1.
The philosophical views current in Germany during the period in which
the psychology of Locke was in fashion in France and before the genius
of Kant opened a new path, were based on the system of Leibnitz. We
might therefore expect to find a theory of Progress developed there,
parallel to the development in France though resting on different
principles. For Leibnitz, as we saw, provided in his cosmic optimism
a basis for the doctrine of human Progress, and he had himself
incidentally pointed to it. This development, however, was delayed. It
was only towards the close of the period--which is commonly known as
the age of "Illumination"--that Progress came to the front, and it is
interesting to observe the reason.
Wolf was the leading successor and interpreter of Leibnitz. He
constrained that thinker's ideas into a compact logical system which
swayed Germany till Kant swept it away. In such cases it usually
happens that some striking doctrines and tendencies of the master are
accentuated and enforced, while others are suffered to drop out of
sight.
So it was here. In the Wolfian system, Leibnitz's conception of
development was suffered to drop out of sight, and the dynamic element
which animated his speculation disappeared. In particular, he had laid
down that the sum of motive forces in the physical world is constant.
His disciples proceeded to the inference that the sum of morality in
the ethical world is constant. This dogma obviously eliminates the
possibility of ethical improvement for collective humanity. And so we
find Mendelssohn, who was the popular exponent of Wolf's philosophy,
declaring that "progress is only for the individual; but that the whole
of humanity here below in the course of time shall always progress and
perfect itself seems to me not to have been the purpose of Providence."
[Footnote: See Bock, Jakob Wegelin als Geschichtstheoretiker, in
Leipsiger Studien, ix. 4, pp. 23-7 (1902).]
The publication of the Nouveaux Essais in 1765 induced some thinkers to
turn from the dry bones of Wolf to the spirit of Leibnitz himself. And
at the same time French thought was penetrating. In consequence of these
influences the final phase of the German "Illumination" is marked by the
appearance of two or three works in which Progress is a predominating
idea.
We see this reaction against Wolf and his static school in a little
work published by Herder in 1774--"a philosophy of history for the
cultivation of mankind." There is continuous development, he declares,
and one people builds upon the work of another. We must judge past ages,
not by the present, but relatively to their own particular conditions.
What exists now was never possible before, for everything that man
accomplishes is conditioned by time, climate, and circumstances.
Six years later Lessing's pamphlet on the Education of the Human Race
appeared, couched in the form of aphoristic statements, and to a modern
reader, one may venture to say, singularly wanting in argumentative
force. The thesis is that the drama of history is to be explained as the
education of man by a progressive series of religions, a series not yet
complete, for the future will produce another revelation to lift him
to a higher plane than that to which Christ has drawn him up. This
interpretation of history proclaimed Progress, but assumed an ideal and
applied a measure very different from those of the French philosophers.
The goal is not social happiness, but a full comprehension of God.
Philosophy of religion is made the key to the philosophy of history. The
work does not amount to more than a suggestion for a new synthesis, but
it was opportune and arresting.
Herder meanwhile had been thinking, and in 1784 he gave the German world
his survey of man's career--Ideas of the Philosophy of the History of
Humanity. In this famous work, in which we can mark the influence of
French thinkers, especially Montesquieu, as well as of Leibnitz, he
attempted, though on very different lines, the same task which Turgot
and Condorcet planned, a universal history of civilisation.
The Deity designed the world but never interferes in its process,
either in the physical cosmos or in human history. Human history itself,
civilisation, is a purely natural phenomenon. Events are strictly
enchained; continuity is unbroken; what happened at any given time could
have happened only then, and nothing else could have happened.
Herder's rigid determinism not only excludes Voltaire's chance but also
suppresses the free play of man's intelligent will. Man cannot guide his
own destinies; his actions and fortunes are determined by the nature
of things, his physical organisation and physical environment. The
fact that God exists in inactive ease hardly affects the fatalistic
complexion of this philosophy; but it is perhaps a mitigation that the
world was made for man; humanity is its final cause.
The variety of the phases of civilisation that have appeared on earth
is due to the fact that the possible manifestations of human nature are
very numerous and that they must all be realised. The lower forms are
those in which the best, which means the most human, faculties of our
nature are undeveloped. The highest has not yet been realised. "The
flower of humanity, captive still in its germ, will blossom out one
day into the true form of man like unto God, in a state of which no
terrestrial man can imagine the greatness and the majesty." [Footnote:
Ideen, v. 5.]
Herder is not a systematic thinker--indeed his work abounds in
contradictions--and he has not made it clear how far this full epiphany
results from the experiences of mankind in preceding phases. He believes
that life is an education for humanity (he has taken the phrase of
Lessing), that good progressively develops, that reason and justice
become more powerful. This is a doctrine of Progress, but he distinctly
opposes the hypothesis of a final and unique state of perfection as the
goal of history, which would imply that earlier generations exist for
the sake of the later and suffer in order to ensure the felicity of
remote posterity--a theory which offends his sense of justice and
fitness. On the contrary, man can realise happiness equally in every
stage of civilisation. All forms of society are equally legitimate, the
imperfect as well as the perfect; all are ends in themselves, not mere
stages on the way to something better. And a people which is happy in
one of these inferior states has a perfect right to remain in it.
Thus the Progress which Herder sees is, to use his own geometrical
illustration, a sequence of unequal and broken curves, corresponding
to different maxima and minima. Each curve has its own equation, the
history of each people is subject to the laws of its own environment;
but there is no general law controlling the whole career of humanity.
[Footnote: Ib. xv. 3. The power of ideas in history, which Herder failed
to appreciate, was recognised by a contemporary savant from whom he
might have learned. Jakob Wegelin, a Swiss, had, at the invitation of
Frederick the Great, settled in Berlin, where he spent the last years of
his life and devoted his study to the theory of history. His merit was
to have perceived that "external facts are penetrated and governed by
spiritual forces and guiding ideas, and that the essential and permanent
in history is conditioned by the nature and development of ideas."
(Dierauer, quoted by Bock, op. cit. p. 13.) He believed in the
progressive development of mankind as a whole, but as his learned
brochures seem to have exerted no influence, it would be useless here to
examine more closely his views, which are buried in the transactions
of the Prussian Academy of Science. In Switzerland he came under the
influence of Rousseau and d'Alembert. After he moved to Berlin (1765)
he fell under that of Leibnitz. It may be noted (1) that he deprecated
attempts at writing a universal history as premature until an adequate
knowledge of facts had been gained, and this would demand long
preliminary labours; (2) that he discussed the question whether history
is an indefinite progression or a series of constant cycles, and decided
for the former view. (Memoire sur le cours periodique, 1785).
Bock's monograph is the best study of Wegelin; but see also Flint's
observations in Philosophy of History, vol. i. (1874).]
Herder brought down his historical survey only as far as the sixteenth
century. It has been suggested [Footnote: Javary, De l'idee de progres,
p. 69.] that if he had come down further he might have comprehended
the possibility of a deliberate transformation of societies by the
intelligent action of the human will--an historical force to which he
does not do justice, apparently because he fancied it incompatible
with strict causal sequence. The value of his work does not lie in
the philosophical principles which he applied. Nor was it a useful
contribution to history; of him it has been said, as of Bossuet, that
facts bent like grass under his feet. [Footnote: Jouffroy, Melanges,
p. 81.] But it was a notable attempt to do for human phenomena what
Leibnitz in his Theodicy sought to do for the cosmos, and it pointed
the way to the rationalistic philosophies of history which were to be a
feature of the speculations of the following century.
2.
The short essay of Kant, which he clumsily called the Idea of a
Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan, [Footnote: 1784. This work
of Kant was translated by De Quincey (Works, vol. ix. 428 sqq., ed.
Masson), who is responsible for cosmopolitical as the rendering of
weltburgerlich.] approaches the problems raised by the history of
civilisation from a new point of view.
He starts with the principle of invariable law. On any theory of free
will, he says, human actions are as completely under the control of
universal-laws of nature as any other physical phenomena. This is
illustrated by statistics. Registers of births, deaths, and marriages
show that these events occur with as much conformity to laws of nature
as the oscillations of the weather.
It is the same with the great sequence of historical events. Taken alone
and individually, they seem incoherent and lawless; but viewed in their
connection, as due to the action not of individuals but of the human
species, they do not fail to reveal "a regular stream of tendency."
Pursuing their own often contradictory purposes, individual nations and
individual men are unconsciously promoting a process to which if they
perceived it they would pay little regard.
Individual men do not obey a law. They do not obey the laws of instinct
like animals, nor do they obey, as rational citizens of the world would
do, the laws of a preconcerted plan. If we look at the stage of history
we see scattered and occasional indications of wisdom, but the general
sum of men's actions is "a web of folly, childish vanity, and often even
of the idlest wickedness and spirit of destruction."
The problem for the philosopher is to discover a meaning in this
senseless current of human actions, so that the history of creatures who
pursue no plan of their own may yet admit of a systematic form. The clew
to this form is supplied by the predispositions of human nature.
I have stated this problem almost in Kant's words, and as he might have
stated it if he had not introduced the conception of final causes. His
use of the postulate of final causes without justifying it is a defect
in his essay. He identifies what he well calls a stream of tendency with
"a natural purpose." He makes no attempt to show that the succession of
events is such that it cannot be explained without the postulate of a
purpose. His solution of the problem is governed by this conception of
finality, and by the unwarranted assumption that nature does nothing in
vain.
He lays down that all the tendencies to which any creature is
predisposed by its nature must in the end be developed perfectly and
agreeably to their final purpose. Those predispositions in man
which serve the use of his reason are therefore destined to be fully
developed. This destiny, however, cannot be realised in the individual;
it can only be realised in the species. For reason works tentatively,
by progress and regress. Each man would require an inordinate length of
time to make a perfect use of his natural tendencies. Therefore, as life
is short, an incalculable series of generations is needed.
The means which nature employs to develop these tendencies is the
antagonism which in man's social state exists between his gregarious
and his antigregarious tendencies. His antigregarious nature expresses
itself in the desire to force all things to comply to his own humour.
Hence ambition, love of honour, avarice. These were necessary to raise
mankind from the savage to the civilised state. But for these antisocial
propensities men would be gentle as sheep, and "an Arcadian life would
arise, of perfect harmony and mutual love, such as must suffocate and
stifle all talents in their very germs." Nature, knowing better than man
what is good for the species, ordains discord. She is to be thanked
for competition and enmity, and for the thirst of power and wealth. For
without these the final purpose of realising man's rational nature would
remain unfulfilled. This is Kant's answer to Rousseau.
The full realisation of man's rational nature is possible only in
a "universal civil society" founded on political justice. The
establishment of such a society is the highest problem for the human
species. Kant contemplates, as the political goal, a confederation of
states in which the utmost possible freedom shall be united with the
most rigorous determination of the boundaries of freedom.
Is it reasonable to suppose that a universal or cosmopolitical society
of this kind will come into being; and if so, how will it be brought
about? Political changes in the relations of states are generally
produced by war. Wars are tentative endeavours to bring about new
relations and to form new political bodies. Are combinations and
recombinations to continue until by pure chance some rational
self-supporting system emerges? Or is it possible that no such condition
of society may ever arrive, and that ultimately all progress may be
overwhelmed by a hell of evils? Or, finally, is Nature pursuing her
regular course of raising the species by its own spontaneous efforts
and developing, in the apparently wild succession of events, man's
originally implanted tendencies?
Kant accepts the last alternative on the ground that it is not
reasonable to assume a final purpose in particular natural processes and
at the same time to assume that there is no final purpose in the whole.
Thus his theory of Progress depends on the hypothesis of final causes.
It follows that to trace the history of mankind is equivalent to
unravelling a hidden plan of Nature for accomplishing a perfect civil
constitution for a universal society; since a universal society is
the sole state in which the tendencies of human nature can be fully
developed. We cannot determine the orbit of the development, because the
whole period is so vast and only a small fraction is known to us, but
this is enough to show that there is a definite course.
Kant thinks that such a "cosmopolitical" history, as he calls it, is
possible, and that if it were written it would give us a clew opening up
"a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we
shall discover the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite
toil, where all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted and
its own destination upon this earth accomplished."
3.
But to see the full bearing of Kant's discussion we must understand its
connection with his ethics. For his ethical theory is the foundation and
the motive of his speculation on Progress. The progress on which he lays
stress is moral amelioration; he refers little to scientific or material
progress. For him morality was an absolute obligation founded in the
nature of reason. Such an obligation presupposes an end to be attained,
and this end is a reign of reason under which all men obeying the moral
law mutually treat each other as ends in themselves. Such an ideal state
must be regarded as possible, because it is a necessary postulate of
reason. From this point of view it may be seen that Kant's speculation
on universal history is really a discussion whether the ideal state,
which is required as a subjective postulate in the interest of ethics,
is likely to be realised objectively.
Now, Kant does not assert that because our moral reason must assume the
possibility of this hypothetical goal civilisation is therefore moving
towards it. That would be a fallacy into which he was incapable of
falling. Civilisation is a phenomenon, and anything we know about it can
only be inferred from experience. His argument is that there are actual
indications of progress in this desirable direction. He pointed to the
contemporary growth of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these
are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in
principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on
to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to
infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is
put forward as a hypothesis, not as a dogma.
It is probable that what hindered Kant from broaching his theory of
Progress with as much confidence as Condorcet was his perception that
nothing could be decisively affirmed about the course of civilisation
until the laws of its movement had been discovered. He saw that this was
a matter for scientific investigation. He says expressly that the laws
are not yet known, and suggests that some future genius may do for
social phenomena what Kepler and Newton did for the heavenly bodies. As
we shall see, this is precisely what some of the leading French thinkers
of the next generation will attempt to do.
But cautiously though he framed the hypothesis Kant evidently considered
Progress probable. He recognised that the most difficult obstacle to the
moral advance of man lies in war and the burdens which the possibility
of war imposes. And he spent much thought on the means by which war
might be abolished. He published a philosophical essay on Perpetual
Peace, in which he formulated the articles of an international treaty to
secure the disappearance of war. He considered that, while a universal
republic would be the positive ideal, we shall probably have to be
contented with what he calls a negative substitute, consisting in
a federation of peoples bound by a peace-alliance guaranteeing the
independence of each member. But to assure the permanence of this system
it is essential that each state should have a democratic constitution.
For such a constitution is based on individual liberty and civil
equality. All these changes should be brought about by legal reforms;
revolutions--he was writing in 1795---cannot be justified.
We see the influence of Rousseau's Social Contract and that of the Abbe
de Saint-Pierre, with whose works Kant was acquainted. There can be
little doubt that it was the influence of French thought, so powerful
in Germany at this period, that turned Kant's mind towards these
speculations, which belong to the latest period of his life and form a
sort of appendix to his philosophical system. The theory of Progress,
the idea of universal reform, the doctrine of political equality--Kant
examined all these conceptions and appropriated them to the service of
his own highly metaphysical theory of ethics. In this new association
their spirit was changed.
In France, as we saw, the theory of Progress was generally associated
with ethical views which could find a metaphysical basis in the
sensationalism of Locke. A moral system which might be built on
sensation, as the primary mental fact, was worked out by Helvetius. But
the principle that the supreme law of conduct is to obey nature had
come down as a practical philosophy from Rabelais and Montaigne through
Moliere to the eighteenth century. It was reinforced by the theory of
the natural goodness of man. Jansenism had struggled against it and was
defeated. After theology it was the turn of metaphysics. Kant's moral
imperative marked the next stage in the conflict of the two opposite
tendencies which seek natural and ultra-natural sanctions for morality.
Hence the idea of progress had a different significance for Kant and for
its French exponents, though his particular view of the future possibly
in store for the human species coincided in some essential points with
theirs. But his theory of life gives a different atmosphere to the idea.
In France the atmosphere is emphatically eudaemonic; happiness is the
goal. Kant is an uncompromising opponent of eudaemonism. "If we take
enjoyment or happiness as the measure, it is easy," he says, "to
evaluate life. Its value is less than nothing. For who would begin one's
life again in the same conditions, or even in new natural conditions, if
one could choose them oneself, but of which enjoyment would be the sole
end?"
There was, in fact, a strongly-marked vein of pessimism in Kant. One
of the ablest men of the younger generation who were brought up on his
system founded the philosophical pessimism--very different in range and
depth from the sentimental pessimism of Rousseau--which was to play a
remarkable part in German thought in the nineteenth century. [Footnote:
Kant's pessimism has been studied at length by von Hartmann, in Zur
Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismus (1880).] Schopenhauer's
unpleasant conclusion that of all conceivable worlds this is the
worst, is one of the speculations for which Kant may be held ultimately
responsible. [Footnote: Schopenhauer recognised progress social,
economic, and political, but as a fact that contains no guarantee
of happiness; on the contrary, the development of the intelligence
increases suffering. He ridiculed the optimistic ideals of comfortable,
well-regulated states. His views on historical development have been
collected by G. Sparlinsky, Schopenhauers Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, in
Berner Studien s. Philosophie, Bd. lxxii. (1910).]
4.
Kant's considerations on historical development are an appendix to his
philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof of his
system. It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists, for whom his
system was the point of departure, though they rejected its essential
feature, the limitation of human thought. With Fichte and Hegel
progressive development was directly deduced from their principles. If
their particular interpretations of history have no permanent value, it
is significant that, in their ambitious attempts to explain the universe
a priori, history was conceived as progressive, and their philosophies
did much to reinforce a conception which on very different principles
was making its way in the world. But the progress which their systems
involved was not bound up with the interest of human happiness, but
stood out as a fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of
the nature of thought.
The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote:
Fichte's philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des
gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at Berlin
in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of "freedom"; that is its end
and goal, but a goal that always recedes. It can never be reached; for
its full attainment would mean the complete suppression of Nature. The
process of the world, therefore, consists in an indefinite approximation
to an unattainable ideal: freedom is being perpetually realised more and
more; and the world, as it ascends in this direction, becomes more and
more a realm of reason.
What Fichte means by freedom may be best explained by its opposition to
instinct. A man acting instinctively may be acting quite reasonably,
in a way which any one fully conscious of all the implications and
consequences of the action would judge to be reasonable. But in order
that his actions should be free he must himself be fully conscious of
all those implications and consequences.
It follows that the end of mankind upon earth is to reach a state in
which all the relations of life shall be ordered according to reason,
not instinctively but with full consciousness and deliberate purpose.
This end should govern the ethical rules of conduct, and it determines
the necessary stages of history.
It gives us at once two main periods, the earliest and the latest: the
earliest, in which men act reasonably by instinct, and the latest, in
which they are conscious of reason and try to realise it fully. But
before reaching this final stage they must pass through an epoch in
which reason is conscious of itself, but not regnant. And to reach this
they must have emancipated themselves from instinct, and this process
of emancipation means a fourth epoch. But they could not have wanted
to emancipate themselves unless they had felt instinct as a servitude
imposed by an external authority, and therefore we have to distinguish
yet another epoch wherein reason is expressed in authoritarian
institutions to which men blindly submit. In this way Fichte deduces
five historical epochs: two in which progress is blind, two in which it
is free, and an intermediate in which it is struggling to consciousness.
[Footnote: First Epoch: that of instinctive reason; the age of
innocence. Second: that of authoritarian reason. Third: that of
enfranchisement; the age of scepticism and unregulated liberty. Fourth:
that of conscious reason, as science. Fifth: that of regnant reason, as
art.] But there are no locked gates between these periods; they overlap
and mingle; each may have some of the characteristics of another; and in
each there is a vanguard leading the way and a rearguard lagging behind.
At present (1804) we are in the third age; we have broken with
authority, but do not yet possess a clear and disciplined knowledge of
reason. [Footnote: Three years later, however, Fichte maintained in his
patriotic Discourses to the German Nation (1807) that in 1804 man had
crossed the threshold of the fourth epoch. He asserted that the progress
of "culture" and science will depend henceforward chiefly on Germany.]
Fichte has deduced this scheme purely a priori without any reference
to actual experience. "The philosopher," he says, "follows the a priori
thread of the world-plan which is clear to him without any history;
and if he makes use of history, it is not to prove anything, since his
theses are already proved independently of all history."
Historical development is thus presented as a necessary progress towards
a goal which is known but cannot be reached. And this fact as to the
destiny of the race constitutes the basis of morality, of which
the fundamental law is to act in such a way as to promote the free
realisation of reason upon earth. It has been claimed by a recent critic
that Fichte was the first modern philosopher to humanise morals. He
completely rejected the individualistic conception which underlay
Kantian as well as Christian ethics. He asserted that the true motive of
morality is not the salvation of the individual man but the Progress of
humanity. In fact, with Fichte Progress is the principle of ethics. That
the Christian ideal of ascetic saintliness detached from society has
no moral value is a plain corollary from the idea of earthly Progress.
[Footnote: X. Leon, La Philosophie de Fichte (1902), pp. 477-9.]
One other point in Fichte's survey of history deserves notice--the
social role of the savant. It is the function of the savant to discover
the truths which are a condition of moral progress; he may be said
to incarnate reason in the world. We shall see how this idea played
a prominent part in the social schemes of Saint-Simon and Comte.
[Footnote: Fichte, Ueber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794).]
5.
Hegel's philosophy of history is better known than Fichte's. Like
Fichte, he deduced the phases a priori from his metaphysical principles,
but he condescended to review in some detail the actual phenomena. He
conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's consciousness of its
own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is virtually equivalent
to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines Universal History as the
description of the process by which Spirit or God comes to the
consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom does not mean that Spirit
could choose at any moment to develop in a different way; its actual
development is necessary and is the embodiment of reason. Freedom
consists in fully recognising the fact.
Of the particular features which distinguish Hegel's treatment, the
first is that he identifies "history" with political history, the
development of the state. Art, religion, philosophy, the creations
of social man, belong to a different and higher stage of Spirit's
self-revelation. [Footnote: The three phases of Spirit are (1)
subjective; (2) objective; (3) absolute. Psychology, e.g., is included
in (1), law and history in (2), religion in (3).] In the second place,
Hegel ignores the primitive prehistoric ages of man, and sets the
beginning of his development in the fully-grown civilisation of China.
He conceives the Spirit as continually moving from one nation to another
in order to realise the successive stages of its self-consciousness:
from China to India, from India to the kingdoms of Western Asia; then
from the Orient to Greece, then to Rome, and finally to the Germanic
world. In the East men knew only that ONE is free, the political
characteristic was despotism; in Greece and Rome they knew that SOME
are free, and the political forms were aristocracy and democracy; in
the modern world they know that ALL are free, and the political form
is monarchy. The first period, he compared to childhood, the second to
youth (Greece) and manhood (Rome), the third to old age, old but not
feeble. The third, which includes the medieval and modern history of
Europe, designated by Hegel as the Germanic world--for "the German
spirit is the spirit of the modern world"--is also the final period. In
it God realises his freedom completely in history, just as in Hegel's
own absolute philosophy, which is final, God has completely understood
his own nature.
And here is the most striking difference between the theories of Fichte
and Hegel. Both saw the goal of human development in the realisation of
"freedom," but, while with Fichte the development never ends as the goal
is unattainable, with Hegel the development is already complete, the
goal is not only attainable but has now been attained. Thus Hegel's is
what we may call a closed system. History has been progressive, but no
path is left open for further advance. Hegel views this conclusion
of development with perfect complacency. To most minds that are not
intoxicated with the Absolute it will seem that, if the present is the
final state to which the evolution of Spirit has conducted, the result
is singularly inadequate to the gigantic process. But his system is
eminently inhuman. The happiness or misery of individuals is a matter of
supreme indifference to the Absolute, which, in order to realise itself
in time, ruthlessly sacrifices sentient beings.
The spirit of Hegel's philosophy, in its bearing on social life, was
thus antagonistic to Progress as a practical doctrine. Progress there
had been, but Progress had done its work; the Prussian monarchical state
was the last word in history. Kant's cosmopolitical plan, the liberalism
and individualism which were implicit in his thought, the democracies
which he contemplated in the future, are all cast aside as a
misconception. Once the needs of the Absolute Spirit have been
satisfied, when it has seen its full power and splendour revealed in
the Hegelian philosophy, the world is as good as it can be. Social
amelioration does not matter, nor the moral improvement of men, nor the
increase of their control over physical forces.
6.
The other great representative of German idealism, who took his
departure from Kant, also saw in history a progressive revelation of
divine reason. But it was the processes of nature, not the career
of humanity, that absorbed the best energies of Schelling, and the
elaboration of a philosophical idea of organic evolution was the
prominent feature of his speculation. His influence--and it was wide,
reaching even scientific biologists--lay chiefly in diffusing this
idea, and he thus contributed to the formation of a theory which was
afterwards to place the idea of Progress on a more imposing base.
[Footnote: Schelling's views notoriously varied at various stages of his
career. In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he distinguished
three historical periods, in the first of which the Absolute reveals
itself as Fate, in the second as Nature, in the third as Providence, and
asserted that we are still living in the second, which began with the
expansion of Rome (Werke, i. 3, p. 603). In this context he says
that the conception of an infinite "progressivity" is included in the
conception of "history," but adds that the perfectibility of the race
cannot be directly inferred. For it may be said that man has no
proper history but turns round on a wheel of Ixion. The difficulty of
establishing the fact of Progress from the course of events lies in
discovering a criterion. Schelling rejects the criterion of moral
improvement and that of advance in science and arts as unpractical
or misleading. But if we see the sole object of history in a gradual
realisation of the ideal state, we have a measure of Progress which can
be applied; though it cannot be proved either by theory or by experience
that the goal will be attained. This must remain an article of faith
(ib. 592 sqq.).]
Schelling influenced, among others, his contemporary Krause, a less
familiar name, who worked out a philosophy of history in which this idea
is fundamental. Krause conceived history, which is the expression of the
Absolute, as the development of life; society as an organism; and
social growth as a process which can be deduced from abstract biological
principles.
[Footnote: Krause divided man's earthly career into three Ages--infancy,
growth, and maturity. The second of these falls into three periods
characterised by (1) polytheism, (2) monotheism (Middle Ages), (3)
scepticism and liberty, and we are now in the third of these periods.
The third Age will witness the union of humanity in a single social
organism, and the universal acceptance of "panentheism" (the doctrine of
the unity of all in God), which is the principle of Krause's philosophy
and religion. But though this will be the final stage on the earth,
Krause contemplates an ulterior career of humanity in other solar
systems.
Krause never attracted attention in England, but he exerted
some influence in France and Spain, and especially in Belgium,
notwithstanding the grotesque jargon in which he obscured his thoughts.
See Flint, Philosophy of History, pp. 474-5. Flint's account of his
speculations is indulgent. The main ideas of his philosophy of history
will be found in the Introduction a la philosophie (ed. 2, 1880) of G.
Tiberghien, a Belgian disciple.]
All these transcendent speculations had this in common that they
pretended to discover the necessary course of human history on
metaphysical principles, independent of experience. But it has been
rightly doubted whether this alleged independence was genuine. We may
question whether any of them would have produced the same sequence of
periods of history, if the actual facts of history had been to them a
sealed book. Indeed we may be sure that they were surreptitiously and
subconsciously using experience as a guide, while they imagined that
abstract principles were entirely responsible for their conclusions. And
this is equivalent to saying that their ideas of progressive movement
were really derived from that idea of Progress which the French thinkers
of the eighteenth century had attempted to base on experience.
The influence, direct and indirect, of these German philosophers reached
far beyond the narrow circle of the bacchants or even the wandbearers
of idealism. They did much to establish the notion of progressive
development as a category of thought, almost as familiar and
indispensable as that of cause and effect. They helped to diffuse the
idea of "an increasing purpose" in history. Augustine or Bossuet might
indeed have spoken of an increasing purpose, but the "purpose" of their
speculations was subsidiary to a future life. The purpose of the German
idealists could be fulfilled in earthly conditions and required no
theory of personal immortality.
This atmosphere of thought affected even intelligent reactionaries who
wrote in the interest of orthodox Christianity and the Catholic Church.
Progressive development is admitted in the lectures on the Philosophy of
History of Friedrich von Schlegel. [Footnote: Translated into English
in 2 vols., 1835.] He denounced Condorcet, and opposed to perfectibility
the corruptible nature of man. But he asserted that the philosophy
of history is to be found in "the principles of social progress."
[Footnote: Op. cit. ii, p. 194, sqq.] These principles are three: the
hidden ways of Providence emancipating the human race; the freewill of
man; and the power which God permits to the agents of evil,--principles
which Bossuet could endorse, but the novelty is that here they are
arrayed as forces of Progress. In fact, the point of von Schlegel's
pretentious, unilluminating book is to rehabilitate Christianity by
making it the key to that new conception of life which had taken shape
among the enemies of the Church.
7.
As biological development was one of the constant preoccupations of
Goethe, whose doctrine of metamorphosis and "types" helped to prepare
the way for the evolutionary hypothesis, we might have expected to find
him interested in theories of social progress, in which theories
of biological development find a logical extension. But the French
speculations on Progress did not touch his imagination; they left him
cool and sceptical. Towards the end of his life, in conversation with
Eckermann, he made some remarks which indicate his attitude. [Footnote:
Gesprache mit Goethe, 23 Oktober 1828.] "'The world will not reach its
goal so quickly as we think and wish. The retarding demons are always
there, intervening and resisting at every point, so that, though there
is an advance on the whole, it is very slow. Live longer and you will
find that I am right.'
"'The development of humanity,' said Eckermann, 'appears to be a matter
of thousands of years.'
"'Who knows?' Goethe replied, 'perhaps of millions. But let humanity
last as long as it will, there will always be hindrances in its way, and
all kinds of distress, to make it develop its powers. Men will become
more clever and discerning, but not better nor happier nor more
energetic, at least except for limited periods. I see the time coming
when God will take no more pleasure in the race, and must again proceed
to a rejuvenated creation. I am sure that this will happen and that the
time and hour in the distant future are already fixed for the beginning
of this epoch of rejuvenation. But that time is certainly a long
way off, and we can still for thousands and thousands of years enjoy
ourselves on this dear old playing-ground, just as it is.'"
That is at once a plain rejection of perfectibility, and an opinion that
intellectual development is no highroad to the gates of a golden city.