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THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
AN INQUIRY INTO ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH
By J. B. Bury
Regius Professor Of Modern History, And Fellow Of King's
College, In The University Of Cambridge
Dedicated to the memories of Charles Francois Castel de Saint-Pierre,
Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de Condorcet, Auguste Comte, Herbert
Spencer, and other optimists mentioned in this volume.
Tantane uos generis tenuit fiducia uestri?
PREFACE
We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in either
case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and trace the
history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to be no more
than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea of western
civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity is the general test
to which social aims and theories are submitted as a matter of course.
The phrase CIVILISATION AND PROGRESS has become stereotyped, and
illustrates how we have come to judge a civilisation good or bad
according as it is or is not progressive. The ideals of liberty and
democracy, which have their own ancient and independent justifications,
have sought a new strength by attaching themselves to Progress. The
conjunctions of "liberty and progress," "democracy and progress,"
meet us at every turn. Socialism, at an early stage of its modern
development, sought the same aid. The friends of Mars, who cannot bear
the prospect of perpetual peace, maintain that war is an indispensable
instrument of Progress. It is in the name of Progress that the
doctrinaires who established the present reign of terror in Russia
profess to act. All this shows the prevalent feeling that a social or
political theory or programme is hardly tenable if it cannot claim that
it harmonises with this controlling idea.
In the Middle Ages Europeans followed a different guiding star. The idea
of a life beyond the grave was in control, and the great things of
this life were conducted with reference to the next. When men's deepest
feelings reacted more steadily and powerfully to the idea of saving
their souls than to any other, harmony with this idea was the test by
which the opportuneness of social theories and institutions was judged.
Monasticism, for instance, throve under its aegis, while liberty of
conscience had no chance. With a new idea in control, this has been
reversed. Religious freedom has thriven under the aegis of Progress;
monasticism can make no appeal to it.
For the hope of an ultimate happy state on this planet to be enjoyed by
future generations--or of some state, at least, that may relatively be
considered happy--has replaced, as a social power, the hope of felicity
in another world. Belief in personal immortality is still very widely
entertained, but may we not fairly say that it has ceased to be a
central and guiding idea of collective life, a criterion by which social
values are measured? Many people do not believe in it; many more regard
it as so uncertain that they could not reasonably permit it to affect
their lives or opinions. Those who believe in it are doubtless the
majority, but belief has many degrees; and one can hardly be wrong
in saying that, as a general rule, this belief does not possess the
imaginations of those who hold it, that their emotions react to it
feebly, that it is felt to be remote and unreal, and has comparatively
seldom a more direct influence on conduct than the abstract arguments to
be found in treatises on morals.
Under the control of the idea of Progress the ethical code recognised in
the Western world has been reformed in modern times by a new principle
of far-reaching importance which has emanated from that idea. When
Isocrates formulated the rule of life, "Do unto others," he probably did
not mean to include among "others" slaves or savages. The Stoics and the
Christians extended its application to the whole of living humanity. But
in late years the rule has received a vastly greater extension by the
inclusion of the unborn generations of the future. This principle of
duty to posterity is a direct corollary of the idea of Progress. In
the recent war that idea, involving the moral obligation of making
sacrifices for the sake of future ages, was constantly appealed to;
just as in the Crusades, the most characteristic wars of our medieval
ancestors, the idea of human destinies then in the ascendant lured
thousands to hardship and death.
The present attempt to trace the genesis and growth of the idea in broad
outline is a purely historical inquiry, and any discussion of the
great issue which is involved lies outside its modest scope. Occasional
criticisms on particular forms which the creed of Progress assumed,
or on arguments which were used to support it, are not intended as a
judgment on its general validity. I may, however, make two observations
here. The doubts which Mr. Balfour expressed nearly thirty years ago,
in an Address delivered at Glasgow, have not, so far as I know, been
answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the
notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as
a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have
appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day,
notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have
instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to
which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a
long stride forward on the road to Utopia.
The preponderance of France's part in developing the idea is an
outstanding feature of its history. France, who, like ancient Greece,
has always been a nursing-mother of ideas, bears the principal
responsibility for its growth; and if it is French thought that will
persistently claim our attention, this is not due to an arbitrary
preference on my part or to neglect of speculation in other countries.
J. B. BURY. January, 1920.
CONTENTS
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: FONTENELLE
CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF MAN: ABBE 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 SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE
CHAPTER XVII "PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
(1830-1851)
CHAPTER XVIII MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851
CHAPTER XIX PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX: NOTES TO THE TEXT
[Proofreaders note: these notes have been
interspersed in the main text as Footnotes]
INTRODUCTION
When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in
history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human
aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as
liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism. Some of these
have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of them should
not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were the
united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it. They are
approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not
because they are true or false. But there is another order of ideas
that play a great part in determining and directing the course of man's
conduct but do not depend on his will--ideas which bear upon the mystery
of life, such as Fate, Providence, or personal immortality. Such ideas
may operate in important ways on the forms of social action, but they
involve a question of fact and they are accepted or rejected not because
they are believed to be useful or injurious, but because they are
believed to be true or false.
The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it
is important to be quite clear on the point. We now take it so much for
granted, we are so conscious of constantly progressing in knowledge,
arts, organising capacity, utilities of all sorts, that it is easy to
look upon Progress as an aim, like liberty or a world-federation, which
it only depends on our own efforts and good-will to achieve. But though
all increases of power and knowledge depend on human effort, the idea
of the Progress of humanity, from which all these particular progresses
derive their value, raises a definite question of fact, which man's
wishes or labours cannot affect any more than his wishes or labours can
prolong life beyond the grave.
This idea means that civilisation has moved, is moving, and will move
in a desirable direction. But in order to judge that we are moving in
a desirable direction we should have to know precisely what the
destination is. To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of
human development would be a condition of society in which all the
inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence. But
it is impossible to be sure that civilisation is moving in the right
direction to realise this aim. Certain features of our "progress" may be
urged as presumptions in its favour, but there are always offsets, and
it has always been easy to make out a case that, from the point of view
of increasing happiness, the tendencies of our progressive civilisation
are far from desirable. In short, it cannot be proved that the unknown
destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement
may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore
not Progress. This is a question of fact, and one which is at present as
insoluble as the question of personal immortality. It is a problem which
bears on the mystery of life.
Moreover, even if it is admitted to be probable that the course of
civilisation has so far been in a desirable direction, and such as would
lead to general felicity if the direction were followed far enough, it
cannot be proved that ultimate attainment depends entirely on the human
will. For the advance might at some point be arrested by an insuperable
wall. Take the particular case of knowledge, as to which it is generally
taken for granted that the continuity of progress in the future depends
altogether on the continuity of human effort (assuming that human brains
do not degenerate). This assumption is based on a strictly limited
experience. Science has been advancing without interruption during the
last three or four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new
problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for
exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt,
they have always found means to advance further. But what assurance have
we that they will not one day come up against impassable barriers? The
experience of four hundred years, in which the surface of nature has
been successfully tapped, can hardly be said to warrant conclusions
as to the prospect of operations extending over four hundred or four
thousand centuries. Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that
some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge
is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are
exhausted--because, for instance, scientific instruments have reached
the limit of perfection beyond which it is demonstrably impossible to
improve them, or because (in the case of astronomy) we come into the
presence of forces of which, unlike gravitation, we have no terrestrial
experience? It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall
not soon reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human
intellect is unqualified to pass.
But it is just this assumption which is the light and inspiration of
man's scientific research. For if the assumption is not true, it means
that he can never come within sight of the goal which is, in the case
of physical science, if not a complete knowledge of the cosmos and
the processes of nature, at least an immeasurably larger and deeper
knowledge than we at present possess.
Thus continuous progress in man's knowledge of his environment, which is
one of the chief conditions of general Progress, is a hypothesis which
may or may not be true. And if it is true, there remains the further
hypothesis of man's moral and social "perfectibility," which rests on
much less impressive evidence. There is nothing to show that he may not
reach, in his psychical and social development, a stage at which the
conditions of his life will be still far from satisfactory, and beyond
which he will find it impossible to progress. This is a question of fact
which no willing on man's part can alter. It is a question bearing on
the mystery of life.
Enough has been said to show that the Progress of humanity belongs to
the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is
true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or
false. Belief in it is an act of faith.
The idea of human Progress then is a theory which involves a
synthesis of the past and a prophecy of the future. It is based on
an interpretation of history which regards men as slowly
advancing--pedetemtim progredientes--in a definite and desirable
direction, and infers that this progress will continue indefinitely. And
it implies that, as
The issue of the earth's great business,
a condition of general happiness will ultimately be enjoyed, which will
justify the whole process of civilisation; for otherwise the direction
would not be desirable. There is also a further implication. The process
must be the necessary outcome of the psychical and social nature of man;
it must not be at the mercy of any external will; otherwise there
would be no guarantee of its continuance and its issue, and the idea of
Progress would lapse into the idea of Providence.
As time is the very condition of the possibility of Progress, it is
obvious that the idea would be valueless if there were any cogent
reasons for supposing that the time at the disposal of humanity is
likely to reach a limit in the near future. If there were good cause for
believing that the earth would be uninhabitable in A.D. 2000 or 2100
the doctrine of Progress would lose its meaning and would automatically
disappear. It would be a delicate question to decide what is the minimum
period of time which must be assured to man for his future development,
in order that Progress should possess value and appeal to the emotions.
The recorded history of civilisation covers 6000 years or so, and if we
take this as a measure of our conceptions of time-distances, we might
assume that if we were sure of a period ten times as long ahead of us
the idea of Progress would not lose its power of appeal. Sixty thousand
years of HISTORICAL time, when we survey the changes which have come to
pass in six thousand, opens to the imagination a range vast enough to
seem almost endless.
This psychological question, however, need not be decided. For science
assures us that the stability of the present conditions of the solar
system is certified for many myriads of years to come. Whatever gradual
modifications of climate there may be, the planet will not cease to
support life for a period which transcends and flouts all efforts of
imagination. In short, the POSSIBILITY of Progress is guaranteed by the
high probability, based on astro-physical science, of an immense time to
progress in.
It may surprise many to be told that the notion of Progress, which now
seems so easy to apprehend, is of comparatively recent origin. It has
indeed been claimed that various thinkers, both ancient (for instance,
Seneca) and medieval (for instance, Friar Bacon), had long ago conceived
it. But sporadic observations--such as man's gradual rise from primitive
and savage conditions to a certain level of civilisation by a series of
inventions, or the possibility of some future additions to his knowledge
of nature--which were inevitable at a certain stage of human reflection,
do not amount to an anticipation of the idea. The value of such
observations was determined, and must be estimated, by the whole context
of ideas in which they occurred. It is from its bearings on the future
that Progress derives its value, its interest, and its power. You may
conceive civilisation as having gradually advanced in the past, but you
have not got the idea of Progress until you go on to conceive that it
is destined to advance indefinitely in the future. Ideas have
their intellectual climates, and I propose to show briefly in this
Introduction that the intellectual climates of classical antiquity and
the ensuing ages were not propitious to the birth of the doctrine of
Progress. It is not till the sixteenth century that the obstacles to
its appearance definitely begin to be transcended and a favourable
atmosphere to be gradually prepared.
[Footnote: The history of the idea of Progress has been treated
briefly and partially by various French writers; e.g. Comte, Cours de
philosophie positive, vi. 321 sqq.; Buchez, Introduction a la science
de l'histoire, i. 99 sqq. (ed. 2, 1842); Javary, De l'idee de progres
(1850); Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes
(1856); Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne (1854); Caro,
Problemes de la morale sociale (1876); Brunetiere, La Formation de
l'idee de progres, in Etudes critiques, 5e serie. More recently M. Jules
Delvaille has attempted to trace its history fully, down to the end
of the eighteenth century. His Histoire de l'idee de progres (1910) is
planned on a large scale; he is erudite and has read extensively. But
his treatment is lacking in the power of discrimination. He strikes one
as anxious to bring within his net, as theoriciens du progres, as many
distinguished thinkers as possible; and so, along with a great deal
that is useful and relevant, we also find in his book much that is
irrelevant. He has not clearly seen that the distinctive idea of
Progress was not conceived in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, or even
in the Renaissance period; and when he comes to modern times he fails to
bring out clearly the decisive steps of its growth. And he does not seem
to realise that a man might be "progressive" without believing in, or
even thinking about, the doctrine of Progress. Leonardo da Vinci and
Berkeley are examples. In my Ancient Greek Historians (1909) I dwelt on
the modern origin of the idea (p. 253 sqq.). Recently Mr. R. H. Murray,
in a learned appendix to his Erasmus and Luther, has developed the
thesis that Progress was not grasped in antiquity (though he makes an
exception of Seneca),--a welcome confirmation.]
I
It may, in particular, seem surprising that the Greeks, who were so
fertile in their speculations on human life, did not hit upon an idea
which seems so simple and obvious to us as the idea of Progress. But if
we try to realise their experience and the general character of their
thought we shall cease to wonder. Their recorded history did not go back
far, and so far as it did go there had been no impressive series of new
discoveries suggesting either an indefinite increase of knowledge or a
growing mastery of the forces of nature. In the period in which their
most brilliant minds were busied with the problems of the universe
men might improve the building of ships, or invent new geometrical
demonstrations, but their science did little or nothing to transform the
conditions of life or to open any vista into the future. They were
in the presence of no facts strong enough to counteract that profound
veneration of antiquity which seems natural to mankind, and the
Athenians of the age of Pericles or of Plato, though they were
thoroughly, obviously "modern" compared with the Homeric Greeks, were
never self-consciously "modern" as we are.
1.
The indications that human civilisation was a gradual growth, and that
man had painfully worked his way forward from a low and savage state,
could not, indeed, escape the sharp vision of the Greeks. For instance,
Aeschylus represents men as originally living at hazard in sunless
caves, and raised from that condition by Prometheus, who taught them the
arts of life. In Euripides we find a similar recognition of the ascent
of mankind to a civilised state, from primitive barbarism, some god or
other playing the part of Prometheus. In such passages as these we have,
it may be said, the idea that man has progressed; and it may fairly be
suggested that belief in a natural progress lay, for Aeschylus as
well as for Euripides, behind the poetical fiction of supernatural
intervention. But these recognitions of a progress were not incompatible
with the widely-spread belief in an initial degeneration of the human
race; nor did it usually appear as a rival doctrine. The old legend of
a "golden age" of simplicity, from which man had fallen away, was
generally accepted as truth; and leading thinkers combined it with
the doctrine of a gradual sequence of social and material improvements
[Footnote: In the masterly survey of early Greek history which
Thucydides prefixed to his work, he traces the social progress of the
Greeks in historical times, and finds the key to it in the increase of
wealth.] during the subsequent period of decline. We find the two
views thus combined, for instance, in Plato's Laws, and in the earliest
reasoned history of civilisation written by Dicaearchus, a pupil of
Aristotle. [Footnote: Aristotle's own view is not very clear. He thinks
that all arts, sciences, and institutions have been repeatedly, or
rather an infinite number of times (word in Greek) discovered in the
past and again lost. Metaphysics, xi. 8 ad fin.; Politics, iv. 10,
cp. ii. 2. An infinite number of times seems to imply the doctrine of
cycles.] But the simple life of the first age, in which men were not
worn with toil, and war and disease were unknown, was regarded as
the ideal State to which man would lie only too fortunate if he could
return. He had indeed at a remote time ill the past succeeded in
ameliorating some of the conditions of his lot, but such ancient
discoveries as fire or ploughing or navigation or law-giving did
not suggest the guess that new inventions might lead ultimately to
conditions in which life would be more complex but as happy as the
simple life of the primitive world.
But, if some relative progress might be admitted, the general view of
Greek philosophers was that they were living in a period of inevitable
degeneration and decay--inevitable because it was prescribed by the
nature of the universe. We have only an imperfect knowledge of the
influential speculations of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Empedocles, but
we may take Plato's tentative philosophy of history to illustrate the
trend and the prejudices of Greek thought on this subject. The world was
created and set going by the Deity, and, as his work, it was perfect;
but it was not immortal and had in it the seeds of decay. The period of
its duration is 72,000 solar years. During the first half of this period
the original uniformity and order, which were impressed upon it by the
Creator, are maintained under his guidance; but then it reaches a point
from which it begins, as it were, to roll back; the Deity has loosened
his grip of the machine, the order is disturbed, and the second 36,000
years are a period of gradual decay and degeneration. At the end of this
time, the world left to itself would dissolve into chaos, but the Deity
again seizes the helm and restores the original conditions, and
the whole process begins anew. The first half of such a world-cycle
corresponds to the Golden Age of legend in which men lived happily and
simply; we have now unfortunately reached some point in the period of
decadence.
Plato applies the theory of degradation in his study of political
communities. [Footnote: Plato's philosophy of history. In the myth of
the Statesman and the last Books of the Republic. The best elucidation
of these difficult passages will be found in the notes and appendix to
Book viii. in J. Adam's edition of the Republic (1902).] He conceives
his own Utopian aristocracy as having existed somewhere towards the
beginning of the period of the world's relapse, when things were not so
bad, [Footnote: Similarly he places the ideal society which he describes
in the Critias 9000 years before Solon. The state which he plans in the
Laws is indeed imagined as a practicable project in his own day, but
then it is only a second-best. The ideal state of which Aristotle
sketched an outline (Politics, iv. v.) is not set either in time or in
place.] and exhibits its gradual deterioration, through the successive
stages of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and despotism. He explains
this deterioration as primarily caused by a degeneration of the race,
due to laxity and errors in the State regulation of marriages, and the
consequent birth of biologically inferior individuals.
The theories of Plato are only the most illustrious example of the
tendency characteristic of Greek philosophical thinkers to idealise
the immutable as possessing a higher value than that which varies. This
affected all their social speculations. They believed in the ideal of an
absolute order in society, from which, when it is once established, any
deviation must be for the worse. Aristotle, considering the subject
from a practical point of view, laid down that changes in an established
social order are undesirable, and should be as few and slight as
possible. [Footnote: Politics, ii. 5.] This prejudice against change
excluded the apprehension of civilisation as a progressive movement.
It did not occur to Plato or any one else that a perfect order might be
attainable by a long series of changes and adaptations. Such an order,
being an embodiment of reason, could be created only by a deliberate and
immediate act of a planning mind. It might be devised by the wisdom of a
philosopher or revealed by the Deity. Hence the salvation of a community
must lie in preserving intact, so far as possible, the institutions
imposed by the enlightened lawgiver, since change meant corruption and
disaster. These a priori principles account for the admiration of the
Spartan state entertained by many Greek philosophers, because it was
supposed to have preserved unchanged for an unusually long period a
system established by an inspired legislator.
2.
Thus time was regarded as the enemy of humanity. Horace's verse,
Damnosa quid non imminuit dies?
"time depreciates the value of the world," expresses the pessimistic
axiom accepted in most systems of ancient thought.
The theory of world-cycles was so widely current that it may almost be
described as the orthodox theory of cosmic time among the Greeks, and it
passed from them to the Romans.
[Footnote: Plato's world-cycle. I have omitted details not essential;
e.g. that in the first period men were born from the earth and only in
the second propagated themselves. The period of 36,000 years, known as
the Great Platonic Year, was probably a Babylonian astronomical period,
and was in any case based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system and
connected with the solar year conceived as consisting of 360 days.
Heraclitus seems to have accepted it as the duration of the world
between his periodic universal conflagrations. Plato derived the number
from predecessors, but based it on operations with the numbers 3, 4, 5,
the length of the sides of the Pythagorean right-angled triangle. The
Great Year of the Pythagorean Philolaus seems to have been different,
and that of the Stoics was much longer (6,570,000 years).
I may refer here to Tacitus, Dialogus c. 16, as an appreciation of
historical perspective unusual in ancient writers: "The four hundred
years which separate us from the ancients are almost a vanishing
quantity if you compare them with the duration of the ages." See the
whole passage, where the Magnus Annus of 12,954 years is referred to.]
According to some of the Pythagoreans [Footnote: See Simplicius, Phys.
732, 26.] each cycle repeated to the minutest particular the course and
events of the preceding. If the universe dissolves into the original
chaos, there appeared to them to be no reason why the second chaos
should produce a world differing in the least respect from its
predecessor. The nth cycle would be indeed numerically distinct from
the first, but otherwise would be identical with it, and no man could
possibly discover the number of the cycle in which he was living. As no
end seems to have been assigned to the whole process, the course of
the world's history would contain an endless number of Trojan Wars, for
instance; an endless number of Platos would write an endless number
of Republics. Virgil uses this idea in his Fourth Eclogue, where he
meditates a return of the Golden Age:
Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae uehat Argo
Delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella,
Atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles.
The periodic theory might be held in forms in which this uncanny
doctrine of absolute identity was avoided; but at the best it meant an
endless monotonous iteration, which was singularly unlikely to stimulate
speculative interest in the future. It must be remembered that no
thinker had any means of knowing how near to the end of his cycle the
present hour might be. The most influential school of the later
Greek age, the Stoics, adopted the theory of cycles, and the natural
psychological effect of the theory is vividly reflected in Marcus
Aurelius, who frequently dwells on it in his Meditations. "The
rational soul," he says, "wanders round the whole world and through
the encompassing void, and gazes into infinite time, and considers the
periodic destructions and rebirths of the universe, and reflects that
our posterity will see nothing new, and that our ancestors saw nothing
greater than we have seen. A man of forty years, possessing the most
moderate intelligence, may be said to have seen all that is past and
all that is to come; so uniform is the world." [Footnote: xi. I. The
cyclical theory was curiously revived in the nineteenth; century by
Nietzsche, and it is interesting to note his avowal that it took him
a long time to overcome the feeling of pessimism which the doctrine
inspired.]
3.
And yet one Stoic philosopher saw clearly, and declared emphatically,
that increases in knowledge must be expected in the future.
"There are many peoples to-day," Seneca wrote, "who are ignorant of
the cause of eclipses of the moon, and it has only recently been
demonstrated among ourselves. The day will come when time and human
diligence will clear up problems which are now obscure. We divide the
few years of our lives unequally between study and vice, and it will
therefore be the work of many generations to explain such phenomena as
comets. One day our posterity will marvel at our ignorance of causes so
clear to them.
"How many new animals have we first come to know in the present age? In
time to come men will know much that is unknown to us. Many discoveries
are reserved for future ages, when our memory will have faded from men's
minds. We imagine ourselves initiated in the secrets of nature; we are
standing on the threshold of her temple."
[Footnote: The quotations from Seneca will be found in Naturales
Quaestiones, vii. 25 and 31. See also Epist. 64. Seneca implies
continuity in scientific research. Aristotle had stated this expressly,
pointing out that we are indebted not only to the author of the
philosophical theory which we accept as true, but also to the
predecessors whose views it has superseded (Metaphysics, i. ii. chap.
1). But he seems to consider his own system as final.]
But these predictions are far from showing that Seneca had the least
inkling of a doctrine of the Progress of humanity. Such a doctrine is
sharply excluded by the principles of his philosophy and his profoundly
pessimistic view of human affairs. Immediately after the passage which
I have quoted he goes on to enlarge on the progress of vice. "Are you
surprised to be told that human knowledge has not yet completed its
whole task? Why, human wickedness has not yet fully developed."
Yet, at least, it may be said, Seneca believed in a progress of
knowledge and recognised its value. Yes, but the value which he
attributed to it did not lie in any advantages which it would bring
to the general community of mankind. He did not expect from it any
improvement of the world. The value of natural science, from his point
of view, was this, that it opened to the philosopher a divine region, in
which, "wandering among the stars," he could laugh at the earth and all
its riches, and his mind "delivered as it were from prison could return
to its original home." In other words, its value lay not in its results,
but simply in the intellectual activity; and therefore it concerned not
mankind at large but a few chosen individuals who, doomed to live in a
miserable world, could thus deliver their souls from slavery.
For Seneca's belief in the theory of degeneration and the hopeless
corruption of the race is uncompromising. Human life on the earth is
periodically destroyed, alternately by fire and flood; and each period
begins with a golden age in which men live in rude simplicity,
innocent because they are ignorant not because they are wise. When they
degenerate from this state, arts and inventions promote deterioration by
ministering to luxury and vice.
Interesting, then, as Seneca's observations on the prospect of some
future scientific discoveries are, and they are unique in ancient
literature, [Footnote: They are general and definite. This distinguishes
them, for instance, from Plato's incidental hint in the Republic as to
the prospect of the future development of solid geometry.] they were
far from adumbrating a doctrine of the Progress of man. For him, as for
Plato and the older philosophers, time is the enemy of man. [Footnote:
The quotations and the references here will be found in Nat. Quaest. i.
Praef.; Epist. 104, Sec. 16 (cp. 110, Sec. 8; 117, Sec. 20, and the fine
passage in 65, Sec. 16-21); Nat. Quaest. iii. 28-30; and finally Epist.
90, Sec. 45, cp. Sec. 17. This last letter is a criticism on Posidonius,
who asserted that the arts invented in primitive times were due to
philosophers. Seneca repudiates this view: omnia enim ista sagacitas
hominum, non sapientia inuenit.
Seneca touches on the possibility of the discovery of new lands beyond
the ocean in a passage in his Medea (374 sqq.) which has been often
quoted:
uenient annis
secula seris, quibus oceanus
uincula rerum laxet et ingens
pateat tellus Tiphysque novos
detegat orbes,...
nec sit terris ultima Thule.]
4.
There was however a school of philosophical speculation, which might
have led to the foundation of a theory of Progress, if the historical
outlook of the Greeks had been larger and if their temper had been
different. The Atomic theory of Democritus seems to us now, in many
ways, the most wonderful achievement of Greek thought, but it had a
small range of influence in Greece, and would have had less if it had
not convinced the brilliant mind of Epicurus. The Epicureans developed
it, and it may be that the views which they put forward as to the
history of the human race are mainly their own superstructure. These
philosophers rejected entirely the doctrine of a Golden Age and a
subsequent degeneration, which was manifestly incompatible with their
theory that the world was mechanically formed from atoms without
the intervention of a Deity. For them, the earliest condition of men
resembled that of the beasts, and from this primitive and miserable
condition they laboriously reached the existing state of civilisation,
not by external guidance or as a consequence of some initial design, but
simply by the exercise of human intelligence throughout a long
period. [Footnote: Lucretius v. 1448 sqq. (where the word PROGRESS is
pronounced):
Usus et impigrae simul experientia mentis
Paulatim docuit pedetemtim progredientis.
Sic unum quicquid paulatim protrahit aetas
In medium ratioque in luminis erigit oras.
Namque alid ex alio clarescere et ordine debet
Artibus, ad summum donee uenere cacumen.]
The gradual amelioration of their existence was marked by the discovery
of fire and the use of metals, the invention of language, the invention
of weaving, the growth of arts and industries, navigation, the
development of family life, the establishment of social order by means
of kings, magistrates, laws, the foundation of cities. The last great
step in the amelioration of life, according to Lucretius, was the
illuminating philosophy of Epicurus, who dispelled the fear of invisible
powers and guided man from intellectual darkness to light.
But Lucretius and the school to which he belonged did not look forward
to a steady and continuous process of further amelioration in the
future. They believed that a time would come when the universe would
fall into ruins, [Footnote: Ib. 95.] but the intervening period did not
interest them. Like many other philosophers, they thought that their
own philosophy was the final word on the universe, and they did not
contemplate the possibility that important advances in knowledge might
be achieved by subsequent generations. And, in any case, their scope was
entirely individualistic; all their speculations were subsidiary to the
aim of rendering the life of the individual as tolerable as possible
here and now. Their philosophy, like Stoicism, was a philosophy of
resignation; it was thoroughly pessimistic and therefore incompatible
with the idea of Progress. Lucretius himself allows an underlying
feeling of scepticism as to the value of civilisation occasionally
to escape. [Footnote: His eadem sunt omnia semper (iii. 945) is the
constant refrain of Marcus Aurelius.]
Indeed, it might be said that in the mentality of the ancient Greeks
there was a strain which would have rendered them indisposed to take
such an idea seriously, if it had been propounded. No period of their
history could be described as an age of optimism. They were never, by
their achievements in art or literature, in mathematics or philosophy,
exalted into self-complacency or lured into setting high hopes on
human capacity. Man has resourcefulness to meet everything--[words in
Greek],--they did not go further than that.
This instinctive pessimism of the Greeks had a religious tinge which
perhaps even the Epicureans found it hard entirely to expunge. They
always felt that they were in the presence of unknown incalculable
powers, and that subtle dangers lurked in human achievements and gains.
Horace has taken this feeling as the motif of a criticism on man's
inventive powers. A voyage of Virgil suggests the reflection that his
friend's life would not be exposed to hazards on the high seas if the
art of navigation had never been discovered--if man had submissively
respected the limits imposed by nature. But man is audacious:
Nequiquam deus abscidit
Prudens oceano dissociabili Terras.
In vain a wise god sever'd lands
By the dissociating sea.
Daedalus violated the air, as Hercules invaded hell. The discovery
of fire put us in possession of a forbidden secret. Is this unnatural
conquest of nature safe or wise? Nil mortalibus ardui est:
Man finds no feat too hard or high;
Heaven is not safe from man's desire.
Our rash designs move Jove to ire,
He dares not lay his thunder by.
The thought of this ode [Footnote: i. 3.] roughly expresses what would
have been the instinctive sense of thoughtful Greeks if the idea of
Progress had been presented to them. It would have struck them as
audacious, the theory of men unduly elated and perilously at ease in the
presence of unknown incalculable powers.
This feeling or attitude was connected with the idea of Moira. If we
were to name any single idea as generally controlling or pervading Greek
thought from Homer to the Stoics, [Footnote: The Stoics identified
Moira with Pronoia, in accordance with their theory that the universe is
permeated by thought.] it would perhaps be Moira, for which we have no
equivalent. The common rendering "fate" is misleading. Moira meant a
fixed order in the universe; but as a fact to which men must bow, it had
enough in common with fatality to demand a philosophy of resignation and
to hinder the creation of an optimistic atmosphere of hope. It was this
order which kept things in their places, assigned to each its proper
sphere and function, and drew a definite line, for instance, between
men and gods. Human progress towards perfection--towards an ideal of
omniscience, or an ideal of happiness, would have been a breaking down
of the bars which divide the human from the divine. Human nature does
not alter; it is fixed by Moira.
5.
We can see now how it was that speculative Greek minds never hit on
the idea of Progress. In the first place, their limited historical
experience did not easily suggest such a synthesis; and in the second
place, the axioms of their thought, their suspiciousness of change,
their theories of Moira, of degeneration and cycles, suggested a view
of the world which was the very antithesis of progressive development.
Epicurean, philosophers made indeed what might have been an important
step in the direction of the doctrine of Progress, by discarding the
theory of degeneration, and recognising that civilisation had been
created by a series of successive improvements achieved by the effort of
man alone. But here they stopped short. For they had their eyes fixed on
the lot of the individual here and now, and their study of the history
of humanity was strictly subordinate to this personal interest. The
value of their recognition of human progress in the past is conditioned
by the general tenor and purpose of their theory of life. It was simply
one item in their demonstration that man owed nothing to supernatural
intervention and had nothing to fear from supernatural powers. It is
however no accident that the school of thought which struck on a path
that might have led to the idea of Progress was the most uncompromising
enemy of superstition that Greece produced.
It might be thought that the establishment of Roman rule and order in a
large part of the known world, and the civilising of barbarian peoples,
could not fail to have opened to the imagination of some of those who
reflected on it in the days of Virgil or of Seneca, a vista into the
future. But there was no change in the conditions of life likely to
suggest a brighter view of human existence. With the loss of freedom
pessimism increased, and the Greek philosophies of resignation were
needed more than ever. Those whom they could not satisfy turned their
thoughts to new mystical philosophies and religions, which were little
interested in the earthly destinies of human society.
II
1.
The idea of the universe which prevailed throughout the Middle Ages, and
the general orientation of men's thoughts were incompatible with some of
the fundamental assumptions which are required by the idea of Progress.
According to the Christian theory which was worked out by the Fathers,
and especially by St. Augustine, the whole movement of history has the
purpose of securing the happiness of a small portion of the human race
in another world; it does not postulate a further development of human
history on earth. For Augustine, as for any medieval believer, the
course of history would be satisfactorily complete if the world came
to an end in his own lifetime. He was not interested in the question
whether any gradual amelioration of society or increase of knowledge
would mark the period of time which might still remain to run before the
day of Judgment. In Augustine's system the Christian era introduced the
last period of history, the old age of humanity, which would endure only
so long as to enable the Deity to gather in the predestined number
of saved people. This theory might be combined with the widely-spread
belief in a millennium on earth, but the conception of such a
dispensation does not render it a theory of Progress.
Again, the medieval doctrine apprehends history not as a natural
development but as a series of events ordered by divine intervention and
revelations. If humanity had been left to go its own way it would have
drifted to a highly undesirable port, and all men would have incurred
the fate of everlasting misery from which supernatural interference
rescued the minority. A belief in Providence might indeed, and in a
future age would, be held along with a belief in Progress, in the same
mind; but the fundamental assumptions were incongruous, and so long as
the doctrine of Providence was undisputedly in the ascendant, a doctrine
of Progress could not arise. And the doctrine of Providence, as it was
developed in Augustine's "City of God," controlled the thought of the
Middle Ages.
There was, moreover, the doctrine of original sin, an insuperable
obstacle to the moral amelioration of the race by any gradual process of
development. For since, so long as the human species endures on earth,
every child will be born naturally evil and worthy of punishment,
a moral advance of humanity to perfection is plainly impossible.
[Footnote: It may be added that, as G. Monod observed, "les hommes du
moyen age n'avaient pas conscience des modifications successives que le
temps apporte avec lui dans les choses humaines" (Revue Historique, i.
p. 8).]
2.
But there are certain features in the medieval theory of which we must
not ignore the significance. In the first place, while it maintained
the belief in degeneration, endorsed by Hebrew mythology, it definitely
abandoned the Greek theory of cycles. The history of the earth was
recognised as a unique phenomenon in time; it would never occur again
or anything resembling it. More important than all is the fact that
Christian theology constructed a synthesis which for the first time
attempted to give a definite meaning to the whole course of human
events, a synthesis which represents the past as leading up to a
definite and desirable goal in the future. Once this belief had been
generally adopted and prevailed for centuries men might discard it along
with the doctrine of Providence on which it rested, but they could not
be content to return again to such views as satisfied the ancients,
for whom human history, apprehended as a whole, was a tale of little
meaning. [Footnote: It may be observed that Augustine (De Civ. Dei, x.
14) compares the teaching (recta eruditio) of the people of God, in
the gradual process of history, to the education of an individual.
Prudentius has a similar comparison for a different purpose (c.
Symmachum, ii. 315 sqq.):
Tardis semper processibus aucta Crescit vita hominis et longo proficit
usu. Sic aevi mortalis habet se mobilis ordo, Sic variat natura vices,
infantia repit, etc.
Floras (Epitome, ad init.) had already divided Roman history into four
periods corresponding to infancy, adolescence, manhood, and old age.]
They must seek for some new synthesis to replace it.
Another feature of the medieval theory, pertinent to our inquiry, was an
idea which Christianity took over from Greek and Roman thinkers. In
the later period of Greek history, which began with the conquests of
Alexander the Great, there had emerged the conception of the whole
inhabited world as a unity and totality, the idea of the whole human
race as one. We may conveniently call it the ecumenical idea--the
principle of the ecumene or inhabited world, as opposed to the principle
of the polis or city. Promoted by the vast extension of the geographical
limits of the Greek world resulting from Alexander's conquests, and by
his policy of breaking down the barriers between Greek and barbarian,
the idea was reflected in the Stoic doctrine that all men are brothers,
and that a man's true country is not his own particular city, but the
ecumene. [Footnote: Plutarch long ago saw the connection between the
policy of Alexander and the cosmopolitan teaching of Zeno. De Alexandri
Magni virtute, i. Sec. 6.] It soon became familiar, popularised by the
most popular of the later philosophies of Greece; and just as it had
been implied in the imperial aspiration and polity of Alexander, so it
was implied, still more clearly, in the imperial theory of Rome. The
idea of the Roman Empire, its theoretical justification, might
be described as the realisation of the unity of the world by the
establishment of a common order, the unification of mankind in a single
world-embracing political organism. The term "world," orbis (terrarum),
which imperial poets use freely in speaking of the Empire, is more than
a mere poetical or patriotic exaggeration; it expresses the idea, the
unrealised ideal of the Empire. There is a stone from Halicarnassus in
the British Museum, on which the idea is formally expressed from another
point of view. The inscription is of the time of Augustus, and the
Emperor is designated as "saviour of the community of mankind." There we
have the notion of the human race apprehended as a whole, the ecumenical
idea, imposing upon Rome the task described by Virgil as regere
imperio populos, and more humanely by Pliny as the creation of a single
fatherland for all the peoples of the world. [Footnote: Pliny, Nat.
Hist. iii. 6. 39.]
This idea, which in the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages took the
form of a universal State and a universal Church, passed afterwards
into the conception of the intercohesion of peoples as contributors to
a common pool of civilisation--a principle which, when the idea of
Progress at last made its appearance in the world, was to be one of the
elements in its growth.
3.
One remarkable man, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, [Footnote: c. A.D.
1210-92. Of Bacon's Opus Majus the best and only complete edition is
that of J. H. Bridges, 2 vols. 1897 (with an excellent Introduction).
The associated works, Opus Minus and Opus Tertium, have been edited by
Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Inedita, 1859.]who stands on an
isolated pinnacle of his own in the Middle Ages, deserves particular
consideration. It has been claimed for him that he announced the idea of
Progress; he has even been compared to Condorcet or Comte. Such claims
are based on passages taken out of their context and indulgently
interpreted in the light of later theories. They are not borne out by an
examination of his general conception of the universe and the aim of his
writings.
His aim was to reform higher education and introduce into the
universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular
studies. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this purpose,
to which his exposition of his own discoveries was subordinate. It was
addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had asked Bacon to give him
an account of his researches, and was designed to persuade the Pontiff
of the utility of science from an ecclesiastical point of view, and
to induce him to sanction an intellectual reform, which without the
approbation of the Church would at that time have been impossible. With
great ingenuity and resourcefulness he sought to show that the
studies to which he was devoted--mathematics, astronomy, physics,
chemistry--were indispensable to an intelligent study of theology and
Scripture. Though some of his arguments may have been urged simply to
capture the Pope's good-will, there can be no question that Bacon
was absolutely sincere in his view that theology was the mistress
(dominatrix) of the sciences and that their supreme value lay in being
necessary to it.
It was, indeed, on this principle of the close interconnection of
all branches of knowledge that Bacon based his plea and his scheme of
reform. And the idea of the "solidarity" of the sciences, in which
he anticipated a later age, is one of his two chief claims to be
remembered. [Footnote: Cp. Opus Tertium, c. iv. p. 18, omnes scientiae
sunt connexae et mutuis se fovent auxiliis sicut partes ejusdem totius,
quarum quaelibet opus suum peragit non solum propter se sed pro aliis.]
It is the motif of the Opus Majus, and it would have been more fully
elaborated if he had lived to complete the encyclopaedic work, Scriptum
Principale, which he had only begun before his death. His other title
to fame is well-known. He realised, as no man had done before him, the
importance of the experimental method in investigating the secrets of
nature, and was an almost solitary pioneer in the paths to which his
greater namesake, more than three hundred years later, was to invite the
attention of the world.
But, although Roger Bacon was inspired by these enlightened ideas,
although he cast off many of the prejudices of his time and boldly
revolted against the tyranny of the prevailing scholastic philosophy,
he was nevertheless in other respects a child of his age and could not
disencumber himself of the current medieval conception of the universe.
His general view of the course of human history was not materially
different from that of St. Augustine. When he says that the practical
object of all knowledge is to assure the safety of the human race, he
explains this to mean "things which lead to felicity in the next life."
[Footnote: Opus Majus, vii. p. 366.]
It is pertinent to observe that he not only shared in the belief in
astrology, which was then universal, but considered it one of the most
important parts of "mathematics." It was looked upon with disfavour by
the Church as a dangerous study; Bacon defended its use in the
interests of the Church itself. He maintained, like Thomas Aquinas,
the physiological influence of the celestial bodies, and regarded the
planets as signs telling us what God has decreed from eternity to come
to pass either by natural processes or by acts of human will or directly
at his own good pleasure. Deluges, plagues, and earthquakes were capable
of being predicted; political and religious revolutions were set in the
starry rubric. The existence of six principal religions was determined
by the combinations of Jupiter with the other six planets. Bacon
seriously expected the extinction of the Mohammedan religion before the
end of the thirteenth century, on the ground of a prediction by an Arab
astrologer. [Footnote: Ib. iv. p. 266; vii. p. 389.]
One of the greatest advantages that the study of astrological lore
will bring to humanity is that by its means the date of the coming of
Anti-Christ may be fixed with certainty, and the Church may be prepared
to face the perils and trials of that terrible time. Now the arrival
of Anti-Christ meant the end of the world, and Bacon accepted the view,
which he says was held by all wise men, that "we are not far from the
times of Anti-Christ." Thus the intellectual reforms which he urged
would have the effect, and no more, of preparing Christendom to resist
more successfully the corruption in which the rule of Anti-Christ would
involve the world. "Truth will prevail," by which he meant science
will make advances, "though with difficulty, until Anti-Christ and his
forerunners appear;" and on his own showing the interval would probably
be short.
The frequency with which Bacon recurs to this subject, and the emphasis
he lays on it, show that the appearance of Anti-Christ was a fixed
point in his mental horizon. When he looked forward into the future,
the vision which confronted him was a scene of corruption, tyranny, and
struggle under the reign of a barbarous enemy of Christendom; and after
that, the end of the world. [Footnote: (1) His coming may be fixed by
astrology: Opus Majus, iv. p. 269 (inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel
magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi; cp. p. 402). (2) His coming
means the end of the world: ib. p. 262. (3) We are not far from it: ib.
p. 402. One of the reasons which seem to have made this view probable to
Bacon was the irruption of the Mongols into Europe during his lifetime;
cp. p. 268 and vii. p. 234. Another was the prevalent corruption,
especially of the clergy, which impressed him deeply; see Compendium
studii philosophiae, ed. Brewer, p. 402. (4) "Truth will prevail," etc.:
Opus Majus, i. pp. 19, 20. He claimed for experimental science that
it would produce inventions which could be usefully employed against
Antichrist: ib. vii. p. 221.] It is from this point of view that we
must appreciate the observations which he made on the advancement of
knowledge. "It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients have
left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours, which,
unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better results";
Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers; Avicenna and
Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and have added much
that is new; and so it will go on till the end of the world. And Bacon
quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical Inquiries" to show that the
acquisition of knowledge is gradual. Attention has been already called
to those passages, and it was shown how perverse it is, on the strength
of such remarks, to claim Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine
of Progress. The same claim has been made for Bacon with greater
confidence, and it is no less perverse. The idea of Progress is
glaringly incongruous with his vision of the world. If his programme of
revolutionising secular learning had been accepted--it fell completely
dead, and his work was forgotten for many ages,--he would have been the
author of a progressive reform; but how many reformers have there been
before and after Bacon on whose minds the idea of Progress never dawned?
[Footnote: Bacon quotes Seneca: See Opus Majus, i. pp. 37, 55, 14.
Much has been made out of a well-known passage in his short Epistle de
secretis operibus artis et naturae et de militate magiae, c. iv. (ed.
Brewer, p. 533), in which he is said to PREDICT inventions which have
been realised in the locomotives, steam navigation, and aeroplanes of
modern times. But Bacon predicts nothing. He is showing that science can
invent curious and, to the vulgar, incredible things without the aid of
magic. All the inventions which he enumerates have, he declares, been
actually made in ancient times, with the exception of a flying-machine
(instrumentum volandi quod non vidi nec hominem qui vidisset cognovi,
sed sapientem qui hoc artificium excogitavit explere cognosco).
Compare the remarks of S. Vogl, Die Physik Roger Bacos (1906), 98 sqq.]
4.
Thus Friar Bacon's theories of scientific reform, so far from amounting
to an anticipation of the idea of Progress, illustrate how impossible it
was that this idea could appear in the Middle Ages. The whole spirit
of medieval Christianity excluded it. The conceptions which were
entertained of the working of divine Providence, the belief that the
world, surprised like a sleeping household by a thief in the night,
might at any moment come to a sudden end, had the same effect as the
Greek theories of the nature of change and of recurring cycles of the
world. Or rather, they had a more powerful effect, because they were
not reasoned conclusions, but dogmas guaranteed by divine authority. And
medieval pessimism as to man's mundane condition was darker and sterner
than the pessimism of the Greeks. There was the prospect of happiness in
another sphere to compensate, but this, engrossing the imagination, only
rendered it less likely that any one should think of speculating about
man's destinies on earth.
III
1.
The civilised countries of Europe spent about three hundred years in
passing from the mental atmosphere of the Middle Ages into the mental
atmosphere of the modern world. These centuries were one of the
conspicuously progressive periods in history, but the conditions were
not favourable to the appearance of an idea of Progress, though the
intellectual milieu was being prepared in which that idea could be born.
This progressive period, which is conveniently called the Renaissance,
lasted from the fourteenth into the seventeenth century. The great
results, significant for our present purpose, which the human mind
achieved at this stage of its development were two. Self-confidence
was restored to human reason, and life on this planet was recognised as
possessing a value independent of any hopes or fears connected with a
life beyond the grave.
But in discarding medieval naivete and superstition, in assuming a
freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a new
conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to the
guidance of Greek and Roman thinkers, and called up the spirit of the
ancient world to exorcise the ghosts of the dark ages. Their minds were
thus directed backwards to a past civilisation which, in the ardour of
new discovery, and in the reaction against medievalism, they enthroned
as ideal; and a new authority was set up, the authority of ancient
writers. In general speculation the men of the Renaissance followed
the tendencies and adopted many of the prejudices of Greek philosophy.
Although some great discoveries, with far-reaching, revolutionary
consequences, were made in this period, most active minds were engaged
in rediscovering, elaborating, criticising, and imitating what was old.
It was not till the closing years of the Renaissance that speculation
began to seek and feel its way towards new points of departure. It
was not till then that a serious reaction set in against the deeper
influences of medieval thought.
2.
To illustrate the limitations of this period let us take Machiavelli,
one of the most original thinkers that Italy ever produced.
There are certain fundamental principles underlying Machiavelli's
science of politics, which he has indicated incidentally in his
unsystematic way, but which are essential to the comprehension of his
doctrines. The first is that at all times the world of human beings has
been the same, varying indeed from land to land, but always presenting
the same aspect of some societies advancing towards prosperity, and
others declining. Those which are on the upward grade will always reach
a point beyond which they cannot rise further, but they will not remain
permanently on this level, they will begin to decline; for human things
are always in motion and therefore must go up or down. Similarly,
declining states will ultimately touch bottom and then begin to ascend.
Thus a good constitution or social organisation can last only for a
short time. [Footnote: Machiavelli's principle of advance and decline:
Discorsi, ii. Introduction; Istorie fiorentine, v. ad init. For the
cycle of constitutions through which all states tend to move see
Discorsi, ii. 2 (here we see the influence of Polybius).]
It is obvious that in this view of history Machiavelli was inspired and
instructed by the ancients. And it followed from his premisses that the
study of the past is of the highest value because it enables men to
see what is to come; since to all social events at any period there are
correspondences in ancient times. "For these events are due to men, who
have and always had the same passions, and therefore of necessity the
effects must be the same." [Footnote: Discorsi, iii. 43.]
Again, Machiavelli follows his ancient masters in assuming as evident
that a good organisation of society can be effected only by the
deliberate design of a wise legislator. [Footnote: Ib. iii. 1. The
lawgiver must assume for his purposes that all men are bad: ib. i. 3.
Villari has useful remarks on these principles in his Machiavelli,
Book ii. cap. iii.] Forms of government and religions are the personal
creations of a single brain; and the only chance for a satisfactory
constitution or for a religion to maintain itself for any length of
time is constantly to repress any tendencies to depart from the original
conceptions of its creator.
It is evident that these two assumptions are logically connected. The
lawgiver builds on the immutability of human nature; what is good for
one generation must be good for another. For Machiavelli, as for Plato,
change meant corruption. Thus his fundamental theory excluded any
conception of a satisfactory social order gradually emerging by the
impersonal work of successive generations, adapting their institutions
to their own changing needs and aspirations. It is characteristic, and
another point of resemblance with ancient thinkers that he sought the
ideal state in the past--republican Rome.
These doctrines, the sameness of human nature and the omnipotent
lawgiver, left no room for anything resembling a theory of Progress.
If not held afterwards in the uncompromising form in which Machiavelli
presented them, yet it has well been pointed out that they lay at the
root of some of the most famous speculations of the eighteenth century.
[Footnote: Villari, loc. cit.]
Machiavelli's sameness of human nature meant that man would always have
the same passions and desires, weaknesses and vices. This assumption was
compatible with the widely prevailing view that man had degenerated in
the course of the last fifteen hundred years. From the exaltation of
Greek and Roman antiquity to a position of unattainable superiority,
especially in the field of knowledge, the degeneration of humanity was
an easy and natural inference. If the Greeks in philosophy and
science were authoritative guides, if in art and literature they were
unapproachable, if the Roman republic, as Machiavelli thought, was an
ideal state, it would seem that the powers of Nature had declined, and
she could no longer produce the same quality of brain. So long as this
paralysing theory prevailed, it is manifest that the idea of Progress
could not appear.
But in the course of the sixteenth century men began here and there,
somewhat timidly and tentatively, to rebel against the tyranny of
antiquity, or rather to prepare the way for the open rebellion which was
to break out in the seventeenth. Breaches were made in the proud citadel
of ancient learning. Copernicus undermined the authority of Ptolemy
and his predecessors; the anatomical researches of Vesalius injured the
prestige of Galen; and Aristotle was attacked on many sides by men like
Telesio, Cardan, Ramus, and Bruno. [Footnote: It has been observed that
the thinkers who were rebelling against the authority of Aristotle--the
most dangerous of the ancient philosophers, because he was so closely
associated with theological scholasticism and was supported by the
Church--frequently attacked under the standard of some other ancient
master; e.g. Telesio resorted to Parmenides, Justus Lipsius to
the Stoics, and Bruno is under the influence of Plotinus and Plato
(Bouillier, La Philosophie cartesienne, vol. i. p. 5). The idea of
"development" in Bruno has been studied by Mariupolsky (Zur Geschichte
des Entwicklungsbegriffs in Berner Studien, Bd. vi. 1897), who pointed
out the influence of Stoicism on his thought.] In particular branches of
science an innovation was beginning which heralded a radical revolution
in the study of natural phenomena, though the general significance of
the prospect which these researches opened was but vaguely understood at
the time. The thinkers and men of science were living in an intellectual
twilight. It was the twilight of dawn. At one extremity we have
mysticism which culminated in the speculations of Bruno and Campanella;
at the other we have the scepticism of Montaigne, Charron, and Sanchez.
The bewildered condition of knowledge is indicated by the fact that
while Bruno and Campanella accepted the Copernican astronomy, it was
rejected by one who in many other respects may claim to be reckoned as a
modern--I mean Francis Bacon.
But the growing tendency to challenge the authority of the ancients does
not sever this period from the spirit which informed the Renaissance.
For it is subordinate or incidental to a more general and important
interest. To rehabilitate the natural man, to claim that he should be
the pilot of his own course, to assert his freedom in the fields of art
and literature had been the work of the early Renaissance. It was the
problem of the later Renaissance to complete this emancipation in the
sphere of philosophical thought. The bold metaphysics of Bruno, for
which he atoned by a fiery death, offered the solution which was most
unorthodox and complete. His deification of nature and of man as part of
nature involved the liberation of humanity from external authority. But
other speculative minds of the age, though less audacious, were equally
inspired by the idea of freely interrogating nature, and were all
engaged in accomplishing the programme of the Renaissance--the
vindication of this world as possessing a value for man independent of
its relations to any supermundane sphere. The raptures of Giordano Bruno
and the sobrieties of Francis Bacon are here on common ground. The whole
movement was a necessary prelude to a new age of which science was to be
the mistress.
It is to be noted that there was a general feeling of complacency as to
the condition of learning and intellectual pursuits. This optimism is
expressed by Rabelais. Gargantua, in a letter to Pantagruel, studying
at Paris, enlarges to his son on the vast improvements in learning and
education which had recently, he says, been brought about. "All the
world is full of savants, learned teachers, large libraries; and I am of
opinion that neither in the time of Plato nor of Cicero nor of Papinian
were there such facilities for study as one sees now." It is indeed the
study of the ancient languages and literatures that Gargantua considers
in a liberal education, but the satisfaction at the present diffusion of
learning, with the suggestion that here at least contemporaries have
an advantage over the ancients, is the significant point. [Footnote:
Rabelais, Book ii. chap. 8.] This satisfaction shines through the
observation of Ramus that "in one century we have seen a greater
progress in men and works of learning than our ancestors had seen in the
whole course of the previous fourteen centuries." [Footnote: Praefat.
Scholarum Mathematicarum, maiorem doctorum hominum et operum proventum
seculo uno vidimus quam totis antea 14 seculis maiores nostri viderent.
(Ed. Basel, 1569.)] [Footnote 1. Guillaume Postel observed in his
De magistratibus Atheniensium liber (1541) that the ages are always
progressing (secula semper proficere), and every day additions are made
to human knowledge, and that this process would only cease if Providence
by war, or plague, or some catastrophe were to destroy all the
accumulated stores of knowledge which have been transmitted from
antiquity in books (Praef., B verso). What is known of the life of this
almost forgotten scholar has been collected by G. Weill (De Gulielmi
Postelli vita et indole, 1892). He visited the East, brought back
oriental MSS., and was more than once imprisoned on charges of heresy.
He dreamed of converting the Mohammedans, and of uniting the whole world
under the empire of France.]
In this last stage of the Renaissance, which includes the first quarter
of the seventeenth century, soil was being prepared in which the idea of
Progress could germinate, and our history of it origin definitely begins
with the work of two men who belong to this age, Bodin, who is hardly
known except to special students of political science, and Bacon, who
is known to all the world. Both had a more general grasp of the
significance of their own time than any of their contemporaries, and
though neither of them discovered a theory of Progress, they both made
contributions to thought which directly contributed to its subsequent
appearance.
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
studies [Footnote: Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, 1566.]
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 [Footnote: Les six
livres de la Republique, 1576.], 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. [Footnote: Hegel's division is (1) the Oriental,
(2) a, the Greek, b, the Roman, and (3) the Germanic worlds.] 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. [Footnote: Climates and geography. The fullest discussion
will be found in the Republique, Book v. cap. i. Here Bodin anticipated
Montesquieu. There was indeed nothing new in the principle; it had been
recognised by Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and other Greeks,
and in a later age by Roger Bacon.
But Bodin first developed and applied it methodically. This part of
his work was ignored, and in the eighteenth century Montesquieu's
speculations on the physical factors in history were applauded as a new
discovery.]
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.
[Footnote: See especially Methodus, cap. v. pp. 124, 130, 136.] 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." [Footnote: Methodus, cap. VII. p. 353.] 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. [Footnote: Ib. cap. I. p. 12.]
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. [Footnote: Ib.
cap. VII. p. 361: "cum aeterna quadam lege naturae conversio rerum
omnium velut in orbem redire videatur, ut aeque vitia virtutibus,
ignoratio scientiae, turpe honesto consequens sit, atque tenebrae luci,
fallunt qui genus hominum semper deterius seipso evadere putant."] 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. [Footnote: Ib. p. 356.]
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 nourish, 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. [Footnote: Cardan had
already signalised the compass, printing, and gunpowder as three modern
inventions, to which "the whole of antiquity has nothing equal to show."
He adds, "I pass over the other inventions of this age which, though
wonderful, form rather a development of ancient arts than surpass the
intellects of our ancestors." De subtilitate, lib. 3 ad init. (Opera,
iii. p. 609).] 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. [Footnote: Methodus, cap. VII.,
pp. 359-61. Bodin also points out that there was an improvement, in
some respects, in manners and morals since the early Roman Empire; for
instance, in the abolition of gladiatorial spectacles (p. 359).]
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. [Footnote: Bodin was also a
firm believer in sorcery. His La Demonomanie (1578) is a monument of
superstition.] 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 number [Footnote: I.e. a
number equal to the sum of all its factors.] 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 (= 12 cubed) years. He gives the
Roman republic from the foundation of Rome to the battle of Actium 729
(=9 cubed) years. [Footnote: Methodus, cap. v. pp. 265 sqq.]
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.
[Footnote: Cp. Baudrillart, J. Bodin et son temps, p. 148 (1853). This
monograph is chiefly devoted to a full analysis of La Republique.] 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,
[Footnote: See above, p. 23.] 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. [Footnote: Republique, Book
v. cap. 1 (p. 690; ed. 1593); Methodus, cap. vi. p. 194; cap. vii. p.
360.]
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. [Footnote: De la vicissitude ou variete
des choses en l'univers, 1577, 2nd ed. (which I have used), 1584.] 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 and bringing into prominence human achievements in science,
philosophy, and the arts. Beginning with the advance of man from
primitive rudeness to ordered society--a sketch based on the conjectures
of Plato in the Protagoras--Le Roy reviews the history, and estimates
the merits, of the Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians, the Greeks, Romans
and Saracens, and finally of the modern age. The facts, he thinks,
establish the proposition that the art of warfare, eloquence,
philosophy, mathematics, and the fine arts, generally flourish and
decline together.
But they do decline. Human things are not perpetual; all pass through
the same cycle--beginning, progress, perfection, corruption, end. This,
however, does not explain the succession of empires in the world, the
changes of the scene of prosperity from one people or set of peoples
to another. Le Roy finds the cause in providential design. God, he
believes, cares for all parts of the universe and has distributed
excellence in arms and letters now to Asia, now to Europe, again to
Africa, letting virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance travel from
country to country, that all in their turn may share in good and bad
fortune, and none become too proud through prolonged prosperity.
But what of the modern age in Western Europe? It is fully the equal, he
assevers, of the most illustrious ages of the past, and in some respects
it is superior. Almost all the liberal and mechanical arts of antiquity,
which had been lost for about 1200 years, have been restored, and
there have been new inventions, especially printing, and the mariner's
compass, and "I would give the third place to gunnery but that it seems
invented rather for the ruin than for the utility of the human race." In
our knowledge of astronomy and cosmography we surpass the ancients. "We
can affirm that the whole world is now known, and all the races of men;
they can interchange all their commodities and mutually supply their
needs, as inhabitants of the same city or world-state." And hence there
has been a notable increase of wealth.
Vice and suffering, indeed, are as grave as ever, and we are afflicted
by the trouble of heresies; but this does not prove a general
deterioration of morals. If that inveterate complaint, the refrain
chanted by old men in every age, were true, the world would already
have reached the extreme limit of wickedness, and integrity would have
disappeared utterly. Seneca long ago made the right criticism. Hoc
maiores nostri questi sunt, hoc nos querimur, hoc posteri nostri
querentur, eversos esse mores.... At ista stant loco eodem. Perhaps
Le Roy was thinking particularly of that curious book the Apology for
Herodotus, in which the eminent Greek scholar, Henri Estienne, exposed
with Calvinistic prejudice the iniquities of modern times and the
corruption of the Roman Church. [Footnote: L'Introduction au traite
de la conformite des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes, ou traite
preparatif a l'Apologie pour Herodote, ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879.
The book was published in 1566.]
But if we are to judge by past experience, does it not follow that this
modern age must go the same way as the great ages of the past which
it rivals or even surpasses? Our civilisation, too, having reached
perfection, will inevitably decline and pass away: is not this the clear
lesson of history? Le Roy does not shirk the issue; it is the point to
which his whole exposition has led and he puts it vividly.
"If the memory of the past is the instruction of the present and the
premonition of the future, it is to be feared that having reached
so great excellence, power, wisdom, studies, books, industries
will decline, as has happened in the past, and disappear--confusion
succeeding to the order and perfection of to-day, rudeness to
civilisation, ignorance to knowledge. I already foresee in imagination
nations, strange in form, complexion, and costume, overwhelming
Europe--like the Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, Saracens of
old--destroying our cities and palaces, burning our libraries,
devastating all that is beautiful. I foresee in all countries wars,
domestic and foreign, factions and heresies which will profane all
things human and divine; famines, plagues, and floods; the universe
approaching an end, world-wide confusion, and the return of things to
their original chaos." [Footnote: It is characteristic of the age that
in the last sentence the author goes beyond the issue and contemplates
the possibility which still haunted men's minds that the end of the
world might not be far off.]
But having conducted us to this pessimistic conclusion Le Roy finds
it repugnant, and is unwilling to acquiesce in it. Like an embarrassed
dramatist he escapes from the knot which he has tied by introducing the
deus ex machina.
"However much these things proceed according to the fatal law of the
world, and have their natural causes, yet events depend principally
on Divine Providence which is superior to nature and alone knows the
predetermined times of events." That is to say, it depends, after all,
on Providence whether the argument from past experience is valid. Who
knows whether the modern age may not prove the exception to the law
which has hitherto prevailed? Let us act as if it would.
This is the practical moral that Le Roy enforces in the last book of his
dissertation. We must not allow ourselves to be paralysed or dismayed by
the destinies of past civilisations, but must work hard to transmit to
posterity all that has been achieved, and augment the discoveries of the
past by new researches. For knowledge is inexhaustible. "Let us not be
so simple as to believe that the ancients have known and said everything
and left nothing to their successors. Or that nature gave them all her
favours in order to remain sterile ever after." Here Le Roy lays
down Bodin's principle which was to be asserted more urgently in the
following century--the permanence of natural forces. Nature is the same
now as always, and can produce as great intellects as ever. The elements
have the same power, the constellations keep their old order, men are
made of the same material. There is nothing to hinder the birth in this
age of men equal in brains to Plato, Aristotle, or Hippocrates.
Philosophically, Le Roy's conclusion is lame enough. We are asked to
set aside the data of experience and act on an off-chance. But the
determination of the optimist to escape from the logic of his own
argument is significant. He has no conception of an increasing
purpose or underlying unity in the history of man, but he thinks that
Providence--the old Providence of St. Augustine, who arranged the events
of Roman history with a view to the coming of Christ--may, for some
unknown reason, prolong indefinitely the modern age. He is obeying
the instinct of optimism and confidence which was already beginning to
create the appropriate atmosphere for the intellectual revolution of the
coming century.
His book was translated into English, but neither in France nor in
England had it the same influence as the speculations of Bodin. But it
insinuated, as the reader will have observed, the same three views which
Bodin taught, and must have helped to propagate them: that the world
has not degenerated; that the modern age is not inferior to classical
antiquity; and that the races of the earth form now a sort of "mundane
republic."