The Idea of Progress: An Inguiry into Its Origin and Growth

the intellectual movement of the seventeenth, which had changed the outlook of speculative thought. It was one continuous rationalistic movement. In the days of Racine and Perrault men had b

and the improvement of the arts of life, if life itself could not be ameliorated? Was not some radical reconstruction possible, in the social fabric, corresponding to the radical reconstruction inaugurated by Descartes in the principles of science and in the methods of thought? Year by year the obscurantism of the r

were due neither to innate and incorrigible disabilities of the human being nor to the nature of things, but simply to ignorance and prejudices, then the improvement of his state, and ultimately the attainment of felicity, would be only a matter

re Fontenelle was one of the most conspicuous guests. To the same circle belonged his friend the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, and it is in his writings that we first find the theory widened in its compass to embrace progress towards social perfection. [Footnote: For his life and

. Applying this standard he obliterated from the roll of great men most of those whom common opinion places among the greatest. Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne receive short shrift from the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. [Footnote: Compare Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais, xii., where Newton is acclaimed as the greatest man who ever lived.] He was superficial in his knowledge bot

pplicable to Christianity was a device for propagating rationalism in days when it was dangerous to propagate it openly. This is what the Abbe did in his Discourse against Mohammedanism. Again, in his Physical Explanation of an Apparition he remarks: "To diminish our fanatical proclivities, it would be useful if the Government were to establish an annual prize, to be awarded by the Academy of Sciences, for the best explanation, by natural laws, o

conomics, finance, education, all worked out in detail, and all aiming at the increase of pleasure and the diminution of pain. The Abbe's nimble intelligence had a weak side, which must have somewhat compromised his influence. He was so confident in the reasonableness of his projects that he always believed that if they were fairly considered the ruling powers could not fail to adopt them in their own interests. It is the nature of a reformer to be sanguine, but the optimism of Saint-Pierre touched naivete. Thousands might have agreed with his view that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy was an unwholesome institution, b

utes by peaceful means. [Footnote: Le Nouveau Cynee (Paris, 1623). It has recently been reprinted with an English translation by T. W. Balch, Philadelphia (1909).] The consequence of universal peace, he said, will be the arrival of "that beautiful century which the ancient theologians promise after there have rolled by six thousand years. For they sa

course of the great struggle of the Spanish Succession that he turned his attention to war and came to the conclusion that it is an unnecessary evil and even an absurdity. In 1712 he attended the congress at Utrecht in the capacity of secretary to Cardinal de Polignac, one of the Fren

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yield to Europe five hundred years after its establishment. Now we can see the first beginnings, but it is beyond the powers of the human mind to discern its infinite effects in the future. It may produce results more precious than a

ruth of history. The age of iron came first, the infancy of society, when men were poor and ignorant of the arts; it is the present condition of the savages of Africa and America. The age of bronze ensued, in which there was more security, better laws, and the invention of the most necessary arts began. There followed the age of silver, and Europe has not yet emerged from it. Our reason has inde

s project was the formation of a Political Academy which should do for politics what the Academy of Sciences did for the study of nature, and should act as an advisory body to ministers of state on all questions of the public welfare. If this proposal and some others were adopted, he believed that the golden age would not long b

sign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is ten thousand years old a century will be what a single year is in the life of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. The mortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through

with what it will be five or six thousand years hence. And when that stage is reached, it will only have entered on what we may call its

Perrault seem to have regarded it as in its virility; they set no term to its duration, but they did not dwell on future prospects. The Abbe was the first to fix his eye on the remote destinies of the race and name immense periods of time. It

that advance would have been infinitely greater were it not that three general obstacles retarded it and even, at some times and in some countries, caused a retrogression. These obstacles were wars, superstition, and the Jealousy of rulers who feared that p

are more studied in colleges, and their tendency is to liberate us from subjection to the authority of the ancients. Again, the foundation of scientific Academies has given facilities both for communicating and for correcting new discoveries; the art of prin

places where human wisdom has reached the most advanced stage. It is certain that the ten best men of the highest class at Ispahan or Constantinople will be inferior in their knowledge of politics and ethics to the ten most distinguished sages of Paris or London. And this will be

and to the sum of pleasures, and will add more. The progress in physical science is part of the progress of the "universal human reason," whose aim is the augmentation of our happiness. But there are two other sciences which are much more important for the promotion of happiness-Ethics and Politics-and these, neglected by men of genius, have made little way in the course of two thousand years. It is a grave misfortune that De

for permanent peace were adopted. Let the State immediately found Political and Ethical Academies; let the ablest men consecrate their talents to the science of government; and in a hundred years we shall make more progress than we should make in two thousand at the rate we are moving. If these things are done, human reason will have advanced

h the ideas which were all round him in a society saturated with Cartesianism,-supremacy of human reason, progressive enlightenment, the value of this life for its own sake, and the standard of utility. Given these ideas and the particular bias of his own mind, it required no great ingenuity to advance from the thought of the progress of science to the thought of p

t many of his schemes were sound and valuable. His economic ideas, which he thought out for himself, were in advance of his time, and he has even been described by a recent writer as "un contemporain egare au xviii siecle." Some of his financial proposals wer

f endless particular reforms, he had built up general theories of government and society, economics and education, th

to depreciate the study of mathematical and physical sciences-notwithstanding his veneration for Descartes-as comparatively useless, and he despised the fine arts as waste of time and toil which might be better spent. He had no knowledge of natural science a

of his life. His God, however, was more than the creator and organiser of the Encyclopaedists, he was also the "Dieu vengeur et remunerateur" in whom Voltaire believed. But here his faith was larger than Voltaire's. For while Voltaire referred the punishments and rewards to this life, the Abbe believed in the immortality of the soul, in heaven and hell. He

tion" as Voltaire, Diderot, and the rest. He did not go so far as they in aggressi

ght of the eighteenth century, which concentrated itself on social problems. He anticipated the "humanistic" spirit of the Encyclopaedists, who were to make m