Yet in spite of these considerations Taine believes in a definitely guaranteed progress. Man’s lower nature does not inspire optimism, but his high power of reason does, and it is on this faith in reason that Taine confidently founds his assertions regarding progress. He sees in reason the ultimate end and meaning of all else. The triumph of reason is an ideal goal to which, in spite of so many obstacles, all the forces of the universe are striving. In this intellectual progress, this gradual rationalisation of mankind, Taine sees the essential element of progress upon which all other goods depend. The betterment of social conditions will naturally follow; it is the spiritual and mental factor which is the keynote of progress Reason, he contends, will give us a new ethic, a new politic and a new religion.
Renan shares with Taine the belief in reason and its ultimate triumph. His views on progress are, however, more discursive, and are extremely interesting and suggestive. He was in his later years shrewd enough to discover the difficulties of his own doctrine. Thus although he believed in a “guaranteed” progress, Renan marks a stage midway between the idea of progress as held by Comte and Taine on the one hand, and by Cournot and Renouvier on the other.
His early book, L’Avenir de la Science, glows with ardent belief in this assured progress, which is bound up with his confidence in science and rationality. “Our creed,” he there declares, “is the reasonableness of progress.” This idea of progress is almost as central a point in Renan’s thought as it was in that of Comte, and he gave it a more metaphysical significance. His general philosophy owes much to history, and for him the philosophy of history is the explanation of progress. By this term he means an ever-growing tendency to perfection, to fuller consciousness and life, to nobler, better and more beautiful ends. He thinks it necessary to conceive of a sort of inner spring, urging all things on to fuller life. He seems here to anticipate vaguely the central conception of Guyau and of Bergson. But, like Taine, Renan founds his doctrine of progress on rationalism. He well expresses this in one of his Drames philosophiques (L’Eau de Jouvence), through the mouth of Prospero, who represents rational thought. This character declares that “it is science which brings about social progress, and not progress which gives rise to science. Science only asks from society to have granted to it the conditions necessary to its life and to produce a sufficient number of minds capable of understanding it.”[[4]] In the preface written for this drama he declares that science or reason will ultimately succeed in creating the power and force of government in humanity.
[4] L’Eau de Jouvence, Act 4, Scene I., Conclusion.
These thoughts re-echo many of the sentiments voiced on behalf of progress by Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Comte. It is interesting, however, to note an important point on which Renan not only parts company with them, but ranges himself in opposition to them. This point is that of socialism or democracy, call it what one will.
In the spring of 1871 Renan was detained at Versailles during the uproar of the Commune in Paris, and there wrote his Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques, which were published five years later. In these pages certain doctrines of progress and history are set forth, notably in the “dialogues of three philosophers of that school whose ground-principles are the cult of the ideal, the negation of the supernatural and the investigation of reality.” Renan raises a discussion of the end of the world’s development. The universe, he maintains, is not devoid of purpose: it pursues an ideal end. This goal to which the evolutionary process moves is the reign of reason. But there are striking limitations to this advance. From this kingdom of reason on the earth the mass of men are shut out. Renan does not believe in a gradual improvement of the mass of mankind accompanied by a general rationalisation which is democratic. The truth is that Renan was an intellectual aristocrat and, as such, he abhorred Demos. His gospel of culture, upon which he lays the greatest stress, is for the few who are called and chosen, while the many remain outside the pale, beyond the power of the salvation he offers. The development of the democratic idea he looks upon as thoroughly mischievous, inasmuch as it involves, in his opinion, degeneration, a levelling down to mediocrity. In his philosophy of history he adopts an attitude somewhat akin to that of Carlyle in his worship of Great Men. The end of history is, Renan states, the production of men of genius. The great mass of men, the common stuff of humanity, he likens to the soil from which these Great Ones grow. The majority of men have their existence justified only by the appearance upon the scene of “Heroes of Culture.” In this teaching the parallelism to the gospel of the Superman is apparent, yet it seems clear that although Renan’s man of culture despises the ignorance and vulgarity of the crowd, he does so condescendingly as a benefactor, and is free from the passionate hatred and scorn to which Nietzsche’s Superman is addicted. Nevertheless, Renan’s attitude of uncompromising hostility to democratic development is very marked. He couples his confidence in Science to his anti-democratic views, and affirms the “Herd” to be incapable of culture. Although the process of rationalisation and the establishment of the kingdom of reason is applicable only to the patrician and not to the plebs, this process is claimed by Renan to be capable of great extension, not in the number of its adherents but in the extent of culture. In this final reign of reason, instinctive action and impulse will be replaced by deliberation, and science will succeed religion.
His famous letter to Berthelot includes a brief statement of his views on progressive culture, which, for him, constitutes the sign of progress. “One ought never,” he writes, “to regret seeing clearer into the depths.” By endeavouring to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up capital of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors, who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time. The true men of progress, he claims, are those who profess as their starting-point a profound respect for the past. Renan himself was a great lover of the past, yet we find him remarking in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse that he has no wish to be taken for an uncompromising reactionist. “I love the past, but I envy the future,” and he thinks that it would be extremely pleasant to live upon this planet at as late a period as possible. He appears jealous of the future and of the young, whose fate it will be to know what will be the outcome of the activities of the German Emperor, what will be the climax of the conflict of European nationalities, what development socialism will take. His shrewd mind had alreadv foreseen in a measure the possible development of German militarism and of Bolshevism. He regards the world as moving towards a kind of “Americanism,” by which he means a type of life in which culture and refinement shall have little place. Yet, although he has a horror and a dread of democracy, he feels also that the evils accompanying it may be, after all, no worse than those involved in the reactionary dominance of nobles and clergy.
Humanity has not hitherto marched, he thinks, with much method. Order he considers to be desirable, but only in view of progress. Revolutions are only absurd and odious, he asserts in L’Avenir de la Science, to those who do not believe in progress. Yet he claims that reaction has its place in the plan of Providence, for it works unwittingly for the general good. “There are,” to quote his metaphor, “declivities down which the rôle of the traction engine consists solely in holding back.”
Renan thinks that if democratic ideas should secure a clear triumph, science and scientific teaching would soon find the modest subsidies now accorded them cut off. He fears the approach of an era of mediocrity, of vulgarity, in fact, which will persecute the intellectuals and deprive the world of liberty. He is not thoughtlessly optimistic; he was far too shrewd an intellect for that. Our age, he suggests, may be regarded in future as the turning point of humanity’s history, that point where its deterioration set in, the prelude to its decline and fall. But he asserts, as against this, that Nature does not know the meaning of the word “discouragement.” Humanity, proving itself incapable of progress, but only capable of further deterioration, would be replaced by other forms. “We must not, because of our personal tastes, our prejudices perhaps, set ourselves to oppose the action of our time. This action goes on without regard to us and probably is right.”[[5]] The future of science is assured. With its progress, Renan points out, we must reckon upon the decay of organised religion, as professed by sects or churches. The disappearance of this organised religion will, however, result most assuredly in a temporary moral degeneration, since morality has been so conventionally bound up with the Church. An era of egoism, military and economic in character, will arise and for a time prevail.
[5] Preface to Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse.