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

s laid by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre. It must ultimately be judged by the evidence afforded by history, and it is n

ute, and will secure his arrival at the desirable place. Hitherto a certain order and unity had been found in history by the Christian theory of providential design and final causes. New principles of order and unity were needed to replace the principles w

ding to sociology, the history of civilisation, and the philosophy of history. Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois, which may claim to be the parent wo

intellectual climate in which that idea was produced; he had been nurtured both on the dissolving, dialectic of Bayle, and on the Cartesi

nomena are subject to general laws. He had already conceived this, his most striking and important idea, when he

tain it, or overthrow it; all that occurs is subject to these causes; and if a particular cause, like the accidental result of a battle, has ruined a state, there was a genera

d final causes; and one of the effects of the Considerations which Montesq

the effect of a collection of ideas which he was unable to co-ordinate in the clarity of a system. A new principle, the operation of general causes, is enthroned; but, beyond the obvious distinction of physical and moral, they are not classified. We have no guara

tention to it, and since he wrote, geographical conditions have been recognised by all inquirers as an influential factor in the development of human societies. His own discussion of the question did not result in any useful conclusions. He did not determine the limits of the action of physical conditions, and a reader hardly knows whether to regard them as fundamental or accessory, as determining the course of civilisation or only perturbing it. "Several things govern men," he says, "climat

ld have been an antidote to this belief. It had however less effect on his contemporaries than we might have expected, and they found more to their purpose in what he said of the influence of laws on manners. There may be

circumstances, but he did not distinguish or connect stages of civilisation. He was inclined to confound, as Sorel has observed, all periods and constitutions. Whatever be the value of the idea of Progress, we may agree

g since fallen into neglect, were published in the Mercure de France between 1745 and 1751; it was issued complete in 1756, along with the Age of Louis XIV., which was its continuation. If we add the Precis of the Reign of Louis XV. (1769), and observe that the Introduction and first fourteen chapters of the Essay sketch the history of the world before Charlemag

he same way he proposed in the Essay to trace "l'histoire de l'esprit humain," not the details of facts, and to show by what steps man advanced "from the barbarous rusticity" of the times of Charlemagne and his successors "to the politeness of our own." To do this, he said, was real

reat obstacles to the progress of humanity, and that if they were abolishe

vils which have afflicted men, prejudices, which are not their least scourge, will gradually disappear among all those who govern nations, an

is considered view. His common sense prevented him from indulging in Utopian speculations about the future; and his cynicism constantly led him to use the language of a pessimist. But at an early stage of his career he had taken up arms for human nature against that "sublime misanthrope" Pascal, who "writes against human nature almost as he wrote against the Jesuits"; and he returned to the attack at the end of his life. Now Pascal's Pensees enshrined a theory

ps que ce si

to-day is infinitely preferable

rais ou la mou

nt le triste

ne brillaient

s pour cela

it l'industrie

? c'etait pu

universal; it related only to four or five peoples, and especially the little Jewish nation which "was unknown to the rest of the world or justly despised," but which Bossuet made the centre of interest, as if the final cause of all the great empires of antiquity lay in their r

cerned himself only with the causal enchainment of events and the immediate motives of men. His interpretation of history was confined to the discovery of particular causes; he did not consider the operation of those larger general causes which Montesquieu investigated. Montesquieu sought to show that the vicissitudes of societies

cession of religions, the revolutions of states, and most of the great crises of history were decided by accidents, is there any cogent ground for believing that human reason, the principle to which Voltaire attributes the advance of civilisation, will prevail in the long run? Civilisation has been organised here and there, now and then, up to a certain point; there have been eras of rapid progress, but how can we be sure t

Progress, questions which belong to what was soon to be known as the Philosophy of History, a

ator, but if he had ever written the Discourses on Universal History which he designed at the age of twenty-three his position in historical literature might have overshadowed his oth

h it played in Bossuet is usurped by those general causes which he had learned from Montesquieu. But his systematic mind would have organised and classified the ideas which Montesquieu left somewhat confused. He criticised the inductions drawn in the Esprit des lois concerning the influence of climate as hasty and exaggerated; and he pointed out that the physical causes can only produce their effects by acting on "the hidden principles which contribute to fo

" Turgot does not discuss the question of free-will, but his causal continuity does not exclude "the free action of great men." He conceives universal history as the progress of the human race advancing as an immense whole steadily, though slowly, through alternating periods of calm and disturbance towards greater perfection. The various units of the entire mass do not move with equal steps, because n

gress would soon have been arrested. To avoid war peoples would have remained in isolation, and the race would have lived divided for ever into a multitude of isolated groups, speaking different tongues. All these groups would have been limited in the range of their ideas, stationa

power would completely disappear if they attempted to engage in peaceful intercourse. But though Turgot has put his point in an unconvincing form, his purpose was to show that as a m

ver is, is right." He regards all the race's actual experiences as the indispensable mechanism of Progress, and does not regret its mistakes and calamities. Many changes and revolutions, he observes, may seem to have had most mischievous effects; yet every

which are the prominent case, there were improvements in mechanical arts, in commerce, in some of the habits of civil life, all of which helped to prepare the way for happier times. Here Turgot's view of history is sharply opposed to Voltaire's. He considers Christianity to have been a powerf

so natural as to suppose they were produced by intelligent beings, invisible and resembling ourselves; for what else would they have resembled?" That is Comte's theological stage. "When philosophers recognised the absurdity of the fables about the gods, but had not yet gained an insight into natural history, they thought to explain the causes of phenomena by abstract expressions such as essences and faculties." That is t

ment and morals, religion, science, and arts. While his general thesis coincided with that of Voltaire-the gradual advance of humanity towards a state of enlightenment and reasonableness,-he made the idea of Progress more vital; for him it was an organising conception, just as the idea of Providence was for St. Augustine and Bossuet an organising conception, which gave history its unity and