All the legitimate influences of Christianity were in the same direction. Christianity is the religion of Progress. Here is a distinctive feature, which we vainly seek in any Heathen faith professed upon earth. Confucius, in his sublime morals, taught us not to do unto others what we would have them not do unto us; but the Chinese philosopher did not declare the ultimate triumph of this law. It was reserved for the Sermon on the Mount to reveal the vital truth, that all the highest commands of religion and duty, drawing in their train celestial peace, and marking the final goal of all Progress among men, shall one day be obeyed. "For verily I say unto you," says the Saviour, "till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled."
There is nothing of good so vast or beautiful, nothing so distant or seemingly inaccessible, as to fall beyond the reach of these promises. Though imperfectly understood, or recognized, in the night of ignorance and prejudice, they were heralds of the dawn. In the advance of Modern Europe, they led the way, whispering, Onward forever! Long before Philosophy deduced the Law of Human Progress from the history of man, the Gospel silently planted it in the human heart. There it rested, influencing powerfully, though gently, the march of events.
Slowly did it pass from the formularies of devotion into the convictions of reason and the treasury of science. Strange blindness! They, who, repeating the Lord's Prayer, daily called for the coming of his kingdom on earth, who professed implicit faith in the final fulfilment of the Law, still continued in Heathen ignorance of the significance and spirit of the Prayer they daily uttered and of the Law they daily recognized. They did not perceive that the kingdom of the Lord was to come, and the Law to be fulfilled by a continuity of daily labor. As modern civilization gradually unfolded itself amidst the multiplying generations of men, they witnessed the successive manifestations of power,—but perceived no Law. They looked upon the imposing procession of events, but did not discern the rule which guided the mighty series. Ascending from triumph to triumph, they saw dominion extended by the discoveries of intrepid navigators,—saw learning strengthened by the studies of accomplished scholars,—saw universities opening their portals to ingenuous youth in all corners of the land, from Aberdeen and Copenhagen to Toledo and Ferrara,—saw Art put forth new graces in the painting of Raffaelle, new grandeur in the painting, the sculpture, and the architecture of Michel Angelo,—caught the strains of poets, no longer cramped by ancient idioms, but flowing sweetly in the language learned at a mother's knee,—received the manifold revelations of science in geometry, mathematics, astronomy,—beheld the barbarism of the barbarous Art of War changed and refined, though barbarous still, by the invention of gunpowder,—witnessed knowledge of all kinds springing to unwonted power through the marvellous agency of the printing-press,—admired the character of the Good Man of Peace, as described in that work of unexampled circulation, translated into all modern languages, the "Imitation of Christ," by Thomas à Kempis,—listened to the apostolic preaching of Wyckliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, Savonarola in Florence, Luther at Worms; and yet all these things, the harmonious expression of progressive energies belonging to Man, token of an untiring advance, earnest of a mightier Future, seemed to teach no certain lesson.
The key to this advance had not been found. It was not seen that the constant desire for improvement implanted in man, with the constant effort consequent thereon in a life susceptible of indefinite Progress, caused, naturally, under the laws of a beneficent God, an indefinite advance,—that the evil passions of individuals, or of masses, while retarding, could not permanently restrain this divine impulse,—and that each generation, by irresistible necessity, added to the accumulations of the Past, and in this way prepared a higher Future. To all ignorant of this tendency, history, instead of a connected chain, with cause and effect in natural order, is nothing but a disconnected, irregular series of incidents, like separate and confused circles having no common bond. It is a dark chaos, embroiled by "chance, high arbitress," or swayed by some accidental man, fortunate in position or power. Even Macchiavelli, the consummate historian and politician of his age,—Bodin, the able speculator upon Government,—Bossuet, the eloquent teacher of religion and history,—Grotius, the illustrious founder of the Laws of Nations,—whose large intelligence should have grasped the true philosophy of events,—all failed to recognize in them any prevailing law or governing principle.
It was reserved for a professor at Naples, Giambattista Vico, in the early part of the last century, to review the history of the Past, analyze its movements, and finally disclose the existence of a primitive rule or law by which these movements were effected. His work, entitled "The Principles of a New Science concerning the Common Nature of Nations,"[246] first published in 1725, constitutes an epoch in historical studies. Recent Italian admirers vindicate for its author a place among great discoverers, by the side of Descartes, Galileo, Bacon, and Newton.[247] Without undertaking to question, or to adopt, this lofty homage to a name little known, it will not be doubted, that, as author of an elaborate work devoted expressly to the philosophy of history, at a period when history was supposed to be without philosophy, he deserves honorable mention.
Vico taught regard not merely for the individual and the nation, but the race, and showed, that, whatever the fortunes of individuals, Humanity advances,—that no blind or capricious chance controls the course of human affairs, but that whatever is done proceeds directly, under God, from the forces and faculties of men, and thus can have no true cause except in the nature of things,—excluding, of course, the idea of chance. He recognized three principles at the foundation of civilization: first, the existence of Divine Providence; secondly, the necessity of moderating the passions; and, thirdly, the immortality of the soul: three primal truths, answering to three historical facts of universal acceptance,—religion, marriage, and sepulture. Three stages marked the history of mankind: first, the divine, or theocratic; next, the heroic; and, lastly, the human. These appeared in Antiquity, and were reproduced, as he fancied, in modern times. Ingenuity and novelty are stamped upon this exposition, which is elevated by the exclusion of chance and the recognition of God.
While recognizing Humanity as governed by law, and with a common dependence, the Neapolitan professor failed to perceive that this same law and this common dependence promise to conduct it through unknown and infinite stages. Believing monarchy a perfect government, he did not see beyond the time of kings. Like others before him, and even in our own day, he was perplexed by the treacherous image of youth, manhood, and age, which he applied to nations, as to the individual man. No discovery is complete, and that of Vico, while most ingenious and fruitful, failed to grasp the whole law of the Future.
Meanwhile a gigantic genius in Germany,—whose vision, no less comprehensive than penetrating, embraced the whole circumference of knowledge and reached into the undiscovered Future, to whom the complexities of mathematics, the subtilties of philology, the mazes of philosophy, the courses of history, the rules of jurisprudence, and the heights of theology were all equally familiar,—Leibnitz, that more than imperial conqueror in the realms of universal knowledge,—the greatest, perhaps, of Human Intelligences,—enunciated the Law of Progress in all the sciences and all the concerns of life. The Present, born of the Past, he said, is pregnant with the Future. It is by a sure series that we advance, using and enjoying all our gifts for health of body and improvement of mind. Everything, from the simplest substance up to man, progresses towards God, the Infinite Being, Source of all other beings; and in bold words, which may require explanation, he says, "Man seems able to arrive at perfection": Videtur homo ad perfectionem venire posse.[248]
Leibnitz saw the Law of Progress by intuition, and became its herald. But there is no reason to believe that he appreciated its transcendent importance as a rule of conduct, and submitted his great powers to its influence. He saw more than Vico, but he did not discern the practical guide he had discovered. And yet, recognizing this law, the gates of the Future were open to him, and he saw Man in distant perspective, arrived at heights of happiness which he cannot now conceive. The vision of Universal Peace was to him no longer a vision, but the practical idea of humane statesmen, while he bent his incomparable genius to the discovery of a new agent of intercourse among men,—the aspiration of other philosophers since his day,—a Universal Language, where the confusion of tongues will be forgotten, and the union of hearts be consummated in the union of speech.
Close upon Leibnitz came Lessing, whose genius, less universal, but more exquisite, made him the regenerator of German literature. His soul was touched by sympathy for all mankind, and he saw its sure advance. Almost by his side was Herder, gifted among a gifted people, who in his "Philosophy of History" portrays Humanity in its incessant progress from small beginnings of ignorance and barbarism, when wrong and war and slavery prevail, to the recognition of reason and justice as the rule of life. "There is nothing enthusiastical," he says in that work, which is a classic of German prose, "in the hope, that, wherever men dwell, at some future period will dwell men rational, just, and happy,—happy, not through the means of their own reason alone, but of the common reason of their whole fraternal race."[249] In these last words the Law of Progress is announced, with all its promises.