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The Idea of Progress, An inguiry into its origin and growth
CHAPTER XVII
"PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT (1830-1851)
1.
In 1850 there appeared at Paris a small book by M. A. Javary, with the
title DE L'IDEE DU PROGRES. Its interest lies in the express
recognition that Progress was the characteristic idea of the age,
ardently received by some, hotly denounced by others. [Footnote:
Lamartine denounced in his monthly journal Le Conseiller du peuple,
vol. i. (1849), all the progressive gospels of the day, socialist,
communist, Saint-Simonian, Fourierist, Icarian--in fact every school
of social reform since the First Republic--as purely materialistic,
sprung from the "cold seed of the century of Helvetius" (pp. 224,
287).]
"If there is any idea," he says, "that belongs properly to one
century, at least by the importance accorded to it, and that, whether
accepted or not, is familiar to all minds, it is the idea of Progress
conceived as the general law of history and the future of humanity."
He observes that some, intoxicated by the spectacle of the material
improvements of modern civilisation and the results of science, set no
limits to man's power or his hopes; while others, unable to deny the
facts, say that this progress serves only the lower part of human
nature, and refuse to look with complacency on a movement which means,
they assert, a continuous decadence of the nobler part. To which it is
replied that, If moral decadence is a fact, it is only transient; it
is a necessary phase of a development which means moral progress in
the end, for it is due to the process by which the beliefs, ideas, and
institutions of the past disappear and make way for new and better
principles.
And Javary notes a prevailing tendency in France to interpret every
contemporary movement as progressive, while all the social
doctrinaires justify their particular reforms by invoking the law of
Progress. It was quite true that during the July monarchy nearly all
serious speculations on society and history were related to that idea.
It was common to Michelet and Quinet, who saw in the march of
civilisation the gradual triumph of liberty; to Leroux and Cabet, who
preached humanitarian communism; to Louis Blanc and to Proudhon; to
the bourgeois, who were satisfied with the regime of Louis Philippe
and grew rich, following the precept of Guizot, as well as to the
workers who overthrew it. It is significant that the journal of Louis
Blanc, in which he published his book on the ORGANISATION OF WORK
(1839), was entitled REVUS DES PROGRES. The political question as to
the due limits between government and individual freedom was discussed
in terms of Progress: is personal liberty or state authority the
efficient means of progressing? The metaphysical question of necessity
and freewill acquired a new interest: is Progress a fatality,
independent of human purposes, determined by general, ineluctable,
historical laws? Quinet and Michelet argued vigorously against the
optimism of Cousin, who with Hegel held that history is just what it
ought to be and could not be improved.
2.
Among the competing theories of the time, and sharply opposed to the
views of Comte, was the idea, derived from the Revolution, that the
world is moving towards universal equality and the obliteration of
class distinctions, that this is the true direction of Progress. This
view, represented by leaders of the popular movement against the
bourgeois ascendency, derived powerful reinforcement from one of the
most enlightened political thinkers of the day. The appearance of de
Tocqueville's renowned study of American democracy was the event of
1834. He was convinced that he had discovered on the other side of the
Atlantic the answer to the question whither the world is tending. In
American society he found that equality of conditions is the
generating fact on which every other fact depends. He concluded that
equality is the goal of humanity, providentially designed.
"The gradual development of equality of conditions has the principal
characteristics of a providential fact. It is universal, it is
permanent, it eludes human power; all events and all men serve this
development. . . . This whole book has been written under the
impression of a sort of religious terror produced in the author's soul
by the view of this irresistible revolution which for so many
centuries has been marching across all obstacles, and which is to- day
seen still advancing in the midst of the ruins it has made. ... If the
men of our time were brought to see that the gradual and progressive
development of equality is at once the past and the future of their
history, this single discovery would give that development the sacred
character of the will of the sovran master."
Here we have a view of the direction of Progress and the meaning of
history, pretending to be based upon the study of facts and announced
with the most intense conviction. And behind it is the fatalistic
doctrine that the movement cannot be arrested or diverted; that it is
useless to struggle against it; that men, whatever they may do, cannot
deflect the clock-like motion regulated by a power which de
Tocqueville calls Providence but to which his readers might give some
other name.
3.
It has been conjectured, [Footnote: Georges Sorel, Les Illusions du
progres, pp. 247-8 (1908).] and seems probable enough, that de
Tocqueville's book was one of the influences which wrought upon the
mind of Proudhon. The speculations of this remarkable man, who, like
Saint-Simon and Comte, sought to found a new science of society,
attracted general attention in the middle of the century. [Footnote:
Compare the appreciation by Weill in Histoire du mouvement social en
France 1852-1910 (1911, ed. 2), p. 41: "Le grande ecrivain
revolutionnaire et anarchiste n'etait au fond ni un revolutionnaire ni
un anarchiste, mais un reformateur pratique et modere qui a fait
illusion par le ton vibrant de ses pamphlets centre la societe
capitaliste."]His hostility to religion, his notorious dictum that
"property is theft," his gospel of "anarchy," and the defiant,
precipitous phrases in which he clothed his ideas, created an
impression that he was a dangerous anti-social revolutionary. But when
his ideas are studied in their context and translated into sober
language, they are not so unreasonable. Notwithstanding his
communistic theory of property and his ideal of equality, he was a
strong individualist. He held that the future of civilisation depends
on the energy of individuals, that liberty is a condition of its
advance, and that the end to be kept in view is the establishment of
justice, which means equality. He saw the difficulty of reconciling
liberty with complete equality, but hoped that the incompatibility
would be overcome by a gradual reduction of the natural differences in
men's capacities. He said, "I am an anarchist," but his anarchy only
meant that the time would come when government would be superfluous,
when every human being could be trusted to act wisely and morally
without a restraining authority or external sanctions. Nor was he a
Utopian. He comprehended that such a transformation of society would
be a long, slow process, and he condemned the schools of Saint-Simon
and Fourier for imagining that a millennium might be realised
immediately by a change of organisation.
He tells us that all his speculations and controversial activities are
penetrated with the idea of Progress, which he described as "the
railway of liberty"; and his radical criticism on current social
theories, whether conservative or democratic, was that they did not
take Progress seriously though they invoked it.
"What dominates in all my studies, what forms their beginning and end,
their summit and their base, their reason, what makes my originality
as a thinker (if I have any), is that I affirm Progress resolutely,
irrevocably, and everywhere, and deny the Absolute. All that I have
ever written, all I have denied or affirmed, I have written, denied or
affirmed in the name of one unique idea, Progress. My adversaries, on
the other hand, are all partisans of the Absolute, IN OMNI GENERE,
CASU, ET NUMERO, to use the phrase of Sganarelle." [Footnote:
Philosophie du progres, Premiere lettre (1851).]
4.
A vague confidence in Progress had lain behind and encouraged the
revolution of 1789, but in the revolution of 1848 the idea was
definitely enthroned as the regnant principle. It presided over the
session of the Committee which drew up the Constitution of the second
Republic. Armand Marrast, the most important of the men who framed
that document, based the measure of universal suffrage upon "the
invisible law which rules societies," the law of progress which has
been so long denied but which is rooted in the nature of man. His
argument was this: Revolutions are due to the repression of progress,
and are the expression and triumph of a progress which has been
achieved. But such convulsions are an undesirable method of
progressing; how can they be avoided? Only by organising elastic
institutions in which new ideas of amelioration can easily be
incorporated, and laws which can be accommodated without struggle or
friction to the rise of new opinions. What is needed is a flexible
government open to the penetration of ideas, and the key to such a
government is universal suffrage.
[Footnote: Marrast, "the invisible law"; "Oui," he continues, "toute
societe est progressive, parce que tout individu est educable,
perfectible; on peut mesurer, limiter, peut-etre les facultes d'un
individu; on ne saurait limiter, mesurer ce que peuvent, dans l'ordre
des idees, les intelligences dont les produits ne s'ajoutent pas
seulement mais se fecondent et se multiplient dans une progression
indefinie." No. 393 Republique francoise. Assemblee nationale. Projet
de Constitution ... precede par un rapport fait au nom de la
Commission par le citoyen Armand Marrast. Seance du 30 aout, 1848.]
Universal suffrage was practical politics, but the success of the
revolution fluttered agreeably all the mansions of Utopia, and social
reformers of every type sought to improve the occasion. In the history
of the political struggles of 1848 the names are written of Proudhon,
of Victor Considerant the disciple of Fourier, of Pierre Leroux the
humanitarian communist, and his devoted pupil George Sand. The chief
title of Leroux to be remembered is just his influence over the soul
of the great novelist. Her later romances are pervaded by ideas
derived from his teaching. His communism was vague and ineffectual,
but he was one of the minor forces in the thought of the period, and
there are some features in his theory which deserve to be pointed out.
Leroux had begun as a member of the Saint-Simonian school, but he
diverged into a path of his own. He reinstated the ideal of equality
which Saint-Simon rejected, and made the approach to that ideal the
measure of Progress. The most significant process in history, he held,
is the gradual breaking down of caste and class: the process is now
approaching its completion; "today MAN is synonymous with EQUAL."
In order to advance to the city of the future we must have a force and
a lever. Man is the force, and the lever is the idea of Progress. It
is supplied by the study of history which displays the improvement of
our faculties, the increase of our power over nature, the possibility
of organising society more efficaciously. But the force and the lever
are not enough. A fulcrum is also required, and this is to be found in
the "solidarity" of the human race. But this conception meant for
Leroux something different from what is ordinarily meant by the
phrase, a deeper and even mystical bond. Human "solidarity" was a
corollary from the pantheistic religion of the Saint-Simonians, but
with Leroux, as with Fourier, it was derived from the more difficult
doctrine of palingenesis. We of this generation, he believed, are not
merely the sons and descendants of past generations, we are the past
generations themselves, which have come to birth again in us.
Through many pages of the two volumes [Footnote: De l'humanite, 1840
(dedicated to Beranger).] in which he set forth his thesis, Leroux
expended much useless learning in endeavouring to establish this
doctrine, which, were it true, might be the central principle in a new
religion of humanity, a transformed Pythagoreanism. It is easy to
understand the attractiveness of palingenesis to a believer in
Progress: for it would provide a solution of the anomaly that
generations after generations are sacrificed for the sake of
posterity, and so appear to have no value in themselves. Believers in
Progress, who are sensitive to the sufferings of mankind, past and
present, need a stoical resolution to face this fact. We saw how
Herder refused to accept it. A pantheistic faith, like that of the
Saint-Simonian Church, may help some, it cannot do more, to a stoical
acquiescence. The palingenesis of Leroux or Fourier removes the
radical injustice. The men of each generation are sacrificed and
suffer for the sake of their descendants, but as their descendants are
themselves come to life again, they are really suffering in their own
interests. They will themselves reach the desirable state to which the
slow, painful process of history is tending.
But palingenesis, notwithstanding all the ancient opinions and
traditions that the researches of Leroux might muster, could carry
little conviction to those who were ceasing to believe in the familiar
doctrine of a future life detached from earth, and Madame Dudevant was
his only distinguished convert.
5.
The ascendency of the idea of Progress among thoughtful people in
France in the middle of the last century is illustrated by the work
which Ernest Renan composed under the immediate impression of the
events of 1848. He desired to understand the significance of the
current revolutionary doctrines, and was at once involved in
speculation on the future of humanity. This is the purport of L'AVENIR
DE LA SCIENCE. [Footnote: L'Avenir de la science--Pensees de (1848).
Published in 1890.]
[Footnote: The ascendency of the idea of Progress at this epoch may be
further illustrated by E. Pelletan's Profession de foi du dix-
neuvieme siecle, 1852 (4th ed., 1857), where Progress is described as
the general law of the universe; and by Jean Reynaud's Philosophie
religieuse: Terre et ciel (3rd ed., 1858), a religious but not
orthodox book, which acclaims the "sovran principle of perfectibility"
(cp. p. 138). I may refer also to the rhetorical pages of E. Vacherot
on the Doctrine du progres, printed (as part of an essay on the
Philosophy of History) in his Essais de philosophie critique (1864).]
The author was then convinced that history has a goal, and that
mankind tends perpetually, though in an oscillating line, towards a
more perfect state, through the growing dominion of reason over
instinct and caprice. He takes the French Revolution as the critical
moment in which humanity first came to know itself. That revolution
was the first attempt of man to take the reins into his own hands. All
that went before we may call, with Owen, the irrational period of
human existence.
We have now come to a point at which we must choose between two
faiths. If we despair of reason, we may find a refuge from utter
scepticism in a belief in the external authority of the Roman Church.
If we trust reason, we must accept the march of the human mind and
justify the modern spirit. And it can be justified only by proving
that it is a necessary step towards perfection. Renan affirmed his
belief in the second alternative, and felt confident that
science--including philology, on the human bearings of which he
enlarged,--philosophy, and art would ultimately enable men to realise
an ideal civilisation, in which all would be equal. The state, he
said, is the machine of Progress, and the Socialists are right in
formulating the problem which man has to solve, though their solution
is a bad one. For individual liberty, which socialism would seriously
limit, is a definite conquest, and ought to be preserved inviolate.
Renan wrote this work in 1848 and 1849, but did not publish it at the
time. He gave it to the world forty years later. Those forty years had
robbed him of his early optimism. He continues to believe that the
unfortunate conditions of our race might be ameliorated by science,
but he denounces the view that men can ever be equal. Inequality is
written in nature; it is not only a necessary consequence of liberty,
but a necessary postulate of Progress. There will always be a superior
minority. He criticises himself too for having fallen into the error
of Hegel, and assigned to man an unduly important place in the
universe.
[Footnote: Renan, speaking of the Socialists, paid a high tribute to
Bazard (L'Avenir de la science, p. 104). On the other hand, he
criticised Comte severely (p. 149).
Renan returned to speculation on the future in 1863, in a letter to M.
Marcellin-Berthelot (published in Dialogues et fragments
philosophiques, 1876): "Que sera Ie monde quand un million de fois se
sera reproduit ce qui s'est passe depuis 1763 quand la chimie, au lieu
de quatre-vingt ans de progres, en aura cent millions?" (p. 183). And
again in the Dialogues written in 1871 (ib.), where it is laid down
that the end of humanity is to produce great men: "le grand oeuvre
s'accomplira par la science, non par la democratic. Rien sans grands
hommes; le salut se fera par des grands hommes" (p. 103).]
In 1890 there was nothing left of the sentimental socialism which he
had studied in 1848; it had been blown away by the cold wind of
scientific socialism which Marx and Engels created. And Renan had come
to think that in this new form socialism would triumph. [Footnote: He
reckoned without the new forces, opposed to socialism as well as to
parliamentary democracy, represented by Bakunin and men like Georges
Sorel.] He had criticised Comte for believing that "man lives
exclusively by science, or rather little verbal tags, like geometrical
theorems, dry formulae." Was he satisfied by the concrete doctrine of
Marx that all the phenomena of civilisation at a given period are
determined by the methods of production and distribution which then
prevail? But the future of socialism is a minor issue, and the
ultimate goal of humanity is quite uncertain. "Ce qu'il y a de
consolant, c'est qu'on arrive necessairement quelque part." We may
console ourselves with the certainty that we must get somewhere.
6.
Proudhon described the idea of Progress as the railway of liberty. It
certainly supplied motive power to social ideals which were repugnant
and alarming to the authorities of the Catholic Church. At the Vatican
it was clearly seen that the idea was a powerful engine driven by an
enemy; and in the famous SYLLABUS of errors which Pope Pius IX. flung
in the face of the modern world at the end of 1864, Progress had the
honour of being censured. The eightieth error, which closes the list,
runs thus:
Romanus Pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo et cum
recenti civilitate sese reconciliare et componere.
"The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, be reconciled and come to terms
with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilisation."
No wonder, seeing that Progress was invoked to justify every movement
that offended the nostrils of the Vatican--liberalism, toleration,
democracy, and socialism. And the Roman Church well understood the
intimate connection of the idea with the advance of rationalism.