Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Progress
LIKE the idea of evolution, with which it has some affinity, the idea of progress
seems to be typically modern. Anticipations of it may be found in ancient and mediaeval
thought,
- sometimes in the form of implicit denials of the idea.
But in explicit formulation, in emphasis and importance, progress, like evolution,
is almost a new idea in modern times. It is not merely more prominent in modern
discussion; it affects the significance of many other ideas, and so gives a characteristic
color or tendency to modern thought.
The idea of evolution affects our conceptions of nature and man. But the theory of
evolution is itself affected by the idea of progress. Since it was a major theme at least
two centuries before Darwin, progress does not depend for its significance upon the theory
of biological evolution. The reverse relationship seems to obtain. The idea of evolution
gets some of its moral, social, even cosmic significance from its implication that the
general motion in the world of living things, perhaps in the universe, is a progress from
lower to higher forms.
Darwin thinks "Von Baer has defined advancement or progress in the organic scale
better than anyone else, as resting on the amount of differentiation and specialization of
the several parts of a being"--to which Darwin adds the qualification that the
organisms must be judged when they have arrived at maturity. "As organisms have
become slowly adapted to diversified lines of life, their parts will have become more and
more differentiated and specialized for various functions from the advantage gained by the
division of physiological labor. The same part appears often to have been modified first
for one purpose, and then long afterwards for some other and quite distinct purpose; and
thus all the parts are rendered more and more complex .... In accordance with this
view," Darwin writes, "it seems, if we turn to geological evidence, that
organization on the whole has advanced throughout the world by slow and interrupted steps.
In the kingdom of the Vertebrata it has culminated in man."
Whether strictly biological evolution has a single or uniform direction may be disputed in
the light of evidences of regression and the multiplication of lower as well as higher
forms. But Darwin seems to think that since "natural selection works solely by and
for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress
toward perfection." Whatever the evidence may be, the popular notion of evolution,
especially when applied by writers like Herbert Spencer to human society or civilization,
connotes progress--the gradual yet steady march toward perfection.
APART FROM THIS APPLICATION of the idea of evolution to man's world, progress seems to be
the central thesis in the modern philosophy of history. In the minds of some, the
philosophy of history is so intimately connected -- with a theory of progress that the
philosophy of history is itself regarded as a modern development. There seems to be some
justification for this view in modern works on the tendency of history which have no
ancient counterparts, such as the writings of Vico, Condorcet, Kant, Proudhon, Comte, J.
S. Mill, Hegel, and Marx.
These writers do not all define or explain progress in the same way. Nor do they all
subscribe to an inviolable and irresistible law of progress which has the character of a
divine ordinance, replacing or transforming less optimistic views of providence.
But
- for the most part the moderns are optimists. They either
believe in man's perfectibility and in his approach to perfection through his own efforts
freely turned toward the realization of ideals;
or they see in the forces of history--whether the manifestations of a world spirit
or the pressure of material (i.e., economic) conditions--an inevitable development from
less to more advanced stages of civilization, according to a dialectical pattern of
conflict and resolution, each resolution necessarily rising to a higher level.
As opposed to the optimism of expecting a continual improvement in all things or an
irreversible ascent to new heights, the pessimistic view denies that progress is either
the law or the hope of history. It believes rather that everything which goes up must come
down. As indicated in the chapter on HISTORY, the theory of cycle after cycle of rise and
decline--or even the notion that the golden age is past, that it is never to be regained,
and that things are steadily getting worse--prevails more in the ancient than in the
modern world.
The modern exceptions to optimism in the philosophy of history are notably Spengler and,
to a much less extent, Toynbee. But modern pessimism never seems to reach the intensity of
the Preacher's reiteration in Ecclesiastes that "there is no new thing under the
sun" and that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Nor does the modern
theory of cycles of civilization, even in Vico, seem to be as radical as that of the
ancients. In his vision of cosmic cycles Lucretius sees the whole world crumbling into
atomic dust to be reborn again. Herodotus does not relieve the gloom of his observation
that, in the life of cities, prosperity "never continues long in one stay." The
eternity of the world means for Aristotle that "probably each art and each science
has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished."
LEAVING TO THE Chapter on HISTORY the discussion of progress so far as it concerns an
explicit philosophy of history, we shall here deal with considerations of progress as they
occur in economics, in political theory, in the history of philosophy and the whole
intellectual tradition of the arts and sciences.
In this last connection, the great books play a dual role. They provide the major evidence
which, on different interpretations, points toward opposite answers to the question
whether or not there has been progress in the tradition of western thought. Whatever their
readers may think on this subject, the great authors, having read the works of their
predecessors, offer their own interpretations of the intellectual tradition. In many
cases, especially among the modern writers, their point of departure--even the conception
they entertain of the originality and worth of their own contribution--stems from their
concern with a deplorable lack of progress, for which they offer new methods as remedies.
Before we enter upon the discussion of economic, political, or intellectual progress, it
seems useful to distinguish between the fact and the idea of progress. When men examine
the fact of progress, they look to the past and find there evidence for or against the
assertion that a change for the better has taken place in this or that respect. Two things
are involved: a study of the changes which have occurred and the judgment--based on some
standard of appraisal--that the changes have been for the better. But when men entertain
the idea of progress, they turn from the past and present and look to the future. They
regard the past merely as a basis for prophecy, and the present as an occasion for making
plans to fulfill their prophecies or hopes. The fact of progress belongs to the record of
achievement; the idea of progress sets a goal to be achieved.
This distinction seems to be exemplified by the difference between ancient and modern
considerations of progress. The ancients observe the fact of progress in some
particulars--almost never universally. Thucydides, for example, in the opening chapters of
his History, contrasts the power and wealth of the modern city-states of Greece
with "the weakness of ancient times." "Without commerce, without freedom of
communication either by land or sea, cultivating no more of their territory than the
exigencies of life required, destitute of capital, never planting their land (for they
could not tell when an invader might not come and take it all away, and when he did come
they had no walls to stop him), thinking that the necessities of daily sustenance could be
supplied at one place as well as another, they cared little for shifting their habitation,
and consequently neither built large cities nor attained to any other form of
greatness."
But Thucydides does not seem to draw from these observations any general idea of
progress. He does not concretely imagine a future excelling the Periclean age in the
magnitude of its wars and the magnificence of its wealth, as that period dwarfs antiquity.
He does not infer that whatever factors worked to cause the advance from past to present
may continue to operate with similar results. It might almost be said that he does not
think about the future; certainly he does not think of it as rich in promise.
"Knowledge of the past," he writes, is "an aid to the interpretation of the
future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it."
Adam Smith's thinking about economic progress represents the contrasting modern emphasis
upon the future. In one sense, both Thucydides and Smith measure economic progress in the
same way, though one writes of the wealth of cities, the other of the wealth of nations.
Both Smith and Thucydides judge economic improvement in terms of increasing opulence, the
growth of capital reserves, the expansion of commerce, and the enlarged power in war or
peace which greater wealth bestows. But Smith, in the spirit of Francis Bacon, seeks to
analyze the causes of prosperity in order to make them work, for further progress. He is
the promoter of progress, not merely the historian who witnesses the beneficial effect on
productivity of an increasingly refined division of labor and of the multiplication of
machinery.
To know how these things have operated to bring about the opulence of modern nations as
compared with the miserable poverty of primitive tribes or even the limited property of
ancient cities is to know how to formulate policies which shall still further expand the
wealth of nations. For Smith the study of the means and methods by which economic progress
has been made serves to determine the policy which is most likely to ensure even greater
increments of progress in the future.
MARX APPEARS TO measure economic progress by a different standard. The transition from the
slave economies of antiquity through feudal serfdom to what he calls the
"wage-slavery" of the industrial proletariat may be accompanied by greater
productivity and vaster accumulations of capital stock. But the essential point for him
about these successive systems of production is their effect upon the status and
conditions of labor. The Communist Manifesto notes respects in which, under the
capitalist system, the supposedly free workingman is worse off than were his servile
ancestors.
- But if economic progress is conceived as the historically
determined approach to the final liberation of labor from its oppressors, then capitalism
represents both an advance over feudalism and a stage in the march to communism.
Each successive economic revolution brings mankind nearer to the goal of the ideal
or classless economy. Capitalism creates the proletariat--the revolutionary class which is
to be that system's own undoing. The overthrow of the landed aristocracy by the
bourgeoisie thus prepares the way for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as that in turn
liquidates the obstacles to the realization of the perfect communist democracy.
We are not here concerned with the details of this history and prophecy but only with the
theory of progress which it involves. In the first place, it seems to set an ultimate goal
to progress, while at the same time it makes progress a necessary feature of what is for
Marx, as it is for Hegel, the "dialectic of history." Those who think that the
inevitability of progress ought to render progress as interminable as history itself, find
some inconsistency in this tenet of dialectical materialism, as well as in Hegel's notion
of the necessary dialectical stages by which the Absolute Idea reaches perfect realization
in the German state. Can progress be the inner law of history and yet reach its goal
before the end of time?
There may be some answer to this question in a second aspect of the theory of progress
which goes with a dialectic of history. The progress which the successive stages of
history represent resides in the quality of human institutions rather than in the nature
of man. If more economic justice or greater political liberty is achieved, it is not
because the later generations of men are born with a nature more disposed to goodness or
virtue, but because better institutions have evolved from the conflict of historical
forces. Furthermore, according to Marx, man's nature is only partly determined at birth.
Part remains to be determined by the social and economic circumstances of his life-by the
system of production under which he lives. Hence though institutional progress may arrive
at its historical goal with the establishment of the ideal economy, it may be possible for
further progress to be made throughout the rest of time by the improvement of men
themselves, when at last their natures can develop under ideal circumstances.
WE HAVE NOTED TWO great issues in the characteristically modern discussion of progress. Is
the goal of progress definitely attainable, or is its goal an ideal progressively
approximated but never realized? Is progress accomplished by the betterment of human
institutions or by improvements in the nature of man?
The second question has a critical bearing on the first, especially for those who conceive
man as infinitely perfectible. It also relates to the problem of the evolutionist: whether
a higher form of life on earth will evolve from man or whether the future belongs to the
progressive development of human nature-biologically or culturally. Darwin is unwilling to
admit that "man alone is capable of progressive improvement," but he does affirm
that man "is capable of incomparably greater and more rapid improvement than is any
other animal."
Rousseau, on the other hand, claims that "the faculty of self-improvement" is
one distinction between man and brute "which will admit of no dispute." But he
also thinks that this faculty is the cause of human decline as well as progress. "A
brute, at the end of a few months," he writes, "is all he will ever be during
his whole life, and his species, at the end of a thousand years, exactly what it was the
first year of that thousand . . . .While the brute, which has acquired nothing and has
therefore nothing to lose, still retains the force of instinct, man, who loses, by age or
accident, all that his perfectibility had enabled him to gain, falls by this means lower
than the brutes themselves."
One other issue concerning progress remains to be stated. It raises the question of
freedom or necessity in history. Is progress inevitable in the very nature of the case, or
does it occur only when men plan wisely and choose well in their efforts to better
themselves or the conditions of their lives?
In his Idea of a Universal History and his Principle of Progress, Kant
finds the possibility of progress in man's potentialities for improvement. He regards the
realization of this possibility as a work of freedom rather than a manifestation of
historical necessity. Political progress may have an ultimate goal-the world republic or
federation of states. But this, according. to Kant's conclusion in the Science of
Right, is an impracticable idea, and serves only the regulative purpose of
"promoting a continuous approximation to Perpetual Peace." Hegel's theory of the
progressive realization of the idea of the state in history seems to represent the
contrary position on both points. Progress is an historical necessity, and it reaches an
historic consummation.
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN ancients and moderns with respect to political progress seems to be
the same as that which we observed between Thucydides and Adam Smith with regard to
wealth. The ancients assert the superiority of the present over the past, and even trace
the stages by which advances have been made from primitive to civilized conditions. But
they do not extend the motion they observe into the future. The moderns look to the future
as to a fulfillment without which present political activity would be undirected.
According to Aristotle, for example, the state is the last stage in the development of
social life which begins with the family. "When several families are united, and the
association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be
formed is the village." The village or tribal community, in turn, becomes the unit
out of which a larger and more truly political community is formed. "When several
villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite
self-sufficing, the state comes into existence."
Aristotle sees this development not merely as a progress from smaller and weaker societies
to larger and more powerful ones, but also as an advance toward the realization of man's
political nature. Absolute or despotic government by the eldest, natural to the family,
still persists in the tribe. "This is the reason why the Hellenic states were
originally governed by kings; because the Hellenes were under royal rule before they came
together, as the barbarians still are." Not until the domestic or tribal form of
government is replaced by political or constitutional government--not until kings and
subjects are replaced by statesmen and citizens--is the state or political community fully
realized.
But Aristotle does not conceive the development he describes as one continuing into the
future. He does not imagine a larger political unity than the city-state, as Kant is able
to envisage a world state as the ultimate formation toward which the progressive political
unification of mankind should tend. Though Aristotle recognizes that new institutions have
been invented and old ones perfected, his political theory, unlike Mill's, does not seem
to measure the goodness of the best existing institutions by their devotion to further
progress.
Considering the criterion of a good form of government, Mill criticizes those who separate
the maintenance of order, or the preservation of existing institutions, from the
cultivation of progress. "Progress includes Order," he writes, "but Order
does not include Progress." Order "is not an additional end to be reconciled
with Progress, but a part and means of Progress itself. If a gain in one respect is
purchased by a more than equivalent loss in the same or in any other, there is not
Progress. Conduciveness to Progress, thus understood, includes the whole excellence of
government."
Progress fails to define good government, Mill adds, unless we understand by the term not
merely "the idea of moving onward," but "quite as much the prevention of
falling back. The very same social causes . . . are as much-required to prevent society
from retrograding, as to produce a further advance. Were there no improvement to be hoped
for, life would not be the less an unceasing struggle against causes of deterioration; as
it even now is. Politics, as conceived by the ancients, consisted wholly in this . . .
Though we no longer hold this opinion; though most men in the present age profess a
contrary creed, believing that the tendency of things, on the whole, is toward
improvement; we ought not to forget that there is an incessant and everflowing current of
human affairs toward the worse."
According to Mill, the ideally best polity is representative government on democratic
principles. By a just distribution of political rights and by the fullest grant of
liberties, it serves better than any other form of government "to promote the virtue
and intelligence of the people themselves." This is the ultimate end of political
progress. Inferior forms of government, such as despotic monarchy, may be justified for
people as yet unfit for self-government, but only if they also work for progress, i.e.,
"if they carry those communities through the intermediate stages which they must
traverse before they can become fit for the best form of government."
The whole theory of good government is thus for Mill a theory of progress in which we must
take "into account, not only the next step, but all the steps which society has yet
to make; both those which can be foreseen and the far wider indefinite range which is at
present out of sight." We must judge the merits of diverse forms of government by
that ideal form "which, if the necessary conditions existed for giving effect to its
beneficial tendencies, would, more than all others, favour and promote not some one
improvement, but all forms and degrees of it."
IN THE FIELD OF THE ARTS and sciences or culture generally, the modern emphasis upon
progress seems to be even more pronounced than in the spheres of economics and politics.
Lack of progress in a science is taken to indicate that it has not yet been established on
the right foundations or that the right method for discovering the truth has not yet been
found. Lack of agreement in a particular field is the chief symptom of these defects.
The fact that philosophy "has been cultivated for many centuries by the best minds
that have ever lived, and that nevertheless no single thing is to be found in it which is
not a subject of dispute, and in consequence which is not dubious," leads Descartes
to propose his new method. He hopes this may ensure progress in philosophy, of the same
sort which the new method has, in his view, accomplished in mathematics. The Novum
Organum of Bacon seems to be dedicated to the same end of progressively augmenting
knowledge in all those fields in which, according to the inventory made in the Advancement
of Learning of the present state of the sciences, no or little progress has been made
since antiquity. Similarly, Locke, Hume, and Kant insist that a study of the human mind
should precede all other studies in order to save men from fruitless disputes concerning
matters beyond their capacities for knowledge; they hope thereby to encourage research in
areas where progress can be made.
The comparison of different disciplines or subject matters with respect to their progress
leads to the condemnation of those which lag behind. The great scientific advances of the
17th century tend to intensify the complaint about philosophy, especially metaphysics. The
progress which has been made from the beginning in mathematics and more recently in
physics means to Kant that each of these disciplines has found the "safe way" or
the "secure path" of a science. By comparison, metaphysics has not yet even made
a beginning. A hundred years later, William James is still to say that, by comparison with
the progress of knowledge in the natural sciences, metaphysics belongs to the future.
- The notion that any field of learning has attained its full
maturity seems to Bacon to be the presumption of those philosophers who, seeking "to
acquire the reputation of perfection for their own art," try to instill the
"belief that whatever has not yet been invented and understood can never be so
hereafter."
Whenever such belief prevails, learning languishes.
- "By far the greatest obstacle to the advancement of the
sciences, and the undertaking of any new attempt or departure, is to be found in men's despair
and the idea of impossibility."
THOUGH THE ANCIENTS do not evidence this presumption of perfection in their arts
and sciences, neither do they fret about lack of progress. Nor does the disagreement of
minds seem to them to signify an unhealthy condition which requires new and special
methods to cure.
"The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy," writes
Aristotle. "An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain
the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but everyone
says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute
little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is
amassed." Aristotle puts the intellectual tradition to use by adopting the policy of
calling "into council the views of those of our predecessors who have declared any
opinion" on whatever subject is being considered, "in order that we may profit
by whatever is sound in their suggestions and avoid their errors."
But, in the opinion of the moderns, the intellectual tradition can also be the greatest
impediment to the advancement of learning if it is received uncritically and with undue
reverence for the authority of the ancients. "The respect in which antiquity is held
today," Pascal says, "has reached such extremes in those matters in which it
should have the least preponderance, that one can no longer present innovations without
danger." This is the common complaint of Hobbes, Bacon, Descartes, and Harvey.
- "The reverence for antiquity and the authority of men
who have been esteemed great in philosophy have," according to Bacon, "retarded
men from advancing in science, and almost enchanted them."
Harvey agrees with Bacon that
- philosophers or scientists should not "swear such fealty
to their mistress Antiquity, that they openly, and even in sight of all, deny and desert
their friend Truth."
Harvey has a much higher opinion than Bacon of the achievements of antiquity.
"The ancient philosophers," he writes, "whose industry even we admire, went
a different way to work, and by their unwearied labor and variety of experiments,
searching into the nature of things, have left us no doubtful light to guide us in our
studies. In this way it is that almost everything we yet possess of note or credit in
philosophy, has been transmitted to us through the industry of ancient Greece."
His admiration for the ancients does not, however, lead Harvey to rest on their
achievements. "When we acquiesce in the discoveries of the ancients, and believe
(which we are apt to do through indolence) that nothing farther remains to be known,"
then, in his opinion, "we suffer the edge of our ingenuity to be taken off, and the
lamp which they delivered us to be extinguished. No one of a surety," he continues,
"will allow that all truth was engrossed by the ancients, unless he be utterly
ignorant (to pass by other arts for the present) of the many remarkable discoveries that
have lately been made in anatomy."
In his own anatomical researches, Harvey adopts an attitude toward the work of his
predecessors, both ancient and recent, which remarkably resembles the attitude expressed
by Aristotle toward his scientific forebears. "As we are about to discuss the motion,
action, and use of the heart and arteries, it is imperative on us," Harvey declares,
"first to state what has been thought of these things by others in their writings,
and what has been held by the vulgar and by tradition, in order that what is true may be
confirmed, and what is false set right by dissection, multiplied experience, and accurate
observation." It is precisely this attitude which Bacon expressly condemns.
Bacon sees
- no genuine method of science, but merely a cultivation of
opinion, in those who prepare themselves for discovery by first obtaining "a full
account of all that has been said on the subject by others." Those who begin in this
way, it is the judgment of Descartes, seldom go further.
Particularly the followers of Aristotle "would think themselves happy,"
he says, "if they had as much knowledge of nature as he had, even if this were on the
condition that they should never attain to any more.
- They are like the ivy that never tries to mount above the
trees which give it support, and which often even descends again after it has reached the
summit; for it appears to me that such men also sink again--that is to say, somehow render
themselves more ignorant than they would have been had they abstained from study
altogether. For, not content with knowing all that is intelligibly explained in their
author, they wish in addition to find in him the solution of many difficulties of which he
says nothing, and in regard to which he possibly had no thought at all."
Pascal takes a more moderate view.
We can profit, he thinks, from a limited respect for the ancients. "Just as
they made use of those discoveries which have been handed down to them only as a means for
making new ones and this happy audacity opened the road to great things, so," Pascal
suggests, "must we accept those which they found for us and follow their example by
making them the means and not the end of our study, and thus try to surpass them by
imitating them.
- "For what would be more wrong than to treat the ancients
with more caution than they did those who preceded them, and to have for them this
inviolable respect which they only deserve from us because they did not feel a similar
respect for those who had the same advantage over them?"
MODERN WRITERS SEEM to conceive the law of intellectual progress by an analogy
between the mind of the race and the individual mind. Where Aquinas says merely that
"it seems natural to human reason to advance gradually from the imperfect to the
perfect," adding, in the past tense, that hence the imperfect teaching of early
philosophers "was afterwards perfected by those who succeeded them," Pascal
generalizes the insight and gives it future significance. "Not only does each man
progress from day to day in the sciences, but all men combined make constant progress as
the universe ages, because the same thing happens in the succeeding generations of men as
in the different ages of each particular man. So that the whole succession of men, in the
course of so many centuries, should be regarded as the same man who exists always and
learns continually."
At this point Pascal applies his metaphor to effect a reversal of the relation between the
moderns and the ancients. "Since old age is the time of life most distant from
childhood, who does not realize that old age in this universal man should not be sought in
the times closest to his birth, but in those which are farthest away from it? Those whom
we call ancients were really novices in all things, and actually belonged to the childhood
of man; and as we have added to their knowledge the experience of the centuries which
followed them, it is in ourselves that may be found this antiquity which we revere in
others."
Whether by accident or borrowing, this characteristically modern view of the advantage
progress confers upon modernity is expressed in similar language by Hobbes and Bacon.
- "Though I reverence those men of ancient times,"
writes Hobbes, "who either have written truth perspicuously or have set us in a
better way to find it out for ourselves; yet to the antiquity itself I think nothing due;
for if we will reverence age, the present is the oldest."
"Antiquity, as we call it," writes Bacon, "is the young state of
the world; for those times are ancient when the world is ancient; and not those we
vulgarly account ancient by computing backwards; so that the present time is the real
antiquity."
To secure a sound, not specious, progress in all things of the mind, Bacon recommends
- the avoidance of two extremes, the affectations of antiquity
and novelty, for "antiquity envies new improvements, and novelty is not content to
add without defacing."
Since "antiquity deserves that men should stand awhile upon it, to view
around which is the best way," the great books of the past can lay the foundations
for progress, but only if they are properly read. "Let great authors, therefore, have
their due," Bacon declares, "but so as not to defraud time, which is the author
of authors, and the parent of truth."
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