Books: The Idea of Progress

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The Deity designed the world but never interferes in its process,
either in the physical cosmos or in human history. Human history
itself, civilisation, is a purely natural phenomenon. Events are
strictly enchained; continuity is unbroken; what happened at any
given time could have happened only then, and nothing else could
have happened. Herder's rigid determinism not only excludes
Voltaire's chance but also suppresses the free play of man's
intelligent will. Man cannot guide his own destinies; his actions
and fortunes are determined by the nature of things, his physical
organisation and physical environment. The fact that God exists in
inactive ease hardly affects the fatalistic complexion of this
philosophy; but it is perhaps a mitigation that the world was made
for man; humanity is its final cause.

The variety of the phases of civilisation that have appeared on
earth is due to the fact that the possible manifestations of human
nature are very numerous and that they must all be realised. The
lower forms are those in which the best, which means the most human,
faculties of our nature are undeveloped. The highest has not yet
been realised. "The flower of humanity, captive still in its germ,
will blossom out one day into the true form of man like unto God, in
a state of which no terrestrial man can imagine the greatness and
the majesty." [Footnote: Ideen, v. 5.]

Herder is not a systematic thinker--indeed his work abounds in
contradictions--and he has not made it clear how far this full
epiphany results from the experiences of mankind in preceding
phases. He believes that life is an education for humanity (he has
taken the phrase of Lessing), that good progressively develops, that
reason and justice become more powerful. This is a doctrine of
Progress, but he distinctly opposes the hypothesis of a final and
unique state of perfection as the goal of history, which would imply
that earlier generations exist for the sake of the later and suffer
in order to ensure the felicity of remote posterity--a theory which
offends his sense of justice and fitness. On the contrary, man can
realise happiness equally in every stage of civilisation. All forms
of society are equally legitimate, the imperfect as well as the
perfect; all are ends in themselves, not mere stages on the way to
something better. And a people which is happy in one of these
inferior states has a perfect right to remain in it.

Thus the Progress which Herder sees is, to use his own geometrical
illustration, a sequence of unequal and broken curves, corresponding
to different maxima and minima. Each curve has its own equation, the
history of each people is subject to the laws of its own
environment; but there is no general law controlling the whole
career of humanity. [Footnote: Ib. xv. 3. The power of ideas in
history, which Herder failed to appreciate, was recognised by a
contemporary savant from whom he might have learned. Jakob Wegelin,
a Swiss, had, at the invitation of Frederick the Great, settled in
Berlin, where he spent the last years of his life and devoted his
study to the theory of history. His merit was to have perceived that
"external facts are penetrated and governed by spiritual forces and
guiding ideas, and that the essential and permanent in history is
conditioned by the nature and development of ideas." (Dierauer,
quoted by Bock, op. cit. p. 13.) He believed in the progressive
development of mankind as a whole, but as his learned brochures seem
to have exerted no influence, it would be useless here to examine
more closely his views, which are buried in the transactions of the
Prussian Academy of Science. In Switzerland he came under the
influence of Rousseau and d'Alembert. After he moved to Berlin
(1765) he fell under that of Leibnitz. It may be noted (1) that he
deprecated attempts at writing a universal history as premature
until an adequate knowledge of facts had been gained, and this would
demand long preliminary labours; (2) that he discussed the question
whether history is an indefinite progression or a series of constant
cycles, and decided for the former view. (Memoire sur le cours
periodique, 1785). Bock's monograph is the best study of Wegelin;
but see also Flint's observations in Philosophy of History, vol. i.
(1874).]

Herder brought down his historical survey only as far as the
sixteenth century. It has been suggested [Footnote: Javary, De
l'idee de progres, p. 69.] that if he had come down further he might
have comprehended the possibility of a deliberate transformation of
societies by the intelligent action of the human will--an historical
force to which he does not do justice, apparently because he fancied
it incompatible with strict causal sequence. The value of his work
does not lie in the philosophical principles which he applied. Nor
was it a useful contribution to history; of him it has been said, as
of Bossuet, that facts bent like grass under his feet. [Footnote:
Jouffroy, Melanges, p. 81.] But it was a notable attempt to do for
human phenomena what Leibnitz in his Theodicy sought to do for the
cosmos, and it pointed the way to the rationalistic philosophies of
history which were to be a feature of the speculations of the
following century.

2.

The short essay of Kant, which he clumsily called the Idea of a
Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan, [Footnote: 1784. This
work of Kant was translated by De Quincey (Works, vol. ix. 428 sqq.,
ed. Masson), who is responsible for cosmopolitical as the rendering
of weltburgerlich.] approaches the problems raised by the history
of civilisation from a new point of view.

He starts with the principle of invariable law. On any theory of
free will, he says, human actions are as completely under the
control of universal-laws of nature as any other physical phenomena.
This is illustrated by statistics. Registers of births, deaths, and
marriages show that these events occur with as much conformity to
laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather.

It is the same with the great sequence of historical events. Taken
alone and individually, they seem incoherent and lawless; but viewed
in their connection, as due to the action not of individuals but of
the human species, they do not fail to reveal "a regular stream of
tendency." Pursuing their own often contradictory purposes,
individual nations and individual men are unconsciously promoting a
process to which if they perceived it they would pay little regard.

Individual men do not obey a law. They do not obey the laws of
instinct like animals, nor do they obey, as rational citizens of the
world would do, the laws of a preconcerted plan. If we look at the
stage of history we see scattered and occasional indications of
wisdom, but the general sum of men's actions is "a web of folly,
childish vanity, and often even of the idlest wickedness and spirit
of destruction."

The problem for the philosopher is to discover a meaning in this
senseless current of human actions, so that the history of creatures
who pursue no plan of their own may yet admit of a systematic form.
The clew to this form is supplied by the predispositions of human
nature.

I have stated this problem almost in Kant's words, and as he might
have stated it if he had not introduced the conception of final
causes. His use of the postulate of final causes without justifying
it is a defect in his essay. He identifies what he well calls a
stream of tendency with "a natural purpose." He makes no attempt to
show that the succession of events is such that it cannot be
explained without the postulate of a purpose. His solution of the
problem is governed by this conception of finality, and by the
unwarranted assumption that nature does nothing in vain.

He lays down that all the tendencies to which any creature is
predisposed by its nature must in the end be developed perfectly and
agreeably to their final purpose. Those predispositions in man which
serve the use of his reason are therefore destined to be fully
developed. This destiny, however, cannot be realised in the
individual; it can only be realised in the species. For reason works
tentatively, by progress and regress. Each man would require an
inordinate length of time to make a perfect use of his natural
tendencies. Therefore, as life is short, an incalculable series of
generations is needed.

The means which nature employs to develop these tendencies is the
antagonism which in man's social state exists between his gregarious
and his antigregarious tendencies. His antigregarious nature
expresses itself in the desire to force all things to comply to his
own humour. Hence ambition, love of honour, avarice. These were
necessary to raise mankind from the savage to the civilised state.
But for these antisocial propensities men would be gentle as sheep,
and "an Arcadian life would arise, of perfect harmony and mutual
love, such as must suffocate and stifle all talents in their very
germs." Nature, knowing better than man what is good for the
species, ordains discord. She is to be thanked for competition and
enmity, and for the thirst of power and wealth. For without these
the final purpose of realising man's rational nature would remain
unfulfilled. This is Kant's answer to Rousseau.

The full realisation of man's rational nature is possible only in a
"universal civil society" founded on political justice. The
establishment of such a society is the highest problem for the human
species. Kant contemplates, as the political goal, a confederation
of states in which the utmost possible freedom shall be united with
the most rigorous determination of the boundaries of freedom.

Is it reasonable to suppose that a universal or cosmopolitical
society of this kind will come into being; and if so, how will it be
brought about? Political changes in the relations of states are
generally produced by war. Wars are tentative endeavours to bring
about new relations and to form new political bodies. Are
combinations and recombinations to continue until by pure chance
some rational self-supporting system emerges? Or is it possible that
no such condition of society may ever arrive, and that ultimately
all progress may be overwhelmed by a hell of evils? Or, finally, is
Nature pursuing her regular course of raising the species by its own
spontaneous efforts and developing, in the apparently wild
succession of events, man's originally implanted tendencies?

Kant accepts the last alternative on the ground that it is not
reasonable to assume a final purpose in particular natural processes
and at the same time to assume that there is no final purpose in the
whole. Thus his theory of Progress depends on the hypothesis of
final causes.

It follows that to trace the history of mankind is equivalent to
unravelling a hidden plan of Nature for accomplishing a perfect
civil constitution for a universal society; since a universal
society is the sole state in which the tendencies of human nature
can be fully developed. We cannot determine the orbit of the
development, because the whole period is so vast and only a small
fraction is known to us, but this is enough to show that there is a
definite course.

Kant thinks that such a "cosmopolitical" history, as he calls it, is
possible, and that if it were written it would give us a clew
opening up "a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a
remote distance we shall discover the human species seated upon an
eminence won by infinite toil, where all the germs are unfolded
which nature has implanted and its own destination upon this earth
accomplished."

3.

But to see the full bearing of Kant's discussion we must understand
its connection with his ethics. For his ethical theory is the
foundation and the motive of his speculation on Progress. The
progress on which he lays stress is moral amelioration; he refers
little to scientific or material progress. For him morality was an
absolute obligation founded in the nature of reason. Such an
obligation presupposes an end to be attained, and this end is a
reign of reason under which all men obeying the moral law mutually
treat each other as ends in themselves. Such an ideal state must be
regarded as possible, because it is a necessary postulate of reason.
From this point of view it may be seen that Kant's speculation on
universal history is really a discussion whether the ideal state,
which is required as a subjective postulate in the interest of
ethics, is likely to be realised objectively.

Now, Kant does not assert that because our moral reason must assume
the possibility of this hypothetical goal civilisation is therefore
moving towards it. That would be a fallacy into which he was
incapable of falling. Civilisation is a phenomenon, and anything we
know about it can only be inferred from experience. His argument is
that there are actual indications of progress in this desirable
direction. He pointed to the contemporary growth of civil liberty
and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral
improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of
French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these
data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a
purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put
forward as a hypothesis, not as a dogma.

It is probable that what hindered Kant from broaching his theory of
Progress with as much confidence as Condorcet was his perception
that nothing could be decisively affirmed about the course of
civilisation until the laws of its movement had been discovered. He
saw that this was a matter for scientific investigation. He says
expressly that the laws are not yet known, and suggests that some
future genius may do for social phenomena what Kepler and Newton did
for the heavenly bodies. As we shall see, this is precisely what
some of the leading French thinkers of the next generation will
attempt to do.

But cautiously though he framed the hypothesis Kant evidently
considered Progress probable. He recognised that the most difficult
obstacle to the moral advance of man lies in war and the burdens
which the possibility of war imposes. And he spent much thought on
the means by which war might be abolished. He published a
philosophical essay on Perpetual Peace, in which he formulated the
articles of an international treaty to secure the disappearance of
war. He considered that, while a universal republic would be the
positive ideal, we shall probably have to be contented with what he
calls a negative substitute, consisting in a federation of peoples
bound by a peace-alliance guaranteeing the independence of each
member. But to assure the permanence of this system it is essential
that each state should have a democratic constitution. For such a
constitution is based on individual liberty and civil equality. All
these changes should be brought about by legal reforms; revolutions-
-he was writing in 1795---cannot be justified.

We see the influence of Rousseau's Social Contract and that of the
Abbe de Saint-Pierre, with whose works Kant was acquainted. There
can be little doubt that it was the influence of French thought, so
powerful in Germany at this period, that turned Kant's mind towards
these speculations, which belong to the latest period of his life
and form a sort of appendix to his philosophical system. The theory
of Progress, the idea of universal reform, the doctrine of political
equality--Kant examined all these conceptions and appropriated them
to the service of his own highly metaphysical theory of ethics. In
this new association their spirit was changed.

In France, as we saw, the theory of Progress was generally
associated with ethical views which could find a metaphysical basis
in the sensationalism of Locke. A moral system which might be built
on sensation, as the primary mental fact, was worked out by
Helvetius. But the principle that the supreme law of conduct is to
obey nature had come down as a practical philosophy from Rabelais
and Montaigne through Moliere to the eighteenth century. It was
reinforced by the theory of the natural goodness of man. Jansenism
had struggled against it and was defeated. After theology it was the
turn of metaphysics. Kant's moral imperative marked the next stage
in the conflict of the two opposite tendencies which seek natural
and ultra-natural sanctions for morality.

Hence the idea of progress had a different significance for Kant and
for its French exponents, though his particular view of the future
possibly in store for the human species coincided in some essential
points with theirs. But his theory of life gives a different
atmosphere to the idea. In France the atmosphere is emphatically
eudaemonic; happiness is the goal. Kant is an uncompromising
opponent of eudaemonism. "If we take enjoyment or happiness as the
measure, it is easy," he says, "to evaluate life. Its value is less
than nothing. For who would begin one's life again in the same
conditions, or even in new natural conditions, if one could choose
them oneself, but of which enjoyment would be the sole end?"

There was, in fact, a strongly-marked vein of pessimism in Kant. One
of the ablest men of the younger generation who were brought up on
his system founded the philosophical pessimism--very different in
range and depth from the sentimental pessimism of Rousseau--which
was to play a remarkable part in German thought in the nineteenth
century. [Footnote: Kant's pessimism has been studied at length by
von Hartmann, in Zur Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismus
(1880).] Schopenhauer's unpleasant conclusion that of all
conceivable worlds this is the worst, is one of the speculations for
which Kant may be held ultimately responsible. [Footnote:
Schopenhauer recognised progress social, economic, and political,
but as a fact that contains no guarantee of happiness; on the
contrary, the development of the intelligence increases suffering.
He ridiculed the optimistic ideals of comfortable, well-regulated
states. His views on historical development have been collected by
G. Sparlinsky, Schopenhauers Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, in Berner
Studien s. Philosophie, Bd. lxxii. (1910).]

4.

Kant's considerations on historical development are an appendix to
his philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof
of his system. It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists,
for whom his system was the point of departure, though they rejected
its essential feature, the limitation of human thought. With Fichte
and Hegel progressive development was directly deduced from their
principles. If their particular interpretations of history have no
permanent value, it is significant that, in their ambitious attempts
to explain the universe a priori, history was conceived as
progressive, and their philosophies did much to reinforce a
conception which on very different principles was making its way in
the world. But the progress which their systems involved was not
bound up with the interest of human happiness, but stood out as a
fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of the nature
of thought.

The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote:
Fichte's philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des
gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at
Berlin in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of "freedom"; that is
its end and goal, but a goal that always recedes. It can never be
reached; for its full attainment would mean the complete suppression
of Nature. The process of the world, therefore, consists in an
indefinite approximation to an unattainable ideal: freedom is being
perpetually realised more and more; and the world, as it ascends in
this direction, becomes more and more a realm of reason.

What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition
to instinct. A man acting instinctively may be acting quite
reasonably, in a way which any one fully conscious of all the
implications and consequences of the action would judge to be
reasonable. But in order that his actions should be free he must
himself be fully conscious of all those implications and
consequences.

It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in
which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to
reason, not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate
purpose. This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it
determines the necessary stages of history.

It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest:
the earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the
latest, in which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it
fully. But before reaching this final stage they must pass through
an epoch in which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant.
And to reach this they must have emancipated themselves from
instinct, and this process of emancipation means a fourth epoch. But
they could not have wanted to emancipate themselves unless they had
felt instinct as a servitude imposed by an external authority, and
therefore we have to distinguish yet another epoch wherein reason is
expressed in authoritarian institutions to which men blindly submit.
In this way Fichte deduces five historical epochs: two in which
progress is blind, two in which it is free, and an intermediate in
which it is struggling to consciousness. [Footnote: First Epoch:
that of instinctive reason; the age of innocence. Second: that of
authoritarian reason. Third: that of enfranchisement; the age of
scepticism and unregulated liberty. Fourth: that of conscious
reason, as science. Fifth: that of regnant reason, as art.] But
there are no locked gates between these periods; they overlap and
mingle; each may have some of the characteristics of another; and in
each there is a vanguard leading the way and a rearguard lagging
behind.

At present (1804) we are in the third age; we have broken with
authority, but do not yet possess a clear and disciplined knowledge
of reason. [Footnote: Three years later, however, Fichte maintained
in his patriotic Discourses to the German Nation (1807) that in 1804
man had crossed the threshold of the fourth epoch. He asserted that
the progress of "culture" and science will depend henceforward
chiefly on Germany.] Fichte has deduced this scheme purely a priori
without any reference to actual experience. "The philosopher," he
says, "follows the a priori thread of the world-plan which is clear
to him without any history; and if he makes use of history, it is
not to prove anything, since his theses are already proved
independently of all history."

Historical development is thus presented as a necessary progress
towards a goal which is known but cannot be reached. And this fact
as to the destiny of the race constitutes the basis of morality, of
which the fundamental law is to act in such a way as to promote the
free realisation of reason upon earth. It has been claimed by a
recent critic that Fichte was the first modern philosopher to
humanise morals. He completely rejected the individualistic
conception which underlay Kantian as well as Christian ethics. He
asserted that the true motive of morality is not the salvation of
the individual man but the Progress of humanity. In fact, with
Fichte Progress is the principle of ethics. That the Christian ideal
of ascetic saintliness detached from society has no moral value is a
plain corollary from the idea of earthly Progress. [Footnote: X.
Leon, La Philosophie de Fichte (1902), pp. 477-9.]

One other point in Fichte's survey of history deserves notice--the
social role of the savant. It is the function of the savant to
discover the truths which are a condition of moral progress; he may
be said to incarnate reason in the world. We shall see how this idea
played a prominent part in the social schemes of Saint-Simon and
Comte. [Footnote: Fichte, Ueber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten
(1794).]

5.

Hegel's philosophy of history is better known than Fichte's. Like
Fichte, he deduced the phases a priori from his metaphysical
principles, but he condescended to review in some detail the actual
phenomena. He conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's
consciousness of its own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is
virtually equivalent to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines
Universal History as the description of the process by which Spirit
or God comes to the consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom
does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment to develop in a
different way; its actual development is necessary and is the
embodiment of reason. Freedom consists in fully recognising the
fact.

Of the particular features which distinguish Hegel's treatment, the
first is that he identifies "history" with political history, the
development of the state. Art, religion, philosophy, the creations
of social man, belong to a different and higher stage of Spirit's
self-revelation. [Footnote: The three phases of Spirit are (1)
subjective; (2) objective; (3) absolute. Psychology, e.g., is
included in (1), law and history in (2), religion in (3).] In the
second place, Hegel ignores the primitive prehistoric ages of man,
and sets the beginning of his development in the fully-grown
civilisation of China. He conceives the Spirit as continually moving
from one nation to another in order to realise the successive stages
of its self-consciousness: from China to India, from India to the
kingdoms of Western Asia; then from the Orient to Greece, then to
Rome, and finally to the Germanic world. In the East men knew only
that ONE is free, the political characteristic was despotism; in
Greece and Rome they knew that SOME are free, and the political
forms were aristocracy and democracy; in the modern world they know
that ALL are free, and the political form is monarchy. The first
period, he compared to childhood, the second to youth (Greece) and
manhood (Rome), the third to old age, old but not feeble. The third,
which includes the medieval and modern history of Europe, designated
by Hegel as the Germanic world--for "the German spirit is the spirit
of the modern world"--is also the final period. In it God realises
his freedom completely in history, just as in Hegel's own absolute
philosophy, which is final, God has completely understood his own
nature.

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