Books: The Idea of Progress

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5.

The study of the history of civilisation has, in Condorcet's eyes,
two uses. It enables us to establish the fact of Progress, and it
should enable us to determine its direction in the future, and
thereby to accelerate the rate of progression.

By the facts of history and the arguments they suggest, he
undertakes to show that nature has set no term to the process of
improving human faculties, and that the advance towards perfection
is limited only by the duration of the globe. The movement may vary
in velocity, but it will never be retrograde so long as the earth
occupies its present place in the cosmic system and the general laws
of this system do not produce some catastrophe or change which would
deprive the human race of the faculties and resources which it has
hitherto possessed. There will be no relapse into barbarism. The
guarantees against this danger are the discovery of true methods in
the physical sciences, their application to the needs of men, the
lines of communication which have been established among them, the
great number of those who study them, and finally the art of
printing. And if we are sure of the continuous progress of
enlightenment, we may be sure of the continuous improvement of
social conditions.

It is possible to foresee events, if the general laws of social
phenomena are known, and these laws can be inferred from the history
of the past. By this statement Condorcet justifies his bold attempt
to sketch his tenth period of human history which lies in the
future; and announces the idea which was in the next generation to
be worked out by Comte. But he cannot be said to have deduced
himself any law of social development. His forecast of the future is
based on the ideas and tendencies of his own age. [Footnote: It is
interesting to notice that the ablest of medieval Arabic historians,
Ibn Khaldun (fourteenth century), had claimed that if history is
scientifically studied future events may be predicted.]

Apart from scientific discoveries and the general diffusion of a
knowledge of the laws of nature on which moral improvement depends,
he includes in his prophetic vision the cessation of war and the
realisation of the less familiar idea of the equality of the sexes.
If he were alive to-day, he could point with triumph to the fact
that of these far-reaching projects one is being accomplished in
some of the most progressive countries and the other is looked upon
as an attainable aim by statesmen who are not visionaries. The
equality of the sexes was only a logical inference from the general
doctrine of equality to which Condorcet's social theory is
reducible. For him the goal of political progress is equality;
equality is to be the aim of social effort--the ideal of the
Revolution.

For it is the multitude of men that must be considered--the mass of
workers, not the minority who live on their labours. Hitherto they
have been neglected by the historian as well as by the statesman.
The true history of humanity is not the history of some men. The
human race is formed by the mass of families who subsist almost
entirely on the fruits of their own work, and this mass is the
proper subject of history, not great men.

You may establish social equality by means of laws and institutions,
yet the equality actually enjoyed may be very incomplete. Condorcet
recognises this and attributes it to three principal causes:
inequality in wealth; inequality in position between the man whose
means of subsistence are assured and can be transmitted to his
family and the man whose means depend on his work and are limited by
the term of his own life [Footnote: He looked forward to the
mitigation of this inequality by the development of life insurance
which was then coming to the front.]; and inequality in education.
He did not propose any radical methods for dealing with these
difficulties, which he thought would diminish in time, without,
however, entirely disappearing. He was too deeply imbued with the
views of the Economists to be seduced by the theories of Rousseau,
Mably, Babeuf, and others, into advocating communism or the
abolition of private property.

Besides equality among the individuals composing a civilised
society, Condorcet contemplated equality among all the peoples of
the earth,--a uniform civilisation throughout the world, and the
obliteration of the distinction between advanced and retrograde
races. The backward peoples, he prophesied, will climb up to the
condition of France and the United States of America, for no people
is condemned never to exercise its reason. If the dogma of the
perfectibility of human nature, unguarded by any restrictions, is
granted, this is a logical inference, and we have already seen that
it was one of the ideas current among the philosophers.

Condorcet does not hesitate to add to his picture adventurous
conjectures on the improvement of man's physical organisation, and a
considerable prolongation of his life by the advance of medical
science. We need only note this. More interesting is the prediction
that, even if the compass of the human being's cerebral powers is
inalterable, the range, precision, and rapidity of his mental
operations will be augmented by the invention of new instruments and
methods.

The design of writing a history of human civilisation was premature,
and to have produced a survey of any durable value would have
required the equipment of a Gibbon. Condorcet was not even as well
equipped as Voltaire. [Footnote: But as he wrote without books the
Sketch was a marvellous tour de force.] The significance of his
Sketch lies in this, that towards the close of an intellectual
movement it concentrated attention on the most important, though
hitherto not the most prominent, idea which that movement had
disseminated, and as it were officially announced human Progress as
the leading problem that claimed the interest of mankind. With him
Progress was associated intimately with particular eighteenth
century doctrines, but these were not essential to it. It was a
living idea; it survived the compromising theories which began to
fall into discredit after the Revolution, and was explored from new
points of view. Condorcet, however, wedded though his mind was to
the untenable views of human nature current in his epoch and his
circle, did not share the tendency of leading philosophers to regard
history as an unprofitable record of folly and crime which it would
be well to obliterate or forget. He recognised the interpretation of
history as the key to human development, and this principle
controlled subsequent speculations on Progress in France.

6.

Cabanis, the physician, was Condorcet's literary executor, and a no
less ardent believer in human perfectibility. Looking at life and
man from his own special point of view, he saw in the study of the
physical organism the key to the intellectual and moral improvement
of the race. It is by knowledge of the relations between his
physical states and moral states that man can attain happiness,
through the enlargement of his faculties and the multiplication of
enjoyments, and that he will be able to grasp, as it were, the
infinite in his brief existence by realising the certainty of
indefinite progress. His doctrine was a logical extension of the
theories of Locke and Condillac. If our knowledge is wholly derived
from sensations, our sensations depend on our sensory organs, and
mind becomes a function of the nervous system.

The events of the Revolution quenched in him as little as in
Condorcet the sanguine confidence that it was the opening of a new
era for science and art, and thereby for the general Progress of
man. "The present is one of those great periods of history to which
posterity will often look back" with gratitude. [Footnote: Picavet,
Les Ideologues, p. 203. Cabanis was born in 1757 and died in 1808.]
He took an active part in the coup d'etat of the 18th of Brumaire
(1799) which was to lead to the despotism of Napoleon. He imagined
that it would terminate oppression, and was as enthusiastic for it
as he and Condorcet had been for the Revolution ten years before.
"You philosophers," he wrote, [Footnote: Ib. p. 224.] "whose studies
are directed to the improvement and happiness of the race, you no
longer embrace vain shadows. Having watched, in alternating moods of
hope and sadness, the great spectacle of our Revolution, you now see
with joy the termination of its last act; you will see with rapture
this new era, so long promised to the French people, at last open,
in which all the benefits of nature, all the creations of genius,
all the fruits of time, labour, and experience will be utilised, an
era of glory and prosperity in which the dreams of your
philanthropic enthusiasm should end by being realised."

It was an over-sanguine and characteristic greeting of the
eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Cabanis was one of the most
important of those thinkers who, living into the new period, took
care that the ideas of their own generation should not be
overwhelmed in the rising flood of reaction.

CHAPTER XII

THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND

1.

The idea of Progress could not help crossing the Channel. France and
England had been at war in the first year of the eighteenth century,
they were at war in the last, and their conflict for supremacy was
the leading feature of the international history of the whole
century. But at no period was there more constant intellectual
intimacy or more marked reciprocal influence between the two
countries. It was a commonplace that Paris and London were the two
great foci of civilisation, and they never lost touch of each other
in the intellectual sphere. Many of the principal works of
literature that appeared in either country were promptly translated,
and some of the French books, which the censorship rendered it
dangerous to publish in Paris, were printed in London.

It was not indeed to be expected that the theory should have the
same kind of success, or exert the same kind of effect in England as
in France. England had her revolution behind her, France had hers
before her. England enjoyed what were then considered large
political liberties, the envy of other lands; France groaned under
the tyranny of worthless rulers. The English constitution satisfied
the nation, and the serious abuses which would now appear to us
intolerable were not sufficient to awaken a passionate desire for
reforms. The general tendency of British thought was to see
salvation in the stability of existing institutions, and to regard
change with suspicion. Now passionate desire for reform was the
animating force which propagated the idea of Progress in France. And
when this idea is translated from the atmosphere of combat, in which
it was developed by French men of letters, into the calm climate of
England, it appears like a cold reflection.

Again, English thinkers were generally inclined to hold, with Locke,
that the proper function of government is principally negative, to
preserve order and defend life and property, not to aim directly at
the improvement of society, but to secure the conditions in which
men may pursue their own legitimate aims. Most of the French
theorists believed in the possibility of moulding society
indefinitely by political action, and rested their hopes for the
future not only on the achievements of science, but on the
enlightened activity of governments. This difference of view tended
to give to the doctrine of Progress in France more practical
significance than in England.

But otherwise British soil was ready to receive the idea. There was
the same optimistic temper among the comfortable classes in both
countries. Shaftesbury, the Deist, had struck this note at the
beginning of the century by his sanguine theory, which was expressed
in Pope's banal phrase: "Whatever is, is right," and was worked into
a system by Hutcheson. This optimism penetrated into orthodox
circles. Progress, far from appearing as a rival of Providence, was
discussed in the interests of Christianity by the Scotch theologian,
Turnbull. [Footnote: The Principles of Modern Philosophy, 1740.]

2.

The theory of the indefinite progress of civilisation left Hume
cold. There is little ground, he argued, to suppose that "the world"
is eternal or incorruptible. It is probably mortal, and must
therefore, with all things in it, have its infancy, youth, manhood,
and old age; and man will share in these changes of state. We must
then expect that the human species should, when the world is in the
age of manhood, possess greater bodily and mental vigour, longer
life, and a stronger inclination and power of generation. But it is
impossible to determine when this stage is reached. For the gradual
revolutions are too slow to be discernible in the short period known
to us by history and tradition. Physically and in mental powers men
have been pretty much the same in all known ages. The sciences and
arts have flourished now and have again decayed, but when they
reached the highest perfection among one people, the neighbouring
peoples were perhaps wholly unacquainted with them. We are therefore
uncertain whether at present man is advancing to his point of
perfection or declining from it. [Footnote: Essay on the
Populousness of Ancient Nations, ad init. ]

The argument is somewhat surprising in an eighteenth century thinker
like Hume, but it did not prevent him from recognising the
superiority of modern to ancient civilisation. This superiority
forms indeed the minor premiss in the general argument by which he
confuted the commonly received opinion as to the populousness of
ancient nations. He insisted on the improvements in art and
industry, on the greater liberty and security enjoyed by modern men.
"To one who considers coolly on the subject," he remarked, "it will
appear that human nature in general really enjoys more liberty at
present in the most arbitrary government of Europe than it ever did
during the most flourishing period of ancient times." [Footnote: The
justification of this statement was the abolition of slavery in
Europe.]

He discussed many of the problems of civilisation, especially the
conditions in which the arts and sciences flourish, [Footnote: Essay
on the Rise of Arts and Sciences.] and drew some general
conclusions, but he was too sceptical to suppose that any general
synthesis of history is possible, or that any considerable change
for the better in the manners of mankind is likely to occur.
[Footnote: Cf. Essay on the Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, ad
init.]

The greatest work dealing with social problems, that Britain
produced in the eighteenth century, was Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, and his luminous exposition of the effects of the division
of labour was the most considerable contribution made by British
thinkers of the age to the study of human development. It is much
more than a treatise on economic principles; it contains a history
of the gradual economic progress of human society, and it suggests
the expectation of an indefinite augmentation of wealth and well-
being. Smith was entirely at one with the French Economists on the
value of opulence for the civilisation and happiness of mankind. But
it was indirectly perhaps that his work contributed most effectively
to the doctrine of the Progress of collective mankind. [Footnote: It
has been observed by Mr. Leslie Stephen that the doctrine of the
rights of man lies in the background of Adam Smith's speculations.]
His teaching that the free commercial intercourse of all the peoples
of the world, unfettered by government policies, was to the greatest
advantage of each, presented an ideal of the economic "solidarity"
of the race, which was one element in the ideal of Progress. And
this principle soon began to affect practice. Pitt assimilated it
when he was a young man, and it is one of the distinctions of his
statesmanship that he endeavoured to apply the doctrines of his
master so far as the prevailing prejudices would allow him.

3.

A few writers of less weight and fame than Hume or Smith expressly
studied history in the light of Progress. It would not help us, in
following the growth of the idea, to analyse the works of Ferguson,
Dunbar, or Priestley. [Footnote: In his Essay on the History of
Civil Society Adam Ferguson treated the growth of civilisation as
due to the progressive nature of man, which insists on carrying him
forward to limits impossible to ascertain. He formulated the process
as a movement from simplicity to complexity, but contributed little
to its explanation.] But I will quote one passage from Priestley,
the most eminent of the three, and the most enthusiastic for the
Progress of man. As the division of labour--the chief principle of
organised society--is carried further he anticipates that

... nature, including both its materials and its laws, will be more
at our command; men will make their situation in this world
abundantly more easy and comfortable; they will probably prolong
their existence in it and will grow daily more happy. ... Thus,
whatever was the beginning of this world, the end will be glorious
and paradisiacal beyond what our imaginations can now conceive.
Extravagant as some people may suppose these views to be, I think I
could show them to be fairly suggested by the true theory of human
nature and to arise from the natural course of human affairs.

[Footnote: This passage of Priestley occurs in his Essay on the
First Principles of Government and on the Nature of Political,
Civil, and Religious Liberty (1768, 2nd ed. 1771), pp. 2-4. His
Lectures on History and General Policy appeared in 1788.

Priestley was a strict utilitarian, who held that there is nothing
intrinsically excellent in justice and veracity apart from their
relation to happiness. The degree of public happiness is measured by
the excellence of religion, science, government, laws, arts,
commerce, conveniences of life, and especially by the degrees of
personal security and personal liberty. In all these the ancients
were inferior, and therefore they enjoyed less happiness. The
present state of Europe is vastly preferable to what it was in any
former period. And "the plan of this divine drama is opening more
and more." In the future, Knowledge will increase and accumulate and
diffuse itself to the lower ranks of society, who, by degrees, will
find leisure for speculation; and looking beyond their immediate
employment, they will consider the complex machine of society, and
in time understand it better than those who now write about it.

See his Lectures, pp. 371, 388 sqq., 528-53.

The English thinker did not share all the views of his French
masters. As a Unitarian, he regarded Christianity as a "great remedy
of vice and ignorance," part of the divine plan; and he ascribed to
government a lesser role than they in the improvement of humanity.
He held, for instance, that the state should not interfere in
education, arguing that this art was still in the experimental
stage, and that the intervention of the civil power might stereotype
a bad system.

Not less significant, though less influential, than the writings of
Priestley and Ferguson was the work of James Dunbar, Professor of
Philosophy at Aberdeen, entitled Essays on the History of Mankind in
Rude and Cultivated Ages (2nd ed., 1781). He conceived history as
progressive, and inquired into the general causes which determine
the gradual improvements of civilisation. He dealt at length with
the effects of climate and local circumstances, but unlike the
French philosophers did not ignore heredity. While he did not enter
upon any discussion of future developments, he threw out
incidentally the idea that the world may be united in a league of
nations.

Posterity, he wrote, "may contemplate, from a concurrence of various
causes and events, some of which are hastening into light, the
greater part, or even the whole habitable globe, divided among
nations free and independent in all the interior functions of
government, forming one political and commercial system" (p. 287).

Dunbar's was an optimistic book, but his optimism was more cautious
than Priestley's. These are his final words:

If human nature is liable to degenerate, it is capable of
proportionable improvement from the collected wisdom of ages. It is
pleasant to infer from the actual progress of society, the glorious
possibilities of human excellence. And, if the principles can be
assembled into view, which most directly tend to diversify the
genius and character of nations, some theory may be raised on these
foundations that shall account more systematically for past
occurrences and afford some openings and anticipations into the
eventual history of the world.]

The problem of dark ages, which an advocate of Progress must
explain, was waved away by Priestley in his Lectures on History with
the observation that they help the subsequent advance of knowledge
by "breaking the progress of authority." [Footnote: This was
doubtless suggested to him by some remarks of Hume in The Rise of
Arts and Sciences.] This is not much of a plea for such periods
viewed as machinery in a Providential plan. The great history of the
Middle Ages, which in the words of its author describes "the triumph
of barbarism and religion," had been completed before Priestley's
Lectures appeared, and it is remarkable that he takes no account of
it, though it might seem to be a work with which a theory of
Progress must come to terms.

Yet the sceptical historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, who was more at home in French literature than any of his
fellow-countrymen, was not opposed to the theory of Progress, and he
even states it in a moderate form. Having given reasons for
believing that civilised society will never again be threatened by
such an irruption of barbarians as that which oppressed the arms and
institutions of Rome, he allows us to "acquiesce in the pleasing
conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still
increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge and perhaps
the virtue of the human race."

"The discoveries of ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic
history or tradition of the most enlightened nations, represent the
HUMAN SAVAGE, naked both in mind and body, and destitute of laws, of
arts, of ideas, and almost of language. From this abject condition,
perhaps the primitive and universal state of man, he has gradually
arisen to command the animals, to fertilise the earth, to traverse
the ocean, and to measure the heavens. His progress in the
improvement and exercise of his mental and corporeal faculties has
been irregular and various, infinitely slow in the beginning, and
increasing by degrees with redoubled velocity; ages of laborious
ascent have been followed by a moment of rapid downfall; and the
several climates of the globe have felt the vicissitudes of light
and darkness. Yet the experience of four thousand years should
enlarge our hopes and diminish our apprehensions; we cannot
determine to what height the human species may aspire in their
advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed that no
people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into
their original barbarism." [Footnote: Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, ch. xxxviii. ad fin.]

But Gibbon treats the whole subject as a speculation, and he treats
it without reference to any of the general principles on which
French thinkers had based their theory. He admits that his reasons
for holding that civilisation is secure against a barbarous
cataclysm may be considered fallacious; and he also contemplates the
eventuality that the fabric of sciences and arts, trade and
manufacture, law and policy, might be "decayed by time." If so, the
growth of civilisation would have to begin again, but not ab initio.
For "the more useful or at least more necessary arts," which do not
require superior talents or national subordination for their
exercise, and which war, commerce, and religious zeal have spread
among the savages of the world, would certainly survive.

These remarks are no more than obiter dicta but they show how the
doctrine of Progress was influencing those who were temperamentally
the least likely to subscribe to extravagant theories.

4.

The outbreak of the French Revolution evoked a sympathetic movement
among English progressive thinkers which occasioned the Government
no little alarm. The dissenting minister Dr. Richard Price, whose
Observations on Civil Liberty (1776), defending the action of the
American colonies, had enjoyed an immense success, preached the
sermon which provoked Burke to write his Reflections; and Priestley,
no less enthusiastic in welcoming the Revolution, replied to Burke.
The Government resorted to tyrannous measures; young men who
sympathised with the French movement and agitated for reforms at
home were sent to Botany Bay. Paine was prosecuted for his Rights of
Man, which directly preached revolution. But the most important
speculative work of the time, William Godwin's Political Justice,
escaped the censorship because it was not published at a popular
price. [Footnote: Godwin had helped to get Paine's book published in
1791, and he was intimate with the group of revolutionary spirits
who were persecuted by the Government. A good account of the episode
will be found in Brailsford's Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle.]

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