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

J.B. Bury

CHAPTER III

CARTESIANISM

If we are to draw any useful lines of demarcation in the continuous
flux of history we must neglect anticipations and announcements, and
we need not scruple to say that, in the realm of knowledge and
thought, modern history begins in the seventeenth century.
Ubiquitous rebellion against tradition, a new standard of clear and
precise thought which affects even literary expression, a flow of
mathematical and physical discoveries so rapid that ten years added
more to the sum of knowledge than all that had been added since the
days of Archimedes, the introduction of organised co-operation to
increase knowledge by the institution of the Royal Society at
London, the Academy of Sciences at Paris, Observatories--realising
Bacon's Atlantic dream--characterise the opening of a new era.

For the ideas with which we are concerned, the seventeenth century
centres round Descartes, whom an English admirer described as "the
grand secretary of Nature." [Footnote: Joseph Glanvill, Vanity of
Dogmatising, p. 211, 64] Though his brilliant mathematical
discoveries were the sole permanent contribution he made to
knowledge, though his metaphysical and physical systems are only of
historical interest, his genius exercised a more extensive and
transforming influence on the future development of thought than any
other man of his century.

Cartesianism affirmed the two positive axioms of the supremacy of
reason, and the invariability of the laws of nature; and its
instrument was a new rigorous analytical method, which was
applicable to history as well as to physical knowledge. The axioms
had destructive corollaries. The immutability of the processes of
nature collided with the theory of an active Providence. The
supremacy of reason shook the thrones from which authority and
tradition had tyrannised over the brains of men. Cartesianism was
equivalent to a declaration of the Independence of Man.

It was in the atmosphere of the Cartesian spirit that a theory of
Progress was to take shape.

1.

Let us look back. We saw that all the remarks of philosophers prior
to the seventeenth century, which have been claimed as enunciations
of the idea of Progress, amount merely to recognitions of the
obvious fact that in the course of the past history of men there
have been advances and improvements in knowledge and arts, or that
we may look for some improvements in the future. There is not one of
them that adumbrates a theory that can be called a theory of
Progress. We have seen several reasons why the idea could not emerge
in the ancient or in the Middle Ages. Nor could it have easily
appeared in the period of the Renaissance. Certain preliminary
conditions were required, and these were not fulfilled till the
seventeenth century. So long as men believed that the Greeks and
Romans had attained, in the best days of their civilisation, to an
intellectual plane which posterity could never hope to reach, so
long as the authority of their thinkers was set up as unimpeachable,
a theory of degeneration held the field, which excluded a theory of
Progress. It was the work of Bacon and Descartes to liberate science
and philosophy from the yoke of that authority; and at the same
time, as we shall see, the rebellion began to spread to other
fields.

Another condition for the organisation of a theory of Progress was a
frank recognition of the value of mundane life and the subservience
of knowledge to human needs. The secular spirit of the Renaissance
prepared the world for this new valuation, which was formulated by
Bacon, and has developed into modern utilitarianism.

There was yet a third preliminary condition. There can be no
certainty that knowledge will continually progress until science has
been placed on sure foundations. And science does not rest for us on
sure foundations unless the invariability of the laws of nature is
admitted. If we do not accept this hypothesis, if we consider it
possible that the uniformities of the natural world may be changed
from time to time, we have no guarantee that science can progress
indefinitely. The philosophy of Descartes established this
principle, which is the palladium of science; and thus the third
preliminary condition was fulfilled.

2.

During the Renaissance period the authority of the Greeks and Romans
had been supreme in the realm of thought, and in the interest of
further free development it was necessary that this authority should
be weakened. Bacon and others had begun the movement to break down
this tyranny, but the influence of Descartes was weightier and more
decisive, and his attitude was more uncompromising. He had none of
Bacon's reverence for classical literature; he was proud of having
forgotten the Greek which he had learned as a boy. The inspiration
of his work was the idea of breaking sharply and completely with the
past, and constructing a system which borrows nothing from the dead.
He looked forward to an advancement of knowledge in the future, on
the basis of his own method and his own discoveries, [Footnote: Cf.
for instance his remarks on medicine, at the end of the Discours de
la methode.] and he conceived that this intellectual advance would
have far-reaching effects on the condition of mankind. The first
title he had proposed to give to his Discourse on Method was "The
Project of a Universal Science which can elevate our Nature to its
highest degree of Perfection." He regarded moral and material
improvement as depending on philosophy and science.

The justification of an independent attitude towards antiquity, on
the ground that the world is now older and more mature, was becoming
a current view. [Footnote: Descartes wrote: Non est quod antiquis
multum tribuamus propter antiquitatem, sed nos potius iis seniores
dicendi. Jam enim senior est mundus quam tune majoremque habemus
rerum experientiam. (A fragment quoted by Baillet, Vie de Descartes,
viii. 10.) Passages to the same effect occur in Malebranche,
Arnauld, and Nicole. (See Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie
cartesienne, i. 482-3.)

A passage in La Mothe Le Vayer's essay Sur l'opiniatrete in Orasius
Tubero (ii. 218) is in point, if, as seems probable, the date of
that work is 1632-33. "Some defer to the ancients and allow
themselves to be led by them like children; others hold that the
ancients lived in the youth of the world, and it is those who live
to-day who are really the ancients, and consequently ought to carry
most weight." See Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et
des Modernes, p. 52.

The passage of Pascal occurs in the Fragment d'un traite du vide,
not published till 1779 (now included in the Pensees, Premiere
Partie, Art. I), and therefore without influence on the origination
of the theory of progress. It has been pointed out that Guillaume
Colletet had in 1636 expressed a similar view (Brunetiere, Etudes
critiques, v. 185-6).]

Descartes expressed it like Bacon, and it was taken up and repeated
by many whom Descartes influenced. Pascal, who till 1654 was a man
of science and a convert to Cartesian ideas, put it in a striking
way. The whole sequence of men (he says) during so many centuries
should be considered as a single man, continually existing and
continually learning. At each stage of his life this universal man
profited by the knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages,
and he is now in his old age. This is a fuller, and probably an
independent, development of the comparison of the race to an
individual which we found in Bacon. It occurs in a fragment which
remained unpublished for more than a hundred years, and is often
quoted as a recognition, not of a general progress of man, but of a
progress in human knowledge.

To those who reproached Descartes with disrespect towards ancient
thinkers he might have replied that, in repudiating their authority,
he was really paying them the compliment of imitation and acting far
more in their own spirit than those who slavishly followed them.
Pascal saw this point. "What can be more unjust," he wrote, "than to
treat our ancients with greater consideration than they showed
towards their own predecessors, and to have for them this incredible
respect which they deserve from us only because they entertained no
such regard for those who had the same advantage (of antiquity) over
them?" [Footnote: Pensees, ib.]

At the same time Pascal recognised that we are indebted to the
ancients for our very superiority to them in the extent of our
knowledge. "They reached a certain point, and the slightest effort
enables us to mount higher; so that we find ourselves on a loftier
plane with less trouble and less glory." The attitude of Descartes
was very different. Aspiring to begin ab integro and reform the
foundations of knowledge, he ignored or made little of what had been
achieved in the past. He attempted to cut the threads of continuity
as with the shears of Atropos. This illusion [Footnote: He may be
reproached himself with scholasticism in his metaphysical
reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of the progress of
knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such doctrine
must take account of the past as well as of the future.

But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though
he did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were
imbued with the Cartesian spirit.

3.

The theological world in France was at first divided on the question
whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy
or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes.
The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it
was probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism
that did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It
was preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the
Discourse of Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was
published in 1640, and in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made
Jansenism a popular power. The Jansenist movement was in France in
some measure what the Puritan movement was in England, and it caught
hold of serious minds in much the same way. The Jesuits had
undertaken the task of making Christianity easy, of finding a
compromise between worldliness and religion, and they flooded the
world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose. Ex
opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine
of Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and
morals. He maintained that there can be no compromise with the
world; that casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is
naturally corrupt; and that in his most virtuous acts some
corruption is present.

Now the significance of these two forces--the stern ideal of the
Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers--is that they
both attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine
thought and conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of
French society from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Louis XV.
[Footnote: For the prevalence of "libertine" thought in France at
the beginning of the seventeenth century see the work of the Pere
Garasse, La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ou
pretendus tels, etc. (1623). Cp. also Brunetiere's illuminating
study, "Jansenistes et Cartesiens" in Etudes critiques, 4me serie.]
This libertinism had its philosophy, a sort of philosophy of nature,
of which the most brilliant exponents were Rabelais and Moliere. The
maxim, "Be true to nature," was evidently opposed sharply to the
principles of the Christian religion, and it was associated with
sceptical views which prevailed widely in France from the early
years of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits sought to make terms
by saying virtually: "Our religious principles and your philosophy
of nature are not after all so incompatible in practice. When it
comes to the application of principles, opinions differ. Theology is
as elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground
that her yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other
hand, fought uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the
time, maintaining the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise
or condescension. And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and
penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of
Louis XIV. escaped it. Its influence can be traced in the Maximes of
La Rochefoucauld and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through
its influence that Moliere found it difficult to get some of his
plays staged. It explains the fact that the court of Louis XIV.,
however corrupt, was decorous compared with the courts of Henry IV.
and Louis XV.; a severe standard was set up, if it was not observed.

The genius of Pascal made the fortunes of Jansenism. He outlived his
Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman. His
Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions of theology more or
less intelligible, and invited the general public to pronounce an
opinion on them. His lucid exposition interested every one in the
abstruse problem, Is man's freedom such as not to render grace
superfluous? But Pascal perceived that casuistry was not the only
enemy that menaced the true spirit of religion for which Jansenism
stood. He came to realise that Cartesianism, to which he was at
first drawn, was profoundly opposed to the fundamental views of
Christianity. His Pensees are the fragments of a work which he
designed in defence of religion, and it is easy to see that this
defence was to be specially directed against the ideas of Descartes.

Pascal was perfectly right about the Cartesian conception of the
Universe, though Descartes might pretend to mitigate its tendencies,
and his fervent disciple, Malebranche, might attempt to prove that
it was more or less reconcilable with orthodox doctrine. We need not
trouble about the special metaphysical tenets of Descartes. The two
axioms which he launched upon the world--the supremacy of reason,
and the invariability of natural laws--struck directly at the
foundations of orthodoxy. Pascal was attacking Cartesianism when he
made his memorable attempt to discredit the authority of reason, by
showing that it is feeble and deceptive. It was a natural
consequence of his changed attitude that he should speak (in the
Pensees) in a much less confident tone about the march of science
than he had spoken in the passage which I quoted above. And it was
natural that he should be pessimistic about social improvement, and
that, keeping his eyes fixed on his central fact that Christianity
is the goal of history, he should take only a slight and subsidiary
interest in amelioration.

The preponderant influence of Jansenism only began to wane during
the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, and till then it
seems to have been successful in counteracting the diffusion of the
Cartesian ideas. Cartesianism begins to become active and powerful
when Jansenism is beginning to decline. And it is just then that the
idea of Progress begins definitely to emerge. The atmosphere in
France was favourable for its reception.

4.

The Cartesian mechanical theory of the world and the doctrine of
invariable law, carried to a logical conclusion, excluded the
doctrine of Providence. This doctrine was already in serious danger.
Perhaps no article of faith was more insistently attacked by
sceptics in the seventeenth century, and none was more vital. The
undermining of the theory of Providence is very intimately connected
with our subject; for it was just the theory of an active Providence
that the theory of Progress was to replace; and it was not till men
felt independent of Providence that they could organise a theory of
Progress.

Bossuet was convinced that the question of Providence was the most
serious and pressing among all the questions of the day that were at
issue between orthodox and heretical thinkers. Brunetiere, his
fervent admirer, has named him the theologian of Providence, and has
shown that in all his writings this doctrine is a leading note. It
is sounded in his early sermons in the fifties, and it is the theme
of his most ambitious work, the Discourse on Universal History,
which appeared in 1681. [Footnote; It has been shown that on one
hand he controverts Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus, and on
the other the dangerous methods of Richard Simon, one of the
precursors of modern biblical criticism. Brunetiere, op. cit. 74-
85.] This book, which has received high praise from those who most
heartily dissent from its conclusions, is in its main issue a
restatement of the view of history which Augustine had worked out in
his memorable book. The whole course of human experience has been
guided by Providence for the sake of the Church; that is, for the
sake of the Church to which Bossuet belonged. Regarded as a
philosophy of history the Discourse may seem little more than the
theory of the De Civitate Dei brought up to date; but this is its
least important aspect. We shall fail to understand it unless we
recognise that it was a pragmatical, opportune work, designed for
the needs of the time, and with express references to current
tendencies of thought.

One main motive of Bossuet in his lifelong concern for Providence
was his conviction that the doctrine was the most powerful check on
immorality, and that to deny it was to remove the strongest
restraint on the evil side of human nature. There is no doubt that
the free-living people of the time welcomed the arguments which
called Providence in question, and Bossuet believed that to champion
Providence was the most efficient means of opposing the libertine
tendencies of his day. "Nothing," he declared in one of his sermons
(1662), "has appeared more insufferable to the arrogance of
libertines than to see themselves continually under the observation
of this ever-watchful eye of Providence. They have felt it as an
importunate compulsion to recognise that there is in Heaven a
superior force which governs all our movements and chastises our
loose actions with a severe authority. They have wished to shake off
the yoke of this Providence, in order to maintain, in independence,
an unteachable liberty which moves them to live at their own fancy,
without fear, discipline, or restraint." [Passage from Bossuet,
quoted by Brunetiere, op. cit. 58.] Bossuet was thus working in the
same cause as the Jansenists.

He had himself come under the influence of Descartes, whose work he
always regarded with the deepest respect. The cautiousness of the
master had done much to disguise the insidious dangers of his
thought, and it was in the hands of those disciples who developed
his system and sought to reconcile it at all points with orthodoxy
that his ideas displayed their true nature. Malebranche's philosophy
revealed the incompatibility of Providence--in the ordinary
acceptation--with immutable natural laws. If the Deity acts upon the
world, as Malebranche maintained, only by means of general laws, His
freedom is abolished, His omnipotence is endangered, He is subject
to a sort of fatality. What will become of the Christian belief in
the value of prayers, if God cannot adapt or modify, on any given
occasion, the general order of nature to the needs of human beings?
These are some of the arguments which we find in a treatise composed
by Fenelon, with the assistance of Bossuet, to demonstrate that the
doctrine of Malebranche is inconsistent with piety and orthodox
religion. They were right. Cartesianism was too strong a wine to be
decanted into old bottles. [Footnote: Fenelon's Refutation of
Malebranche's Traite de la nature et de la grace was not published
till 1820. This work of Malebranche also provoked a controversy with
Arnauld, who urged similar arguments.]

Malebranche's doctrine of what he calls divine Providence was
closely connected with his philosophical optimism. It enabled him to
maintain the perfection of the universe. Admitting the obvious truth
that the world exhibits many imperfections, and allowing that the
Creator could have produced a better result if he had employed other
means, Malebranche argued that, in judging the world, we must take
into account not only the result but the methods by which it has
been produced. It is the best world, he asserts, that could be
framed by general and simple methods; and general and simple methods
are the most perfect, and alone worthy of the Creator. Therefore, if
we take the methods and the result together, a more perfect world is
impossible. The argument was ingenious, though full of assumptions,
but it was one which could only satisfy a philosopher. It is little
consolation to creatures suffering from the actual imperfections of
the system into which they are born to be told that the world might
have been free from those defects, only in that case they would not
have the satisfaction of knowing that it was created and conducted
on theoretically superior principles.

Though Malebranche's conception was only a metaphysical theory,
metaphysical theories have usually their pragmatic aspects; and the
theory that the universe is as perfect as it could be marks a stage
in the growth of intellectual optimism which we can trace from the
sixteenth century. It was a view which could appeal to the educated
public in France, for it harmonised with the general spirit of self-
complacency and hopefulness which prevailed among the higher classes
of society in the reign of Louis XIV. For them the conditions of
life under the new despotism had become far more agreeable than in
previous ages, and it was in a spirit of optimism that they devoted
themselves to the enjoyment of luxury and elegance. The experience
of what the royal authority could achieve encouraged men to imagine
that one enlightened will, with a centralised administration at its
command, might accomplish endless improvements in civilisation.
There was no age had ever been more glorious, no age more agreeable
to live in.

The world had begun to abandon the theory of corruption,
degeneration, and decay.

Some years later the optimistic theory of the perfection of the
universe found an abler exponent in Leibnitz, whom Diderot calls the
father of optimism. [Footnote: See particularly Monadologie, ad fin.
published posthumously in German 1720, in Latin 1728; Theodicee,
Section 341 (1710); and the paper, De rerum originatione radicali,
written in 1697, but not published till 1840 (Opera philosophica,
ed. Erdmann, p. 147 sqq).] The Creator, before He acted, had
considered all possible worlds, and had chosen the best. He might
have chosen one in which humanity would have been better and
happier, but that would not have been the best possible, for He had
to consider the interests of the whole universe, of which the earth
with humanity is only an insignificant part. The evils and
imperfections of our small world are negligible in comparison with
the happiness and perfection of the whole cosmos. Leibnitz, whose
theory is deduced from the abstract proposition that the Creator is
perfect, does not say that now or at any given moment the universe
is as perfect as it could be; its merit lies in its potentialities;
it will develop towards perfection throughout infinite time.

The optimism of Leibnitz therefore concerns the universe as a whole,
not the earth, and would obviously be quite consistent with a
pessimistic view of the destinies of humanity. He does indeed
believe that it would be impossible to improve the universal order,
"not only for the whole, but for ourselves in particular," and
incidentally he notes the possibility that "in the course of time
the human race may reach a greater perfection than we can imagine at
present." But the significance of his speculation and that of
Malebranche lies in the fact that the old theories of degeneration
are definitely abandoned.
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