Books: The Idea of Progress

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The secret poison, of which Fontenelle prepared this remarkable dose
with a touch which reminds us of Voltaire, was being administered in
the same Cartesian period, and with similar precautions, by Bayle.
Like Fontenelle, this great sceptic, "the father of modern
incredulity" as he was called by Joseph de Maistre, stood between
the two centuries and belonged to both. Like Fontenelle, he took a
gloomy view of humanity; he had no faith in that goodness of human
nature which was to be a characteristic dogma of the age of
illumination. But he was untouched by the discoveries of science; he
took no interest in Galileo or Newton; and while the most important
work of Fontenelle was the interpretation of the positive advances
of knowledge, Bayle's was entirely subversive.

The principle of unchangeable laws in nature is intimately connected
with the growth of Deism which is a note of this period. The
function of the Deity was virtually confined to originating the
machine of nature, which, once regulated, was set beyond any further
interference on His part, though His existence might be necessary
for its conservation. A view so sharply opposed to the current
belief could not have made way as it did without a penetrating
criticism of the current theology. Such criticism was performed by
Bayle. His works were a school for rationalism for about seventy
years. He supplied to the thinkers of the eighteenth century,
English as well as French, a magazine of subversive arguments, and
he helped to emancipate morality both from theology and from
metaphysics.

This intellectual revolutionary movement, which was propagated in
salons as well as by books, shook the doctrine of Providence which
Bossuet had so eloquently expounded. It meant the enthronement of
reason--Cartesian reason--before whose severe tribunal history as
well as opinions were tried. New rules of criticism were introduced,
new standards of proof. When Fontenelle observed that the existence
of Alexander the Great could not be strictly demonstrated and was no
more than highly probable, [Footnote: Plurality des mondes, sixieme
soir.] it was an undesigned warning that tradition would receive
short shrift at the hands of men trained in analytical Cartesian
methods.

11.

That the issue between the claims of antiquity and the modern age
should have been debated independently in England and France
indicates that the controversy was an inevitable incident in the
liberation of the human spirit from the authority of the ancients.
Towards the end of the century the debate in France aroused
attention in England and led to a literary quarrel, less important
but not less acrimonious than that which raged in France. Sir
William Temple's Essay, Wotton's Reflexions, and Swift's satire the
Battle of the Books are the three outstanding works in the episode,
which is however chiefly remembered on account of its connection
with Bentley's masterly exposure of the fabricated letters of
Phalaris.

The literary debate in France, indeed, could not have failed to
reverberate across the Channel; for never perhaps did the literary
world in England follow with more interest, or appreciate more
keenly the productions of the great French writers of the time. In
describing Will's coffee-house, which was frequented by Dryden and
all who pretended to be interested in polite letters, Macaulay says,
"there was a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for
Boileau and the ancients." In the discussions on this subject a
remarkable Frenchman who had long lived in England as an exile, M.
de Saint Evremond, must have constantly taken part. The disjointed
pieces of which Saint Evremond's writings consist are tedious and
superficial, but they reveal a mind of much cultivation and
considerable common sense. His judgement on Perrault's Parallel is
that the author "has discovered the defects of the ancients better
than he has made out the advantage of the moderns; his book is good
and capable of curing us of abundance of errors." [Footnote: In a
letter to the Duchess of Mazarin, Works, Eng. tr., iii. 418.] He was
not a partisan. But his friend, Sir William Temple, excited by the
French depreciations of antiquity, rushed into the lists with
greater courage than discretion.

Temple was ill equipped for the controversy, though his Essay on
Ancient and Modern Learning (1690) is far from deserving the disdain
of Macaulay, who describes its matter as "ludicrous and contemptible
to the last degree." [Footnote: The only point in it which need be
noted here is that the author questioned the cogency of Fontenelle's
argument, that the forces of nature being permanent human ability is
in all ages the same. "May there not," he asks, "many circumstances
concur to one production that do not to any other in one or many
ages?" Fontenelle speaks of trees. It is conceivable that various
conditions and accidents "may produce an oak, a fig, or a plane-
tree, that shall deserve to be renowned in story, and shall not
perhaps be paralleled in other countries or times. May not the same
have happened in the production, growth, and size of wit and genius
in the world, or in some parts or ages of it, and from many more
circumstances that contributed towards it than what may concur to
the stupendous growth of a tree or animal?"] And it must be
confessed that the most useful result of the Essay was the answer
which it provoked from Wotton. For Wotton had a far wider range of
knowledge, and a more judicious mind, than any of the other
controversialists, with the exception of Fontenelle; and in
knowledge of antiquity he was Fontenelle's superior. His inquiry
stands out as the most sensible and unprejudiced contribution to the
whole debate. He accepts as just the reasoning of Fontenelle "as to
the comparative force of the geniuses of men in the several ages of
the world and of the equal force of men's understandings absolutely
considered in all times since learning first began to be cultivated
amongst mankind." But this is not incompatible with the thesis that
in some branches the ancients excelled all who came after them. For
it is not necessary to explain such excellence by the hypothesis
that there was a particular force of genius evidently discernible in
former ages, but extinct long since, and that nature is now worn out
and spent. There is an alternative explanation. There may have been
special circumstances "which might suit with those ages which did
exceed ours, and with those things wherein they did exceed us, and
with no other age nor thing besides."

But we must begin our inquiry by sharply distinguishing two fields
of mental activity--the field of art, including poetry, oratory,
architecture, painting, and statuary; and the field of knowledge,
including mathematics, natural science, physiology, with all their
dependencies. In the case of the first group there is room for
variety of opinion; but the superiority of the Greeks and Romans in
poetry and literary style may be admitted without prejudice to the
mental equality of the moderns, for it may be explained partly by
the genius of their languages and partly by political circumstances-
-for example, in the case of oratory, [Footnote: This had been noted
by Fontenelle in his Digression.] by the practical necessity of
eloquence. But as regards the other group, knowledge is not a matter
of opinion or taste, and a definite judgement is possible. Wotton
then proceeds to review systematically the field of science, and
easily shows, with more completeness and precision than Perrault,
the superiority of modern methods and the enormous strides which had
been made.

As to the future, Wotton expresses himself cautiously. It is not
easy to say whether knowledge will advance in the next age
proportionally to its advance in this. He has some fears that there
may be a falling away, because ancient learning has still too great
a hold over modern books, and physical and mathematical studies tend
to be neglected. But he ends his Reflexions by the speculation that
"some future age, though perhaps not the next, and in a country now
possibly little thought of, may do that which our great men would be
glad to see done; that is to say, may raise real knowledge, upon
foundations laid in this age, to the utmost possible perfection to
which it may be brought by mortal men in this imperfect state."

The distinction, on which Wotton insisted, between the sciences
which require ages for their development and the imaginative arts
which may reach perfection in a short time had been recognised by
Fontenelle, whose argument on this point differs from that of his
friend Perrault. For Perrault contended that in literature and art,
as well as in science, later generations can, through the advantage
of time and longer experience, attain to a higher excellence than
their predecessors. Fontenelle, on the other hand, held that poetry
and eloquence have a restricted field, and that therefore there must
be a time at which they reach a point of excellence which cannot be
exceeded. It was his personal opinion that eloquence and history
actually reached the highest possible perfection in Cicero and Livy.

But neither Fontenelle nor Wotton came into close quarters with the
problem which was raised--not very clearly, it is true--by Perrault.
Is there development in the various species of literature and art?
Do they profit and enrich themselves by the general advance of
civilisation? Perrault, as we have seen, threw out the suggestion
that increased experience and psychological study enabled the
moderns to penetrate more deeply into the recesses of the human
soul, and therefore to bring to a higher perfection the treatment of
the character, motives, and passions of men. This suggestion admits
of being extended. In the Introduction to his Revolt of Islam,
Shelley, describing his own intellectual and aesthetic experiences,
writes:

The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own
country, has been to me like external nature, a passion and an
enjoyment. ... I have considered poetry in its most comprehensive
sense; and have read the poets and the historians and the
metaphysicians whose writings have been accessible to me--and have
looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth--as
common sources of those elements which it is the province of the
Poet to embody and combine. And he appends a note:

In this sense there may be such a thing as perfectibility in works
of fiction, notwithstanding the concession often made by the
advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility is a term
applicable only to science.

In other words, all the increases of human experience, from age to
age, all the speculative adventures of the intellect, provide the
artist, in each succeeding generation, with more abundant sources
for aesthetic treatment. As years go on, life in its widest sense
offers more and more materials "which it is the province of the Poet
to embody and combine." This is evidently true; and would it not
seem to follow that literature is not excluded from participating in
the common development of civilisation? One of the latest of the
champions of the Moderns, the Abbe Terrasson, maintained that "to
separate the general view of the progress of the human mind in
regard to natural science, and in regard to belles-lettres, would be
a fitting expedient to a man who had two souls, but it is useless to
him who has only one." [Footnote: Abbe Terrasson, 1670-1750. His
Philosophie applicable a tons les objets de l'esprit et de la raison
was issued posthumously in 1754. His Dissertation critique sur
l'Iliade appeared in 1715.]He put the matter in too abstract a way
to carry conviction; but the nineteenth century was to judge that he
was not entirely wrong. For the question was, as we shall see,
raised anew by Madame de Stael, and the theory was finally to emerge
that art and literature, like laws and institutions, are an
expression of society and therefore inextricably linked with the
other elements of social development--a theory, it may be observed,
which while it has discredited the habit of considering works of art
in a vacuum, dateless and detached, as they were generally
considered by critics of the seventeenth century, leaves the
aesthetic problem much where it was.

Perrault's suggestion as to the enrichment of the material of the
artist by new acquisitions would have served to bring literature and
art into the general field of human development, without
compromising the distinction on which Wotton and others insisted
between the natural sciences and the aesthetic arts. But that
distinction, emphatically endorsed by Voltaire, had the effect of
excluding literature and art from the view of those who in the
eighteenth century recognised progress in the other activities of
man.

12.

It is notable that in this literary controversy the Moderns, even
Fontenelle, seem curiously negligent of the import of the theory
which they were propounding of the intellectual progress of man.
They treat it almost incidentally, as part of the case for the
defence, not as an immensely important conclusion. Its bearings were
more definitely realised by the Abbe Terrasson, whom I have just
named. A geometer and a Cartesian, he took part in the controversy
in its latest stage, when La Motte and Madame Dacier were the
principal antagonists. The human mind, he said, has had its infancy
and youth; its maturity began in the age of Augustus; the barbarians
arrested its course till the Renaissance; in the seventeenth
century, through the illuminating philosophy of Descartes, it passed
beyond the stage which it had attained in the Augustan age, and the
eighteenth century should surpass the seventeenth. Cartesianism is
not final; it has its place in a development. It was made possible
by previous speculations, and it will be succeeded by other systems.
We must not pursue the analogy of humanity with an individual man
and anticipate a period of old age. For unlike the individual,
humanity "being composed of all ages," is always gaining instead of
losing. The age of maturity will last indefinitely, because it is a
progressive, not a stationary, maturity. Later generations will
always be superior to the earlier, for progress is "a natural and
necessary effect of the constitution of the human mind."

CHAPTER VI

THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE DE SAINT-PIERRE

The revolutionary speculations on the social and moral condition of
man which were the outstanding feature of the eighteenth century in
France, and began about 1750, were the development of the
intellectual movement of the seventeenth, which had changed the
outlook of speculative thought. It was one continuous rationalistic
movement. In the days of Racine and Perrault men had been
complacently conscious of the enlightenment of the age in which they
were living, and as time went on, this consciousness became stronger
and acuter; it is a note of the age of Voltaire. In the last years
of Louis XIV., and in the years which followed, the contrast between
this mental enlightenment and the dark background--the social evils
and miseries of the kingdom, the gross misgovernment and oppression-
-began to insinuate itself into men's minds. What was the value of
the achievements of science, and the improvement of the arts of
life, if life itself could not be ameliorated? Was not some radical
reconstruction possible, in the social fabric, corresponding to the
radical reconstruction inaugurated by Descartes in the principles of
science and in the methods of thought? Year by year the obscurantism
of the ruling powers became more glaring, and the most gifted
thinkers, towards the middle of the century, began to concentrate
their brains on the problems of social science and to turn the light
of reason on the nature of man and the roots of society. They
wrought with unscrupulous resolution and with far-reaching effects.

With the extension of rationalism into the social domain, it came
about naturally that the idea of intellectual progress was enlarged
into the idea of the general Progress of man. The transition was
easy. If it could be proved that social evils were due neither to
innate and incorrigible disabilities of the human being nor to the
nature of things, but simply to ignorance and prejudices, then the
improvement of his state, and ultimately the attainment of felicity,
would be only a matter of illuminating ignorance and removing
errors, of increasing knowledge and diffusing light. The growth of
the "universal human reason"--a Cartesian phrase, which had figured
in the philosophy of Malebranche--must assure a happy destiny to
humanity.

Between 1690 and 1740 the conception of an indefinite progress of
enlightenment had been making its way in French intellectual
circles, and must often have been a topic of discussion in the
salons, for instance, of Madame de Lambert, Madame de Tencin, and
Madame Dupin, where Fontenelle was one of the most conspicuous
guests. To the same circle belonged his friend the Abbe de Saint-
Pierre, and it is in his writings that we first find the theory
widened in its compass to embrace progress towards social
perfection. [Footnote: For his life and works the best book is J.
Drouet's monograph, L'Abbe de Saint-Pierre: l'homme et l'oeuvre
(1912), but on some points Goumy's older study (1859) is still worth
consulting. I have used the edition of his works in 12 volumes
published during his lifetime at Rotterdam, 1733-37.]

1.

He was brought up on Cartesian principles, and he idealised
Descartes somewhat as Lucretius idealised Epicurus. But he had no
aptitude for philosophy, and he prized physical science only as far
as it directly administered to the happiness of men. He was a
natural utilitarian, and perhaps no one was ever more consistent in
making utility the criterion of all actions and theories. Applying
this standard he obliterated from the roll of great men most of
those whom common opinion places among the greatest. Alexander,
Julius Caesar, Charlemagne receive short shrift from the Abbe de
Saint-Pierre. [Footnote: Compare Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais,
xii., where Newton is acclaimed as the greatest man who ever lived.]
He was superficial in his knowledge both of history and of science,
and his conception of utility was narrow and a little vulgar. Great
theoretical discoverers like Newton and Leibnitz he sets in a lower
rank than ingenious persons who used their scientific skill to
fashion some small convenience of life. Monuments of art, like Notre
Dame, possessed little value in his eyes compared with a road, a
bridge, or a canal.

Like most of his distinguished contemporaries he was a Deist. On his
deathbed he received the usual rites of the Church in the presence
of his household, and then told the priest that he did not believe a
word of all that. His real views are transparent in some of his
works through the conventional disguises in which prudent writers of
the time were wont to wrap their assaults on orthodoxy. To attack
Mohammedanism by arguments which are equally applicable to
Christianity was a device for propagating rationalism in days when
it was dangerous to propagate it openly. This is what the Abbe did
in his Discourse against Mohammedanism. Again, in his Physical
Explanation of an Apparition he remarks: "To diminish our fanatical
proclivities, it would be useful if the Government were to establish
an annual prize, to be awarded by the Academy of Sciences, for the
best explanation, by natural laws, of the extraordinary effects of
imagination, of the prodigies related in Greek and Latin literature,
and of the pretended miracles told by Protestants, Schismatics, and
Mohammedans." The author carefully keeps on the right side of the
fence. No Catholic authorities could take exception to this. But no
intelligent reader could fail to see that all miracles were
attacked. The miracles accepted by the Protestants were also
believed in by the Catholics.

He was one of the remarkable figures of his age. We might almost say
that he was a new type--a nineteenth century humanitarian and
pacifist in an eighteenth century environment. He was a born
reformer, and he devoted his life to the construction of schemes for
increasing human happiness. He introduced the word bienfaisance into
the currency of the French language, and beneficence was in his eyes
the sovran virtue. There were few departments of public affairs in
which he did not point out the deficiencies and devise ingenious
plans for improvement. Most of his numerous writings are projets--
schemes of reform in government, economics, finance, education, all
worked out in detail, and all aiming at the increase of pleasure and
the diminution of pain. The Abbe's nimble intelligence had a weak
side, which must have somewhat compromised his influence. He was so
confident in the reasonableness of his projects that he always
believed that if they were fairly considered the ruling powers could
not fail to adopt them in their own interests. It is the nature of a
reformer to be sanguine, but the optimism of Saint-Pierre touched
naivete. Thousands might have agreed with his view that the celibacy
of the Catholic clergy was an unwholesome institution, but when he
drew up a proposal for its abolition and imagined that the Pope,
unable to resist his arguments, would immediately adopt it, they
might be excused for putting him down as a crank who could hardly be
taken seriously. The form in which he put forward his memorable
scheme for the abolition of war exhibits the same sanguine
simplicity. All his plans, Rousseau observed, showed a clear vision
of what their effects would be, "but he judged like a child of means
to bring them about." But his abilities were great, and his actual
influence was considerable. It would have been greater if he had
possessed the gift of style.

2.

He was not the first to plan a definite scheme for establishing a
perpetual peace. Long ago Emeric Cruce had given to the world a
proposal for a universal league, including not only the Christian
nations of Europe, but the Turks, Persians, and Tartars, which by
means of a court of arbitration sitting at Venice should ensure the
settlement of all disputes by peaceful means. [Footnote: Le Nouveau
Cynee (Paris, 1623). It has recently been reprinted with an English
translation by T. W. Balch, Philadelphia (1909).] The consequence of
universal peace, he said, will be the arrival of "that beautiful
century which the ancient theologians promise after there have
rolled by six thousand years. For they say that then the world will
live happily and in repose. Now it happens that that time has nearly
expired, and even if it is not, it depends only on the Princes to
give beforehand this happiness to their peoples." Later in the
century, others had ventilated similar projects in obscure
publications, but the Abbe does not refer to any of his
predecessors.

He was not blinded by the superficial brilliancy of the reign of
Louis XIV. to the general misery which the ambitious war-policy of
that sovran brought both upon France and upon her enemies. His
Annales politiques are a useful correction to the Siecle de Louis
Quatorze. It was in the course of the great struggle of the Spanish
Succession that he turned his attention to war and came to the
conclusion that it is an unnecessary evil and even an absurdity. In
1712 he attended the congress at Utrecht in the capacity of
secretary to Cardinal de Polignac, one of the French delegates. His
experiences there confirmed his optimistic mind in the persuasion
that perpetual peace was an aim which might readily be realised; and
in the following year he published the memoir which he had been
preparing, in two volumes, to which he added a third four years
later.

Though he appears not to have known the work of Cruce he did not
claim originality. He sheltered his proposal under an august name,
entitling it Project of Henry the Great to render Peace Perpetual,
explained by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. The reference is to the
"great design" ascribed to Henry IV. by Sully, and aimed at the
abasement of the power of Austria: a federation of the Christian
States of Europe arranged in groups and under a sovran Diet, which
would regulate international affairs and arbitrate in all quarrels.
[Footnote: It is described in Sully's Memoires, Book XXX.] Saint-
Pierre, ignoring the fact that Sully's object was to eliminate a
rival power, made it the text for his own scheme of a perpetual
alliance of all the sovrans of Europe to guarantee to one another
the preservation of their states and to renounce war as a means of
settling their differences. He drew up the terms of such an
alliance, and taking the European powers one by one demonstrated
that it was the plain interest of each to sign the articles. Once
the articles were signed the golden age would begin. [Footnote: For
Sully's grand Design compare the interesting article of Sir Geoffrey
Butler in the Edinburgh Review, October 1919.]

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