The Idea of Progress

An Inquiry Into its Origin and Growth

J. B. Bury

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780486780665
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Wide-ranging, erudite and stimulating, this thought-provoking volume describes the birth and development of one of the most important basic ideas of our civilization: progress, or the concept that humanity is advancing in a definite and desirable direction. Throughout, Bury examines the contributions of Darwin, Descartes, Voltaire, Locke, and other important thinkers.

CHAPTER I

SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND LE ROY

1

IT is a long descent from the genius of Machiavelli to the French historian, Jean Bodin, who published his introduction to historical studies¹ about forty years after Machiavelli’s death. His views and his method differ widely from those of that great pioneer, whom he attacks. His readers were not arrested by startling novelties or immoral doctrine; he is safe, and dull.

But Bodin had a much wider range of thought than Machiavelli, whose mind was entirely concentrated on the theory of politics; and his importance for us lies not in the political speculations by which he sought to prove that monarchy is the best form of government,² but in his attempt to substitute a new theory of universal history for that which prevailed in the Middle Ages. He rejected the popular conception of a golden age and a subsequent degeneration of mankind; and he refuted the view, generally current among medieval theologians, and based on the prophecies of Daniel, which divided the course of history into four periods corresponding to the Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman monarchies, the last of which was to endure till the day of Judgement. Bodin suggests a division into three great periods: the first, of about two thousand years, in which the South-Eastern peoples were predominant; the second, of the same duration, in which those whom he calls the Middle (Mediterranean) peoples came to the front; the third, in which the Northern nations who overthrew Rome became the leaders in civilisation. Each period is stamped by the psychological character of the three racial groups. The note of the first is religion, of the second practical sagacity, of the third warfare and inventive skill. This division actually anticipates the synthesis of Hegel.³ But the interesting point is that it is based on anthropological considerations, in which climate and geography are taken into account; and, notwithstanding the crudeness of the whole exposition and the intrusion of astrological arguments, it is a new step in the study of universal history.

I have said that Bodin rejected the theory of the degeneration of man, along with the tradition of a previous age of virtue and felicity. The reason which he alleged against it is important. The powers of nature have always been uniform. It is illegitimate to suppose that she could at one time produce the men and conditions postulated by the theory of the golden age, and not produce them at another. In other words, Bodin asserts the principle of the permanent and undiminishing capacities of nature, and, as we shall see in the sequel, this principle was significant It is not to be confounded with the doctrine of the immutability of human things assumed by Machiavelli. The human scene has vastly changed since the primitive age of man; “if that so-called golden age could be revoked and compared with our own, we should consider it iron.”⁴ For history largely depends on the will of men, which is always changing; every day new laws, new customs, new institutions, both secular and religious, come into being, and new errors.⁵

But in this changing scene we can observe a certain regularity, a law of oscillation. Rise is followed by fall, and fall by rise; it is a mistake to think that the human race is always deteriorating.⁶ If that were so, we should long ago have reached the lowest stage of vice and iniquity. On the contrary, there has been, through the series of oscillations, a gradual ascent. In the ages which have been foolishly designated as gold and silver men lived like the wild beasts; and from that state they have slowly reached the humanity of manners and the social order which prevail to-day.⁷

Thus Bodin recognises a general progress in the past. That is nothing new; it was the view, for instance, of the Epicureans. But much had passed in the world since the philosophy of Epicurus was alive, and Bodin had to consider twelve hundred years of new vicissitudes. Could the Epicurean theory be brought up to date ?

2

Bodin deals with the question almost entirely in respect to human knowledge. In definitely denying the degeneration of man, Bodin was only expressing what many thinkers of the sixteenth century had been coming to feel, though timidly and obscurely. The philosophers and men of science, who criticised the ancients in special departments, did not formulate any general view on the privileged position of antiquity. Bodin was the first to do so.

Knowledge, letters, and arts have their vicissitudes, he says; they rise, increase, and flourish, and then languish and die. After the decay of Rome there was a long fallow period; but this was followed by a splendid revival of knowledge and an intellectual productivity which no other age has exceeded. The scientific discoveries of the ancients deserve high praise; but the moderns have not only thrown new light on phenomena which they had incompletely explained, they have made new discoveries of equal or indeed greater importance. Take, for instance, the mariner’s compass which has made possible the circumnavigation of the earth and a universal commerce, whereby the world has been changed, as it were, into a single state.⁸ Take the advances we have made in geography and astronomy; the invention of gunpowder; the development of the woollen and other industries. The invention of printing alone can be set against anything that the ancients achieved.⁹

An inference from all this, obvious to a modern reader, would be that in the future there will be similar oscillations, and new inventions and discoveries as remarkable as any that have been made in the past. But Bodin does not draw this inference. He confines himself to the past and present, and has no word to say about the vicissitudes of the future. But he is not haunted by any vision of the end of the world, or the coming of Antichrist; three centuries of humanism lay between him and Roger Bacon,

3

And yet the influence of medievalism, which it had been the work of those three centuries to overcome, was still pervasively there. Still more the authority of the Greeks and Romans, which had been set up by the revival of learning, was, without their realising it, heavy even upon thinkers like Bodin, who did not scruple freely to criticise ancient authors. And so, in his thoughtful attempt to find a clew to universal history, he was hampered by theological and cosmic theories, the legacy of the past. It is significant of the trend of his mind that when he is discussing the periodic decline of science and letters, he suggests that it may be due to the direct action of God, punishing those who misapplied useful sciences to the destruction of men. But his speculations were particularly compromised by his belief in astrology, which, notwithstanding the efforts of humanists like Petrarch, Aeneas Sylvius, and Pico to discredit it, retained its hold over the minds of many eminent, otherwise emancipated, thinkers throughout the period of the Renaissance. Here Bodin is in the company of Machiavelli and Lord Bacon. But not content with the doctrine of astral influence on human events, he sought another key to historical changes in the influence of numbers, reviving the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato, but working them out in a way of his own. He enumerates the durations of the lives of many famous men, to show that they can be expressed by powers of 7 and 9, or the product of these numbers. Other numbers which have special virtues are the powers of 12, the perfect number¹⁰ 496, and various others. He gives many examples to prove that these mystic numbers determine the durations of empires and underlie historical chronology. For instance, the duration of the oriental monarchies from Ninus to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great was 1728 (= 12³) years. He gives the Roman republic from the foundation of Rome to the battle of Actium 729 (= 9³) years.

4

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. 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,¹¹ 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.

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.¹² 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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• PREFATORY NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
• INTRODUCTION
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I SOME INTERPRETATIONS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY: BODIN AND LE ROY
• CHAPTER II UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON
• CHAPTER III CARTESIANISM
• CHAPTER IV THE DOCTRINE OF DEGENERATION: THE ANCIENTS AND MODERNS
• CHAPTER V THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE I FONTENELLE
• CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBÉ DE SAINT-PIERRE
• CHAPTER VII NEW CONCEPTIONS OF HISTORY: MONTESQUIEU, VOLTAIRE, TURGOT
• CHAPTER VIII THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS
• CHAPTER IX WAS CIVILISATION A MISTAKE? ROUSSEAU, CHASTELLUX
• CHAPTER X THE YEAR 2440
• CHAPTER XI THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: CONDORCET
• CHAPTER XII THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND
• CHAPTER XIII GERMAN SPECULATIONS ON PROGRESS
• CHAPTER XIV CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION
• CHAPTER XV THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: I. SAINT-SIMON
• CHAPTER XVI THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE
• CHAPTER XVII “PROGRESS” IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT (1830–1851)
• CHAPTER XVIII MATERIAL PROGRESS: EXHIBITION OF 1851
• CHAPTER XIX PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION
• EPILOGUE
• INDEX