That the notion of progress was conspicuous in the thought of this time is very evident. It was, indeed, in the foreground, and a host of writers testify to this, whom we cannot do much more than mention here. A number of them figured in the events of 1848. The social reformers all invoked “Progress” as justification for their theories being put into action. Bazard took up the ideas of Saint-Simon and expounded them in his Exposition de la Doctrine saint-simonienne (1830). Buchez, in his work on the philosophy of history, assumed progress (1833). The work of Louis Blanc on L’Organisation du Travail appeared in 1839 in a periodical calling itself Revue des Progrès. The brochure from Proudhon, on property, came in 1840, and was followed later by La Philosophie du Progrès (1851). Meanwhile Fourier’s Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées générales attempted in rather a fantastic manner to point the road to progress. Worthless as many of his quaint pages are, they were a severe indictment of much in the existing order, and helped to increase the interest and the faith in progress. Fourier’s disciple, Considérant, was a prominent figure in 1848. The Utopia proposed by Cabet insisted upon fraternité as the keynote to progress, while the volumes of Pierre Leroux, De l’Humanité, which appeared in the same year as Cabet’s volume, 1840, emphasised égalité as the essential factor. His humanitarianism influenced the woman-novelist, George Sand. This same watchword of the Revolution had been eulogised by De Tocqueville in his important study of the American Republic in 1834, and that writer had claimed égalité as the goal of human progress. All these men take progress as an undoubted fact; they only vary by using a different one of the three watchwords, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, to denote the kind of progress they mean. Meanwhile, Michelet and his friend Quinet combated the Hegelian conception of history maintained by Cousin, and they claimed liberté to be the watchword of progress. The confidence of all in progress is almost pathetic in its unqualified optimism. It is not remarkable that the events of 1851 proved a rude shock. Javary, a writer who, in 1850, published a little work, De l’Idée du Progrès, claimed that the idea is the supremely interesting question of the time in its relation to a general philosophy of history and to the ultimate destiny of mankind. This is fairly evident from the writers we have cited, without Javary’s remark, but it is worth noting as being the observation of a contemporary. With the mention of Reynaud’s Philosophie religieuse, upholding the principle of indefinite perfectability and Pelletan’s Profession du Foi du XIXe Siècle, wherein he maintained confidently and dogmatically that progress is the general law of the universe, we must pass on from these minor people to consider one who had a profounder influence on the latter half of the century, and who took over the notion of progress from Saint-Simon.
This was Comte, whose attitude to progress in many respects resembles that of Saint-Simon, but he brought to his work a mental equipment lacking in the earlier writer and succeeded, by the position he gave to it in his Positive Philosophy, in making the idea of progress one which subsequent thinkers could not omit from consideration.
According to Comte, the central factor in progress is the mental. Ideas, as Fouillée was later to assert, are the real forces in humanity’s history. These ideas develop in accordance with the “Law of the Three Stages,” already explained in our Introduction. In spite of the apparent clearness and simplicity of this law, Comte had to admit that as a general law of all development it was to some degree rendered difficult in its application by the lack of simultaneity in development in the different spheres of knowledge and social life. While recognising the mental as the keynote to progress, he also insisted upon the solidarity of the physical, intellectual, moral and social life of man, and to this extent admitted a connection and interaction between material welfare and intellectual progress. The importance of this admission lay in the fact that it led Comte to qualify what first appears as a definite and confident belief in a rectilineal progress. He admits that such a conception is not true, for there is retrogression, conflict, wavering, and not a steady development. Yet he claims that there is a general and ultimate progress about a mean line. The causes which shake and retard the steady progress are not all-powerful, they cannot upset the fundamental order of development. These causes which do give rise to variations are, we may note in passing, the effects of race, climate and political and military feats like those of Napoleon, for whom Comte did not disguise his hatred, styling him the man who had done most harm to humanity. Great men upset his sociological theories, but Comte was no democrat and strongly opposed ideas of Liberty and Equality. We have remarked upon his general attitude to his own age, as one of criticism and anarchy. In this he was probably correct, but he quite underestimated the extent and duration of that anarchy, particularly by his estimate of the decline and fall of Catholicism and of militarism, which he regarded as the two evils of Europe. The events of the twentieth century would have been a rude shock to him, particularly the international conflagration of 1914-1918. It was to Europe that Comte confined his philosophy of history and consequently narrowed it. He knew little outside this field.
He endeavoured, however, to apply his new science of sociology to the development of European history. His work contains much which is good and instructive, but fails ultimately to establish any law of progress. It does not seem to have occurred to Comte’s mind that there might not be one. This was the question which was presented to the thinkers after him, and occupies the chief place in the subsequent discussion of progress.
I
In the second half of the century the belief in a definite and inevitable progress appears in the work of those thinkers inspired by the positivist spirit, Vacherot, Taine and Renan. Vacherot’s views on the subject are given in one of his Essais de Philosophie critique,[[2]] entitled “Doctrine du Progrès.” These pages, in which sublime confidence shines undimmed, were intended as part of a longer work on the Philosophy of History. Many of Renan’s essays, and especially the concluding chapters of his work L’Avenir de la Science, likewise profess an extreme confidence in progressive development. Yet Taine and Renan are both free from the excessive and glowing confidence expressed by Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Comte. Undoubtedly the events of their own time reacted upon their doctrine of progress, and we have already noted the pessimism and disappointment which coloured their thoughts regarding contemporary political events. Both, however, are rationalists, and have unshaken faith in the ultimate triumph of reason.
[2] Published in 1864.
The attitude which Taine adopts to history finds a parallel in the fatalism and determinism of Spinoza, for he looks upon the entire life of mankind as the unrolling of a rigidly predetermined series of events. “Our preferences,” he remarks, “are futile; nature and history have determined things in advance; we must accommodate ourselves to them, for it is certain that they will not accommodate themselves to us.” Taine’s view of history reflects his rejection of freedom, for he maintains that it is a vast regulated chain which operates independently of individuals. Fatalism colours it entirely. It is precisely this attitude of Taine which raises the wrath of Renouvier, and also that of both Cournot and Fouillée, whose discussions we shall examine presently. They see in such a doctrine an untrue view of history and a theory vicious and detestable from a moral standpoint, although it doubtless, as Fouillée sarcastically remarks, has been a very advantageous one for the exploiters of humanity in all ages to teach and to preach to the people.
In passing from Taine’s fatalistic view of history to note his views on progress we find him asserting that man’s nature does not in itself inspire great optimism, for that nature is largely animal, and man is ever ready, however “civilised” he may appear to be, to return to his native primitive ferocity and barbarism. Man is not, according to Taine, even a sane animal, for he is by nature mad and foolish. Health and wisdom only occasionally reign, and so we have no great ground for optimism when we examine closely the nature of man, as it really is. Taine’s treatment of the French Revolution[[3]] shows his hostility to democracy, and he is sceptical about the value or meaning of the watchwords, “Rights of Man,” or Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. This last, he claims, is merely a verbal fiction useful for disguising the reality, which is actual warfare of all against all.
[3] “La Révolution,” in his large work, Les Origines de la France contemporaine.