Chapter 86
Progress and improvement of mankind; advance of knowledge and society; decline.
382 passages · 111 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Progress names the belief, and the doubt, that human things move toward something better. The idea covers the improvement of mankind as a whole, the advance of knowledge and the arts, the growth of wealth and civil society, and the bettering of institutions and individual lives. It also covers its opposite, the conviction that the world declines from a golden age. It is a great idea for these books because nearly every other judgment depends on it. Whether we should revere the ancients or surpass them, whether reform should be swift or slow, whether civilization is a blessing or a disease: each question presupposes some view of the direction of history. As Mill put it, political theory itself presupposes a theory of human progress1.
The boldest statement of a law of progress comes from Pascal. He holds that the whole succession of men is to be considered as a single man who goes on learning continually, so that each advances daily in the sciences as the world grows older2. The paradox follows that the ancients were mankind’s infancy and that we ourselves hold the true antiquity3. Lessing gives the analogy a religious form. The race, like a pupil, passes from childhood to youth, needing nobler motives as its reason matures4. It moves from dependence on scripture toward reason5 and looks toward a time of perfecting, a new eternal Gospel6, reached by a path each individual must also travel7. The denials of individuals, Lessing adds, did not arrest the progress of general reason8. Carlyle, in one mood, declares that all human things are in movement and that perfection is always approaching though never arrived9; mankind, once attaining Christianity, can never retrograde below it10. Mazzini calls progress humanity’s law, earthly life being a stage of eternal advance toward the ideal11. Hugo adds that the human intellect is always on the march and languages move with it12.
Against this stands a vigorous scepticism. Emerson insists that society never advances: what it gains on one side it loses on another, and its changes are not amelioration13. There are no greater men now than among the ancients, and inventions do not invigorate men14. Johnson finds that the revolutions of learning leave the mind in motion without progress, each writer chiefly demolishing his predecessors while truth advances slowly15. Voltaire remarks that enlightened ages merely debate what ignorant peoples invented16. Burke refuses Price’s claim that his own age is uniquely enlightened17. Carlyle, in another mood, mocks the boast of a “March of Intellect” as a symptom of unhealthy self-consciousness18. Even friends of progress hedge. Mill criticizes the eighteenth century’s confidence that modern civilization was wholly superior to the ancients19, and Arnold observes that that century’s gains in prose and freedom were paid for in imaginative life20.
Rousseau gives the doubt its most searching form. Perfectibility, the faculty of improvement, distinguishes man from the beasts, yet it may be the source of all his misfortunes21. The mind advances only as wants and settled society require22,23. Without communication, discoveries perished with their discoverers24. When improvement did come, it perfected the understanding while debasing the species25. What looks like the perfection of individuals is really the decrepitude of the race26. Metallurgy and agriculture civilized men and ruined mankind27, and inequality grew step by step with the improvement of the faculties28,29. Schiller accepts the diagnosis but reverses the verdict. The splitting of human faculties harmed individuals, yet it was the only road by which the race could pass beyond the Greek maximum30. He still asks whether such progress can justify individual suffering31, and he notes that refinement advances as strength of character decays32.
A middle position treats progress as growth through stages, like a life. Bacon has learning pass through infancy, youth, strength and old age, as a state does33. Dryden says nothing is brought to perfection at first, poetry growing from childhood to manhood through successive poets34. Johnson argues that nations, like individuals, have an infancy delighting in giants and enchantments35, and that achievements must be judged against the age that produced them36. Hugo maps poetry’s epochs onto the ages of civilization37,38. Schiller fixes three stages, physical, aesthetic and moral, in an order binding on individual and race alike39. Mill found in the Saint-Simonians an alternation of organic periods of belief and critical periods of questioning40. He found in Comte’s law of three stages a key to his own transitional era41. Taine says each ruling ideal of man languishes and gives way to another42.
The older lament runs the other way. Virgil sees the golden age give place to avarice and rage, though he also foresees huts becoming marble Rome43. Dante traces decline through the metals from Saturn’s chaste reign44 and finds the present fallen from the old virtue45. Don Quixote mourns the passage to an iron age that needs knights for protection46,47. Raleigh finds no giants left48, Jonson complains that wits grow downward49, Pliny that eloquence is nearly extinct50, and Locke that piety and learning decay among the gentry51. Goethe, however, makes such complaints comic, giving each speaker in Faust his grumble about changed times and arrogant youth52. Burns’s Old Brig plays the same part53. Sydney Smith ridicules outright the notion that modern times are degenerate54. Lowell denies that any age is degenerate unless it holds itself cheap55. Adam Smith adds an empirical rebuke: pamphlets have proclaimed decline in every century while England’s produce grew56, since improvement is visible only across distant periods and local decay breeds false alarm57.
Yet decay is not always imaginary. Goethe warns that a nation may not suspect its art is declining or its progress running the wrong way58. Art rises to a summit and falls as artists work for appearances59. Wordsworth judges that diction grew more corrupt with refinement60. Macaulay shows knowledge and prosperity peaking together under Lorenzo61 and literary splendour often outliving the happier times that bred it62. Emerson wonders whether British power has culminated63, and Thoreau warns that culture declines when the soil is exhausted64. Mill’s China is the decisive example: once progressive, it became stationary by making everyone alike65.
On knowledge itself, agreement is widest. Descartes wants successors to begin where predecessors ended, joining many lives and labours66. Pascal would use the ancients as a means, not an end, surpassing them as they surpassed theirs67, so that the sciences are left more finished to each generation68. Bacon conceives his work as one to be completed by future generations69, and Harvey hopes successors of happier genius will inquire more accurately70. For Hume, the failures of predecessors stimulate rather than discourage71. Milton insists that light gained must be used to discover more remote things72. Even Burke credits English advance in science and letters to respect for the inherited patrimony of knowledge73. By the nineteenth century the theme is routine. Newcomb expects each generation of astronomers to add light74, and Geikie describes geography passing from crude exploration to exacting inquiry75.
What hinders this advance? Bacon finds the sciences almost at a stay through sloth and the confidence of a few76. Pascal blames deference to antiquity77, and Emerson blames universities that resist challengers of Euclid and Aristotle78. Lyell shows growing intelligence replacing prodigies with fixed laws79. Pasteur describes the slow conversion of opponents to a new truth80. Franklin’s Dunkers refuse to fix their doctrine so as to remain open to further light81. Berkeley would welcome innovation in knowledge while fearing it in government and religion82. The engines of advance are new methods and inventions. Prometheus already boasts of raising men from cave-dwelling ignorance83,84. Bacon demands a new instrument, like the mariner’s needle85, and hopes inventions will subdue human misery86. Voltaire credits Descartes with clearing two thousand years of chimeras87. Jenner hopes to eradicate a disease from the earth88, and Helmholtz credits natural science with the wealth, health and power of nations89. Emerson notes that machinery has fulfilled Bacon’s predictions90. More sounds an early caution, however: confidence in the compass may turn a good thing into harm91.
Emerson radicalizes the theme. Every general law is superseded by a larger generalization, and thought ascends without end92. Each age must therefore write its own books93. Mill tempers this: many present opinions will be rejected by later ages94, and progress often only substitutes one partial truth for another95.
Darwin carries the question into nature and gives it a careful answer. He denies any innate tendency to progressive development. Advance occurs only where it is beneficial, and simple forms remain fitted to simple conditions96,97,98. Yet natural selection generally yields advance in organisation, understood as specialisation of parts, with occasional retrogression99,100. Modern forms should stand higher than ancient ones by victory in competition101. Standards of highness are disputed, though, and the geological record is too imperfect for proof102. His closing hope that endowments tend toward perfection103 is thus a probability, not a law.
Material improvement receives its patient analyst in Adam Smith. Labourers fare better in an advancing society than in a stationary or declining one104, and their condition has improved over the century105. Rising prices of rude produce are the forerunner of complete cultivation, not a calamity106, while improvement lowers the price of manufactures107. Beneath all of this lies the constant effort of each man to better his condition108. The travellers apply such hopes to new lands. Darwin judges that society and property make races capable of improvement109. He admires the farms of New Zealand110 and Sydney’s rapid growth111, and expects the southern hemisphere to improve112, though he doubts Australia will rival North America113. Dana contrasts an empty bay with a lit city of a hundred thousand114. Thoreau sees mankind progressing westward115, and Whitman’s pioneers take up the task from wearied elder races116. Renan wonders whether modern civilization will absorb the Celts or awaken them117.
Reform divides the moderns most sharply. Sydney Smith answers the cry of no innovation by observing that every established thing was once new118. He holds that improvements should come at the first opportunity, since they are always won against resistance119. Lowell notes that every beneficial change was opposed by good men predicting disaster120. Bacon had already granted that time alters things for the worse unless wisdom improves them121. Burke replies that the honest reformer preserves and improves, working with existing materials122, by slow steps each watched and informing the next123. Dana, on sailors’ conditions, likewise prefers gradual improvement to hasty interference124. Mazzini125 and Tennyson126 ask reverence for the past from those who speak of progress. Mill tries to reconcile the camps: political life needs both a party of order and a party of progress127. He also learned that reforms bring little benefit unless modes of thought change128, a point Schiller makes when he says the state’s improvement must await the healing of the inner man129.
Mill and Channing relocate the measure of progress itself. For Mill, liberty is the only permanent source of improvement, and nations stop progressing when they lose individuality130. Europe owes its advance to the plurality of its paths131, and originals keep civilization from dying out132. Channing holds that the first object of society is progress for all its members133. Real progress is measured by the intelligence and character of the people, not by industry and numbers134. He warns that present civilization depresses a large part of the community135.
Finally, progress turns inward and toward prophecy. Thomas à Kempis places progress in holiness and self-denial136,137. Epictetus says one must be content to seem foolish about outward things in order to progress138. Goethe’s burgher repeats that whoever does not go forward goes backward139. Shelley140 and Tennyson141,142 prophesy a renewed world under one increasing purpose. Lowell asks that new occasions teach new duties143, and Arnold fears mankind’s march may fail144. The authors leave the central question open: whether progress is a law, a probability, or a task. Darwin’s caution and Rousseau’s suspicion stand beside Pascal’s confidence, and none of them settles whether the race’s gain must be the individual’s loss.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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