
For he attempted to extend the Cartesian theory to social facts. He
laid down that political, like physical, phenomena are subject to
general laws. He had already conceived this, his most striking and
important idea, when he wrote the Considerations on the Greatness
and Decadence of the Romans (1734), in which he attempted to apply
it:
It is not Fortune who governs the world, as we see from the history
of the Romans. There are general causes, moral or physical, which
operate in every monarchy, raise it, maintain it, or overthrow it;
all that occurs is subject to these causes; and if a particular
cause, like the accidental result of a battle, has ruined a state,
there was a general cause which made the downfall of this state
ensue from a single battle. In a word, the principal movement
(l'allure principale) draws with it all the particular occurrences.
But if this excludes Fortune it also dispenses with Providence,
design, and final causes; and one of the effects of the
Considerations which Montesquieu cannot have overlooked was to
discredit Bossuet's treatment of history.
The Esprit des lois appeared fourteen years later. Among books which
have exercised a considerable influence on thought few are more
disappointing to a modern reader. The author had not the gift of
what might be called logical architecture, and his work produces the
effect of a collection of ideas which he was unable to co-ordinate
in the clarity of a system. A new principle, the operation of
general causes, is enthroned; but, beyond the obvious distinction of
physical and moral, they are not classified. We have no guarantee
that the moral causes are fully enumerated, and those which are
original are not distinguished from those which are derived. The
general cause which Montesquieu impresses most clearly on the
reader's mind is that of physical environment--geography and
climate.
The influence of climate on civilisation was not a new idea. In
modern times, as we have seen, it was noticed by Bodin and
recognised by Fontenelle. The Abbe de Saint-Pierre applied it to
explain the origin of the Mohammedan religion, and the Abbe Du Bos
in his Reflexions on Poetry and Painting maintained that climate
helps to determine the epochs of art and science. Chardin in his
Travels, a book which Montesquieu studied, had also appreciated its
importance. But Montesquieu drew general attention to it, and since
he wrote, geographical conditions have been recognised by all
inquirers as an influential factor in the development of human
societies. His own discussion of the question did not result in any
useful conclusions. He did not determine the limits of the action of
physical conditions, and a reader hardly knows whether to regard
them as fundamental or accessory, as determining the course of
civilisation or only perturbing it. "Several things govern men," he
says, "climate, religion, laws, precepts of government, historical
examples, morals, and manners, whence is formed as their result a
general mind (esprit general)." This co-ordination of climate with
products of social life is characteristic of his unsystematic
thought. But the remark which the author went on to make, that there
is always a correlation between the laws of a people and its esprit
general, was important. It pointed to the theory that all the
products of social life are closely interrelated.
In Montesquieu's time people were under the illusion that
legislation has an almost unlimited power to modify social
conditions. We have seen this in the case of Saint-Pierre.
Montesquieu's conception of general laws should have been an
antidote to this belief. It had however less effect on his
contemporaries than we might have expected, and they found more to
their purpose in what he said of the influence of laws on manners.
There may be something in Comte's suggestion that he could not give
his conception any real consistency or vigour, just because he was
himself unconsciously under the influence of excessive faith in the
effects of legislative action.
A fundamental defect in Montesquieu's treatment of social phenomena
is that he abstracted them from their relations in time. It was his
merit to attempt to explain the correlation of laws and institutions
with historical circumstances, but he did not distinguish or connect
stages of civilisation. He was inclined to confound, as Sorel has
observed, all periods and constitutions. Whatever be the value of
the idea of Progress, we may agree with Comte that, if Montesquieu
had grasped it, he would have produced a more striking work. His
book announces a revolution in the study of political science, but
in many ways belongs itself to the pre-Montesquieu era.
2.
In the same years in which Montesquieu was busy on the composition
of the Esprit des lois, Voltaire was writing his Age of Louis XIV.
and his Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations, and on the
Principal Facts of History from Charlemagne to the Death of Louis
XIII. The former work, which everybody reads still, appeared in
1751. Parts of the Essay, which has long since fallen into neglect,
were published in the Mercure de France between 1745 and 1751; it
was issued complete in 1756, along with the Age of Louis XIV., which
was its continuation. If we add the Precis of the Reign of Louis XV.
(1769), and observe that the Introduction and first fourteen
chapters of the Essay sketch the history of the world before
Charlemagne, and that China, India, and America are included in the
survey, Voltaire's work amounts to a complete survey of the
civilisation of the world from the earliest times to his own. If
Montesquieu founded social science, Voltaire created the history of
civilisation, and the Essay, for all its limitations, stands out as
one of the considerable books of the century.
In his Age of Louis XIV. he announced that his object was "to paint
not the actions of a single man, but the mind of men (l'esprit des
hommes) in the most enlightened age that had ever been," and that
"the progress of the arts and sciences" was an essential part of his
subject. In the same way he proposed in the Essay to trace
"l'histoire de l'esprit humain," not the details of facts, and to
show by what steps man advanced "from the barbarous rusticity" of
the times of Charlemagne and his successors "to the politeness of
our own." To do this, he said, was really to write the history of
opinion, for all the great successive social and political changes
which have transformed the world were due to changes of opinion.
Prejudice succeeded prejudice, error followed error; "at last, with
time men came to correct their ideas and learn to think."
The motif of the book is, briefly, that wars and religions have been
the great obstacles to the progress of humanity, and that if they
were abolished, with the prejudices which engender them, the world
would rapidly improve.
"We may believe," he says, "that reason and industry will always
progress more and more; that the useful arts will be improved; that
of the evils which have afflicted men, prejudices, which are not
their least scourge, will gradually disappear among all those who
govern nations, and that philosophy, universally diffused, will give
some consolation to human nature for the calamities which it will
experience in all ages."
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