Books: The Idea of Progress

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But could this argument be applied to poetry and literary art, the
field of battle in which the belligerents, including Perrault
himself, were most deeply interested? It might prove that the modern
age was capable of producing poets and men of letter no less
excellent than the ancient masters, but did it prove that their
works must be superior? The objection did not escape Perrault, and
he answers it ingeniously. It is the function of poetry and
eloquence to please the human heart, and in order to please it we
must know it. Is it easier to penetrate the secrets of the human
heart than the secrets of nature, or will it take less time? We are
always making new discoveries about its passions and desires. To
take only the tragedies of Corneille you will find there finer and
more delicate reflections on ambition, vengeance, and jealousy than
in all the books of antiquity. At the close of his Parallel,
however, Perrault, while he declares the general superiority of the
moderns, makes a reservation in regard to poetry and eloquence "for
the sake of peace."

The discussion of Perrault falls far short of embodying a full idea
of Progress. Not only is he exclusively concerned with progress in
knowledge--though he implies, indeed, without developing, the
doctrine that happiness depends on knowledge--but he has no eyes for
the future, and no interest in it. He is so impressed with the
advance of knowledge in the recent past that he is almost incapable
of imagining further progression. "Read the journals of France and
England," he says, "and glance at the publications of the Academies
of these great kingdoms, and you will be convinced that within the
last twenty or thirty years more discoveries have been made in
natural science than throughout the period of learned antiquity. I
own that I consider myself fortunate to know the happiness we enjoy;
it is a great pleasure to survey all the past ages in which I can
see the birth and the progress of all things, but nothing which has
not received a new increase and lustre in our own times. Our age
has, in some sort, arrived at the summit of perfection. And since
for some years the rate of the progress is much slower and appears
almost insensible--as the days seem to cease lengthening when the
solstice is near--it is pleasant to think that probably there are
not many things for which we need envy future generations."

Indifference to the future, or even a certain scepticism about it,
is the note of this passage, and accords with the view that the
world has reached its old age. The idea of the progress of
knowledge, which Perrault expounds, is still incomplete.

3.

Independently of this development in France, the doctrine of
degeneration had been attacked, and the comparison of the ancients
with the moderns incidentally raised, in England.

A divine named George Hakewill published in 1627 a folio of six
hundred pages to confute "the common error touching Nature's
perpetual and universal decay." [Footnote: An Apologie or
Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of
the World, consisting in an Examination and Censure of the common
Errour, etc. (1627, 1630, 1635).] He and his pedantic book, which
breathes the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, are completely
forgotten; and though it ran to three editions, it can hardly have
attracted the attention of many except theologians. The writer's
object is to prove that the power and providence of God in the
government of the world are not consistent with the current view
that the physical universe, the heavens and the elements, are
undergoing a process of decay, and that man is degenerating
physically, mentally, and morally. His arguments in general are
futile as well as tedious. But he has profited by reading Bodin and
Bacon, whose ideas, it would appear, were already agitating
theological minds.

A comparison between the ancients and the moderns arises in a
general refutation of the doctrine of decay, as naturally as the
question of the stability of the powers of nature arises in a
comparison between the ancients and moderns. Hakewill protests
against excessive admiration of antiquity, just because it
encourages the opinion of the world's decay. He gives his argument a
much wider scope than the French controversialists. For him the
field of debate includes not only science, arts, and literature, but
physical qualities and morals. He seeks to show that mentally and
physically there has been no decay, and that the morals of modern
Christendom are immensely superior to those of pagan times. There
has been social progress, due to Christianity; and there has been an
advance in arts and knowledge.

Multa dies uariusque labor mutabilis aeui
Rettulit in melius.

Hakewill, like Tassoni, surveys all the arts and sciences, and
concludes that the moderns are equal to the ancients in poetry, and
in almost all other things excel them. [Footnote: Among modern poets
equal to the ancients, Hakewill signalises Sir Philip Sidney,
Spenser, Marot, Ronsard, Ariosto, Tasso (Book iii. chap. 8, Section
3).]

One of the arguments which he urges against the theory of
degeneration is pragmatic--its paralysing effect on human energy.
"The opinion of the world's universal decay quails the hopes and
blunts the edge of men's endeavours." And the effort to improve the
world, he implies, is a duty we owe to posterity.

"Let not then the vain shadows of the world's fatal decay keep us
either from looking backward to the imitation of our noble
predecessors or forward in providing for posterity, but as our
predecessors worthily provided, for us, so let our posterity bless
us in providing for them, it being still as uncertain to us what
generations are still to ensue, as it was to our predecessors in
their ages."

We note the suggestion that history may be conceived as a sequence
of improvements in civilisation, but we note also that Hakewill here
is faced by the obstacle which Christian theology offered to the
logical expansion of the idea. It is uncertain what generations are
still to ensue. Roger Bacon stood before the same dead wall.
Hakewill thinks that he is living in the last age of the world; but
how long it shall last is a question which cannot be resolved, "it
being one of those secrets which the Almighty hath locked up in the
cabinet of His own counsel." Yet he consoles himself and his readers
with a consideration which suggests that the end is not yet very
near." [Footnote: See Book i. chap. 2, Section 4, p. 24.] It is
agreed upon all sides by Divines that at least two signs forerunning
the world's end remain unaccomplished-the subversion of Rome and the
conversion of the Jews. And when they shall be accomplished God only
knows, as yet in man's judgment there being little appearance of the
one or the other."

It was well to be assured that nature is not decaying or man
degenerating. But was the doctrine that the end of the world does
not "depend upon the law of nature," and that the growth of human
civilisation may be cut off at any moment by a fiat of the Deity,
less calculated to "quail the hopes and blunt the edge of men's
endeavours?" Hakewill asserted with confidence that the universe
will be suddenly wrecked by fire. Una dies dabit exitio. Was the
prospect of an arrest which might come the day after to-morrow
likely to induce men to exert themselves to make provision for
posterity?

The significance of Hakewill lies in the fact that he made the
current theory of degeneration, which stood in the way of all
possible theories of progress, the object of a special inquiry. And
his book illustrates the close connection between that theory and
the dispute over the Ancients and Moderns. It cannot be said that he
has added anything valuable to what may be found in Bodin and Bacon
on the development of civilisation. The general synthesis of history
which he attempts is equivalent to theirs. He describes the history
of knowledge and arts, and all things besides, as exhibiting "a kind
of circular progress," by which he means that they have a birth,
growth, nourishing, failing and fading, and then within a while
after a resurrection and reflourishing. [Footnote: Book iii. chap.
6, Section i, p. 259.] In this method of progress the lamp of
learning passed from one people to another. It passed from the
Orientals (Chaldeans and Egyptians) to the Greeks; when it was
nearly extinguished in Greece it began to shine afresh among the
Romans; and having been put out by the barbarians for the space of a
thousand years it was relit by Petrarch and his contemporaries. In
stating this view of "circular progress," Hakewill comes perilously
near to the doctrine of Ricorsi or Returns which had been severely
denounced by Bacon.

In one point indeed Hakewill goes far beyond Bodin. It was
suggested, as we saw, by the French thinker that in some respects
the modern age is superior in conduct and morals to antiquity, but
he said little on the matter. Hakewill develops the suggestion at
great length into a severe and partial impeachment of ancient
manners and morals. Unjust and unconvincing though his arguments
are, and inspired by theological motives, his thesis nevertheless
deserves to be noted as an assertion of the progress of man in
social morality. Bacon, and the thinkers of the seventeenth century
generally, confined their views of progress in the past to the
intellectual field. Hakewill, though he overshot the mark and said
nothing actually worth remembering, nevertheless anticipated the
larger problem of social progress which was to come to the front in
the eighteenth century.

4.

During the forty years that followed the appearance of Hakewill's
book much had happened in the world of ideas, and when we take up
Glanvill's Plus ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge
since the days of Aristotle, [Footnote: The title is evidently
suggested by a passage in Bacon quoted above, p. 55.] we breathe a
different atmosphere. It was published in 1668, and its purpose was
to defend the recently founded Royal Society which was attacked on
the ground that it was inimical to the interests of religion and
sound learning. For the Aristotelian tradition was still strongly
entrenched in the English Church and Universities, notwithstanding
the influence of Bacon; and the Royal Society, which realised "the
romantic model" of Bacon's society of experimenters, repudiated the
scholastic principles and methods associated with Aristotle's name.

Glanvill was one of those latitudinarian clergymen, so common in the
Anglican Church in the seventeenth century, who were convinced that
religious faith must accord with reason, and were unwilling to abate
in its favour any of reason's claims. He was under the influence of
Bacon, Descartes, and the Cambridge Platonists, and no one was more
enthusiastic than he in following the new scientific discoveries of
his time. Unfortunately for his reputation he had a weak side.
Enlightened though he was, he was a firm believer in witchcraft, and
he is chiefly remembered not as an admirer of Descartes and Bacon,
and a champion of the Royal Society, but as the author of Saducismus
Triumphatus, a monument of superstition, which probably contributed
to check the gradual growth of disbelief in witches and apparitions.

His Plus ultra is a review of modern improvements of useful
knowledge. It is confined to mathematics and science, in accordance
with its purpose of justifying the Royal Society; and the
discoveries of the past sixty years enable the author to present a
far more imposing picture of modern scientific progress than was
possible for Bodin or Bacon. [Footnote: Bacon indeed could have made
out a more impressive picture of the new age if he had studied
mathematics and taken the pains to master the evidence which was
revolutionising astronomy. Glanvill had the advantage of
comprehending the importance of mathematics for the advance of
physical science.] He had absorbed Bacon's doctrine of utility. His
spirit is displayed in the remark that more gratitude is due to the
unknown inventor of the mariners' compass

"than to a thousand Alexanders and Caesars, or to ten times the
number of Aristotles. And he really did more for the increase of
knowledge and the advantage of the world by this one experiment than
the numerous subtile disputers that have lived ever since the
erection of the school of talking."

Glanvill, however, in his complacency with what has already been
accomplished, is not misled into over-estimating its importance. He
knows that it is indeed little compared with the ideal of attainable
knowledge. The human design, to which it is the function of the
Royal Society to contribute, is laid as low, he says, as the
profoundest depths of nature, and reaches as high as the uppermost
storey of the universe, extends to all the varieties of the great
world, and aims at the benefit of universal mankind. Such a work can
only proceed slowly, by insensible degrees. It is an undertaking
wherein all the generations of men are concerned, and our own age
can hope to do little more than to remove useless rubbish, lay in
materials, and put things in order for the building. "We must seek
and gather, observe and examine, and lay up in bank for the ages
that come after."

These lines on "the vastness of the work" suggest to the reader that
a vast future will be needed for its accomplishment. Glanvill does
not dwell on this, but he implies it. He is evidently unembarrassed
by the theological considerations which weighed so heavily on
Hakewill. He does not trouble himself with the question whether
Anti-Christ has still to appear. The difference in general outlook
between these two clergymen is an indication how the world had
travelled in the course of forty years.

Another point in Glanvill's little book deserves attention. He takes
into his prospect the inhabitants of the Transatlantic world; they,
too, are to share in the benefits which shall result from the
subjugation of nature.

"By the gaining that mighty continent and the numerous fruitful
isles beyond the Atlantic, we have obtained a larger field of
nature, and have thereby an advantage for more phenomena, and more
helps both for knowledge and for life, which 'tis very like that
future ages will make better use of to such purposes than those
hitherto have done; and that science also may at last travel into
those parts and enrich Peru with a more precious treasure than that
of its golden mines, is not improbable."

Sprat, the Bishop of Rochester, in his interesting History of the
Royal Society, so sensible and liberal--published shortly before
Glanvill's book,--also contemplates the extension of science over
the world. Speaking of the prospect of future discoveries, he thinks
it will partly depend on the enlargement of the field of western
civilisation "if this mechanic genius which now prevails in these
parts of Christendom shall happen to spread wide amongst ourselves
and other civil nations, or if by some good fate it shall pass
farther on to other countries that were yet never fully civilised."

This then being imagin'd, that there may some lucky tide of civility
flow into those lands which are yet salvage, then will a double
improvement thence arise both in respect of ourselves and them. For
even the present skilful parts of mankind will be thereby made more
skilful, and the other will not only increase those arts which we
shall bestow upon them, but will also venture on new searches
themselves.

He expects much from the new converts, on the ground that nations
which have been taught have proved more capable than their teachers,
appealing to the case of the Greeks who outdid their eastern
masters, and to that of the peoples of modern Europe who received
their light from the Romans but have "well nigh doubled the ancient
stock of trades delivered to their keeping."

5.

The establishment of the Royal Society in 1660 and the Academy of
Sciences in 1666 made physical science fashionable in London and
Paris. Macaulay, in his characteristic way, describes how "dreams of
perfect forms of government made way for dreams of wings with which
men were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of double-keeled
ships which were never to founder in the fiercest storm. All classes
were hurried along by the prevailing sentiment. Cavalier and
Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan were for once allied. Divines,
jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes, swelled the triumph of the
Baconian philosophy." The seeds sown by Bacon had at last begun to
ripen, and full credit was given to him by those who founded and
acclaimed the Royal Society. The ode which Cowley addressed to that
institution might have been entitled an ode in honour of Bacon, or
still better--for the poet seized the essential point of Bacon's
labours--a hymn on the liberation of the human mind from the yoke of
Authority.

Bacon has broke that scar-crow Deity.

Dryden himself, in the Annus Mirabilis, had turned aside from his
subject, the defeat of the Dutch and England's mastery of the seas,
to pay a compliment to the Society, and to prophesy man's mastery of
the universe.

Instructed ships shall sail to rich commerce,
By which remotest regions are allied;
Which makes one city of the universe,
Where some may gain and all may be supplied.

Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky,
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry.

[Footnote: It may be noted that John Wilkins (Bishop of Chester)
published in 1638 a little book entitled Discovery of a New World,
arguing that the moon is inhabited. A further edition appeared in
1684. He attempted to compose a universal language (Sprat, Hist. of
Royal Society, p. 251). His Mercury or the Secret and Swift
Messenger (1641) contains proposals for a universal script (chap.
13). There is also an ingenious suggestion for the communication of
messages by sound, which might be described as an anticipation of
the Morse code. Wilkins and another divine, Seth Ward, the Bishop of
Salisbury, belonged to the group of men who founded the Royal
Society.]

Men did not look far into the future; they did not dream of what the
world might be a thousand or ten thousand years hence. They seem to
have expected quick results. Even Sprat thinks that "the absolute
perfection of the true philosophy" is not far off, seeing that "this
first great and necessary preparation for its coming"--the
institution of scientific co-operation--has been accomplished.
Superficial and transient though the popular enthusiasm was, it was
a sign that an age of intellectual optimism had begun, in which the
science of nature would play a leading role.

CHAPTER V

THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE: FONTENELLE

1.

Nine months before the first part of Perrault's work appeared a
younger and more brilliant man had formulated, in a short tract, the
essential points of the doctrine of the progress of knowledge. It
was Fontenelle.

Fontenelle was an anima naturaliter moderna. Trained in the
principles of Descartes, he was one of those who, though like
Descartes himself, too critical to swear by a master, appreciated
unreservedly the value of the Cartesian method. Sometimes, he says,
a great man gives the tone to his age; and this is true of
Descartes, who can claim the glory of having established a new art
of reasoning. He sees the effects in literature. The best books on
moral and political subjects are distinguished by an arrangement and
precision which he traces to the esprit geometrique characteristic
of Descartes. [Footnote: Sur l'utilite des mathematiques el de la
physique (Oeuvres, iii. p. 6, ed. 1729).] Fontenelle himself had
this "geometrical mind," which we see at its best in Descartes and
Hobbes and Spinoza.

He had indeed a considerable aptitude for letters. He wrote poor
verses, and could not distinguish good poetry from bad. That perhaps
was the defect of l'esprit geometrique. But he wrote lucid prose.
There was an ironical side to his temper, and he had an ingenious
paradoxical wit, which he indulged, with no little felicity, in his
early work, Dialogues of the Dead. These conversations, though they
show no dramatic power and are simply a vehicle for the author's
satirical criticisms on life, are written with a light touch, and
are full of surprises and unexpected turns. The very choice of the
interlocutors shows a curious fancy, which we do not associate with
the geometrical intellect. Descartes is confronted with the Third
False Demetrius, and we wonder what the gourmet Apicius will find to
say to Galileo.

2.

In the Dialogues of the Dead, which appeared in 1683, the Ancient
and Modern controversy is touched on more than once, and it is the
subject of the conversation between Socrates and Montaigne. Socrates
ironically professes to expect that the age of Montaigne will show a
vast improvement on his own; that men will have profited by the
experience of many centuries; and that the old age of the world will
be wiser and better regulated than its youth. Montaigne assures him
that it is not so, and that the vigorous types of antiquity, like
Pericles, Aristides, and Socrates himself, are no longer to be
found. To this assertion Socrates opposes the doctrine of the
permanence of the forces of Nature. Nature has not degenerated in
her other works; why should she cease to produce reasonable men?

He goes on to observe that antiquity is enlarged and exalted by
distance: "In our own day we esteemed our ancestors more than they
deserved, and now our posterity esteems us more than we deserve.
There is really no difference between our ancestors, ourselves, and
our posterity. C'est toujours la meme chose." But, objects
Montaigne, I should have thought that things were always changing;
that different ages had their different characters. Are there not
ages of learning and ages of ignorance, rude ages and polite? True,
replies Socrates, but these are only externalities. The heart of man
does not change with the fashions of his life. The order of Nature
remains constant (l'ordre general de la Nature a l'air bien
constant).

This conclusion harmonises with the general spirit of the Dialogues.
The permanence of the forces of Nature is asserted, but for the
purpose of dismissing the whole controversy as rather futile.
Elsewhere modern discoveries, like the circulation of the blood and
the motions of the earth, are criticised as useless; adding nothing
to the happiness and pleasures of mankind. Men acquired, at an early
period, a certain amount of useful knowledge, to which they have
added nothing; since then they have been slowly discovering things
that are unnecessary. Nature has not been so unjust as to allow one
age to enjoy more pleasures than another. And what is the value of
civilisation? It moulds our words, and embarrasses our actions; it
does not affect our feelings. [Footnote: See the dialogues of Harvey
with Erasistratus (a Greek physician of the third century B.C.);
Galileo with Apicius; Montezuma with Fernando Cortez.]

One might hardly have expected the author of these Dialogues to come
forward a few years later as a champion of the Moderns, even though,
in the dedicatory epistle to Lucian, he compared France to Greece.
But he was seriously interested in the debated question, as an
intellectual problem, and in January 1688 he published his
Digression on the Ancients and Moderns, a short pamphlet, but
weightier and more suggestive than the large work of his friend
Perrault, which began to appear nine months later.

3.

The question of pre-eminence between the Ancients and Moderns is
reducible to another. Were trees in ancient times greater than to-
day? If they were, then Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes cannot be
equalled in modern times; if they were not, they can.

Fontenelle states the problem in this succinct way at the beginning
of the Digression. The permanence of the forces of Nature had been
asserted by Saint Sorlin and Perrault; they had offered no proof,
and had used the principle rather incidentally and by way of
illustration. But the whole inquiry hinged on it. If it can be shown
that man has not degenerated, the cause of the Moderns is
practically won. The issue of the controversy must be decided not by
rhetoric but by physics. And Fontenelle offers what he regards as a
formal Cartesian proof of the permanence of natural forces.

If the Ancients had better intellects than ours, the brains of that
age must have been better arranged, formed of firmer or more
delicate fibres, fuller of "animal spirits." But if such a
difference existed, Nature must have been more vigorous; and in that
case the trees must have profited by that superior vigour and have
been larger and finer. The truth is that Nature has in her hands a
certain paste which is always the same, which she is ever turning
over and over again in a thousand ways, and of which she forms men,
animals, and plants. She has not formed Homer, Demosthenes, and
Plato of a finer or better kneaded clay than our poets, orators, and
philosophers. Do not object that minds are not material. They are
connected by a material bond with the brain, and it is the quality
of this material bond that determines intellectual differences.

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