Review:Bury:The Idea of Progress (R.F.)

The Heretic

Review:Bury:The Idea of Progress (R.F.) written by Author:R. F.

Review:Sinclair:The Romantic (S.H.H.)

From The Canadian Forum, December 1920, p.86

The Idea of Progress, by J. B. Bury (Macmillan). This latest work by Professor Bury, an inquiry into the "Origin and Growth" of the idea of progress, is historical rather than analytical. To its learning, its penetration, its high impartiality, were not the name of its author sufficient, its pages would bear ample witness. The appositeness of such an enquiry to-day needs no urging. For the past half century the varied currency of 'progress' has been as widespread and as widely accepted as Western Civilization itself. The war brought not merely to the philosophers but to all questionings as to whether there had not been an over issue of this currency; its value depreciated; its very basis was questioned. Examination of the way in which this currency of progress arose becomes as timely as examination of the coinage itself. No such attempt to describe the growth of the idea of the progress had ever been made before in English, and only recently in French. The latter is perhaps the more remarkable since it is inevitably and naturally French thought, in the main, though not solely, which has moulded and disseminated the idea.

Progress is not merely a western, it is also a modern concept. The idea of definite, or indefinite, future growth and advancement was alien to classical civilisations despite isolated references in Seneca or Lucretius. Nor did mediaevalism find a place for the idea. The escape from barbaiism was too vivid, too near, was indeed too incomplete. The Providence of God had saved society but for the next world rather than for this. Nor did the earlier Renaissance, with one foot in the middle ages and its face turned towards Greece, conceive of it. Bodin, in the second half of the sixteenth century could argue that mankind had, on the whole, progressed up to his own day. But not until the next century, after Francis Bacon, still without belief in the unlimited development of mankind and believing himself to be living in the 'old age' of the world, had further freed thought from classical influences and — more important — taught that knowledge and scientific development were valuable because of their use to humanity, could a theory of progress be shaped. This was largely the work of Descartes. Scientific thought now freed from both Classical and Providential formulae could add the necessary foundation of a belief in the invariability of the laws of nature. To the reasoned belief that their own age was more 'advanced' than that of the Greeks and Romans was added a clear enunciation of the dogma that advancement would not cease, but would continue indefinitely. Not merely in knowledge, argues the Abbé St. Pierre, but also in happiness. The eighteenth century philosophers developed and elaborated the idea, drawing implication therefrom — e.g. that "The human race is what we wish to make it", by education and government human perfectibility can be attained. Rousseau may deny the fact of progress to his own day yet believed in the idea, and in fact helped largely to bring about the great experiment in progress at the end of the century. Condorcet whilst awaiting death under this experiment, could yet champion the cause of progress and proclaim his belief in "the advance of the human species towards truth and happiness," based on his view of past history and the influence of the equality which the Revolution was to bring.

The failure of the French Revolution to achieve the perfection of human society was, in general, far from discrediting a belief in progress. It rather set men searching for a "law" of progress which should give the belief a scientific basis, the work of St. Simon and Comte. History as popularised by Guizot and Buckle was subject to a general law of progress. Meanwhile the evidence of material progress following the Industrial Revolution, first in England and then in France, persuaded more than the writings of philosophers or historians. And the ills which accompanied that revolution provided matter for the new study of Sociology and for the Socialist to whom progress, even perfectibility were attainable by state organization and regulation: "The city of gold" was to him "situated just round the promontory."

The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and the acceptance of the Theory of Evolution marked the last stage of the development of our idea of progress. It needed but the application of the theory to sociology and ethics to argue that, in Spencer's words, "The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain.....always towards perfection is the mighty movement". This was the optimistic view of evolution; it could be, and has been, interpreted in the opposite sense. Yet of its general and popular acceptance in the optimistic sense by the generation which followed Darwin there is no doubt. Progress and Civilisation — our civilisation — become synonymous terms; it was a comfortable doctrine for, on the whole, a comfortable world: it brought an elevating responsibility for posterity. But will it last? Dr. Bury, and he is of course not alone, is not so sure. We have escaped or emerged by the efforts of the rationalists and the growth of science from the illusion of finality to the "dogma" of Progress. "But if we accept the reasonings on which the dogma of Progress is based, must we not carry them to their full conclusion? In escaping from the illusion of finality, is it legitimate to exempt that dogma itself? Must it not, too. submit to its own [p.88] negation of finality? Will not that process of change, for which Progress is the optimistic name, compel 'Progress' too to fall from the commanding position in which it is now, with apparent security, enthroned?"

R. F.