The Idea of Progress

From a believer in such a theory, which illustrates the limitations of men's outlook on the world in the Renaissance period, we could perhaps hardly expect a vision of Progress. The best that can be said for it is that, both here and in his astrological creed, Bodin is crudely attempting to bring human history into close connection with the rest of the universe, and to establish the view that the whole world is built on a divine plan by which all the parts are intimately interrelated. [Footnote: Cp. Baudrillart, J. Bodin et son temps, p. 148 (1853).

This monograph is chiefly devoted to a full analysis of La Republique.] He is careful, however, to avoid fatalism. He asserts, as we have seen, that history depends largely on the will of men. And he comes nearer to the idea of Progress than any one before him; he is on the threshold.

For if we eliminate his astrological and Pythagorean speculations, and various theological parentheses which do not disturb his argument, his work announces a new view of history which is optimistic regarding man's career on earth, without any reference to his destinies in a future life. And in this optimistic view there are three particular points to note, which were essential to the subsequent growth of the idea of Progress. In the first place, the decisive rejection of the theory of degeneration, which had been a perpetual obstacle to the apprehension of that idea. Secondly, the unreserved claim that his own age was fully equal, and in some respects superior, to the age of classical antiquity, in respect of science and the arts. He leaves the ancients reverently on their pedestal, but he erects another pedestal for the moderns, and it is rather higher. We shall see the import of this when we come to consider the intellectual movement in which the idea of Progress was afterwards to emerge. In the third place, he had a conception of the common interest of all the peoples of the earth, a conception which corresponded to the old ecumenical idea of the Greeks and Romans, [Footnote: See above, p. 23.] but had now a new significance through the discoveries of modern navigators. He speaks repeatedly of the world as a universal state, and suggests that the various races, by their peculiar aptitudes and qualities, contribute to the common good of the whole. This idea of the "solidarity" of peoples was to be an important element in the growth of the doctrine of Progress. [Footnote: Republique, Book v. cap. 1 (p. 690; ed. 1593); Methodus, cap. vi. p. 194; cap. vii. p. 360.]

These ideas were in the air. Another Frenchman, the classical scholar, Louis Le Roy, translator of Plato and Aristotle, put forward similar views in a work of less celebrity, On the Vicissitude or Variety of the Things in the Universe. [Footnote: De la vicissitude ou variete des choses en l'univers, 1577, 2nd ed. (which I have used), 1584.] It contains a survey of great periods in which particular peoples attained an exceptional state of dominion and prosperity, and it anticipates later histories of civilisation by dwelling but slightly on political events and bringing into prominence human achievements in science, philosophy, and the arts. Beginning with the advance of man from primitive rudeness to ordered society-a sketch based on the conjectures of Plato in the Protagoras-Le Roy reviews the history, and estimates the merits, of the Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians, the Greeks, Romans and Saracens, and finally of the modern age. The facts, he thinks, establish the proposition that the art of warfare, eloquence, philosophy, mathematics, and the fine arts, generally flourish and decline together.

But they do decline. Human things are not perpetual; all pass through the same cycle-beginning, progress, perfection, corruption, end. This, however, does not explain the succession of empires in the world, the changes of the scene of prosperity from one people or set of peoples to another. Le Roy finds the cause in providential design. God, he believes, cares for all parts of the universe and has distributed excellence in arms and letters now to Asia, now to Europe, again to Africa, letting virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance travel from country to country, that all in their turn may share in good and bad fortune, and none become too proud through prolonged prosperity.

But what of the modern age in Western Europe? It is fully the equal, he assevers, of the most illustrious ages of the past, and in some respects it is superior. Almost all the liberal and mechanical arts of antiquity, which had been lost for about 1200 years, have been restored, and there have been new inventions, especially printing, and the mariner's compass, and "I would give the third place to gunnery but that it seems invented rather for the ruin than for the utility of the human race." In our knowledge of astronomy and cosmography we surpass the ancients. "We can affirm that the whole world is now known, and all the races of men; they can interchange all their commodities and mutually supply their needs, as inhabitants of the same city or world-state." And hence there has been a notable increase of wealth.

Vice and suffering, indeed, are as grave as ever, and we are afflicted by the trouble of heresies; but this does not prove a general deterioration of morals. If that inveterate complaint, the refrain chanted by old men in every age, were true, the world would already have reached the extreme limit of wickedness, and integrity would have disappeared utterly. Seneca long ago made the right criticism. Hoc maiores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc posteri nostri querentur, eversos esse mores.... At ista stant loco eodem. Perhaps Le Roy was thinking particularly of that curious book the Apology for Herodotus, in which the eminent Greek scholar, Henri Estienne, exposed with Calvinistic prejudice the iniquities of modern times and the corruption of the Roman Church. [Footnote: L'Introduction au traite de la conformite des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes, ou traite preparatif a l'Apologie pour Herodote, ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879. The book was published in 1566.]

But if we are to judge by past experience, does it not follow that this modern age must go the same way as the great ages of the past which it rivals or even surpasses? Our civilisation, too, having reached perfection, will inevitably decline and pass away: is not this the clear lesson of history? Le Roy does not shirk the issue; it is the point to which his whole exposition has led and he puts it vividly.

"If the memory of the past is the instruction of the present and the premonition of the future, it is to be feared that having reached so great excellence, power, wisdom, studies, books, industries will decline, as has happened in the past, and disappear-confusion succeeding to the order and perfection of to-day, rudeness to civilisation, ignorance to knowledge. I already foresee in imagination nations, strange in form, complexion, and costume, overwhelming Europe-like the Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, Saracens of old-destroying our cities and palaces, burning our libraries, devastating all that is beautiful. I foresee in all countries wars, domestic and foreign, factions and heresies which will profane all things human and divine; famines, plagues, and floods; the universe approaching an end, world-wide confusion, and the return of things to their original chaos." [Footnote: It is characteristic of the age that in the last sentence the author goes beyond the issue and contemplates the possibility which still haunted men's minds that the end of the world might not be far off.]

But having conducted us to this pessimistic conclusion Le Roy finds it repugnant, and is unwilling to acquiesce in it. Like an embarrassed dramatist he escapes from the knot which he has tied by introducing the deus ex machina.

"However much these things proceed according to the fatal law of the world, and have their natural causes, yet events depend principally on Divine Providence which is superior to nature and alone knows the predetermined times of events." That is to say, it depends, after all, on Providence whether the argument from past experience is valid. Who knows whether the modern age may not prove the exception to the law which has hitherto prevailed? Let us act as if it would.

This is the practical moral that Le Roy enforces in the last book of his dissertation. We must not allow ourselves to be paralysed or dismayed by the destinies of past civilisations, but must work hard to transmit to posterity all that has been achieved, and augment the discoveries of the past by new researches. For knowledge is inexhaustible. "Let us not be so simple as to believe that the ancients have known and said everything and left nothing to their successors. Or that nature gave them all her favours in order to remain sterile ever after." Here Le Roy lays down Bodin's principle which was to be asserted more urgently in the following century-the permanence of natural forces. Nature is the same now as always, and can produce as great intellects as ever. The elements have the same power, the constellations keep their old order, men are made of the same material. There is nothing to hinder the birth in this age of men equal in brains to Plato, Aristotle, or Hippocrates.

Philosophically, Le Roy's conclusion is lame enough. We are asked to set aside the data of experience and act on an off-chance. But the determination of the optimist to escape from the logic of his own argument is significant. He has no conception of an increasing purpose or underlying unity in the history of man, but he thinks that Providence-the old Providence of St. Augustine, who arranged the events of Roman history with a view to the coming of Christ-may, for some unknown reason, prolong indefinitely the modern age. He is obeying the instinct of optimism and confidence which was already beginning to create the appropriate atmosphere for the intellectual revolution of the coming century.

His book was translated into English, but neither in France nor in England had it the same influence as the speculations of Bodin. But it insinuated, as the reader will have observed, the same three views which Bodin taught, and must have helped to propagate them: that the world has not degenerated; that the modern age is not inferior to classical antiquity; and that the races of the earth form now a sort of "mundane republic."

How seriously the question between the Moderns and the Ancients-on whose behalf Boileau had come forward and crossed swords with Saint Sorlin-was taken is shown by the fact that Saint Sorlin, before his death, solemnly bequeathed the championship of the Moderns to a younger man, Charles Perrault. We shall see how he fulfilled the trust. It is illustrated too by a book which appeared in the seventies, Les Entretiens d'Ariste et Eugene, by Bouhours, a mundane and popular Jesuit Father.

In one of these dialogues the question is raised, but with a curious caution and evasiveness, which suggests that the author was afraid to commit himself; he did not wish to make enemies. [Footnote: Rigault notes that he makes one contribution to the subject, the idea that the torch of civilisation has passed from country to country, in different ages, e.g. from Greece to Rome, and recently from Italy to France. In the last century the Italians were first in doctrine and politesse. The present century is for France what the last was for Italy: "We have all the esprit and all the science, all other countries are barbarous in comparison" (p. 239, ed. 1782, Amsterdam). But, as we shall see, he had been anticipated by Hakewill, whose work was unknown to Rigault.]

The general atmosphere in France, in the reign of Louis XIV., was propitious to the cause of the Moderns. Men felt that it was a great age, comparable to the age of Augustus, and few would have preferred to have lived at any other time. Their literary artists, Corneille, and then Racine and Moliere, appealed so strongly to their taste that they could not assign to them any rank but the first. They were impatient of the claims to unattainable excellence advanced for the Greeks and Romans. "The ancients," said Moliere, "are the ancients, we are the people of to-day." This might be the motto of Descartes, and it probably expressed a very general feeling.

It was in 1687 that Charles Perrault-who is better remembered for his collection of fairy-tales than for the leading role which he played in this controversy-published his poem on "The Age of Louis the Great." The enlightenment of the present age surpasses that of antiquity,-this is the theme.

La docte Antiquite dans toute sa duree

A l'egal de nos jours ne fut point eclairee.

Perrault adopts a more polite attitude to "la belle antiquite" than Saint Sorlin, but his criticism is more insidious. Greek and Roman men of genius, he suggests, were all very well in their own times, and might be considered divine by our ancestors. But nowadays Plato is rather tiresome; and the "inimitable Homer" would have written a much better epic if he had lived in the reign of Louis the Great. The important passage, however, in the poem is that in which the permanent power of nature to produce men of equal talent in every age is affirmed.

A former les esprits comme a former les corps

La Nature en tout temps fait les mesmes efforts;

Son etre est immuable, et cette force aisee

Dont elle produit tout ne s'est point epuisee;

..... De cette mesme main les forces infinies

Produisent en tout temps de semblables genies.

The "Age of Louis the Great" was a brief declaration of faith. Perrault followed it up by a comprehensive work, his Comparison of the Ancients and the Moderns (Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes), which appeared in four parts during the following years (1688-1696). Art, eloquence, poetry the sciences, and their practical applications are all discussed at length; and the discussion is thrown into the form of conversations between an enthusiastic champion of the modern age, who conducts the debate, and a devotee of antiquity, who finds it difficult not to admit the arguments of his opponent, yet obstinately persists in his own views.

Perrault bases his thesis on those general considerations which we have met incidentally in earlier writers, and which were now almost commonplaces among those who paid any attention to the matter. Knowledge advances with time and experience; perfection is not necessarily associated with antiquity; the latest comers have inherited from their predecessors and added new acquisitions of their own. But Perrault has thought out the subject methodically, and he draws conclusions which have only to be extended to amount to a definite theory of the progress of knowledge.

A particular difficulty had done much to hinder a general admission of progressive improvement in the past. The proposition that the posterior is better and the late comers have the advantage seemed to be incompatible with an obvious historical fact. We are superior to the men of the dark ages in knowledge and arts. Granted. But will you say that the men of the tenth century were superior to the Greeks and Romans? To this question-on which Tassoni had already touched-Perrault replies: Certainly not. There are breaches of continuity. The sciences and arts are like rivers, which flow for part of their course underground, and then, finding an opening, spring forth as abundant as when they plunged beneath the earth. Long wars, for instance, may force peoples to neglect studies and throw all their vigour into the more urgent needs of self-preservation; a period of ignorance may ensue but with peace and felicity knowledge and inventions will begin again and make further advances. [Footnote: The passages in Perrault's Parallele specially referred to in the text will be found in vol. i. pp. 35-7, 60-61, 67, 231-3.]

It is to be observed that he does not, claim any superiority in talents or brain power for the moderns. On the contrary, he takes his stand on the principle which he had asserted in the "Age of Louis the Great," that nature is immutable. She still produces as great men as ever, but she does not produce greater. The lions of the deserts of Africa in our days do not differ in fierceness from those the days of Alexander the Great, and the best men of all times are equal in vigour. It is their work and productions that are unequal, and, given equally favourable conditions, the latest must be the best. For science and the arts depend upon the accumulation of knowledge, and knowledge necessarily increases as time goes on.

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.

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.