The Purpose of History

by Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge

It would seem to follow from these considerations that progress involves something more than the continuous accumulation of results in some specified direction, the piling of them up on one another in such a way that the total heap is more impressive than any of the portions added to it, and more illustrative, consequently, of a particular career. There might, indeed, be progress in this sense, if we divorced the conception of it from any standard which might intelligently judge it and set a value upon it. For the passage from seed to fruit, or any movement in time which attains an end illustrative of the steps by which it has been reached is in that sense progressive. But progress in this sense means no more than the fact of history. The career of things in time is precisely that sort of movement, and indicates the sense in which history is naturally purposeful. To call it progress adds nothing to the meaning of it unless a standard is introduced by which it can be measured. If we will risk again the treacherous distinction between man as intelligent and nature as simply forceful, we may say that progress rightfully implies some improvement of nature. We should then see that to improve nature involves the doing of something which nature, left to herself, does not do, and, consequently, that nature herself affords no indication of progress and no measure or standard of it. Nor does history afford them, if we divorce history from every moral estimate of it. For again, we may say that progress implies some improvement of history, so that to judge that there has been progress is not to discover that history by evolving has put a value upon itself. It is rather to judge that history has measured up to a standard applied to it. It seems idle, therefore, to suppose that history apart from such a standard can tell us what progress is or whether it has been made.

Yet history might do so if we are ready to admit man makes moral judgments as naturally as the sun shines. If his morality were some miracle, supernaturally imposed upon his natural career, we should need supernatural sanctions for it, for no natural achievement of his could justify it. These sanctions might justify him and what he does, if he conformed to them, but neither he nor his actions could give them natural warrant. They would express nothing after which he naturally aspires, and could, consequently, afford him no vision of a goal the attainment of which would crown his history with its own natural fruition. But if his morality is natural, his ideals and standards of judgment express what he has discovered he might be, and point out to him what his history might attain, had he knowledge and power enough to turn it in the direction of his own conscious purposes. Accordingly his history then might reveal both progress and the criterion of it. But it would do so not simply because it is a history, but because it is a history of a certain kind. Man makes progress because he can conceive what progress is, and use that conception as a standard of selection and as a goal to be reached. He participates in his own history consciously, and that means that he participates in it morally, with a sense of obligation to his career. For to be conscious implies the anticipation in imagination of results which are not yet attained, but which might be attained if appropriate means were found. Conceiving thus what he might be, man always has some standard and measure of what he is. He sees ahead of him, and moves, therefore, with care and discrimination. All the forces and impulses of his nature do not simply impel him on from behind; they also draw him on from before through his ability to conceive to what enlargement and fruition they might be carried. He condemns his life as miserable, only because he conceives a happiness which condemns it; and he calls it good, only because joys, once anticipated but now attained, have blessed it. Progress is thus characteristic of human history, because it is characteristic of man that progress should be conceived. His life is not only a life of nutrition and reproduction, or of pleasures and pains, but a life also of hopes and fears. And when hope and fear are not blind, but enlightened, his life is also a life of reason, for reason is the ability to conceive the ends which clarify the movements toward them.

"Without reason, as without memory, there might still be pleasures and pains in existence. To increase those pleasures and reduce those pains would be to introduce an improvement into the sentient world, as if a devil suddenly died in hell or in heaven a new angel were created. Since the beings, however, in which these values would reside, would, by hypothesis, know nothing of one another, and since the betterment would take place unprayed-for and unnoticed, it could hardly be called a progress; and certainly not a progress in man, since man, without the ideal continuity given by memory and reason, would have no moral being. In human progress, therefore, reason is not a casual instrument, having its sole value in its service to sense; such a betterment in sentience would not be progress unless it were a progress in reason, and the increasing pleasure revealed some object that could please; for without a picture of the situation from which a heightened vitality might flow, the improvement could be neither remembered nor measured nor desired."[9]

Carrying thus the conception and measure of progress in his own career, man can judge his history morally, and decide what progress he has made. He speaks aptly of "making" progress, recognizing in that expression that he uses the materials at his command for the ends he desires. But the materials at his command are not of his own making. He may, indeed, have modified them by former use, but in each instance of his using them they are always so much matter with a structure and character of their own. This fact puts the continuity of history in a new light. It forbids the attempt to conceive it as a movement pushing forward, as it were, into the future. We should conceive it rather from the point of view of the time process as we have already analyzed it. Then we should see that the continuity of history is the continuity of the results of the conversion of the possible into the actual—the part of the line which has been drawn. It comprises all that has been accomplished, conserved either by man's memory or by nature at large, and existing for continued modification or use. As such, it has its own structure, its own uniformities, and its own laws. To them every modification made is subject. That is why everything "connects on from what lies at hand," and why everything we do—even the expressions we use—points backward to what our ancestors have done. Since what they have done is only material for what we may do, it can not of itself explain our use of it, or judge our own values. An understanding of it should, however, make us wiser in the use of it. That is why we need contemporaneous experience and empirical science. We need to discover, either by our own experience or by reconstituting the experience of others, what happens when given material is used in a given way. Such discoveries are the only genuine explanations. They reveal the conditions to which actions must conform if the ends we desire are to be attained.

More generally expressed the continuity of history is the continuity of matter. It comprises in sum the structure to which every movement in time is subject. It makes up what we call the laws of nature conformably to which whatever is done must be done. But in itself it is inert and impotent. Activity of some sort must penetrate it, if there is to be anything effected. And what is effected reveals, when experimentally understood, the laws as limitations within which the control of any movement is possible.

A wall is built by laying stone on stone. It may be torn down and built again, or left a ruin. The placing or overthrow of every stone occurs as just that event but once, never to return, but the stones, though chiseled or worn in the handling, remain constant material for constant use. The result is a wall or a ruin, both of which illustrate the law of gravitation, but neither of which was produced by that law. That is what history is like. It is an activity which transforms the materials of the world without destroying them, and transforms them subject to laws of their own. The world is thus ever new, but never lawless. It is always fresh and always old. The present is, as Francis Bacon said, its real antiquity. Time is thus the arch-conservative and the arch-radical. Forever it revises its inheritance, but it is never quit of it.

Man's inheritance comprises both what he has derived from his ancestors, and also the world bequeathed to him from day to day. This material he uses with some knowledge of its laws, and with the conscious desire to convert it to his own ends. The kinds of progress he can make are thus relevant to the purposes he sets before him. Since the satisfaction of his physical needs and the desire of comfortable living require some mastery of physical resources, his progress can naturally be measured by the degree of success he makes in providing for satisfactions of this kind. Such progress is material progress, and its standards are economy and efficiency, or the attainment of the maximum result with the minimum of effort. This kind of progress is very diversified, embracing all the economic concerns of life, and much of society and the arts. But material prosperity is provisional. To be well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed, and even to have friends and the opportunity for unlimited amusement, these things have never been permanently regarded as defining human happiness to the full. Having these things man is still curious to know what he will do. Material progress indicates mastery of the necessities of his existence in order that he may then be free to act. If no free act follows upon such mastery, life loses its savor, and pleasures grow stale. Material progress would thus seem to be a preliminary to living well, but would not be living well itself. For man would be in a sorry plight if he succeeded in mastering the physical resources of his world, and then found nothing to do.

There seems to be nothing further for him to do than to reflect, or rather what he does further, flows from his reflections. Since he satisfies his bodily wants, not blindly, but consciously and through exercise of his intelligence, looking before and after, and trying to see his life from beginning to end, his reflections lead him to self-consciousness. He discovers his personality and makes the crucial distinction between his body and his soul. He speaks of his world, of his friends, of his life. He begins then to wonder for what purpose and by what right his possessive attitude is warranted; for unless he suppresses his reflections or yields himself thoughtlessly to his instincts and emotions, he can not fail to observe that things are no more rightfully his than another's, and that to belong rightfully to any one there must be some warrant drawn from a world with which his soul could be congenial. Even his soul begins to appear as not rightfully his, for why should he have now this haunting sense of belonging to another world, and of being a visitor to this in need of introduction and credentials? Reflection thus gives birth to a new kind of life in which also progress may be made. We call it rational progress, for it involves the attempt to justify existence by discovering sanctions which reason can approve, and to which all should give assent, because each soul must, on seeing them, recognize them as its own.

Reflection may lead man to do generous things. He may comfort the distressed, help the poor, relieve pain, or reform society. The world affords him abundant opportunity for his benefactions. He may create beautiful things which he and others can enjoy perfectly in the mere beholding of them. He may worship the gods, dimly conscious that they at least lead the perfect life, and that to dwell with them is immortality. Such exercises of the spirit yield him a new kind of happiness. But his danger lies in supposing that his existence can be thus externally justified: that others will bless him for his benefactions; that Beauty lurks hidden to be gloriously seen even at the risk of destruction; or that God intended him to be happy. If, however, he is saved from thus superstitiously converting the ideal possibilities of his life into justifying reasons why he should exist at all, he may see in them the fruition of all his history. Even his material progress gives him a hint of this, for it is genuine progress and justifies itself naturally through the attainment of its ends. For he needs no sanction to warm his body when cold, or to feed it when hungry. It is sufficient that he sees the end to be reached and finds the means to reach it. The hunger of the soul may be no less efficacious. Although these cravings tend to bring uneasiness and distaste into his animal enjoyments, they find some satisfaction if these enjoyments are idealized and transformed into a vision of what they might be freed from the material grossness which clogs them. Man then begins to conceive ideal love and friendship, and an ideal society. If only he were the free partaker of such perfect things, his existence would need no justification. In acknowledging this, however, he may rediscover himself and learn more adequately what the purpose of his history is. It is so to use the materials of the world that they will be permanently used in the light of the ideal perfection they naturally suggest. Man can conceive no occupation more satisfying and no happiness more complete. In entering upon it he makes rational progress. Its measure is the degree of success he attains in making his animal life minister to ideals he can own without reserve and love without regret.