Now, Kant does not assert that because our moral reason must assume the possibility of this hypothetical goal civilisation is therefore moving towards it. That would be a fallacy into which he was incapable of falling. Civilisation is a phenomenon, and anything we know about it can only be inferred from experience. His argument is that there are actual indications of progress in this desirable direction. He pointed to the contemporary growth of civil liberty and religious liberty, and these are conditions of moral improvement. So far his argument coincides in principle with that of French theorists of Progress. But Kant goes on to apply to these data the debatable conception of final causes, and to infer a purpose in the development of humanity. Only this inference is put forward as a hypothesis, not as a dogma.
It is probable that what hindered Kant from broaching his theory of Progress with as much confidence as Condorcet was his perception that nothing could be decisively affirmed about the course of civilisation until the laws of its movement had been discovered. He saw that this was a matter for scientific investigation. He says expressly that the laws are not yet known, and suggests that some future genius may do for social phenomena what Kepler and Newton did for the heavenly bodies. As we shall see, this is precisely what some of the leading French thinkers of the next generation will attempt to do.
But cautiously though he framed the hypothesis Kant evidently considered Progress probable. He recognised that the most difficult obstacle to the moral advance of man lies in war and the burdens which the possibility of war imposes. And he spent much thought on the means by which war might be abolished. He published a philosophical essay on Perpetual Peace, in which he formulated the articles of an international treaty to secure the disappearance of war. He considered that, while a universal republic would be the positive ideal, we shall probably have to be contented with what he calls a negative substitute, consisting in a federation of peoples bound by a peace-alliance guaranteeing the independence of each member. But to assure the permanence of this system it is essential that each state should have a democratic constitution. For such a constitution is based on individual liberty and civil equality. All these changes should be brought about by legal reforms; revolutions—he was writing in 1795—-cannot be justified.
We see the influence of Rousseau's Social Contract and that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, with whose works Kant was acquainted. There can be little doubt that it was the influence of French thought, so powerful in Germany at this period, that turned Kant's mind towards these speculations, which belong to the latest period of his life and form a sort of appendix to his philosophical system. The theory of Progress, the idea of universal reform, the doctrine of political equality—Kant examined all these conceptions and appropriated them to the service of his own highly metaphysical theory of ethics. In this new association their spirit was changed.
In France, as we saw, the theory of Progress was generally associated with ethical views which could find a metaphysical basis in the sensationalism of Locke. A moral system which might be built on sensation, as the primary mental fact, was worked out by Helvetius. But the principle that the supreme law of conduct is to obey nature had come down as a practical philosophy from Rabelais and Montaigne through Moliere to the eighteenth century. It was reinforced by the theory of the natural goodness of man. Jansenism had struggled against it and was defeated. After theology it was the turn of metaphysics. Kant's moral imperative marked the next stage in the conflict of the two opposite tendencies which seek natural and ultra-natural sanctions for morality.
Hence the idea of progress had a different significance for Kant and for its French exponents, though his particular view of the future possibly in store for the human species coincided in some essential points with theirs. But his theory of life gives a different atmosphere to the idea. In France the atmosphere is emphatically eudaemonic; happiness is the goal. Kant is an uncompromising opponent of eudaemonism. "If we take enjoyment or happiness as the measure, it is easy," he says, "to evaluate life. Its value is less than nothing. For who would begin one's life again in the same conditions, or even in new natural conditions, if one could choose them oneself, but of which enjoyment would be the sole end?"
There was, in fact, a strongly-marked vein of pessimism in Kant. One of the ablest men of the younger generation who were brought up on his system founded the philosophical pessimism—very different in range and depth from the sentimental pessimism of Rousseau—which was to play a remarkable part in German thought in the nineteenth century. [Footnote: Kant's pessimism has been studied at length by von Hartmann, in Zur Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismus (1880).] Schopenhauer's unpleasant conclusion that of all conceivable worlds this is the worst, is one of the speculations for which Kant may be held ultimately responsible. [Footnote: Schopenhauer recognised progress social, economic, and political, but as a fact that contains no guarantee of happiness; on the contrary, the development of the intelligence increases suffering. He ridiculed the optimistic ideals of comfortable, well-regulated states. His views on historical development have been collected by G. Sparlinsky, Schopenhauers Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, in Berner Studien s. Philosophie, Bd. lxxii. (1910).]
4.
Kant's considerations on historical development are an appendix to his philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof of his system. It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists, for whom his system was the point of departure, though they rejected its essential feature, the limitation of human thought. With Fichte and Hegel progressive development was directly deduced from their principles. If their particular interpretations of history have no permanent value, it is significant that, in their ambitious attempts to explain the universe a priori, history was conceived as progressive, and their philosophies did much to reinforce a conception which on very different principles was making its way in the world. But the progress which their systems involved was not bound up with the interest of human happiness, but stood out as a fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of the nature of thought.
The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote: Fichte's philosophy of history will be found in Die Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), lectures which he delivered at Berlin in 1804-5.] tends to a full realisation of "freedom"; that is its end and goal, but a goal that always recedes. It can never be reached; for its full attainment would mean the complete suppression of Nature. The process of the world, therefore, consists in an indefinite approximation to an unattainable ideal: freedom is being perpetually realised more and more; and the world, as it ascends in this direction, becomes more and more a realm of reason.