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The Idea of Progress, An inguiry into its origin and growth

J.B. Bury

CHAPTER II

UTILITY THE END OF KNOWLEDGE: BACON

1.

Among the great precursors of a new order of thought Francis Bacon
occupies a unique position. He drew up a definite programme for a
"great Renovation " of knowledge; he is more clearly conscious than
his contemporaries of the necessity of breaking with the past and
making a completely new start; and his whole method of thought seems
intellectually nearer to us than the speculations of a Bruno or a
Campanella. Hence it is easy to understand that he is often
regarded, especially in his own country, as more than a precursor,
as the first philosopher, of the modern age, definitely within its
precincts. [Footnote: German critics have been generally severe on
Bacon as deficient in the scientific spirit. Kuno Fischer, Baco van
Verulam (1856). Liebig, Ueber Francis Bacon van Verulam und die
Methode der Naturforschung (1863). Lange (Geschichte des
Materialismus, i. 195) speaks of "die aberglaubische und eitle
Unwissenschaftlichkeit Bacos."]

It is not indeed a matter of fundamental importance how we classify
these men who stood on the border of two worlds, but it must be
recognised that if in many respects Bacon is in advance of
contemporaries who cannot be dissociated from the Renaissance, in
other respects, such as belief in astrology and dreams, he stands on
the same ground, and in one essential point--which might almost be
taken as the test of mental progress at this period--Bruno and
Campanella have outstripped him. For him Copernicus, Kepler, and
Galileo worked in vain; he obstinately adhered to the old geocentric
system.

It must also be remembered that the principle which he laid down in
his ambitious programme for the reform of science--that experiment
is the key for discovering the secrets of nature--was not a new
revelation. We need not dwell on the fact that he had been
anticipated by Roger Bacon; for the ideas of that wonderful thinker
had fallen dead in an age which was not ripe for them. But the
direct interrogation of nature was already recognised both in
practice and in theory in the sixteenth century. What Bacon did was
to insist upon the principle more strongly and explicitly, and to
formulate it more precisely. He clarified and explained the
progressive ideas which inspired the scientific thought of the last
period of the European Renaissance, from which he cannot, I think,
be dissociated.

But in clearing up and defining these progressive ideas, he made a
contribution to the development of human thought which had far-
reaching importance and has a special significance for our present
subject. In the hopes of a steady increase of knowledge, based on
the application of new methods, he had been anticipated by Roger
Bacon, and further back by Seneca. But with Francis Bacon this idea
of the augmentation of knowledge has an entirely new value. For
Seneca the exploration of nature was a means of escaping from the
sordid miseries of life. For the friar of Oxford the principal use
of increasing knowledge was to prepare for the coming of Antichrist.
Francis Bacon sounded the modern note; for him the end of knowledge
is utility. [Footnote; The passages specially referred to are: De
Aug. Sc. vii. i; Nov. Org. i. 81 and 3.]

2.

The principle that the proper aim of knowledge is the amelioration
of human life, to increase men's happiness and mitigate their
sufferings--commodis humanis inservire--was the guiding star of
Bacon in all his intellectual labour. He declared the advancement of
"the happiness of mankind" to be the direct purpose of the works he
had written or designed. He considered that all his predecessors had
gone wrong because they did not apprehend that the finis scientarum,
the real and legitimate goal of the sciences, is "the endowment of
human life with new inventions and riches"; and he made this the
test for defining the comparative values of the various branches of
knowledge.

The true object, therefore, of the investigation of nature is not,
as the Greek philosophers held, speculative satisfaction, but to
establish the reign of man over nature; and this Bacon judged to be
attainable, provided new methods of attacking the problems were
introduced. Whatever may be thought of his daring act in bringing
natural science down from the clouds and assigning to her the
function of ministering to the material convenience and comfort of
man, we may criticise Bacon for his doctrine that every branch of
science should be pursued with a single eye towards practical use.
Mathematics, he thought, should conduct herself as a humble, if
necessary, handmaid, without any aspirations of her own. But it is
not thus that the great progress in man's command over nature since
Bacon's age has been effected. Many of the most valuable and
surprising things which science has succeeded in doing for
civilisation would never have been performed if each branch of
knowledge were not guided by its own independent ideal of
speculative completeness. [Footnote: This was to be well explained
by Fontenelle, Preface sur l'utilite des mathematiques, in Oeuvres
(ed. 1729), iii, I sqq.] But this does not invalidate Bacon's
pragmatic principle, or diminish the importance of the fact that in
laying down the utilitarian view of knowledge he contributed to the
creation of a new mental atmosphere in which the theory of Progress
was afterwards to develop.

3.

Bacon's respect for the ancients and his familiarity with their
writings are apparent on almost every page he wrote. Yet it was one
of his principal endeavours to shake off the yoke of their
authority, which he recognised to be a fatal obstacle to the
advancement of science. "Truth is not to be sought in the good
fortune of any particular conjuncture of time"; its attainment
depends on experience, and how limited was theirs. In their age "the
knowledge both of time and of the world was confined and meagre;
they had not a thousand years of history worthy of that name, but
mere fables and ancient traditions; they were not acquainted with
but a small portion of the regions and countries of the world."
[Footnote: Nov. Org. i. 84; 56, 72, 73, 74.] In all their systems
and scientific speculation "there is hardly one single experiment
that has a tendency to assist mankind." Their theories were founded
on opinion, and therefore science has remained stationary for the
last two thousand years; whereas mechanical arts, which are founded
on nature and experience, grow and increase.

In this connection, Bacon points out that the word "antiquity" is
misleading, and makes a remark which will frequently recur in
writers of the following generations. Antiquitas seculi iuventus
mundi; what we call antiquity and are accustomed to revere as such
was the youth of the world. But it is the old age and increasing
years of the world--the time in which we are now living--that
deserves in truth to be called antiquity. We are really the
ancients, the Greeks and Romans were younger than we, in respect to
the age of the world. And as we look to an old man for greater
knowledge of the world than from a young man, so we have good reason
to expect far greater things from our own age than from antiquity,
because in the meantime the stock of knowledge has been increased by
an endless number of observations and experiments. Time is the great
discoverer, and truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Take the three inventions which were unknown to the ancients-
printing, gunpowder, and the compass. These "have changed the
appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then
in warfare, and lastly in navigation; and innumerable changes have
been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star appears to
have exercised a greater power or influence on human affairs than
these mechanical discoveries." [Footnote: Nov. Org. 129. We have
seen that these three inventions had already been classed together
as outstanding by Cardan and Le Roy. They also appear in Campanella.
Bodin, as we saw, included them in a longer list.] It was perhaps
the results of navigation and the exploration of unknown lands that
impressed Bacon more than all, as they had impressed Bodin. Let me
quote one passage.

"It may truly be affirmed to the honour of these times, and in a
virtuous emulation with antiquity, that this great building of the
world had never through-lights made in it till the age of us and our
fathers. For although they [the ancients] had knowledge of the
antipodes ... yet that mought be by demonstration, and not in fact;
and if by travel, it requireth the voyage but of half the earth. But
to circle the earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done nor
enterprised till these later times: and therefore these times may
justly bear in their word ... plus ultra in precedence of the
ancient non ultra. ... And this proficience in navigation and
discoveries may plant also an expectation of the further proficience
and augmentation of all sciences, because it may seem that they are
ordained by God to be coevals, that is, to meet in one age. For so
the prophet Daniel, speaking of the latter times foretelleth,
Plurimi pertransibunt, et multiplex erit scientia: as if the
openness and through-passage of the world and the increase of
knowledge were appointed to be in the same ages; as we see it is
already performed in great part: the learning of these later times
not much giving place to the former two periods or returns of
learning, the one of the Grecians, the other of the Romans."
[Footnote: Advancement of Learning, ii. 13, 14.]

In all this we have a definite recognition of the fact that
knowledge progresses. Bacon did not come into close quarters with
the history of civilisation, but he has thrown out some observations
which amount to a rough synthesis. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 1, 6;
Nov. Org. i. 78, 79, 85.] Like Bodin, he divided, history into three
periods--(1) the antiquities of the world; (2) the middle part of
time which comprised two sections, the Greek and the Roman; (3)
"modern history," which included what we now call the Middle Ages.
In this sequence three particular epochs stand out as fertile in
science and favourable to progress--the Greek, the Roman, and our
own--"and scarcely two centuries can with justice be assigned to
each." The other periods of time are deserts, so far as philosophy
and science are concerned. Rome and Greece are "two exemplar States
of the world for arms, learning, moral virtue, policy, and laws."
But even in those two great epochs little progress was made in
natural philosophy. For in Greece moral and political speculation
absorbed men's minds; in Rome, meditation and labour were wasted on
moral philosophy, and the greatest intellects were devoted to civil
affairs. Afterwards, in the third period, the study of theology was
the chief occupation of the Western European nations. It was
actually in the earliest period that the most useful discoveries for
the comfort of human life were made, "so that, to say the truth,
when contemplation and doctrinal science began, the discovery of
useful works ceased."

So much for the past history of mankind, during which many things
conspired to make progress in the subjugation of nature slow,
fitful, and fortuitous. What of the future? Bacon's answer is: if
the errors of the past are understood and avoided there is every
hope of steady progress in the modern age.

But it might be asked. Is there not something in the constitution of
things which determines epochs of stagnation and vigour, some force
against which man's understanding and will are impotent? Is it not
true that in the revolutions of ages there are floods and ebbs of
the sciences, which flourish now and then decline, and that when
they have reached a certain point they can proceed no further? This
doctrine of Returns or ricorsi [Footnote: Bodin's conversiones.] is
denounced by Bacon as the greatest obstacle to the advancement of
knowledge, creating, as it does, diffidence or despair. He does not
formally refute it, but he marshals the reasons for an optimistic
view, and these reasons supply the disproof The facts on which the
fatalistic doctrine of Returns is based can be explained without
resorting to any mysterious law. [Footnote: Nov. Org. i. 92 sqq.]
Progress has not been steady or continuous on account of the
prejudices and errors which hindered men from setting to work in the
right way. The difficulties in advancing did not arise from things
which are not in our power; they were due to the human
understanding, which wasted time and labour on improper objects. "In
proportion as the errors which have been committed impeded the past,
so do they afford reason to hope for the future."

4.

But will the new period of advance, which Bacon expected and strove
to secure, be of indefinite duration? He does not consider the
question. His view that he lived in the old age of the world implies
that he did not anticipate a vast tract of time before the end of
mankind's career on earth. And an orthodox Christian of that time
could hardly be expected to predict. The impression we get is that,
in his sanguine enthusiasm, he imagined that a "prudent
interrogation" of nature could extort all her secrets in a few
generations. As a reformer he was so engaged in the immediate
prospect of results that his imagination did not turn to the
possibilities of a remoter future, though these would logically
follow from his recognition of "the inseparable propriety of time
which is ever more and more to disclose truth." He hopes everything
from his own age in which learning has made her third visitation to
the world, a period which he is persuaded will far surpass that of
Grecian and Roman learning. [Footnote: Advancement, ii. 24.] If he
could have revisited England in 1700 and surveyed what science had
performed since his death his hopes might have been more than
satisfied.

But, animated though he was with the progressive spirit, as Leonardo
da Vinci had been before him, all that he says of the prospects of
an increase of knowledge fails to amount to the theory of Progress.
He prepares the way, he leads up to it; but his conception of his
own time as the old age of humanity excludes the conception of an
indefinite advance in the future, which is essential if the theory
is to have significance and value. And in regard to progress in the
past, though he is clearer and more emphatic than Bodin, he hardly
adds anything to what Bodin had observed. The novelty of his view
lies not in his recognition of the advance of knowledge and its
power to advance still further, but in the purpose which he assigned
to it. [Footnote: Campanella held its purpose to be the
contemplation of the wisdom of God; cp., for instance, De sensu
rerum, Bk. iv. epilogus, where the world is described as statua Dei
altissimi (p. 370; ed. 1620).] The end of the sciences is their
usefulness to the human race. To increase knowledge is to extend the
dominion of man over nature, and so to increase his comfort and
happiness, so far as these depend on external circumstances. To
Plato or Seneca, or to a Christian dreaming of the City of God, this
doctrine would seem material and trivial; and its announcement was
revolutionary: for it implied that happiness on earth was an end to
be pursued for its own sake, and to be secured by co-operation for
mankind at large. This idea is an axiom which any general doctrine
of Progress must presuppose; and it forms Bacon's great contribution
to the group of ideas which rendered possible the subsequent rise of
that doctrine.

Finally, we must remember that by Bacon, as by most of his
Elizabethan contemporaries, the doctrine of an active intervening
Providence, the Providence of Augustine, was taken as a matter of
course, and governed more or less their conceptions of the history
of civilisation. But, I think, we may say that Bacon, while he
formally acknowledged it, did not press it or emphasise it.
[Footnote: See Advancement, iii. II. On the influence of the
doctrine on historical writing in England at the beginning of the
seventeenth century see Firth, Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the
World (Proc. of British Academy, vol. viii., 1919), p. 8.]

5.

Bacon illustrated his view of the social importance of science in
his sketch of an ideal state, the New Atlantis. He completed only a
part of the work, and the fragment was published after his death.
[Footnote: In 1627. It was composed about 1623. It seems almost
certain that he was acquainted with the Christianopolis of Johann
Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), which had appeared in Latin in 1614,
and contained a plan for a scientific college to reform the
civilised world. Andreae, who was acquainted both with More and with
Campanella, placed his ideal society in an island which he called
Caphar Salama (the name of a village in Palestine). Andreae's work
had also a direct influence on the Nova Solyma of Samuel Gott
(1648). See the Introduction of F. E. Held to his edition of
Christianopolis (1916). In Macaria, another imaginary state of the
seventeenth century (A description of the famous Kingdoms of
Macaria, 1641, by Hartlib), the pursuit of science is not a
feature.] It is evident that the predominating interest that moved
his imagination was different from that which guided Plato. While
Plato aimed at securing a permanent solid order founded on immutable
principles, the design of Bacon was to enable his imaginary
community to achieve dominion over nature by progressive
discoveries. The heads of Plato's city are metaphysicians, who
regulate the welfare of the people by abstract doctrines established
once for all; while the most important feature in the New Atlantis
is the college of scientific investigators, who are always
discovering new truths which may alter the conditions of life. Here,
though only in a restricted field, an idea of progressive
improvement, which is the note of the modern age, comes in to modify
the idea of a fixed order which exclusively prevailed in ancient
speculation.

On the other hand, we must not ignore the fact that Bacon's ideal
society is established by the same kind of agency as the ideal
societies of Plato and Aristotle. It has not developed; it was
framed by the wisdom of an original legislator Solamona. In this it
resembles the other imaginary commonwealths of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The organisation of More's Utopia is fixed
initially once for all by the lawgiver Utopus. The origin of
Campanella's Civitas Solis is not expressly stated, but there can be
no doubt that he conceived its institutions as created by the fiat
of a single lawgiver. Harrington, in his Oceana, argues with
Machiavelli that a commonwealth, to be well turned, must be the work
of one man, like a book or a building. [Footnote: Harrington,
Oceana, pp. 77-8, 3rd ed. (1747).]

What measure of liberty Bacon would have granted to the people of
his perfect state we cannot say; his work breaks off before he comes
to describe their condition. But we receive the impression that the
government he conceived was strictly paternal, though perhaps less
rigorous than the theocratic despotism which Campanella, under
Plato's influence, set up in the City of the Sun. But even
Campanella has this in common with More--and we may be sure that
Bacon's conception would have agreed here--that there are no hard-
and-fast lines between the classes, and the welfare and happiness of
all the inhabitants is impartially considered, in contrast with
Plato's scheme in the Laws, where the artisans and manual labourers
were an inferior caste existing less for their own sake than for the
sake of the community as a whole. [Footnote: This however does not
apply to the Republic, as is so commonly asserted. See the just
criticisms of A. A. Trever, A History of Greek Economic Thought
(Chicago, 1916), 49 sqq.]

It may finally be pointed out that these three imaginary
commonwealths stand together as a group, marked by a humaner temper
than the ancient, and also by another common characteristic which
distinguishes them, on one hand, from the ideal states of Plato and,
on the other, from modern sketches of desirable societies. Plato and
Aristotle conceived their constructions within the geographical
limits of Hellas, either in the past or in the present. More, Bacon,
and Campanella placed theirs in distant seas, and this remoteness in
space helped to create a certain illusion, of reality. [Footnote:
Civitas Solis, p. 461 (ed. 1620). Expectancy of end of world: Ib. p.
455.] The modern plan is to project the perfect society into a
period of future time. The device of More and his successors was
suggested by the maritime explorations of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries; the later method was a result of the rise of
the idea of Progress. [Footnote: Similarly the ideal communistic
states imagined by Euemerus and Iambulus in the southern seas owed
their geographical positions to the popular interest in seafaring in
the Indian Ocean in the age after Alexander. One wonders whether
Campanella knew the account of the fictitious journey of Iambulus to
the Islands of the Sun, in Diodorus Siculus, ii. 55-60.]

6.

A word or two more may be said about the City of the Sun. Campanella
was as earnest a believer in the interrogation of nature as Bacon,
and the place which science and learning hold in his state (although
research is not so prominent as in the New Atlantis), and the
scientific training of all the citizens, are a capital feature. The
progress in inventions, to which science may look forward, is
suggested. The men of the City of the Sun "have already discovered
the one art which the world seemed to lack--the art of flying; and
they expect soon to invent ocular instruments which will enable them
to see the invisible stars and auricular instruments for hearing the
harmony of the spheres." Campanella's view of the present conditions
and prospects of knowledge is hardly less sanguine than that of
Bacon, and characteristically he confirms his optimism by
astrological data. "If you only knew what their astrologers say
about the coming age. Our times, they assert, have more history in a
hundred years than the whole world in four thousand. More books have
been published in this century than in five thousand years before.
They dwell on the wonderful inventions of printing, of artillery,
and of the use of the magnet,--clear signs of the times--and also
instruments for the assembling of the inhabitants of the world into
one fold," and show that these discoveries were conditioned by
stellar influences.

But Campanella is not very sure or clear about the future. Astrology
and theology cause him to hesitate. Like Bacon, he dreams of a great
Renovation and sees that the conditions are propitious, but his
faith is not secure. The astronomers of his imaginary state
scrutinise the stars to discover whether the world will perish or
not, and they believe in the oracular saying of Jesus that the end
will come like a thief in the night. Therefore they expect a new
age, and perhaps also the end of the world.

The new age of knowledge was about to begin. Campanella, Bruno, and
Bacon stand, as it were, on the brink of the dividing stream,
tenduntque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
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