us have entertained? I think they arise from our habit of letting
ourselves be guided by words rather than by realities, by what men are
_saying_ rather than by what they are _doing_, by what teachers are
teaching than by what learners are learning. If you take your stand in
the realm of words, of doctrines, of theories, of philosophies, of
books, preachings, and uttered ideals, you might make out a strong case
for a high degree of moral progress actually attained. But if you ask
how much of this has been learnt by mankind at large, and learnt in such
a way as to issue in practice, you get a different story. We have
attached too much importance to the first story and too little to the
second. There has been a great deal of false emphasis in consequence.
This false emphasis is especially prominent in the education controversy
which is now going on--and the question of moral progress, by the way,
is the question of education in the widest and highest sense of the
term. People seem quite content so long as they can get the right thing
taught. They don't always see that unless the right thing is taught by
the right people and in the right way it will not be _learnt_. Now
education is ultimately a question of what is being _learnt_, not of
what is being _taught_. The process of learning is a very curious and
complicated one, and it often happens that what goes in at the teacher's
end comes out at the pupil's end in a wholly different form and with a
wholly different value; and we have the highest authority for believing
that what really counts is not so much that which goeth into a man but
that which cometh out of him. That applies to all education--especially
moral education. So that if you argue from what has gone into the human
race in the way of moral teaching you may be greatly surprised and
perhaps disappointed when you compare it with what has come out of the
human race in the meantime. What has been taught is not what has been
learnt. It has suffered a sea change in the process. Nor is the question
wholly one of learning. There is the further question of remembering. I
believe that a candid examination of the facts would convince us that
the human race has proved itself a forgetful pupil. It has not always
retained what it has learnt. Emerson has said that no account of the
Holy Ghost has been lost. But how did Emerson find that out? The only
accents Emerson knew of were those which the world happened to have
remembered. If any had been lost in the meantime Emerson naturally would
not know of their existence. I have heard of a functionary, whose
precise office I am not able to define, called 'the Lord's
Remembrancer'. It would be a great help to Moral Progress if we had in
modern life a People's Remembrancer. His place is occupied to some
extent by the study of history, and for that reason one could wish for
the sake of Moral Progress that the study of history were universal. For
my own part I seldom open a book of history without recovering what for
me is a lost account of the Holy Ghost. Next to conceit I reckon
forgetfulness as the greatest enemy of Moral Progress. I suppose Rudyard
Kipling had something of this in mind when he wrote his poem--
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.
Another cause of our over-estimate of Moral Progress is that we have
thought too much of the abstract State and too little of the actual
States now in being. Our devotion to 'the' State as an ideal has led us
to overlook the fact that many actual States represent a form of
morality so low that it is doubtful if it can be called morality at all.
In their relations _with one another_ they display qualities which would
disgrace the brutes. And the worst of it is that at times these States
drag down to their own low level the morality of the individuals
belonging to them. Thus at the present moment we see quite decent
Englishmen and quite decent Germans tearing one another to pieces like
mad dogs, a thing they would never dream of doing as between man and
man, and which they do only because they are in the grip of forces alien
to their own nature. We have overestimated Progress by thinking only of
what is happening inside each of the States. We have forgotten to
consider the bearing of the States to one another, which remains on a
level lower than that of individuals.
The impression has gone abroad that the nations of the world need to
take _only one step_ from the position where they now stand to
accomplish the final unity of all mankind. Taking any one of these
nations--our own for example--we can trace the steps by which the
warring elements within it have become reconciled, until finally there
has emerged that vast unitary corporation--the British Empire. So with
all the others. What more is required therefore than one step further in
the same direction, to join up all the States into a single world State.
But I am bound to think we are too hasty in treating the unity of
mankind as needing only one step more. It is not so easy as all that.
When you study the process by which unity has been brought about in the
various European communities you find that motives of conquest and
corresponding motives of defence have had a great deal to do with it.
Germany, for example, was built up and now holds together as a fighting
unit. Whether Germany and the other States would still maintain their
cohesion when they were no longer fighting units, and when the motives
of conquest and defence were no longer in operation, is a question on
which I should not like to dogmatize either way. Certainly we have no
right to assume offhand that the unifying process which has given the
nations the mass cohesion and efficiency they require for holding their
own against enemy States would still remain in full power when there
were no longer any enemy States to be considered.
But what do we mean by Progress?
Progress may be defined as that process by which a thing advances from a
less to a more complete state of itself. Now whether this process is a
desirable one or not obviously depends on the nature of the thing which
is progressing. Take the largest and most inclusive of all things--the
whole world. And now suppose philosophy to have proved that the world,
the whole world, is advancing from a less to a more complete state of
itself--which as a matter of fact is what the doctrine of evolution
claims to have proved. Ought I to rejoice in this discovery? Will it
give me satisfaction? That clearly depends on the nature of the world.
If I am antecedently assured that the world is good, I shall naturally
rejoice on hearing that it is advancing from a less to a more complete
state of itself. But if the nature of the world is evil, what reason can
I possibly have for rejoicing in its evolution? Assuming the world to be
evil in its essential nature, I for my part, if I were consulted in the
matter, would certainly give my vote against its being allowed to
advance from a less to a more complete state of itself. The less such a
world progresses the easier it will be for moral beings to live in it.
Our interest lies in its remaining as undeveloped as possible.
Obvious as this seems there are some evolutionists who take a rather
different view. They seem to think that any sort of world, no matter
what its nature might be, would ultimately become a good world if it
were allowed to develop its nature far enough. It is just the fact of
its continually becoming more of itself that makes it good. But this
would compel us to abandon our definition that progress is the advance
of a thing from a less to a more complete state of _itself_. For if
itself were a bad self to begin with all such advance of _itself_ would
only make it worse. It is possible that an essentially bad man like Iago
might be converted into a good one, but not by advancing from a less to
a more complete state of _himself_ as he originally was--unless indeed
we change the hypothesis and suppose that he was not essentially bad to
begin with. So with the world at large. Our nature being what it is,
namely moral, we must first be convinced that the world is in principle
good before we can derive the least satisfaction from knowing that it is
advancing from a less to a more complete state of _itself_. The
alternative doctrine makes a breach in the doctrine of progress which is
inconsistent with its original form. A thing develops by retaining its
essential nature--that is the original form. But a bad world which
develops into a good one doesn't retain its essential nature. There
comes a point somewhere when the next step of progress can be achieved
only by the thing dropping its original nature--a point at which the
thing is no longer becoming more of its former self, which was bad, but
is ceasing to be its former self altogether and becoming something else,
which is good.
Let us apply this to progress in three specific directions--Science, the
Mechanical Arts, and Government.
We find that the progress of science has enormously increased man's
power over the forces of nature. Is it a good thing that man's power
over the forces of nature should be increased? That surely depends on
the manner in which this power is used, and this depends again on the
moral nature of man. When we observe, as we may truly observe,
especially at the present time, that of all the single applications
which man has made of science, the most extensive and perhaps the most
efficient is that of devising implements for destroying his brother man,
it is at least permissible to raise the question whether the progress of
science has contributed on the whole to the progress of humanity. Had it
not been for the progress of science, which has enormously increased the
wealth of the world, it is doubtful if this war, which is mainly a war
about wealth, would have taken place at all. Or if a war had broken out,
it would not have involved the appalling destruction of human life and
property we are now witnessing--such that, within a space of two years,
about six million human beings have been killed, thirty-five millions
wounded, and wealth destroyed to the extent of about fifteen thousand
millions sterling--though some say it is very much more. Science taught
us to make this wealth: science has also taught us how to destroy it.
When one thinks of how much of this is attributable to the progress of
science, I say it is _permissible to raise the question_ whether man is
a being who can safely be entrusted with that control over the forces of
nature which science gives him. What if he uses this power, as he
plainly can do, for his own undoing? To ask this, as we can hardly help
asking, is to transfer the question of scientific progress into the
sphere of morality. It is conceivable that the progress of science might
involve for us no progress at all. It might be, and some have feared
that it may become, a step towards the self-destruction of the human
race.
Take the mechanical arts. The chief effects of progress in the
mechanical arts have been an enormous increase in the material wealth
of mankind, and, partly consequent upon this, a parallel growth of
population in the industrial countries of the world. It is by no means
clear that either of these things constitutes a definite step in human
progress. Consider the growth of population--the immense increase in the
total bulk and volume of the human race. Whether this constitutes a
clear gain to humanity obviously cannot be answered without reference to
moral considerations. To increase the arithmetical quantity of life in
the world can be counted a gain only if the general tendencies of life
are in the right direction. If they are in the wrong direction, then the
more lives there are to yield to these tendencies the less reason has
the moralist to be satisfied with what is happening. No one, so far as I
know, has ever seriously maintained that the end and aim of progress is
to increase the number of human beings up to the limit which the planet
is able to support; though some doctrines if pressed to their conclusion
would lead to that, notably the doctrine that all morality rests
ultimately on the instinct for the preservation and the reproduction of
life. We have first to be convinced that the human race is not on the
wrong road before we can look with complacency on the increase of its
numbers. We may note in this connexion that mankind possesses no sort of
collective control over its own mass or volume. The mass or total number
of lives involved is determined by forces which are not subject to the
unitary direction of any existing human will either individual or
collective. This applies not only to the human race as a whole, but to
particular communities. Their growth is unregulated. They just come to
be what they are in point of size. This fact seems to me a very
important one to bear in mind when we talk of the progress of science
giving us control over the forces of nature. So far no state, no
government, no community has won any effective control over that group
of the forces of nature which determine the total size of the community
in question. It is an aspect of human destiny which appears to be left
to chance; and yet when we consider what it means, is there any aspect
of human destiny on which such tremendous consequences depend? And ought
we not to consider this before claiming, as we so often claim, that the
progress of science has given us control of the forces of nature? It is
strange that this point has not been more considered, especially by
thinkers who are fond of the word 'humanity'--'the good of humanity'--or
the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Humanity has an
arithmetical or quantitative side, and the good of humanity surely
depends, to some extent, on how much humanity there is. I can imagine
many things which might be good for a Greek city state of 10,000 souls
which would not be good, or not good in the same sense, for a community
of 100,000,000 souls. Surely it needs no reasoning to prove that our
power to do our duty to others is affected by the number of others to
whom duty has to be done--it makes a difference where there are 10,000
of men or 100,000,000. Similarly with the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. What is the _greatest_ number? A great deal that has
been said about this would not have been said if we had considered that
the _greatest number_ itself is left at the disposal of forces outside
the present scope of our own will. Even the proposal to sell our goods
and give the proceeds to the poor would surely be affected, from the
moral point of view, by the number of the poor who were to receive the
distribution. Were this so small that the poor would get five pounds
apiece it would be one question; were it so large that they would
receive a halfpenny apiece it would be another question. Thus we may
conclude that the progress of the mechanical arts with the consequent
increase in the bulk of the human race has not solved the problem of
moral progress, but only placed that problem in a new and more
perplexing context. A similar conclusion would meet us if we were to
consider the parallel increase of the wealth of the world. The moral
question is not about the amount of wealth the world possesses, but
about the way men spend it and the use they make of it. Industrially
speaking, the human race has made its fortune during the last hundred
years. But has it made up its mind what to do with the fortune? And has
its mind been made up in the right way? To raise these questions is to
see that progress from the economic point of view may be the reverse of
progress from the moral. But I shall not further enlarge upon this--the
theme being too familiar.
The third question which relates itself to moral progress is that of
Government. Now Government, I need hardly say, is not an end in itself.
It is a device which man has set up to help him in attaining the true
end of his life. To make up our minds how we ought to be governed is
therefore impossible unless we have previously made up our minds how we
ought to live. What might be a good government for a people whose end is
industrial success might be a very bad one for a people who had some
other end in view. Well, then, are we well governed at the present time?
Are we better governed than we were? Has progress taken place in this
department? Plainly we cannot answer these questions unless we have
chosen our end in life and are morally satisfied with it. In the history
of modern states we discover a tendency, more strongly marked in some
quarters than in others, towards that form of democracy which is called
responsible self-government. Government of the people, for the people,
by the people. The people are going to govern themselves. But they may
do so in a thousand different ways--each of which has a different moral
value. A people may go wrong just as fatally in governing itself as in
being governed by some external authority. I confess that nothing I can
learn from the history of government entirely reassures me on this
point. I see everywhere progress towards organization, but then one is
bound to ask on what ulterior end is this organization directed? I see
everywhere a growing subordination of the individual to the State. This
may or may not be a very good thing. What _kind of State_ is it to which
the individual is becoming subordinated? There are great differences
among them--some seem to me, one in particular at the present time,
thoroughly bad, and I cannot see that the individual gains morally by
being subordinated to such a State--at least if he gains in one
direction he loses more in another.
Even the social unity which Governments are capable of achieving must
not be too hastily translated into moral progress. We are entitled to
ask several questions before the one can be equated with the other. To
begin with, do men know what they want to achieve by their unified life?
And if they do know what they want, have we not still the right to
criticize its moral value and say 'this is right' or this is wrong?
Should the time ever come when the common will of mankind should get
itself expressed by the decrees of a universal democracy, would moral
criticism be at an end so far as the said decrees were concerned? For my
part I cannot see that it would. Perhaps it were truer to say that only
then would moral criticism effectively begin. As things now are, we are
prevented from criticizing the common will because none of us knows what
exactly the common will demands. But if it could get itself expressed
and defined by the decrees of a perfect democracy we should know. Those
decrees would reveal the human community to itself, and it is possible
that the revelation would not be altogether agreeable to our moral
sense. We might then discover that the common will is capable of being
grossly immoral. So far it has been impossible for us to make this
discovery because no organ exists for expressing the common will on the
human scale, and even those which express it on the national scale are
not perfect. I am far from saying the discovery would be made; but I
know of no line of argument which rules it out as impossible. Meanwhile
we are scarcely justified in regarding the common will as necessarily
moral until we know more than we do of what precisely it is that the
common will aims at and intends to achieve. To back the common will
through thick and thin, as some of our philosophers seem disposed to do,
is a dangerous speculation--it might perhaps be described as putting
your money on a dark horse.
This leads me to say a word concerning a phrase which has been much in
use of late--the Collective Wisdom of Mankind, or the Collective Wisdom
of the State. Progress is sometimes defined as a gradual approach to a
state of things where this collective wisdom rules the course of events.
And collective wisdom is sometimes represented as vastly wiser than that
possessed by any individual, even the wisest.
Now if this really is so it seems pretty obvious that, when the
collective wisdom speaks, no individual can have the right of appeal.
What are you, what am I, that either of us should set up our private
intelligence against the intelligence of forty million of our fellow
citizens? That surely would be a preposterous claim. The collective
wisdom must know best: at least it knows much better than you or I.
But is the collective wisdom of the State so immensely superior to that
of the individual, and of necessity so? Have we any means of bringing
the matter to the test? It is extremely difficult to do so. Not until
we make the experiment do we find how rare are the occasions of which we
can say that then and there the collective wisdom of the community
fairly and fully expressed itself. Acts of Parliament are not good
examples. They usually represent not the collective wisdom of the whole
community, but the wisdom of the majority after it has been checked,
modified, and perhaps nullified by the opposing wisdom of an almost
equal minority. Take as an example the history of the Irish Question.
How difficult it is to put one's finger on any moment in that tangled
story and say that then and there the collective wisdom of the community
knew what it wanted to do and did it! So with almost everything else.
Now if there be such a thing as the collective wisdom of the State I
suppose that the moment when we are most likely to find it in action is
the moment when one State has dealings with another State. That surely
is a fair test. If States possess collective wisdom they ought to show
its existence and measure when they confront one another _as
States_--when State calls to State across the great deeps of
international policy. What should we say of any State which claimed
collective wisdom only when dealing with its own individual
members--with you and me--but dropped the claim when the question was
one of reasonable intercourse with another State similarly endowed? This
we should say is a very dubious claim.
Well, how stands the matter when this test is applied? The present war
provides the answer. The war arose out of a type of quarrel which, had
it occurred between half a dozen individuals of average intelligence,
would have been amicably settled, by reasonable human intercourse, in
twenty minutes. Does not this afford a rough measure of the collective
wisdom of such States as at present exist in this world? Does it not
suggest that they have little faculty of reasonable intercourse with
one another? And when you say _that_ of any being, or any collection of
beings, do you not put it pretty low down in the scale of intelligence?
It is literally true that these States do not understand one another.
Thus we are driven back upon a plain alternative; either the States do
not represent collective wisdom, or else this collective wisdom is one
of the lowest forms of wisdom now extant on this planet. In either case
we must be very cautious in our use of the phrase. We must not infer
moral progress from the reign of collective wisdom until we are assured
that collective wisdom is really as wise as some of its devotees assume
it to be.
About the idea of moral progress, which is only another name for the
idea of progress in its widest form, I need say little, the question
having been adequately treated by other lecturers. But I will add this.
Belief in moral progress is a belief which no man can live without, and,
at the same time, a belief which cannot be proved by any appeal to human
experience. We cannot live without it, because life is just the process
of reaching forward to a better form of itself. Were a man to say that
since the world began no moral progress has taken place he would thereby
show his latent belief in moral progress. For no man would take the
trouble to deny moral progress unless he believed that the world would
in some way be made better by his denial. He would not even trouble to
come to a private conclusion in the matter unless he believed that his
private conclusion was something to the good. In that sense perhaps we
may say that moral progress is proved, for the best proof of any belief
is that it remains indispensable to the life we have to live. But the
appeal to experience would not prove it--and for this reason. A
progressive world is a world which not only makes gains, but _keeps_ its
gains when they are made. If the Kingdom of Heaven were to become a
fact to-morrow, that of itself would not prove progress, if you admit
the possibility that the world might hereafter retreat from the position
it had won. That possibility you could never rule out--except by an
appeal to faith. A world which attained the goal and then lost it would
be a greater failure, from the point of view of moral progress, than one
which never attained the goal at all. The doctrine that the gains of
morality can never be lost is widely held; but it does not rest on a
philosophic or a scientific basis. As Hume taught long ago, you cannot
infer an infinite conclusion from finite data--and in this case the
conclusion is infinite and the data are finite. They are not only finite
but various: some pointing one way, some another.
Finally we cannot prove moral progress by appeal to any objective
standard, such as the amount of happiness existing in the world at
successive dates. Suppose you were able to show that, up to date, the
amount of happiness in the world has shown a steady increase until it
has reached the grand sum total now existing. Now suppose that you were
transferred to another planet where the conditions were the exact
opposite: where the inhabitants ages ago started with the happiness we
now possess, and gradually declined until, at the present moment, they
are no happier than the human race was at the first stage of its career.
Now add together the totals of happiness for both your worlds, the
ascending world which starts with the minimum and ends with the maximum,
the declining world which starts with the maximum and ends with the
minimum. The grand totals in both cases are exactly the same. So far as
the total result is concerned, the declining world has just as much to
show for itself as the ascending. Valued in terms of happiness, the one
world would be worth as much as the other.
And yet we know that the value of these two worlds is not the same. The
ascending is worth a lot more than the descending. Why? I leave you with
that conundrum. Answer it, and you have the key to the meaning of Moral
Progress.
BOOKS FOR REFERENCE
T. H. Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, Book III, ch. 3.
Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ch. 1.
Spencer, _Data of Ethics_, ch. 13 to 14.
VII
PROGRESS IN GOVERNMENT
A. E. ZIMMERN