Progress and History

by Unknown

MORAL PROGRESS

L. P. Jacks

From the syllabus of all the lectures in this course I gather that every lecturer on the programme is dealing with the question of moral progress. This is inevitable. Each lecturer must show that the particular sort of progress he is dealing with is real or genuine progress, and this it cannot be unless it is moral. That is itself a significant fact and throws a valuable light on our subject. It shows that progress, as it is studied throughout the course, is not progress in the abstract, whatever that may mean, but progress for us constituted as we are; and since our constitution is essentially moral all progress that we can recognize as such must be moral also. Science, Industry, Government, might all claim progress on their own ground and in their own nature, but this would not prove progress as we understand the word, unless it could be shown further that these things contribute to human betterment in the highest sense of the word. Their progress might conceivably involve our regress.

To believe in moral progress as an historical fact, as a process that has begun, and is going on, and will be continued—that is one thing, and it is my own position. To believe that this progress is far advanced is another thing, and is not my position. While believing in Moral Progress as a fact, I also believe that we are much nearer to the beginnings of it than the end. We should do well to accustom ourselves to this thought. Many of our despairs, lamentations, and pessimisms are disappointments which arise from our extravagant notions of the degree of progress already attained. There has been a great deal of what I have called philosophic pharisaism. Perhaps it would be better called aeonic pharisaism. I mean the spirit in the present age which seems to say 'I thank thee, O God, that I am not as former ages: ignorant, barbaric, cruel, unsocial; I read books, ride in aeroplanes, eat my dinner with a knife and fork, and cheerfully pay my taxes to the State; I study human science, talk freely about humanity, and spend much of my time in making speeches on social questions'. Now there is truth in all this, but not the kind of truth which should lead us to self-flattery. A good rule for optimists would be this: 'Believe in moral progress, but do not believe in too much of it.' I think there would be more optimists in the world, more cheerfulness, more belief in moral progress, if we candidly faced the fact that morally considered we are still in a neolithic age, not brutes indeed any longer, and yet not so far outgrown the brutish stage as to justify these trumpetings. One of the beneficent lessons of the present war has been to moderate our claims in this respect. It has revealed us to ourselves as nothing else in history has ever done, and it has revealed, among other things, that moral progress is not nearly so advanced as we thought it was. It has been a terrible blow to the pharisaism of which I have just spoken. It has not discredited science, nor philosophy, nor government, nor anything else that we value, but it has shown that these things have not brought us as far as we thought. That very knowledge, when you come to think of it, is itself a very distinct step in moral progress. Before the war we were growing morally conceited; we thought ourselves much better, more advanced in morality, than we really were, and this conceit was acting as a real barrier to our farther advance. A sharp lesson was needed to take this conceit out of us—to remind us that as yet we are only at the bare beginnings of moral advance—and not, as some of us fondly imagined, next door to the goal. This sudden awakening to the truth is full of promise for the future.

And now what is the cause of these exaggerated notions which so many of us have entertained? I think they arise from our habit of letting ourselves be guided by words rather than by realities, by what men are saying rather than by what they are doing, by what teachers are teaching than by what learners are learning. If you take your stand in the realm of words, of doctrines, of theories, of philosophies, of books, preachings, and uttered ideals, you might make out a strong case for a high degree of moral progress actually attained. But if you ask how much of this has been learnt by mankind at large, and learnt in such a way as to issue in practice, you get a different story. We have attached too much importance to the first story and too little to the second. There has been a great deal of false emphasis in consequence. This false emphasis is especially prominent in the education controversy which is now going on—and the question of moral progress, by the way, is the question of education in the widest and highest sense of the term. People seem quite content so long as they can get the right thing taught. They don't always see that unless the right thing is taught by the right people and in the right way it will not be learnt. Now education is ultimately a question of what is being learnt, not of what is being taught. The process of learning is a very curious and complicated one, and it often happens that what goes in at the teacher's end comes out at the pupil's end in a wholly different form and with a wholly different value; and we have the highest authority for believing that what really counts is not so much that which goeth into a man but that which cometh out of him. That applies to all education—especially moral education. So that if you argue from what has gone into the human race in the way of moral teaching you may be greatly surprised and perhaps disappointed when you compare it with what has come out of the human race in the meantime. What has been taught is not what has been learnt. It has suffered a sea change in the process. Nor is the question wholly one of learning. There is the further question of remembering. I believe that a candid examination of the facts would convince us that the human race has proved itself a forgetful pupil. It has not always retained what it has learnt. Emerson has said that no account of the Holy Ghost has been lost. But how did Emerson find that out? The only accents Emerson knew of were those which the world happened to have remembered. If any had been lost in the meantime Emerson naturally would not know of their existence. I have heard of a functionary, whose precise office I am not able to define, called 'the Lord's Remembrancer'. It would be a great help to Moral Progress if we had in modern life a People's Remembrancer. His place is occupied to some extent by the study of history, and for that reason one could wish for the sake of Moral Progress that the study of history were universal. For my own part I seldom open a book of history without recovering what for me is a lost account of the Holy Ghost. Next to conceit I reckon forgetfulness as the greatest enemy of Moral Progress. I suppose Rudyard Kipling had something of this in mind when he wrote his poem—

Lord God of Hosts be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

Another cause of our over-estimate of Moral Progress is that we have thought too much of the abstract State and too little of the actual States now in being. Our devotion to 'the' State as an ideal has led us to overlook the fact that many actual States represent a form of morality so low that it is doubtful if it can be called morality at all. In their relations with one another they display qualities which would disgrace the brutes. And the worst of it is that at times these States drag down to their own low level the morality of the individuals belonging to them. Thus at the present moment we see quite decent Englishmen and quite decent Germans tearing one another to pieces like mad dogs, a thing they would never dream of doing as between man and man, and which they do only because they are in the grip of forces alien to their own nature. We have overestimated Progress by thinking only of what is happening inside each of the States. We have forgotten to consider the bearing of the States to one another, which remains on a level lower than that of individuals.

The impression has gone abroad that the nations of the world need to take only one step from the position where they now stand to accomplish the final unity of all mankind. Taking any one of these nations—our own for example—we can trace the steps by which the warring elements within it have become reconciled, until finally there has emerged that vast unitary corporation—the British Empire. So with all the others. What more is required therefore than one step further in the same direction, to join up all the States into a single world State. But I am bound to think we are too hasty in treating the unity of mankind as needing only one step more. It is not so easy as all that. When you study the process by which unity has been brought about in the various European communities you find that motives of conquest and corresponding motives of defence have had a great deal to do with it. Germany, for example, was built up and now holds together as a fighting unit. Whether Germany and the other States would still maintain their cohesion when they were no longer fighting units, and when the motives of conquest and defence were no longer in operation, is a question on which I should not like to dogmatize either way. Certainly we have no right to assume offhand that the unifying process which has given the nations the mass cohesion and efficiency they require for holding their own against enemy States would still remain in full power when there were no longer any enemy States to be considered.

But what do we mean by Progress?

Progress may be defined as that process by which a thing advances from a less to a more complete state of itself. Now whether this process is a desirable one or not obviously depends on the nature of the thing which is progressing. Take the largest and most inclusive of all things—the whole world. And now suppose philosophy to have proved that the world, the whole world, is advancing from a less to a more complete state of itself—which as a matter of fact is what the doctrine of evolution claims to have proved. Ought I to rejoice in this discovery? Will it give me satisfaction? That clearly depends on the nature of the world. If I am antecedently assured that the world is good, I shall naturally rejoice on hearing that it is advancing from a less to a more complete state of itself. But if the nature of the world is evil, what reason can I possibly have for rejoicing in its evolution? Assuming the world to be evil in its essential nature, I for my part, if I were consulted in the matter, would certainly give my vote against its being allowed to advance from a less to a more complete state of itself. The less such a world progresses the easier it will be for moral beings to live in it. Our interest lies in its remaining as undeveloped as possible.