The Idea of Progress Part 15

Bock's monograph is the best study of Wegelin; but see also Flint's observations in Philosophy of History, vol. i. (1874).]

Herder brought down his historical survey only as far as the sixteenth century. It has been suggested [Footnote: Javary, De l'idee de progres, p. 69.] that if he had come down further he might have comprehended the possibility of a deliberate transformation of societies by the intelligent action of the human will--an historical force to which he does not do justice, apparently because he fancied it incompatible with strict causal sequence. The value of his work does not lie in the philosophical principles which he applied. Nor was it a useful contribution to history; of him it has been said, as of Bossuet, that facts bent like gra.s.s under his feet. [Footnote: Jouffroy, Melanges, p. 81.] But it was a notable attempt to do for human phenomena what Leibnitz in his Theodicy sought to do for the cosmos, and it pointed the way to the rationalistic philosophies of history which were to be a feature of the speculations of the following century.

2.

The short essay of Kant, which he clumsily called the Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan, [Footnote: 1784. This work of Kant was translated by De Quincey (Works, vol. ix. 428 sqq., ed.

Ma.s.son), who is responsible for cosmopolitical as the rendering of weltburgerlich.] approaches the problems raised by the history of civilisation from a new point of view.

He starts with the principle of invariable law. On any theory of free will, he says, human actions are as completely under the control of universal-laws of nature as any other physical phenomena. This is ill.u.s.trated by statistics. Registers of births, deaths, and marriages show that these events occur with as much conformity to laws of nature as the oscillations of the weather.

It is the same with the great sequence of historical events. Taken alone and individually, they seem incoherent and lawless; but viewed in their connection, as due to the action not of individuals but of the human species, they do not fail to reveal "a regular stream of tendency."

Pursuing their own often contradictory purposes, individual nations and individual men are unconsciously promoting a process to which if they perceived it they would pay little regard.

Individual men do not obey a law. They do not obey the laws of instinct like animals, nor do they obey, as rational citizens of the world would do, the laws of a preconcerted plan. If we look at the stage of history we see scattered and occasional indications of wisdom, but the general sum of men's actions is "a web of folly, childish vanity, and often even of the idlest wickedness and spirit of destruction."

The problem for the philosopher is to discover a meaning in this senseless current of human actions, so that the history of creatures who pursue no plan of their own may yet admit of a systematic form. The clew to this form is supplied by the predispositions of human nature.

I have stated this problem almost in Kant's words, and as he might have stated it if he had not introduced the conception of final causes. His use of the postulate of final causes without justifying it is a defect in his essay. He identifies what he well calls a stream of tendency with "a natural purpose." He makes no attempt to show that the succession of events is such that it cannot be explained without the postulate of a purpose. His solution of the problem is governed by this conception of finality, and by the unwarranted a.s.sumption that nature does nothing in vain.

He lays down that all the tendencies to which any creature is predisposed by its nature must in the end be developed perfectly and agreeably to their final purpose. Those predispositions in man which serve the use of his reason are therefore destined to be fully developed. This destiny, however, cannot be realised in the individual; it can only be realised in the species. For reason works tentatively, by progress and regress. Each man would require an inordinate length of time to make a perfect use of his natural tendencies. Therefore, as life is short, an incalculable series of generations is needed.

The means which nature employs to develop these tendencies is the antagonism which in man's social state exists between his gregarious and his antigregarious tendencies. His antigregarious nature expresses itself in the desire to force all things to comply to his own humour.

Hence ambition, love of honour, avarice. These were necessary to raise mankind from the savage to the civilised state. But for these antisocial propensities men would be gentle as sheep, and "an Arcadian life would arise, of perfect harmony and mutual love, such as must suffocate and stifle all talents in their very germs." Nature, knowing better than man what is good for the species, ordains discord. She is to be thanked for compet.i.tion and enmity, and for the thirst of power and wealth. For without these the final purpose of realising man's rational nature would remain unfulfilled. This is Kant's answer to Rousseau.

The full realisation of man's rational nature is possible only in a "universal civil society" founded on political justice. The establishment of such a society is the highest problem for the human species. Kant contemplates, as the political goal, a confederation of states in which the utmost possible freedom shall be united with the most rigorous determination of the boundaries of freedom.

Is it reasonable to suppose that a universal or cosmopolitical society of this kind will come into being; and if so, how will it be brought about? Political changes in the relations of states are generally produced by war. Wars are tentative endeavours to bring about new relations and to form new political bodies. Are combinations and recombinations to continue until by pure chance some rational self-supporting system emerges? Or is it possible that no such condition of society may ever arrive, and that ultimately all progress may be overwhelmed by a h.e.l.l of evils? Or, finally, is Nature pursuing her regular course of raising the species by its own spontaneous efforts and developing, in the apparently wild succession of events, man's originally implanted tendencies?

Kant accepts the last alternative on the ground that it is not reasonable to a.s.sume a final purpose in particular natural processes and at the same time to a.s.sume that there is no final purpose in the whole.

Thus his theory of Progress depends on the hypothesis of final causes.

It follows that to trace the history of mankind is equivalent to unravelling a hidden plan of Nature for accomplishing a perfect civil const.i.tution for a universal society; since a universal society is the sole state in which the tendencies of human nature can be fully developed. We cannot determine the orbit of the development, because the whole period is so vast and only a small fraction is known to us, but this is enough to show that there is a definite course.

Kant thinks that such a "cosmopolitical" history, as he calls it, is possible, and that if it were written it would give us a clew opening up "a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we shall discover the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted and its own destination upon this earth accomplished."

3.

But to see the full bearing of Kant's discussion we must understand its connection with his ethics. For his ethical theory is the foundation and the motive of his speculation on Progress. The progress on which he lays stress is moral amelioration; he refers little to scientific or material progress. For him morality was an absolute obligation founded in the nature of reason. Such an obligation presupposes an end to be attained, and this end is a reign of reason under which all men obeying the moral law mutually treat each other as ends in themselves. Such an ideal state must be regarded as possible, because it is a necessary postulate of reason. From this point of view it may be seen that Kant's speculation on universal history is really a discussion whether the ideal state, which is required as a subjective postulate in the interest of ethics, is likely to be realised objectively.

Now, Kant does not a.s.sert that because our moral reason must a.s.sume the possibility of this hypothetical goal civilisation is therefore moving towards it. That would be a fallacy into which he was incapable of falling. Civilisation is a phenomenon, and anything we know about it can only be inferred from experience. His argument is that there are actual indications of progress in this desirable direction. He pointed to the contemporary growth of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a hypothesis, not as a dogma.

It is probable that what hindered Kant from broaching his theory of Progress with as much confidence as Condorcet was his perception that nothing could be decisively affirmed about the course of civilisation until the laws of its movement had been discovered. He saw that this was a matter for scientific investigation. He says expressly that the laws are not yet known, and suggests that some future genius may do for social phenomena what Kepler and Newton did for the heavenly bodies. As we shall see, this is precisely what some of the leading French thinkers of the next generation will attempt to do.

But cautiously though he framed the hypothesis Kant evidently considered Progress probable. He recognised that the most difficult obstacle to the moral advance of man lies in war and the burdens which the possibility of war imposes. And he spent much thought on the means by which war might be abolished. He published a philosophical essay on Perpetual Peace, in which he formulated the articles of an international treaty to secure the disappearance of war. He considered that, while a universal republic would be the positive ideal, we shall probably have to be contented with what he calls a negative subst.i.tute, consisting in a federation of peoples bound by a peace-alliance guaranteeing the independence of each member. But to a.s.sure the permanence of this system it is essential that each state should have a democratic const.i.tution.

For such a const.i.tution is based on individual liberty and civil equality. All these changes should be brought about by legal reforms; revolutions--he was writing in 1795---cannot be justified.

We see the influence of Rousseau's Social Contract and that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, with whose works Kant was acquainted. There can be little doubt that it was the influence of French thought, so powerful in Germany at this period, that turned Kant's mind towards these speculations, which belong to the latest period of his life and form a sort of appendix to his philosophical system. The theory of Progress, the idea of universal reform, the doctrine of political equality--Kant examined all these conceptions and appropriated them to the service of his own highly metaphysical theory of ethics. In this new a.s.sociation their spirit was changed.

In France, as we saw, the theory of Progress was generally a.s.sociated with ethical views which could find a metaphysical basis in the sensationalism of Locke. A moral system which might be built on sensation, as the primary mental fact, was worked out by Helvetius. But the principle that the supreme law of conduct is to obey nature had come down as a practical philosophy from Rabelais and Montaigne through Moliere to the eighteenth century. It was reinforced by the theory of the natural goodness of man. Jansenism had struggled against it and was defeated. After theology it was the turn of metaphysics. Kant's moral imperative marked the next stage in the conflict of the two opposite tendencies which seek natural and ultra-natural sanctions for morality.

Hence the idea of progress had a different significance for Kant and for its French exponents, though his particular view of the future possibly in store for the human species coincided in some essential points with theirs. But his theory of life gives a different atmosphere to the idea.

In France the atmosphere is emphatically eudaemonic; happiness is the goal. Kant is an uncompromising opponent of eudaemonism. "If we take enjoyment or happiness as the measure, it is easy," he says, "to evaluate life. Its value is less than nothing. For who would begin one's life again in the same conditions, or even in new natural conditions, if one could choose them oneself, but of which enjoyment would be the sole end?"

There was, in fact, a strongly-marked vein of pessimism in Kant. One of the ablest men of the younger generation who were brought up on his system founded the philosophical pessimism--very different in range and depth from the sentimental pessimism of Rousseau--which was to play a remarkable part in German thought in the nineteenth century. [Footnote: Kant's pessimism has been studied at length by von Hartmann, in Zur Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismus (1880).] Schopenhauer's unpleasant conclusion that of all conceivable worlds this is the worst, is one of the speculations for which Kant may be held ultimately responsible. [Footnote: Schopenhauer recognised progress social, economic, and political, but as a fact that contains no guarantee of happiness; on the contrary, the development of the intelligence increases suffering. He ridiculed the optimistic ideals of comfortable, well-regulated states. His views on historical development have been collected by G. Sparlinsky, Schopenhauers Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, in Berner Studien s. Philosophie, Bd. lxxii. (1910).]

4.

Kant's considerations on historical development are an appendix to his philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof of his system. It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists, for whom his system was the point of departure, though they rejected its essential feature, the limitation of human thought. With Fichte and Hegel progressive development was directly deduced from their principles. If their particular interpretations of history have no permanent value, it is significant that, in their ambitious attempts to explain the universe a priori, history was conceived as progressive, and their philosophies did much to reinforce a conception which on very different principles was making its way in the world. But the progress which their systems involved was not bound up with the interest of human happiness, but stood out as a fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of the nature of thought.

The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote: Fichte's philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at Berlin in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of "freedom"; that is its end and goal, but a goal that always recedes. It can never be reached; for its full attainment would mean the complete suppression of Nature. The process of the world, therefore, consists in an indefinite approximation to an unattainable ideal: freedom is being perpetually realised more and more; and the world, as it ascends in this direction, becomes more and more a realm of reason.

What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition to instinct. A man acting instinctively may be acting quite reasonably, in a way which any one fully conscious of all the implications and consequences of the action would judge to be reasonable. But in order that his actions should be free he must himself be fully conscious of all those implications and consequences.

It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to reason, not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate purpose.

This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it determines the necessary stages of history.

It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest: the earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the latest, in which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it fully. But before reaching this final stage they must pa.s.s through an epoch in which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant. And to reach this they must have emanc.i.p.ated themselves from instinct, and this process of emanc.i.p.ation means a fourth epoch. But they could not have wanted to emanc.i.p.ate themselves unless they had felt instinct as a servitude imposed by an external authority, and therefore we have to distinguish yet another epoch wherein reason is expressed in authoritarian inst.i.tutions to which men blindly submit. In this way Fichte deduces five historical epochs: two in which progress is blind, two in which it is free, and an intermediate in which it is struggling to consciousness.

[Footnote: First Epoch: that of instinctive reason; the age of innocence. Second: that of authoritarian reason. Third: that of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt; the age of scepticism and unregulated liberty. Fourth: that of conscious reason, as science. Fifth: that of regnant reason, as art.] But there are no locked gates between these periods; they overlap and mingle; each may have some of the characteristics of another; and in each there is a vanguard leading the way and a rearguard lagging behind.

At present (1804) we are in the third age; we have broken with authority, but do not yet possess a clear and disciplined knowledge of reason. [Footnote: Three years later, however, Fichte maintained in his patriotic Discourses to the German Nation (1807) that in 1804 man had crossed the threshold of the fourth epoch. He a.s.serted that the progress of "culture" and science will depend henceforward chiefly on Germany.]

Fichte has deduced this scheme purely a priori without any reference to actual experience. "The philosopher," he says, "follows the a priori thread of the world-plan which is clear to him without any history; and if he makes use of history, it is not to prove anything, since his theses are already proved independently of all history."

Historical development is thus presented as a necessary progress towards a goal which is known but cannot be reached. And this fact as to the destiny of the race const.i.tutes the basis of morality, of which the fundamental law is to act in such a way as to promote the free realisation of reason upon earth. It has been claimed by a recent critic that Fichte was the first modern philosopher to humanise morals. He completely rejected the individualistic conception which underlay Kantian as well as Christian ethics. He a.s.serted that the true motive of morality is not the salvation of the individual man but the Progress of humanity. In fact, with Fichte Progress is the principle of ethics. That the Christian ideal of ascetic saintliness detached from society has no moral value is a plain corollary from the idea of earthly Progress.

[Footnote: X. Leon, La Philosophie de Fichte (1902), pp. 477-9.]

One other point in Fichte's survey of history deserves notice--the social role of the savant. It is the function of the savant to discover the truths which are a condition of moral progress; he may be said to incarnate reason in the world. We shall see how this idea played a prominent part in the social schemes of Saint-Simon and Comte.

[Footnote: Fichte, Ueber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794).]

5.

Hegel's philosophy of history is better known than Fichte's. Like Fichte, he deduced the phases a priori from his metaphysical principles, but he condescended to review in some detail the actual phenomena. He conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's consciousness of its own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is virtually equivalent to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines Universal History as the description of the process by which Spirit or G.o.d comes to the consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment to develop in a different way; its actual development is necessary and is the embodiment of reason. Freedom consists in fully recognising the fact.

Of the particular features which distinguish Hegel's treatment, the first is that he identifies "history" with political history, the development of the state. Art, religion, philosophy, the creations of social man, belong to a different and higher stage of Spirit's self-revelation. [Footnote: The three phases of Spirit are (1) subjective; (2) objective; (3) absolute. Psychology, e.g., is included in (1), law and history in (2), religion in (3).] In the second place, Hegel ignores the primitive prehistoric ages of man, and sets the beginning of his development in the fully-grown civilisation of China.

He conceives the Spirit as continually moving from one nation to another in order to realise the successive stages of its self-consciousness: from China to India, from India to the kingdoms of Western Asia; then from the Orient to Greece, then to Rome, and finally to the Germanic world. In the East men knew only that ONE is free, the political characteristic was despotism; in Greece and Rome they knew that SOME are free, and the political forms were aristocracy and democracy; in the modern world they know that ALL are free, and the political form is monarchy. The first period, he compared to childhood, the second to youth (Greece) and manhood (Rome), the third to old age, old but not feeble. The third, which includes the medieval and modern history of Europe, designated by Hegel as the Germanic world--for "the German spirit is the spirit of the modern world"--is also the final period. In it G.o.d realises his freedom completely in history, just as in Hegel's own absolute philosophy, which is final, G.o.d has completely understood his own nature.

And here is the most striking difference between the theories of Fichte and Hegel. Both saw the goal of human development in the realisation of "freedom," but, while with Fichte the development never ends as the goal is unattainable, with Hegel the development is already complete, the goal is not only attainable but has now been attained. Thus Hegel's is what we may call a closed system. History has been progressive, but no path is left open for further advance. Hegel views this conclusion of development with perfect complacency. To most minds that are not intoxicated with the Absolute it will seem that, if the present is the final state to which the evolution of Spirit has conducted, the result is singularly inadequate to the gigantic process. But his system is eminently inhuman. The happiness or misery of individuals is a matter of supreme indifference to the Absolute, which, in order to realise itself in time, ruthlessly sacrifices sentient beings.

The spirit of Hegel's philosophy, in its bearing on social life, was thus antagonistic to Progress as a practical doctrine. Progress there had been, but Progress had done its work; the Prussian monarchical state was the last word in history. Kant's cosmopolitical plan, the liberalism and individualism which were implicit in his thought, the democracies which he contemplated in the future, are all cast aside as a misconception. Once the needs of the Absolute Spirit have been satisfied, when it has seen its full power and splendour revealed in the Hegelian philosophy, the world is as good as it can be. Social amelioration does not matter, nor the moral improvement of men, nor the increase of their control over physical forces.

6.

The other great representative of German idealism, who took his departure from Kant, also saw in history a progressive revelation of divine reason. But it was the processes of nature, not the career of humanity, that absorbed the best energies of Sch.e.l.ling, and the elaboration of a philosophical idea of organic evolution was the prominent feature of his speculation. His influence--and it was wide, reaching even scientific biologists--lay chiefly in diffusing this idea, and he thus contributed to the formation of a theory which was afterwards to place the idea of Progress on a more imposing base.

[Footnote: Sch.e.l.ling's views notoriously varied at various stages of his career. In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he distinguished three historical periods, in the first of which the Absolute reveals itself as Fate, in the second as Nature, in the third as Providence, and a.s.serted that we are still living in the second, which began with the expansion of Rome (Werke, i. 3, p. 603). In this context he says that the conception of an infinite "progressivity" is included in the conception of "history," but adds that the perfectibility of the race cannot be directly inferred. For it may be said that man has no proper history but turns round on a wheel of Ixion. The difficulty of establishing the fact of Progress from the course of events lies in discovering a criterion. Sch.e.l.ling rejects the criterion of moral improvement and that of advance in science and arts as unpractical or misleading. But if we see the sole object of history in a gradual realisation of the ideal state, we have a measure of Progress which can be applied; though it cannot be proved either by theory or by experience that the goal will be attained. This must remain an article of faith (ib. 592 sqq.).]

Sch.e.l.ling influenced, among others, his contemporary Krause, a less familiar name, who worked out a philosophy of history in which this idea is fundamental. Krause conceived history, which is the expression of the Absolute, as the development of life; society as an organism; and social growth as a process which can be deduced from abstract biological principles.

[Footnote: Krause divided man's earthly career into three Ages--infancy, growth, and maturity. The second of these falls into three periods characterised by (1) polytheism, (2) monotheism (Middle Ages), (3) scepticism and liberty, and we are now in the third of these periods.

The third Age will witness the union of humanity in a single social organism, and the universal acceptance of "panentheism" (the doctrine of the unity of all in G.o.d), which is the principle of Krause's philosophy and religion. But though this will be the final stage on the earth, Krause contemplates an ulterior career of humanity in other solar systems.