If we are to draw any useful lines of demarcation in the continuous flux
of history we must neglect anticipations and announcements, and we need
not scruple to say that, in the realm of knowledge and thought, modern
history begins in the seventeenth century. Ubiquitous rebellion against
tradition, a new standard of clear and precise thought which affects
even literary expression, a flow of mathematical and physical
discoveries so rapid that ten years added more to the sum of knowledge
than all that had been added since the days of Archimedes, the
introduction of organised co-operation to increase knowledge by the
institution of the Royal Society at London, the Academy of Sciences at
Paris, Observatories--realising Bacon's Atlantic dream--characterise the
opening of a new era.
For the ideas with which we are concerned, the seventeenth century
centres round Descartes, whom an English admirer described as "the grand
secretary of Nature." [Footnote: Joseph Glanvill, Vanity of Dogmatising,
p. 211, 64] Though his brilliant mathematical discoveries were the sole
permanent contribution he made to knowledge, though his metaphysical and
physical systems are only of historical interest, his genius exercised
a more extensive and transforming influence on the future development of
thought than any other man of his century.
Cartesianism affirmed the two positive axioms of the supremacy of
reason, and the invariability of the laws of nature; and its instrument
was a new rigorous analytical method, which was applicable to history as
well as to physical knowledge. The axioms had destructive corollaries.
The immutability of the processes of nature collided with the theory
of an active Providence. The supremacy of reason shook the thrones from
which authority and tradition had tyrannised over the brains of men.
Cartesianism was equivalent to a declaration of the Independence of Man.
It was in the atmosphere of the Cartesian spirit that a theory of
Progress was to take shape.
1.
Let us look back. We saw that all the remarks of philosophers prior to
the seventeenth century, which have been claimed as enunciations of the
idea of Progress, amount merely to recognitions of the obvious fact that
in the course of the past history of men there have been advances
and improvements in knowledge and arts, or that we may look for some
improvements in the future. There is not one of them that adumbrates
a theory that can be called a theory of Progress. We have seen several
reasons why the idea could not emerge in the ancient or in the
Middle Ages. Nor could it have easily appeared in the period of the
Renaissance. Certain preliminary conditions were required, and these
were not fulfilled till the seventeenth century. So long as men believed
that the Greeks and Romans had attained, in the best days of their
civilisation, to an intellectual plane which posterity could never
hope to reach, so long as the authority of their thinkers was set up as
unimpeachable, a theory of degeneration held the field, which excluded
a theory of Progress. It was the work of Bacon and Descartes to liberate
science and philosophy from the yoke of that authority; and at the same
time, as we shall see, the rebellion began to spread to other fields.
Another condition for the organisation of a theory of Progress was a
frank recognition of the value of mundane life and the subservience of
knowledge to human needs. The secular spirit of the Renaissance prepared
the world for this new valuation, which was formulated by Bacon, and has
developed into modern utilitarianism.
There was yet a third preliminary condition. There can be no certainty
that knowledge will continually progress until science has been
placed on sure foundations. And science does not rest for us on sure
foundations unless the invariability of the laws of nature is admitted.
If we do not accept this hypothesis, if we consider it possible that the
uniformities of the natural world may be changed from time to time, we
have no guarantee that science can progress indefinitely. The philosophy
of Descartes established this principle, which is the palladium of
science; and thus the third preliminary condition was fulfilled.
2.
During the Renaissance period the authority of the Greeks and Romans
had been supreme in the realm of thought, and in the interest of
further free development it was necessary that this authority should
be weakened. Bacon and others had begun the movement to break down this
tyranny, but the influence of Descartes was weightier and more decisive,
and his attitude was more uncompromising. He had none of Bacon's
reverence for classical literature; he was proud of having forgotten the
Greek which he had learned as a boy. The inspiration of his work was the
idea of breaking sharply and completely with the past, and constructing
a system which borrows nothing from the dead. He looked forward to an
advancement of knowledge in the future, on the basis of his own method
and his own discoveries, [Footnote: Cf. for instance his remarks on
medicine, at the end of the Discours de la methode.] and he conceived
that this intellectual advance would have far-reaching effects on the
condition of mankind. The first title he had proposed to give to his
Discourse on Method was "The Project of a Universal Science which can
elevate our Nature to its highest degree of Perfection." He regarded
moral and material improvement as depending on philosophy and science.
The justification of an independent attitude towards antiquity, on
the ground that the world is now older and more mature, was becoming a
current view. [Footnote: Descartes wrote: Non est quod antiquis multum
tribuamus propter antiquitatem, sed nos potius iis seniores dicendi. Jam
enim senior est mundus quam tune majoremque habemus rerum experientiam.
(A fragment quoted by Baillet, Vie de Descartes, viii. 10.) Passages
to the same effect occur in Malebranche, Arnauld, and Nicole. (See
Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne, i. 482-3.)
A passage in La Mothe Le Vayer's essay Sur l'opiniatrete in Orasius
Tubero (ii. 218) is in point, if, as seems probable, the date of that
work is 1632-33. "Some defer to the ancients and allow themselves to be
led by them like children; others hold that the ancients lived in the
youth of the world, and it is those who live to-day who are really the
ancients, and consequently ought to carry most weight." See Rigault,
Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, p. 52.
The passage of Pascal occurs in the Fragment d'un traite du vide, not
published till 1779 (now included in the Pensees, Premiere Partie, Art.
I), and therefore without influence on the origination of the theory of
progress. It has been pointed out that Guillaume Colletet had in 1636
expressed a similar view (Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, v. 185-6).]
Descartes expressed it like Bacon, and it was taken up and repeated
by many whom Descartes influenced. Pascal, who till 1654 was a man of
science and a convert to Cartesian ideas, put it in a striking way.
The whole sequence of men (he says) during so many centuries should
be considered as a single man, continually existing and continually
learning. At each stage of his life this universal man profited by the
knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages, and he is now in his
old age. This is a fuller, and probably an independent, development of
the comparison of the race to an individual which we found in Bacon. It
occurs in a fragment which remained unpublished for more than a hundred
years, and is often quoted as a recognition, not of a general progress
of man, but of a progress in human knowledge.
To those who reproached Descartes with disrespect towards ancient
thinkers he might have replied that, in repudiating their authority, he
was really paying them the compliment of imitation and acting far more
in their own spirit than those who slavishly followed them. Pascal saw
this point. "What can be more unjust," he wrote, "than to treat our
ancients with greater consideration than they showed towards their own
predecessors, and to have for them this incredible respect which they
deserve from us only because they entertained no such regard for
those who had the same advantage (of antiquity) over them?" [Footnote:
Pensees, ib.]
At the same time Pascal recognised that we are indebted to the ancients
for our very superiority to them in the extent of our knowledge. "They
reached a certain point, and the slightest effort enables us to mount
higher; so that we find ourselves on a loftier plane with less trouble
and less glory." The attitude of Descartes was very different. Aspiring
to begin ab integro and reform the foundations of knowledge, he ignored
or made little of what had been achieved in the past. He attempted
to cut the threads of continuity as with the shears of Atropos. This
illusion [Footnote: He may be reproached himself with scholasticism in
his metaphysical reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of
the progress of knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such
doctrine must take account of the past as well as of the future.
But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though he
did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were imbued with
the Cartesian spirit.
3.
The theological world in France was at first divided on the question
whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy
or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes.
The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it was
probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism that
did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It was
preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the Discourse of
Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was published in 1640, and
in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made Jansenism a popular power.
The Jansenist movement was in France in some measure what the Puritan
movement was in England, and it caught hold of serious minds in much
the same way. The Jesuits had undertaken the task of making Christianity
easy, of finding a compromise between worldliness and religion, and they
flooded the world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose.
Ex opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine of
Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and morals.
He maintained that there can be no compromise with the world; that
casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is naturally corrupt;
and that in his most virtuous acts some corruption is present.
Now the significance of these two forces--the stern ideal of the
Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers--is that they both
attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine thought and
conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of French society
from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Louis XV. [Footnote: For the
prevalence of "libertine" thought in France at the beginning of the
seventeenth century see the work of the Pere Garasse, La Doctrine
curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ou pretendus tels, etc. (1623).
Cp. also Brunetiere's illuminating study, "Jansenistes et Cartesiens"
in Etudes critiques, 4me serie.] This libertinism had its philosophy, a
sort of philosophy of nature, of which the most brilliant exponents
were Rabelais and Moliere. The maxim, "Be true to nature," was evidently
opposed sharply to the principles of the Christian religion, and it was
associated with sceptical views which prevailed widely in France from
the early years of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits sought to make
terms by saying virtually: "Our religious principles and your philosophy
of nature are not after all so incompatible in practice. When it comes
to the application of principles, opinions differ. Theology is as
elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground that her
yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other hand, fought
uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the time, maintaining
the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise or condescension. And
their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few
of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped it. Its
influence can be traced in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and the
Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through its influence that Moliere
found it difficult to get some of his plays staged. It explains the fact
that the court of Louis XIV., however corrupt, was decorous compared
with the courts of Henry IV. and Louis XV.; a severe standard was set
up, if it was not observed.
The genius of Pascal made the fortunes of Jansenism. He outlived his
Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman. His
Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions of theology more or less
intelligible, and invited the general public to pronounce an opinion on
them. His lucid exposition interested every one in the abstruse problem,
Is man's freedom such as not to render grace superfluous? But Pascal
perceived that casuistry was not the only enemy that menaced the true
spirit of religion for which Jansenism stood. He came to realise that
Cartesianism, to which he was at first drawn, was profoundly opposed to
the fundamental views of Christianity. His Pensees are the fragments of
a work which he designed in defence of religion, and it is easy to see
that this defence was to be specially directed against the ideas of
Descartes.
Pascal was perfectly right about the Cartesian conception of the
Universe, though Descartes might pretend to mitigate its tendencies, and
his fervent disciple, Malebranche, might attempt to prove that it was
more or less reconcilable with orthodox doctrine. We need not trouble
about the special metaphysical tenets of Descartes. The two axioms
which he launched upon the world--the supremacy of reason, and the
invariability of natural laws--struck directly at the foundations of
orthodoxy. Pascal was attacking Cartesianism when he made his memorable
attempt to discredit the authority of reason, by showing that it is
feeble and deceptive. It was a natural consequence of his changed
attitude that he should speak (in the Pensees) in a much less confident
tone about the march of science than he had spoken in the passage which
I quoted above. And it was natural that he should be pessimistic about
social improvement, and that, keeping his eyes fixed on his central fact
that Christianity is the goal of history, he should take only a slight
and subsidiary interest in amelioration.
The preponderant influence of Jansenism only began to wane during the
last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and till then it seems
to have been successful in counteracting the diffusion of the Cartesian
ideas. Cartesianism begins to become active and powerful when Jansenism
is beginning to decline. And it is just then that the idea of Progress
begins definitely to emerge. The atmosphere in France was favourable for
its reception.
4.
The Cartesian mechanical theory of the world and the doctrine of
invariable law, carried to a logical conclusion, excluded the doctrine
of Providence. This doctrine was already in serious danger. Perhaps
no article of faith was more insistently attacked by sceptics in the
seventeenth century, and none was more vital. The undermining of the
theory of Providence is very intimately connected with our subject;
for it was just the theory of an active Providence that the theory of
Progress was to replace; and it was not till men felt independent of
Providence that they could organise a theory of Progress.
Bossuet was convinced that the question of Providence was the most
serious and pressing among all the questions of the day that were at
issue between orthodox and heretical thinkers. Brunetiere, his fervent
admirer, has named him the theologian of Providence, and has shown that
in all his writings this doctrine is a leading note. It is sounded
in his early sermons in the fifties, and it is the theme of his most
ambitious work, the Discourse on Universal History, which appeared
in 1681. [Footnote; It has been shown that on one hand he controverts
Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus, and on the other the dangerous
methods of Richard Simon, one of the precursors of modern biblical
criticism. Brunetiere, op. cit. 74-85.] This book, which has received
high praise from those who most heartily dissent from its conclusions,
is in its main issue a restatement of the view of history which
Augustine had worked out in his memorable book. The whole course of
human experience has been guided by Providence for the sake of the
Church; that is, for the sake of the Church to which Bossuet belonged.
Regarded as a philosophy of history the Discourse may seem little more
than the theory of the De Civitate Dei brought up to date; but this is
its least important aspect. We shall fail to understand it unless we
recognise that it was a pragmatical, opportune work, designed for the
needs of the time, and with express references to current tendencies of
thought.
One main motive of Bossuet in his lifelong concern for Providence
was his conviction that the doctrine was the most powerful check on
immorality, and that to deny it was to remove the strongest restraint
on the evil side of human nature. There is no doubt that the free-living
people of the time welcomed the arguments which called Providence in
question, and Bossuet believed that to champion Providence was the
most efficient means of opposing the libertine tendencies of his day.
"Nothing," he declared in one of his sermons (1662), "has appeared
more insufferable to the arrogance of libertines than to see themselves
continually under the observation of this ever-watchful eye of
Providence. They have felt it as an importunate compulsion to recognise
that there is in Heaven a superior force which governs all our movements
and chastises our loose actions with a severe authority. They have
wished to shake off the yoke of this Providence, in order to maintain,
in independence, an unteachable liberty which moves them to live at
their own fancy, without fear, discipline, or restraint." [Passage from
Bossuet, quoted by Brunetiere, op. cit. 58.] Bossuet was thus working in
the same cause as the Jansenists.
He had himself come under the influence of Descartes, whose work he
always regarded with the deepest respect. The cautiousness of the master
had done much to disguise the insidious dangers of his thought, and it
was in the hands of those disciples who developed his system and sought
to reconcile it at all points with orthodoxy that his ideas displayed
their true nature. Malebranche's philosophy revealed the incompatibility
of Providence--in the ordinary acceptation--with immutable natural laws.
If the Deity acts upon the world, as Malebranche maintained, only by
means of general laws, His freedom is abolished, His omnipotence is
endangered, He is subject to a sort of fatality. What will become of the
Christian belief in the value of prayers, if God cannot adapt or modify,
on any given occasion, the general order of nature to the needs of human
beings? These are some of the arguments which we find in a treatise
composed by Fenelon, with the assistance of Bossuet, to demonstrate
that the doctrine of Malebranche is inconsistent with piety and orthodox
religion. They were right. Cartesianism was too strong a wine to
be decanted into old bottles. [Footnote: Fenelon's Refutation of
Malebranche's Traite de la nature et de la grace was not published till
1820. This work of Malebranche also provoked a controversy with Arnauld,
who urged similar arguments.]
Malebranche's doctrine of what he calls divine Providence was closely
connected with his philosophical optimism. It enabled him to maintain
the perfection of the universe. Admitting the obvious truth that the
world exhibits many imperfections, and allowing that the Creator
could have produced a better result if he had employed other means,
Malebranche argued that, in judging the world, we must take into account
not only the result but the methods by which it has been produced. It is
the best world, he asserts, that could be framed by general and simple
methods; and general and simple methods are the most perfect, and alone
worthy of the Creator. Therefore, if we take the methods and the
result together, a more perfect world is impossible. The argument was
ingenious, though full of assumptions, but it was one which could only
satisfy a philosopher. It is little consolation to creatures suffering
from the actual imperfections of the system into which they are born to
be told that the world might have been free from those defects, only in
that case they would not have the satisfaction of knowing that it was
created and conducted on theoretically superior principles.
Though Malebranche's conception was only a metaphysical theory,
metaphysical theories have usually their pragmatic aspects; and the
theory that the universe is as perfect as it could be marks a stage
in the growth of intellectual optimism which we can trace from the
sixteenth century. It was a view which could appeal to the educated
public in France, for it harmonised with the general spirit of
self-complacency and hopefulness which prevailed among the higher
classes of society in the reign of Louis XIV. For them the conditions
of life under the new despotism had become far more agreeable than in
previous ages, and it was in a spirit of optimism that they devoted
themselves to the enjoyment of luxury and elegance. The experience of
what the royal authority could achieve encouraged men to imagine that
one enlightened will, with a centralised administration at its command,
might accomplish endless improvements in civilisation. There was no age
had ever been more glorious, no age more agreeable to live in.
The world had begun to abandon the theory of corruption, degeneration,
and decay.
Some years later the optimistic theory of the perfection of the universe
found an abler exponent in Leibnitz, whom Diderot calls the father of
optimism. [Footnote: See particularly Monadologie, ad fin. published
posthumously in German 1720, in Latin 1728; Theodicee, Section 341
(1710); and the paper, De rerum originatione radicali, written in 1697,
but not published till 1840 (Opera philosophica, ed. Erdmann, p. 147
sqq).] The Creator, before He acted, had considered all possible worlds,
and had chosen the best. He might have chosen one in which humanity
would have been better and happier, but that would not have been
the best possible, for He had to consider the interests of the whole
universe, of which the earth with humanity is only an insignificant
part. The evils and imperfections of our small world are negligible
in comparison with the happiness and perfection of the whole cosmos.
Leibnitz, whose theory is deduced from the abstract proposition that
the Creator is perfect, does not say that now or at any given moment
the universe is as perfect as it could be; its merit lies in its
potentialities; it will develop towards perfection throughout infinite
time.
The optimism of Leibnitz therefore concerns the universe as a whole, not
the earth, and would obviously be quite consistent with a pessimistic
view of the destinies of humanity. He does indeed believe that it would
be impossible to improve the universal order, "not only for the
whole, but for ourselves in particular," and incidentally he notes
the possibility that "in the course of time the human race may reach a
greater perfection than we can imagine at present." But the significance
of his speculation and that of Malebranche lies in the fact that the old
theories of degeneration are definitely abandoned.