Books: The Idea of Progress

J >> J.B. Bury >> The Idea of Progress

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the
universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular
studies. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this
purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was
subordinate. It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had
asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was
designed to persuade the Pontiff of the utility of science from an
ecclesiastical point of view, and to induce him to sanction an
intellectual reform, which without the approbation of the Church
would at that time have been impossible. With great ingenuity and
resourcefulness he sought to show that the studies to which he was
devoted--mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry--were
indispensable to an intelligent study of theology and Scripture.
Though some of his arguments may have been urged simply to capture
the Pope's good-will, there can be no question that Bacon was
absolutely sincere in his view that theology was the mistress
(dominatrix) of the sciences and that their supreme value lay in
being necessary to it.

It was, indeed, on this principle of the close interconnection of
all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme
of reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in
which he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to
be remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, omnes
scientiae sunt connexae et mutuis se fovent auxiliis sicut partes
ejusdem totius, quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non solum propter
se sed pro aliis.] It is the motif of the Opus Majus, and it would
have been more fully elaborated if he had lived to complete the
encyclopaedic work, Scriptum Principale, which he had only begun
before his death. His other title to fame is well-known. He
realised, as no man had done before him, the importance of the
experimental method in investigating the secrets of nature, and was
an almost solitary pioneer in the paths to which his greater
namesake, more than three hundred years later, was to invite the
attention of the world.

But, although Roger Bacon was inspired by these enlightened ideas,
although he cast off many of the prejudices of his time and boldly
revolted against the tyranny of the prevailing scholastic
philosophy, he was nevertheless in other respects a child of his age
and could not disencumber himself of the current medieval conception
of the universe. His general view of the course of human history was
not materially different from that of St. Augustine. When he says
that the practical object of all knowledge is to assure the safety
of the human race, he explains this to mean "things which lead to
felicity in the next life." [Footnote: Opus Majus, vii. p. 366.]

It is pertinent to observe that he not only shared in the belief in
astrology, which was then universal, but considered it one of the
most important parts of "mathematics." It was looked upon with
disfavour by the Church as a dangerous study; Bacon defended its use
in the interests of the Church itself. He maintained, like Thomas
Aquinas, the physiological influence of the celestial bodies, and
regarded the planets as signs telling us what God has decreed from
eternity to come to pass either by natural processes or by acts of
human will or directly at his own good pleasure. Deluges, plagues,
and earthquakes were capable of being predicted; political and
religious revolutions were set in the starry rubric. The existence
of six principal religions was determined by the combinations of
Jupiter with the other six planets. Bacon seriously expected the
extinction of the Mohammedan religion before the end of the
thirteenth century, on the ground of a prediction by an Arab
astrologer. [Footnote: Ib. iv. p. 266; vii. p. 389.]

One of the greatest advantages that the study of astrological lore
will bring to humanity is that by its means the date of the coming
of Anti-Christ may be fixed with certainty, and the Church may be
prepared to face the perils and trials of that terrible time. Now
the arrival of Anti-Christ meant the end of the world, and Bacon
accepted the view, which he says was held by all wise men, that "we
are not far from the times of Anti-Christ." Thus the intellectual
reforms which he urged would have the effect, and no more, of
preparing Christendom to resist more successfully the corruption in
which the rule of Anti-Christ would involve the world. "Truth will
prevail," by which he meant science will make advances, "though with
difficulty, until Anti-Christ and his forerunners appear;" and on
his own showing the interval would probably be short.

The frequency with which Bacon recurs to this subject, and the
emphasis he lays on it, show that the appearance of Anti-Christ was
a fixed point in his mental horizon. When he looked forward into the
future, the vision which confronted him was a scene of corruption,
tyranny, and struggle under the reign of a barbarous enemy of
Christendom; and after that, the end of the world. [Footnote: (1)
His coming may be fixed by astrology: Opus Majus, iv. p. 269
(inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore
Antichristi; cp. p. 402). (2) His coming means the end of the world:
ib. p. 262. (3) We are not far from it: ib. p. 402. One of the
reasons which seem to have made this view probable to Bacon was the
irruption of the Mongols into Europe during his lifetime; cp. p. 268
and vii. p. 234. Another was the prevalent corruption, especially of
the clergy, which impressed him deeply; see Compendium studii
philosophiae, ed. Brewer, p. 402. (4) "Truth will prevail," etc.:
Opus Majus, i. pp. 19, 20. He claimed for experimental science that
it would produce inventions which could be usefully employed against
Antichrist: ib. vii. p. 221.] It is from this point of view that we
must appreciate the observations which he made on the advancement of
knowledge. "It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients
have left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours,
which, unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better
results"; Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers;
Avicenna and Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and
have added much that is new; and so it will go on till the end of
the world. And Bacon quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical
Inquiries" to show that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual.
Attention has been already called to those passages, and it was
shown how perverse it is, on the strength of such remarks, to claim
Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine of Progress. The same claim has
been made for Bacon with greater confidence, and it is no less
perverse. The idea of Progress is glaringly incongruous with his
vision of the world. If his programme of revolutionising secular
learning had been accepted--it fell completely dead, and his work
was forgotten for many ages,--he would have been the author of a
progressive reform; but how many reformers have there been before
and after Bacon on whose minds the idea of Progress never dawned?

[Footnote: Bacon quotes Seneca: See Opus Majus, i. pp. 37, 55, 14.

Much has been made out of a well-known passage in his short Epistle
de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de militate magiae, c. iv.
(ed. Brewer, p. 533), in which he is said to PREDICT inventions
which have been realised in the locomotives, steam navigation, and
aeroplanes of modern times. But Bacon predicts nothing. He is
showing that science can invent curious and, to the vulgar,
incredible things without the aid of magic. All the inventions which
he enumerates have, he declares, been actually made in ancient
times, with the exception of a flying-machine (instrumentum volandi
quod non vidi nec hominem qui vidisset cognovi, sed sapientem qui
hoc artificium excogitavit explere cognosco).

Compare the remarks of S. Vogl, Die Physik Roger Bacos (1906), 98
sqq.]

4.

Thus Friar Bacon's theories of scientific reform, so far from
amounting to an anticipation of the idea of Progress, illustrate how
impossible it was that this idea could appear in the Middle Ages.
The whole spirit of medieval Christianity excluded it. The
conceptions which were entertained of the working of divine
Providence, the belief that the world, surprised like a sleeping
household by a thief in the night, might at any moment come to a
sudden end, had the same effect as the Greek theories of the nature
of change and of recurring cycles of the world. Or rather, they had
a more powerful effect, because they were not reasoned conclusions,
but dogmas guaranteed by divine authority. And medieval pessimism as
to man's mundane condition was darker and sterner than the pessimism
of the Greeks. There was the prospect of happiness in another sphere
to compensate, but this, engrossing the imagination, only rendered
it less likely that any one should think of speculating about man's
destinies on earth.

III

1.

The civilised countries of Europe spent about three hundred years in
passing from the mental atmosphere of the Middle Ages into the
mental atmosphere of the modern world. These centuries were one of
the conspicuously progressive periods in history, but the conditions
were not favourable to the appearance of an idea of Progress, though
the intellectual milieu was being prepared in which that idea could
be born. This progressive period, which is conveniently called the
Renaissance, lasted from the fourteenth into the seventeenth
century. The great results, significant for our present purpose,
which the human mind achieved at this stage of its development were
two. Self-confidence was restored to human reason, and life on this
planet was recognised as possessing a value independent of any hopes
or fears connected with a life beyond the grave.

But in discarding medieval naivete and superstition, in assuming a
freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a
new conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to
the guidance of Greek and Roman thinkers, and called up the spirit
of the ancient world to exorcise the ghosts of the dark ages. Their
minds were thus directed backwards to a past civilisation which, in
the ardour of new discovery, and in the reaction against
medievalism, they enthroned as ideal; and a new authority was set
up, the authority of ancient writers. In general speculation the men
of the Renaissance followed the tendencies and adopted many of the
prejudices of Greek philosophy. Although some great discoveries,
with far-reaching, revolutionary consequences, were made in this
period, most active minds were engaged in rediscovering,
elaborating, criticising, and imitating what was old. It was not
till the closing years of the Renaissance that speculation began to
seek and feel its way towards new points of departure. It was not
till then that a serious reaction set in against the deeper
influences of medieval thought.

2.

To illustrate the limitations of this period let us take
Machiavelli, one of the most original thinkers that Italy ever
produced.

There are certain fundamental principles underlying Machiavelli's
science of politics, which he has indicated incidentally in his
unsystematic way, but which are essential to the comprehension of
his doctrines. The first is that at all times the world of human
beings has been the same, varying indeed from land to land, but
always presenting the same aspect of some societies advancing
towards prosperity, and others declining. Those which are on the
upward grade will always reach a point beyond which they cannot rise
further, but they will not remain permanently on this level, they
will begin to decline; for human things are always in motion and
therefore must go up or down. Similarly, declining states will
ultimately touch bottom and then begin to ascend. Thus a good
constitution or social organisation can last only for a short time.
[Footnote: Machiavelli's principle of advance and decline: Discorsi,
ii. Introduction; Istorie fiorentine, v. ad init. For the cycle of
constitutions through which all states tend to move see Discorsi,
ii. 2 (here we see the influence of Polybius).]

It is obvious that in this view of history Machiavelli was inspired
and instructed by the ancients. And it followed from his premisses
that the study of the past is of the highest value because it
enables men to see what is to come; since to all social events at
any period there are correspondences in ancient times. "For these
events are due to men, who have and always had the same passions,
and therefore of necessity the effects must be the same." [Footnote:
Discorsi, iii. 43.]

Again, Machiavelli follows his ancient masters in assuming as
evident that a good organisation of society can be effected only by
the deliberate design of a wise legislator. [Footnote: Ib. iii. 1.
The lawgiver must assume for his purposes that all men are bad: ib.
i. 3. Villari has useful remarks on these principles in his
Machiavelli, Book ii. cap. iii.] Forms of government and religions
are the personal creations of a single brain; and the only chance
for a satisfactory constitution or for a religion to maintain itself
for any length of time is constantly to repress any tendencies to
depart from the original conceptions of its creator.

It is evident that these two assumptions are logically connected.
The lawgiver builds on the immutability of human nature; what is
good for one generation must be good for another. For Machiavelli,
as for Plato, change meant corruption. Thus his fundamental theory
excluded any conception of a satisfactory social order gradually
emerging by the impersonal work of successive generations, adapting
their institutions to their own changing needs and aspirations. It
is characteristic, and another point of resemblance with ancient
thinkers that he sought the ideal state in the past--republican
Rome.

These doctrines, the sameness of human nature and the omnipotent
lawgiver, left no room for anything resembling a theory of Progress.
If not held afterwards in the uncompromising form in which
Machiavelli presented them, yet it has well been pointed out that
they lay at the root of some of the most famous speculations of the
eighteenth century. [Footnote: Villari, loc. cit.]

Machiavelli's sameness of human nature meant that man would always
have the same passions and desires, weaknesses and vices. This
assumption was compatible with the widely prevailing view that man
had degenerated in the course of the last fifteen hundred years.
From the exaltation of Greek and Roman antiquity to a position of
unattainable superiority, especially in the field of knowledge, the
degeneration of humanity was an easy and natural inference. If the
Greeks in philosophy and science were authoritative guides, if in
art and literature they were unapproachable, if the Roman republic,
as Machiavelli thought, was an ideal state, it would seem that the
powers of Nature had declined, and she could no longer produce the
same quality of brain. So long as this paralysing theory prevailed,
it is manifest that the idea of Progress could not appear.

But in the course of the sixteenth century men began here and there,
somewhat timidly and tentatively, to rebel against the tyranny of
antiquity, or rather to prepare the way for the open rebellion which
was to break out in the seventeenth. Breaches were made in the proud
citadel of ancient learning. Copernicus undermined the authority of
Ptolemy and his predecessors; the anatomical researches of Vesalius
injured the prestige of Galen; and Aristotle was attacked on many
sides by men like Telesio, Cardan, Ramus, and Bruno. [Footnote: It
has been observed that the thinkers who were rebelling against the
authority of Aristotle--the most dangerous of the ancient
philosophers, because he was so closely associated with theological
scholasticism and was supported by the Church--frequently attacked
under the standard of some other ancient master; e.g. Telesio
resorted to Parmenides, Justus Lipsius to the Stoics, and Bruno is
under the influence of Plotinus and Plato (Bouillier, La Philosophie
cartesienne, vol. i. p. 5). The idea of "development" in Bruno has
been studied by Mariupolsky (Zur Geschichte des Entwicklungsbegriffs
in Berner Studien, Bd. vi. 1897), who pointed out the influence of
Stoicism on his thought.] In particular branches of science an
innovation was beginning which heralded a radical revolution in the
study of natural phenomena, though the general significance of the
prospect which these researches opened was but vaguely understood at
the time. The thinkers and men of science were living in an
intellectual twilight. It was the twilight of dawn. At one extremity
we have mysticism which culminated in the speculations of Bruno and
Campanella; at the other we have the scepticism of Montaigne,
Charron, and Sanchez. The bewildered condition of knowledge is
indicated by the fact that while Bruno and Campanella accepted the
Copernican astronomy, it was rejected by one who in many other
respects may claim to be reckoned as a modern--I mean Francis Bacon.

But the growing tendency to challenge the authority of the ancients
does not sever this period from the spirit which informed the
Renaissance. For it is subordinate or incidental to a more general
and important interest. To rehabilitate the natural man, to claim
that he should be the pilot of his own course, to assert his freedom
in the fields of art and literature had been the work of the early
Renaissance. It was the problem of the later Renaissance to complete
this emancipation in the sphere of philosophical thought. The bold
metaphysics of Bruno, for which he atoned by a fiery death, offered
the solution which was most unorthodox and complete. His deification
of nature and of man as part of nature involved the liberation of
humanity from external authority. But other speculative minds of the
age, though less audacious, were equally inspired by the idea of
freely interrogating nature, and were all engaged in accomplishing
the programme of the Renaissance--the vindication of this world as
possessing a value for man independent of its relations to any
supermundane sphere. The raptures of Giordano Bruno and the
sobrieties of Francis Bacon are here on common ground. The whole
movement was a necessary prelude to a new age of which science was
to be the mistress.

It is to be noted that there was a general feeling of complacency as
to the condition of learning and intellectual pursuits. This
optimism is expressed by Rabelais. Gargantua, in a letter to
Pantagruel, studying at Paris, enlarges to his son on the vast
improvements in learning and education which had recently, he says,
been brought about. "All the world is full of savants, learned
teachers, large libraries; and I am of opinion that neither in the
time of Plato nor of Cicero nor of Papinian were there such
facilities for study as one sees now." It is indeed the study of the
ancient languages and literatures that Gargantua considers in a
liberal education, but the satisfaction at the present diffusion of
learning, with the suggestion that here at least contemporaries have
an advantage over the ancients, is the significant point. [Footnote:
Rabelais, Book ii. chap. 8.] This satisfaction shines through the
observation of Ramus that "in one century we have seen a greater
progress in men and works of learning than our ancestors had seen in
the whole course of the previous fourteen centuries." [Footnote:
Praefat. Scholarum Mathematicarum, maiorem doctorum hominum et
operum proventum seculo uno vidimus quam totis antea 14 seculis
maiores nostri viderent. (Ed. Basel, 1569.)] [Footnote 1. Guillaume
Postel observed in his De magistratibus Atheniensium liber (1541)
that the ages are always progressing (secula semper proficere), and
every day additions are made to human knowledge, and that this
process would only cease if Providence by war, or plague, or some
catastrophe were to destroy all the accumulated stores of knowledge
which have been transmitted from antiquity in books (Praef., B
verso). What is known of the life of this almost forgotten scholar
has been collected by G. Weill (De Gulielmi Postelli vita et indole,
1892). He visited the East, brought back oriental MSS., and was more
than once imprisoned on charges of heresy. He dreamed of converting
the Mohammedans, and of uniting the whole world under the empire of
France.]

In this last stage of the Renaissance, which includes the first
quarter of the seventeenth century, soil was being prepared in which
the idea of Progress could germinate, and our history of it origin
definitely begins with the work of two men who belong to this age,
Bodin, who is hardly known except to special students of political
science, and Bacon, who is known to all the world. Both had a more
general grasp of the significance of their own time than any of
their contemporaries, and though neither of them discovered a theory
of Progress, they both made contributions to thought which directly
contributed to its subsequent appearance.

CHAPTER I

SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND LE ROY

1.

It is a long descent from the genius of Machiavelli to the French
historian, Jean Bodin, who published his introduction to historical
studies [Footnote: Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem,
1566.] about forty years after Machiavelli's death. His views and
his method differ widely from those of that great pioneer, whom he
attacks. His readers were not arrested by startling novelties or
immoral doctrine; he is safe, and dull.

But Bodin had a much wider range of thought than Machiavelli, whose
mind was entirely concentrated on the theory of politics; and his
importance for us lies not in the political speculations by which he
sought to prove that monarchy is the best form of government
[Footnote: Les six livres de la Republique, 1576.], but in his
attempt to substitute a new theory of universal history for that
which prevailed in the Middle Ages. He rejected the popular
conception of a golden age and a subsequent degeneration of mankind;
and he refuted the view, generally current among medieval
theologians, and based on the prophecies of Daniel, which divided
the course of history into four periods corresponding to the
Babylonian Persian, Macedonian, and Roman monarchies, the last of
which was to endure till the day of Judgement. Bodin suggests a
division into three great periods: the first, of about two thousand
years, in which the South-Eastern peoples were predominant; the
second, of the same duration, in which those whom he calls the
Middle (Mediterranean) peoples came to the front; the third, in
which the Northern nations who overthrew Rome became the leaders in
civilisation. Each period is stamped by the psychological character
of the three racial groups. The note of the first is religion, of
the second practical sagacity, of the third warfare and inventive
skill. This division actually anticipates the synthesis of Hegel.
[Footnote: Hegel's division is (1) the Oriental, (2) a, the Greek,
b, the Roman, and (3) the Germanic worlds.] But the interesting
point is that it is based on anthropological considerations, in
which climate and geography are taken into account; and,
notwithstanding the crudeness of the whole exposition and the
intrusion of astrological arguments, it is a new step in the study
of universal history. [Footnote: Climates and geography. The fullest
discussion will be found in the Republique, Book v. cap. i. Here
Bodin anticipated Montesquieu. There was indeed nothing new in the
principle; it had been recognised by Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle,
Polybius, and other Greeks, and in a later age by Roger Bacon.

But Bodin first developed and applied it methodically. This part of
his work was ignored, and in the eighteenth century Montesquieu's
speculations on the physical factors in history were applauded as a
new discovery.]

I have said that Bodin rejected the theory of the degeneration of
man, along with the tradition of a previous age of virtue and
felicity. [Footnote: See especially Methodus, cap. v. pp. 124, 130,
136.] The reason which he alleged against it is important. The
powers of nature have always been uniform. It is illegitimate to
suppose that she could at one time produce the men and conditions
postulated by the theory of the golden age, and not produce them at
another. In other words, Bodin asserts the principle of the
permanent and undiminishing capacities of nature, and, as we shall
see in the sequel, this principle was significant. It is not to be
confounded with the doctrine of the immutability of human things
assumed by Machiavelli. The human scene has vastly changed since the
primitive age of man; "if that so-called golden age could be revoked
and compared with our own, we should consider it iron." [Footnote:
Methodus, cap. VII. p. 353.] For history largely depends on the will
of men, which is always changing; every day new laws, new customs,
new institutions, both secular and religious, come into being, and
new errors. [Footnote: Ib. cap. I. p. 12.]

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24