The original publication of these essays was interrupted by serious
illness and by long consequent ill--health, I and now that I am putting
them together I wish to add another which shall shortly explain the
main thread of the argument which they contain. In doing so there is a
risk of tedious repetition, but on a subject both obscure and
important, any defect is better than an appearance of vagueness.
In a former essay I attempted to show that slighter causes than is
commonly thought may change a nation from the stationary to the
progressive state of civilisation, and from the stationary to the
degrading. Commonly the effect of the agent is looked on in the wrong
way. It is considered as operating on every individual in the nation,
and it is assumed, or half assumed, that it is only the effect which
the agent directly produces on everyone that need be considered. But
besides this diffused effect of the first impact of the cause, there is
a second effect, always considerable, and commonly more potent--a new
model in character is created for the nation; those characters which
resemble it are encouraged and multiplied; those contrasted with it are
persecuted and made fewer. In a generation or two, the look of the
nation, becomes quite different; the characteristic men who stand out
are different, the men imitated are different; the result of the
imitation is different. A lazy nation may be changed into an
industrious, a rich into a poor, a religious into a profane, as if by
magic, if any single cause, though slight, or any combination of
causes, however subtle, is strong enough to change the favourite and
detested types of character.
This principle will, I think, help us in trying to solve the question
why so few nations have progressed, though to us progress seems so
natural-what is the cause or set of causes which have prevented that
progress in the vast majority of cases, and produced it in the feeble
minority. But there is a preliminary difficulty: What is progress, and
what is decline? Even in the animal world there is no applicable rule
accepted by physiologists, which settles what animals are higher or
lower than others; there are controversies about it. Still more then in
the more complex combinations and politics of human beings it is likely
to be hard to find an agreed criterion for saying which nation is
before another, or what age of a nation was marching forward and which
was falling back. Archbishop Manning would have one rule of progress
and decline; Professor Huxley, in most important points, quite an
opposite rule; what one would set down as an advance, the other would
set down as a retreat. Each has a distinct end which he wishes and a
distinct calamity which he fears, but the desire of the one is pretty
near the fear of the other; books would not hold the controversy
between them. Again, in art, who is to settle what is advance and what
decline? Would Mr. Buskin agree with anyone else on this subject, would
he even agree with himself or could any common enquirer venture to say
whether he was right or wrong?
I am afraid that I must, as Sir Wm. Hamilton used to say, 'truncate a
problem which I cannot solve.' I must decline to sit in judgment on
disputed points of art, morals, or religion. But without so doing I
think there is such a thing as 'verifiable progress,' if we may say so;
that is, progress which ninety-nine hundredths or more of mankind will
admit to be such, against which there is no established or organised
opposition creed, and the objectors to which, essentially varying in
opinion themselves, and believing one thing and another the reverse,
may be safely and altogether rejected.
Let us consider in what a village of English colonists is superior to a
tribe of Australian natives who roam about them. Indisputably in one,
and that a main sense, they are superior. They can beat the Australians
in war when they like; they can take from them anything they like, and
kill any of them they choose. As a rule, in all the outlying and
uncontested districts of the world, the aboriginal native lies at the
mercy of the intruding European. 'Nor is this all. Indisputably in the
English village there are more means of happiness, a greater
accumulation of the instruments of enjoyment, than in the Australian
tribe. "The English have all manner of books, utensils, and machines
which the others do not use, value, or understand. And in addition, and
beyond particular inventions, there is a general strength which is
capable of being used in conquering a thousand difficulties, and is an
abiding source of happiness, because those who possess it always feel
that they can use it."
If we omit the higher but disputed topics of morals and religion, we
shall find, I think, that the plainer and agreed--on superiorities of
the Englishmen are these: first, that they have a greater command over
the powers of nature upon the whole. Though they may fall short of
individual Australians in certain feats of petty skill, though they may
not throw the boomerang as well, or light a fire with earthsticks as
well, yet on the whole twenty Englishmen with their implements and
skill can change the material world immeasurably more than twenty
Australians and their machines. Secondly, that this power is not
external only; it is also internal. The English not only possess better
machines for moving nature, but are themselves better machines. Mr.
Babbage taught us years ago that one great use of machinery was not to
augment the force of man, but to register and regulate the power of
man; and this in a thousand ways civilised man can do, and is ready to
do, better and more precisely than the barbarian. Thirdly, | civilised
man not only has greater powers over nature, but knows better how to
use them, and by better I here mean better for the health and comfort
of his present body and mind. He can lay up for old age, which a savage
having no durable means of sustenance cannot; he is ready to lay up
because he can distinctly foresee the future, which the vague--minded
savage cannot; he is mainly desirous of gentle, continuous pleasure, I
whereas the barbarian likes wild excitement, and longs for stupefying
repletion. Much, if not all, of these three ways may be summed up in
Mr. Spencer's phrase, that progress is an increase of adaptation of man
to his environment, that is, of his internal powers and wishes to his
external lot and life. Something of it too is expressed in the old
pagan idea 'mens sana in corpore sano.' And I think this sort of
progress may be fairly investigated quite separately, as it is progress
in a sort of good everyone worth reckoning with admits and I agrees in.
No doubt there will remain people like the aged savage, who in his old
age went back to his savage tribe and said that he had 'tried
civilisation for forty years, and it was not worth the trouble.' But we
need not take account of the mistaken ideas of unfit men and beaten
races. On the whole the plainer sort of civilisation, the simpler moral
training, and the more elementary education are plain benefits. And
though there may be doubt as to the edges of the conception yet there
certainly is a broad road of 'verifiable progress' which not only
discoverers and admirers will like, but which all those who come upon
it will use and value.
Unless some kind of abstraction like this is made in the subject the
great problem 'What causes progress?' will, I am confident, long remain
unsolved. Unless we are content to solve simple problems first, the
whole history of philosophy teaches that we shall never solve hard
problems. This is the maxim of scientific humility so often insisted on
by the highest enquirers that, in investigations, as in life, those
'who exalt themselves shall be abased, and those who humble themselves
shall be exalted;' and though we may seem mean only to look for the
laws of plain comfort and simple present happiness, yet we must work
out that simple case first, before we encounter the incredibly harder
additional difficulties of the higher art, morals and religion.
The difficulty of solving the problem even thus limited is exceedingly
great. The most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we
should expect. Lord Macaulay tells us that 'In every experimental
science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being
there is a tendency to ameliorate his condition;' and these two
principles operating everywhere and always, might well have been
expected to 'carry mankind rapidly forward.' Indeed, taking verifiable
progress in the sense which has just been given to it, we may say that
nature gives a prize to every single step in it. Everyone that makes an
invention that benefits himself or those around him, is likely to be
more comfortable himself and to be more respected by those around him.
To produce new things 'serviceable to man's life and conducive to man's
estate,' is, we should say, likely to bring increased happiness to the
producer. It often brings immense reward certainly now; a new form of
good steel pen, a way of making some kind of clothes a little better or
a little cheaper, have brought men great fortunes. And there is the
same kind of prize for industrial improvement in the earliest times as
in the latest; though the benefits so obtainable in early society are
poor indeed in comparison with those of advanced society. Nature is
like a schoolmaster, at least in this, she gives her finest prizes to
her high and most instructed classes; Still, even in the earliest
society, nature helps those who can help themselves, and helps them
very much.
All this should have made the progress of mankind--progress at least in
this limited sense-exceedingly common; but, in fact, any progress is
extremely rare. As a rule (and as has been insisted on before) a
stationary state is by far the most frequent condition of man, as far
as history describes that condition; the progressive state is only a
rare and an occasional exception. Before history began there must have
been in the nation which writes it much progress; else there could have
been no history. It is a great advance in civilisation to be able to
describe the common facts of life, and perhaps, if we were to examine
it, we should find that it was at least an equal advance to wish to
describe them. But very few races have made this step of progress; very
few have been capable even of the meanest sort of history; and as for
writing such a history as that of Thucydides, most nations could as
soon have constructed a planet. When history begins to record, she
finds most of the races incapable of history, arrested, unprogressive,
and pretty much where they are now.
Why, then, have not the obvious and natural causes of progress (as we
should call them) produced those obvious and natural effects? Why have
the real fortunes of mankind been so different from the fortunes which
we should expect? This is the problem which in various forms I have
taken up in these papers, and this is the outline of the solution which
I have attempted to propose.
The progress of MAN requires the co--operation of MEN for its
development. That which any one man or any one family could invent for
themselves is obviously exceedingly limited. And even if this were not
true, isolated progress could never be traced. The rudest sort of
cooperative society, the lowest tribe and the feeblest government, is
so much stronger than isolated man, that isolated man (if he ever
existed in any shape which could be called man), might very easily have
ceased to exist. The first principle of the subject is that man can
only progress in 'co-operative groups;' I might say tribes and nations,
but I use the less common word because few people would at once see
that tribes and nations ARE co-operative groups, and that it is their
being so which makes their value; that unless you can make a strong
co-operative bond, your society will be conquered and killed out by
some other society which has such a bond; and the second principle is
that the members of such a group should be similar enough to one
another to co-operate easily and readily together. The co-operation in
all such cases depends on a FELT UNION of heart and spirit; and this is
only felt when there is a great degree of real likeness in mind and
feeling, however that likeness may have been attained.
This needful co-operation and this requisite likeness I believe to have
been produced by one of the strongest yokes (as we should think if it
were to be reimposed now) and the most terrible tyrannies ever known
among men--the authority of 'customary law.', In its earlier stage this
is no pleasant power--no 'rosewater' authority, as Carlyle would have
called it--but a stern, incessant, implacable rule. And the rule is
often of most childish origin, beginning in a casual superstition or
local accident. 'These people,' says Captain Palmer of the Fiji,' are
very conservative. A chief was one day going over a mountain-path
followed by a long string of his people, when he happened to stumble
and fall; all the rest of the people immediately did the same except
one man, who was set upon by the rest to know whether he considered
himself better than the chief.' What can be worse than a life regulated
by that sort of obedience, and that sort of imitation? This is, of
course, a bad specimen, but the nature of customary law as we
everywhere find it in its earliest stages is that of coarse casual
comprehensive usage, beginning, we cannot tell how, deciding, we cannot
tell why, but ruling everyone in almost every action with an inflexible
grasp.
The necessity of thus forming co-operative groups by fixed customs
explains the necessity of isolation in early society. As a matter of
fact all great nations have been prepared in privacy and in secret.
They have been composed far away from all distraction. Greece, Borne,
Judaea, were framed each by itself, and the antipathy of each to men of
different race and different speech is one of their most marked
peculiarities, and quite their strongest common property. And the
instinct of early ages is a right guide for the needs of early ages.
Intercourse with foreigners then broke down in states the fixed rules
which were forming their characters, so as to be a cause of weak fibre
of mind, of desultory and unsettled action; the living spectacle of an
admitted unbelief destroys the binding authority of religious custom
and snaps the social cord.
Thus we see the use of a sort of 'preliminary' age in societies, when
trade is bad because it prevents the separation of nations, because it
infuses distracting ideas among occupied communities, because it
'brings alien minds to alien shores. And as the trade which we now
think of as an incalculable good, is in that age a formidable evil and
destructive calamity; so war and conquest, which we commonly and justly
see to be now evils, are in that age often singular benefits and great
advantages. It is only by the competition of customs that bad customs
can be eliminated and good customs multiplied. Conquest is the premium
given by nature to those national characters which their national
customs have made most fit to win in war, and in many most material
respects those winning characters are really the best characters. The
characters which do win in war are the characters which we should wish
to win in war.
Similarly, the best institutions have a natural military advantage over
bad institutions. The first great victory of civilisation was the
conquest of nations with ill-defined families having legal descent
through the mother only, by nations of definite families tracing
descent through the father as well as the mother, or through the father
only. Such compact families are a much better basis for military
discipline than the ill-bound families which indeed seem hardly to be
families at all, where 'paternity' is, for tribal purposes, an
unrecognised idea, and where only the physical fact of 'maternity' is
thought to be certain enough to be the foundation of law or custom. The
nations with a thoroughly compacted family system have 'possessed the
earth,' that is, they have taken all the finest districts in the most
competed-for parts; and the nations with loose systems have been merely
left to mountain ranges and lonely islands. The family system and that
in its highest form has been so exclusively the system of civilisation,
that literature hardly recognises any other, and that, if it were not
for the living testimony of a great multitude of scattered communities
which are 'fashioned after the structure of the elder world,' we should
hardly admit the possibility of something so contrary to all which we
have lived amongst, and which we have been used to think of. After such
an example of the fragmentary nature of the evidence it is in
comparison easy to believe that hundreds of strange institutions may
have passed away and have left behind them not only no memorial, but
not even a trace or a vestige to help the imagination to figure what
they were.
I cannot expand the subject, but in the same way the better religions
have had a great physical advantage, if I may say so, over the worse.
They have given what I may call a CONFIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. The
savage subjected to a mean superstition, is afraid to walk simply about
the world--he cannot do THIS because it is ominous, or he must do THAT
because it is lucky, or he cannot do anything at all till the gods have
spoken and given him leave to begin. But under the higher religions
there is no similar slavery and no similar terror.