Part I
What Is Progress?
WHAT IS PROGRESS?
The object of the essays collected in this volume, with the exception of three which recount three curious episodes in Roman history, is the investigation of the most important differences between the ancient world and the modern, between Europe and America; in what way and in what particulars the civilisations of the ancients and of Europe have been modified respectively by the course of centuries and by the passage of the Atlantic. The essays were printed in the first instance in a monthly publication—Hearst’s Magazine—for the perusal of the multitude of hasty readers who are content to skip from argument to argument, and they are now republished in book form for the benefit of those readers who may care to dwell on each argument with greater deliberation. This volume may be considered as the bridge which connects the Greatness and Decline of Rome with a third work which, under the title of Between the Old World and the New, will be published shortly in New York and London.
A comparison between the ancient world and the modern, between Europe and America, suggested to a writer of ancient history by two long tours in the New World—such is the subject of this volume; and such is the subject of the further book which at an early date will again take up a number of the matters outlined in these papers and will submit these to more exhaustive consideration. But neither in this volume nor in its successor must the reader expect the comparison to resolve itself into a definite judgment; and if he imagines that he has discovered such a verdict, he may rest assured that he is mistaken. This book, and the other which will follow it, have been written with the express purpose of emphasising how vain it is to spend our time, as we do, passing judgment on the progress or decadence of the times, of nations, and of civilisations; of showing how easy it is to reverse all the reasonings by which, impelled by passions, interests, prejudices, or illusions, we strive now to exalt, now to abase ourselves by comparison with the ancients and by contrasting the inhabitants of one continent with those of another; of indicating what an easy and sure target irony and dialectic have in all the doctrines, opinions, and beliefs with which man endeavours to establish his by-no-means sure judgments—all the doctrines, including that of progress, at least in the sense in which progress is generally understood.
Including that of progress? the American reader will exclaim, with some misgiving. But are we not living in the age of progress? Can that idea of progress which every morning rises with the sun and sheds new splendour on the two worlds on either side of the Atlantic, and with the sun arouses them to their accustomed tasks—can it be that this idea is but an illusion? No. The author of these two books has not so much confidence in his own wisdom as to try to discover whether man is really progressing or not; whether he is moving down the valley of the centuries towards a fixed goal, or towards an illusion which retreats with each step he takes in its direction. There is one point only which the author proposes to make clear. There are at the present day, on the one hand, those who despise the present and worship the past, extol Europe and depreciate America; on the other hand, those who declare that they would not give one hour of the marvellous present in which they live for all the centuries of the past, and who rate America far more highly than they do Europe. The author sets out to show that the reason why the eternal disputes between the partisans of these divergent views are so inconclusive, is that in this discussion, as in so many others, each side postulates two different definitions of progress, and in their discussions of the past and of the present, of Europe and of America, they start from this dual definition as if it were single and agreed. The result is that they cannot understand and never will understand, if they discuss for a thousand years, each other’s point of view.
The worshippers of the present and the admirers of America argue, more or less consciously, from a definition of progress which would identify it with the increase of the power and speed of machines, of riches, and of our control over nature, however much that control may involve the frenzied squandering of the resources of the earth, which, while immense, are not inexhaustible. And their arguments are sound in their application to the present age, and also to America, if we grant that their definition of progress is the true one. For though steam- and electricity-driven machinery claims Europe as its birthplace, it has reached maturity and has accomplished and is accomplishing its most extraordinary feats in America, where, so to speak, it found virgin soil to exploit. But the opposite school indignantly denies that men are wasting their time and contributing nothing to the improvement and progress of the world, when they strive to embellish it or to instruct it, to soothe and to restrain its unbridled passions. In their view, the masterpieces of art, the great religions, the discoveries of science, the speculations of philosophy, the reform of laws, customs, and constitutions, are milestones along the road to progress. According to these, our age, intent only on making money, ought to be ashamed when it compares itself with the past. Machines are the barbarians of modern times, which have destroyed the fairest works of ancient civilisations. History will show the discovery of America to have been little less than a calamity.
So two persons who, starting from these two definitions of progress, set to work to judge the past and the present, Europe and America, will never succeed in understanding each other, any more than two persons who, wishing to measure a thing together, adopt two different measures. And the discussion will be the more vain and confused, the less clearly and precisely the thought of each disputant apprehends the primary definition of progress, which does duty as a measure for each. Indeed, this unfortunate state of affairs is commoner than is generally supposed at the present day, with the need for hurry which pursues us in every act and at every moment, and with the great whirl of ideas and words which eddies around us. To decide, then, whether our times are or are not greater than those of the ancients, whether America is superior to Europe or Europe to America, we must discover which of these two definitions is the true one. But is it possible to prove that one of these definitions of progress is true and the other false? How many to-day would dare to deny that man made the world progress when, by the use of fire, he launched on the path of victory the locomotive across the earth and the steamer across the ocean? Or when he captured and led through threads of copper the invisible force of electricity adrift in the universe? Or when he embellished the world with arts, and enlightened it with studies, and tempered the innate ferocity of human nature with laws, religion, and customs? It is clear that neither of these two definitions will succeed in putting the other out of court, until men are willing either to superhumanise themselves completely, renouncing material goods in favour of spiritual joys, or, sacrificing the latter to the former, to bestialise themselves. So long as men with few exceptions continue to desire riches and the control of nature, as well as beauty, wisdom, and justice, both these definitions of progress will be partially true. Each will present to us one aspect of progress. It will be impossible, if we adopt only one of the two, to decide whether we are progressive or decadent, whether America is worth more or less than Europe. Every epoch and people will seem at one time and another to be progressive or decadent, to be superior or inferior, according as the one or the other definition is the basis of judgment.
“But,” the reader will say, “why not then combine the two definitions in one? Why not say that progress is the increase of all the good things which man desires: of riches, of wisdom, of power, of beauty, of justice?” But in order to make of these two definitions a single complete and coherent definition, we should have to be certain that it is possible by a single effort to increase all the good things of life. Is it possible, and to what extent is it possible? That is a second grave question which this book and its successor endeavour to answer.
Many and various matters relating to Europe and America are discussed in this book. Still more various and diverse are the discussions in Between the Old World and the New, which presents a series of dialogues occupying the leisure hours of a two weeks’ voyage, in the course of which persons of different degrees of culture and diverse casts of thought discuss Hamlet and progress, machinery and Homer, the Copernican system and riches, science and Vedanta philosophy, Kant and love, Europe and America, Christian Science and sexual morality. These matters are discussed fitfully with mad rushes zigzag over the universe; and the fits and rushes have somewhat dismayed certain critics on this side of the Atlantic. “What a jumble!” they cry. “What an encyclopædia, what an enormity it is! What can Homer and machinery, Hamlet and America, Copernicus and emigration have in common?”