spectacle, to the scientific mind as the theatre of forces which repeat
their work with a mechanical uniformity or perhaps fatally run down to
a predestined and predictable final arrest, to the devout or religious
soul as the constant efflux of a beneficent will, unweariedly kind,
caring for the humblest of its creatures, august, worshipful, deserving
of endless adoration and love, while to the philosophic mind it is known
and ever more to be known as the self-expression of a mind in essence
one with all minds that know it in knowing themselves, know it as the
work or product of a mind engaged or absorbed in knowing itself, and so
creating itself and all that is requisite that it may learn more and
more what is hidden or stored from all eternity within its plenitude. At
least we may say that the conception of a Mind which in order to know
itself creates the conditions of such knowledge, which wills to learn
whatever can be learned of itself from whatever it does, supplies the
best pattern or original after which to model our vaguer and more
blurred conceptions of progressive existence and being elsewhere. It
furnishes to us an ideal of a progress which realizes or maintains and
advances itself, for it is independent upon external conditions. The
Progress of Philosophy or of Wisdom is a palmary instance of progress
achieved out of the internal resources of that which progresses. And
after this pattern we least untruly and least unworthily conceive the
mode of that eternal and universal Progress which is the life of the
Whole within and as part of which we live.
The aim of Philosophy is not edification but the possession and
enjoyment of Truth, and the Truth may wear an aspect which, while it
enlightens, also blinds or even at first appals and paralyses. And
certainly Reality or Philosophy as has come to know it and proclaims it
to be, is not such as either directly to warm our hearts or stimulate
our energies. Not to do either has Philosophy come into the world, nor
so does it help to bring Progress about; nor does it offer prizes to
those who pursue either moral improvement or business success, nor
again does it increase that information concerning 'nature' and men
which is the condition of the one and the other, yet to those who love
Truth and who will buy no good at the sacrifice of it, what it offers is
enough, and to progress towards and in it is for them worth all the
world beside; it is, if not the only real progress, that in the absence
of which all other progress is without worth or substance or reality. In
the end, if any advance anywhere is claimed or asserted, must we not
ask: Is the claim founded on truth, is the good or profit seemingly
attained a (or the) true good? To whom or to what is it good? Can we
stop short of the endeavour to assure ourselves beyond question or doubt
that we are right in what answers we render? And where or by what means
can we reach this save by turning inward on meditation or reflection,
that is by philosophizing? [Greek: Ei philosopheteon philosopheteon, ei
de me, philosopheteon; pantos ara philosopheteon]. Thither the mind of
man has always turned when the burden of the mystery of its nature and
fate has weighed all but intolerably upon it, and turning has never
found itself betrayed, but from knowledge of itself has drawn fresh hope
and strength to resume the uninterrupted march of Progress which is its
life and its history, its being, its self-formation, in courage moving
forwards in and towards the light. It is as if such light were not
merely the condition of its welfare, but the food on which it lived, the
stuff which it transmuted into substance and energy, out of it making,
maintaining and building its very self. So under whatever name, whether
we call what we are doing Philosophy or something else, the search for
more and more light upon ourselves and our world is the most
indispensable activity to which the leagued and co-operative powers of
Man can be devoted. Fortunately it is also that in which success or
failure depends most certainly upon ourselves and in which Progress can
with most confidence be looked for. In it we cannot fail if we will to
take sufficient trouble; the means to it are open and available; it is
our fault if we do not employ them and profit by them. If we have less
wisdom than we might have, it is never any one's fault but our own. The
door of the treasure-house of Wisdom stands ever open.
BOOKS FOR REFERENCE
C. C. J. Webb, _History of Philosophy_ (Home University Library).
Burnet, _History of Greek Philosophy_.
E. J. Bevan, _Stoics and Sceptics_.
Hoeffding, _History of Modern Philosophy_ (translated).
Royce, _The Spirit of Philosophy_.
Merz, _History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century_.
XII
PROGRESS AS AN IDEAL OF ACTION
J. A. SMITH
Throughout this course of lectures, now come to its close, we have
together been engaged in a theoretical inquiry. We have been looking
mainly towards the past, to something therefore for ever and in its very
nature set beyond the possibility of alteration by us or indeed at all.
'What is done not even God can make to be undone.' Were it otherwise it
could not be fact or reality and so not capable of being theorized or
studied. In the words of our programme we have analysed what is involved
in the conception of Progress, shown when it became prominent in the
consciousness of mankind and how far the idea has been realized--that is
has become fact--in the different departments of life. We have taken
Progress as a fact, something accomplished, and have attempted so taking
it to explain or understand it. We have not indeed assumed that it is
confined to the past, but have at times enlarged our consideration so as
to recognize its continuance in the present and to justify the hope of
its persistence in the future. Some of us would perhaps go further and
hold that it has, by these and similar reflections, come to be part of
our assured knowledge that it must so continue and persist. But however
we have widened our purview, what we call Progress has remained to us a
course or movement which still presents the appearance of a fact which
is largely, if not wholly, independent of us--a fact because independent
of us--to which we can occupy no other attitude than that of interested
spectators, interested and concerned, moved or conditioned by it but not
active or co-operative in it. So far as it is in process of realization
in the vast theatre of nature, inorganic or organic, dead or living,
that surrounds us, it pursues its course in virtue of powers not ours
and unamenable to our control. And even when we view it within the
closer environment of human history its current seems to carry us
irresistibly with it. Its existence is indeed of very practical concern
to us, but apparently all we can do is to come to know it, and knowing
it to allow for it as or among the set conditions of our self-originated
or self-governed actions if such actions there be.
The clearer we have become as to the nature of Progress, the more it
would appear that it must be for us, because it is in itself, a fact to
be recognized in theory, taken into account and reckoned with. It is or
it is not, comes to be or does not come to be, and what we have first
and foremost to seek, is light upon its existence and character as it is
or occurs. Light, we hope, has been cast upon it. We have learned that
in its inmost essence and to its utmost bounds Reality--what lies
outside and around us--is not fixed, rigid, immobile, was not and is not
and cannot be as the ancient or mediaeval mind feigned or fabled,
something beyond the reach of time and change--static or stationary--but
is itself a process of ceaseless alteration. We have learned also to be
dissatisfied with the compromise which, while acknowledging such
alteration, all but withdraws it in effect by asserting it to be either
in gross or in detail a process of mere repetition. The system of laws
which science had taught us to consider as the truth of nature is itself
now known to be caught in the evolutionary process, and to be undergoing
a constant modification. As in the modern state, so in Nature, the
legislative power is not exhausted but incessantly embodies itself in
novel forms. Nature itself--_natura naturans_--is now conceived, and
rightly conceived, as a power not bound to laws other than those which
it makes for or imposes on itself, and as in its operations at least
analogous to a will self-determined, self-governing, creative of the
ways and means by which its purpose or purposes are achieved. What that
purpose is we have begun to apprehend, and to see its various processes
as converging or co-operating towards its fulfilment. In the
mythological language which even Science is still obliged to use, we now
speak of Nature as 'selecting' or 'devising', and we ascribe to it a
large freedom of choice wisely used. We can already at least define the
process as guided towards a greater variety and fullness and harmony of
life, or (with a larger courage) as pointed towards a heightening or
potentiation of life. So defining its goal we can sympathize with and
welcome the successful efforts made toward it, and so feel ourselves at
heart one with the power that carries on the process in its aspirations
and its efforts. But still, we cannot help feeling, it and all its ways
lie outside us, and to us it remains an alien or foreign power. I
venture to repeat my contention that this is so just because, however
much we come to learn of its ways, we do not feel that we are coming to
understand it any better, getting inside it, as we do get inside and
understand human nature. Its progress is a change, perhaps a betterment,
in our environment--in externals--and takes place very largely whether
we will and act or no. The larger our acquaintance with it, the more
does its action seem to encroach upon the domain within which our
volitions and acts can make any difference. Even in social life we seem
in the grip and grasp of forces which carry us towards evil or good
whether we will or no. _Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt._ The
whole known universe outside and around us presents to us the spectacle
of what has been called a _de facto_ teleology, and just because it is
so, and so widely and deeply so, it leaves little or no room for us to
set up our ideals within it and to work for their realization. The fact
that the laws which prevail in it are modifiable and modified makes no
difference; they modify themselves, and in their different forms still
constrain us. And no matter how increasingly beneficent they may in
their action appear, they are still despotic and we unfree. The rule of
laws which Science discovers encroaches upon our liberties and
privacies. What we had hitherto thought our very own, the movement of
our impulses and desires and imaginations, are reported by science to be
subject to 'laws of association', and we are borne onwards even if also
at times upwards on an irresistible flood. We remain bound by the iron
necessity of a fate that invades our inmost being--which will not let us
anywhere securely alone. I repeat that it matters not how certainly the
trend of the tide, which sets everywhere around and outside us, is
towards what is good or best for us, it still is the case that it
presents itself as neither asking for from us nor permitting to us the
formation of any ideals of ours nor any prospect of securing them by our
efforts. Were the fact of Progress established and conclusively shown to
be all-pervasive and eternal, it still would bear to us the aspect of a
paternal government which did good to and for us, but all the more left
less and less to ourselves.
This will doubtless be pronounced an exaggeration, and we may weakly
refuse to face the impression naturally consequent upon the progress we
have made in the ascertainment of the facts concerning the world in
which we live. But does not the impression exist? The hateful and
desolating impression made on us earlier by the thought of a 'block'
universe, once for all and rigidly fixed in unalterable and uniform
subjection to eternal and omnipresent law, has dissolved like the
baseless fabric of a vision. And why? Just because being found
intolerable it was faced and put to the question. Now that there has
been substituted for it the spectacle of a universe necessarily or
fatally evolving--or, as we have said, progressing--does it not, while
still evoking the old awe or reverence, do anything but still daunt and
dishearten us? What is our part, we ask, our very own part within all
this? What can we within it do? And the answer, that it is ours, if we
will, to enter into and live in the contemplation of all this no longer
appeals to us. In such a progressive universe we can no longer feel
ourselves 'at home'. In it our active nature would seem to exist only to
be disappointed and rebuffed.
The only progress which we can care for is the progress which we
ourselves bring about, or can believe that we bring about, in ourselves
or our fellows or in the world immediately around us. So long as what is
so named is something devised and executed by a power not our own--not
the same as our own--it may call out from us gratitude and reverence,
but the spectacle of the reality of such Progress cannot exercise the
attractive force nor, so far as it is realized, beget that creative joy
which accompanies even humble acts in which we set an ideal of our own
before ourselves, and see it through our efforts emerge into actual
existence. A practical ideal must be through and through of our own
making. It must be devised by us and set to ourselves for our pursuit,
and its coming to be, or be real, must be our doing. The very idea of it
must be our own, not given or prescribed, still less imposed, and the
process towards it must be our doing too. That there should, on their
view of it, ever be protest and rebellion against its tyrannous demands
appears to me reasonable and right, and those who make it to be guarding
the immediate jewel of man's nature. We should, we might say, if this
were the whole truth about the universe, acknowledge ourselves as its
sons bound to gratitude and obedience because of the fatherly care for
us, but it would be an essential complement to our family loyalty that
we should insist upon and make good our claims to be grown-up sons and
fellow citizens, declining to pronounce it wholly good, if those claims
were denied to us. Now all these conditions seem to make straight
against the possibility of regarding Progress, in the view of it we have
hitherto taken, as an ideal of our action.
In view of this character of the known fact of Progress, so discouraging
and disabling to our active or practical nature, certain suggestions
have been made which are thought to relieve us from these effects. It is
said sometimes that this fatal--if beneficent or beneficial, still
fatal--progress leaves as it were certain interstices in the universe
within which it loses its constraining force, petty provinces but
sufficient, where man is master and determines all events, from which
even, it is sometimes conceded, some obscure but important influences
are permitted to flow, modifying his immediate surroundings, little
sanctuaries where the spirit that is in him and is his devises and
realizes ideals of its own. But the notion of such sacrosanct and
inviolable autonomies is being steadily undermined, and they are felt,
as science becomes more dominant over our imaginations and emotions, to
be no more than eddies in the universal stream, only apparently distinct
and self-maintained, means made and broken for its purpose, really
products and instruments of the world-progress. At any rate, it has been
denied that they can rightfully be thought to stand outside it or
themselves to exercise any effect upon their fortunes and their fate,
still less upon their environment. Another suggestion fully and frankly
acknowledges this, but though denying to us any power to affect either
the form or the direction of the currents on which we are borne along,
declares still open to us the possibility of affecting their speed, and
bids us find satisfaction in the thought that by taking thought or
resolve we can hasten or delay their and the universal movement. Still
another view, abandoning even that hope, proclaims one last choice open
to us, namely, that of sullen submission to, or glad and loyal
acquiescence in, its irresistible sway. But surely all these suggestions
are idle, and but for a moment conceal or postpone the inevitable
conclusion that if Progress was, is and must or will be, that is, is
necessary, what we think or do makes no difference, and can make no
difference to or in it. Whether or no we convert the fact into an ideal,
whether or no we set it before as our aim and exert ourselves to work
for it, it goes on its way all the same. Either then it is not a fact,
never was, and never will be a fact, or it is no possible ideal for
which we can act. To be or become a fact, it must be independent of our
action or our consent or our liking; if it is not all these it is not an
ideal of action, or at any rate not so for us. I must repeat that what
is or can be an ideal of action for us must be wholly and solely of our
making, the very thought of it self-begotten in our mind, every step to
its actual existence the self-created deed of our will. Not that either
idea or act comes into being in a void or without suggestion and
assistance from without us, but still so that the initiative lies in
what we think or do, and so that without us it is unreal and impossible.
It is enough, indeed, that we should be contributory, but the ideal must
be such that without our irreplaceable co-operation it must fail. The
only Progress in which we can take an active interest or make an ideal
of action, is one which we conceive and execute, and that the fact we
call Progress is not.
So far we have found much argument to show that what we have hitherto
called Progress is not and cannot be an ideal of action, or at least of
our action. And now we must face another argument more plain and
apparently fatal, indeed, specially or peculiarly fatal. For the very
notion of Progress is of a process which continues without end, or we
have the dilemma that it is either endless or runs to an end in which
there is no longer Progress but something else. In either case it is not
itself an end or the end, and whatever an ideal of action is, it must be
an end--something beyond which there is nothing, which has no Beyond at
all. To set before oneself as an ideal of action what one certainly
knows to be incapable of attainment or accomplishment, incapable of
coming to an end--that is surely futile and vain. Without a best, better
or better-and-better has no meaning, and when the best is reached
Progress is no more.
The objection may be put in various ways, as thus. What we seek or want
or work for, is to be satisfied, and satisfaction is a state, not a
process or a progress. Or again, acting is a process of seeking, seeking
and striving for something, and surely the seeking cannot itself be the
object of the search. Or once more, what we act for is, as we must
conceive it, something complete, finished, perfect, but Progress is
essentially something incomplete, unfinished, imperfect. We all feel
this, and at times at least the thought that what we seek flies ever
before, affrights and paralyses: recoiling from such a prospect, we set
before our imaginations as the reward or result of our labours, not
movement but rest, not creation or production but consumption and
fruition. We dream of one day coming to participate in a life or
experience so good that there is no change from less good to more good
possible within it, and which, if it can be said to progress at all,
only, in Milton's magnificent words, 'progresses the dateless and
irrevoluble circle of its own perfections, joining inseparable hands
with joy and bliss in over-measure for ever'. Once this ideal has
presented itself to our hopes or desires, it degrades by comparison with
it to a second-best, the former ideal of endless development from lower
to higher. What we want and seek is to be there, to have done with
getting there. 'Here is the house of fulfilment of craving, this is the
cup with the roses around it.' Compared with this, how disconsolate a
prospect is that 'of the sea that hath no shore beyond it, set in all
the sea'--the endless voyage or quest. Not Progress is or can be the
end, but achievement and the enjoyment of it. The progress is towards
and for the end; the end is the supreme good and the progress is only
good because of it, because it is on the way that leads to it, the way
we are content to travel only because it leads there. Once more, and on
still surer grounds, we must pronounce what we have come to know as
Progress to be no possible ideal of action. What draws us on is the hope
of something to be attained in and by the progress. To take Progress,
which on the one hand is a fact and on the other is an incomplete fact,
to be the end of our striving and our doing is to acquiesce in a
self-contradiction.
Yet the counter-ideal of a state in which we shall simply rest from our
labours and sit down to enjoy the fruits of them does not promise
satisfaction either, and so cannot be the end or ideal. Our desire and
our endeavour is not for a moveless, changeless, undeveloping
perfection. In fact, so often as the dream of such a state attained has
presented itself, it has to thoughtful minds appeared anything but
attractive or desirable. Our desire is to go on, and for that we are
willing to pay a price--nay, it is for more than merely to go on, it is
to advance and increase in perfection, so much so that the ideal itself
once more slews round into its opposite and the search appears worth
more than the attainment. It seems that we were not on the other view so
wholly wrong, but must try so to frame our ideal of action as to unite
both characters and satisfy both demands at once, so that it shall be at
once a state and a movement or process, an achievement and a progress, a
rest or quiet and a striving after it, a perfection and a perfecting.
The combination at first sight appears impossible. Yet both characters
it must combine. Here again, I must confess that the idea of mere
Progress, even as achieved by our own efforts, seems to me to omit
something essential to an ideal of action--of what is worth while our
acting for. What is to be an ideal of action must have the character of
a fulfilment--something to be consumed, not merely eternally added to.
For this character of the (or any) ideal of action the best name is
fruition or enjoyment. And the defect in the conception of it as
Progress is that it seems to postpone this without a date.
Let us put this truth which we have discovered concerning Progress in a
nutshell, hiding or disregarding the internal contradiction. What is the
nature, what is the kind of reality, which we have learned to ascribe to
Progress (for we did pronounce it real and essentially capable of being
realized)? It is that it is fact, yet fact not made but in the making;
it is just the name for what is real only through and in the process of
becoming real or being realized. Now I have already elsewhere pointed
out that while a realization which is also a reality, or a reality which
is also a realization, is in nature or what is external to us a mystery
and a puzzle, it is just when we look inwards the open secret of our
being; in our life or action regarded from within, it appears as
something which is only dark because it is so close and familiar to us
that inspection of it is difficult, not because it is in itself opaque
or unintelligible. To its exemplification or illustration there we must
turn for light upon our problem.
Let us for the time disregard the pressure exercised upon us by the
suggestions of physical science, or even, I may add, popular and
imaginative or opinionative--which is Latin for 'dogmatic'--Religion,
and examine how Progress takes place, or is realized and real, within
our spirits, or that spirit which is within us. The inward process is
one by which that spirit is or is real only in the act or fact of being
or coming to be realized, or rather of realizing itself, and the way in
which it so becomes or makes itself real is by acknowledging its own
past, treating it as fact, recognizing its failures or imperfections
therein, projecting on the future an idea or ideal of itself, suggested
by those apprehended wants or defects, of what it might be, and using
that to supply itself with both energy and guidance, drawing from its
own past both strength and light. In all this it acts autonomously, out
of itself, and creates both the requisite light and the indispensable
force, making its very limitations into new sources and reservoirs of
both.