Progress and History

by Unknown

Obvious as this seems there are some evolutionists who take a rather different view. They seem to think that any sort of world, no matter what its nature might be, would ultimately become a good world if it were allowed to develop its nature far enough. It is just the fact of its continually becoming more of itself that makes it good. But this would compel us to abandon our definition that progress is the advance of a thing from a less to a more complete state of itself. For if itself were a bad self to begin with all such advance of itself would only make it worse. It is possible that an essentially bad man like Iago might be converted into a good one, but not by advancing from a less to a more complete state of himself as he originally was—unless indeed we change the hypothesis and suppose that he was not essentially bad to begin with. So with the world at large. Our nature being what it is, namely moral, we must first be convinced that the world is in principle good before we can derive the least satisfaction from knowing that it is advancing from a less to a more complete state of itself. The alternative doctrine makes a breach in the doctrine of progress which is inconsistent with its original form. A thing develops by retaining its essential nature—that is the original form. But a bad world which develops into a good one doesn't retain its essential nature. There comes a point somewhere when the next step of progress can be achieved only by the thing dropping its original nature—a point at which the thing is no longer becoming more of its former self, which was bad, but is ceasing to be its former self altogether and becoming something else, which is good.

Let us apply this to progress in three specific directions—Science, the Mechanical Arts, and Government.

We find that the progress of science has enormously increased man's power over the forces of nature. Is it a good thing that man's power over the forces of nature should be increased? That surely depends on the manner in which this power is used, and this depends again on the moral nature of man. When we observe, as we may truly observe, especially at the present time, that of all the single applications which man has made of science, the most extensive and perhaps the most efficient is that of devising implements for destroying his brother man, it is at least permissible to raise the question whether the progress of science has contributed on the whole to the progress of humanity. Had it not been for the progress of science, which has enormously increased the wealth of the world, it is doubtful if this war, which is mainly a war about wealth, would have taken place at all. Or if a war had broken out, it would not have involved the appalling destruction of human life and property we are now witnessing—such that, within a space of two years, about six million human beings have been killed, thirty-five millions wounded, and wealth destroyed to the extent of about fifteen thousand millions sterling—though some say it is very much more. Science taught us to make this wealth: science has also taught us how to destroy it. When one thinks of how much of this is attributable to the progress of science, I say it is permissible to raise the question whether man is a being who can safely be entrusted with that control over the forces of nature which science gives him. What if he uses this power, as he plainly can do, for his own undoing? To ask this, as we can hardly help asking, is to transfer the question of scientific progress into the sphere of morality. It is conceivable that the progress of science might involve for us no progress at all. It might be, and some have feared that it may become, a step towards the self-destruction of the human race.

Take the mechanical arts. The chief effects of progress in the mechanical arts have been an enormous increase in the material wealth of mankind, and, partly consequent upon this, a parallel growth of population in the industrial countries of the world. It is by no means clear that either of these things constitutes a definite step in human progress. Consider the growth of population—the immense increase in the total bulk and volume of the human race. Whether this constitutes a clear gain to humanity obviously cannot be answered without reference to moral considerations. To increase the arithmetical quantity of life in the world can be counted a gain only if the general tendencies of life are in the right direction. If they are in the wrong direction, then the more lives there are to yield to these tendencies the less reason has the moralist to be satisfied with what is happening. No one, so far as I know, has ever seriously maintained that the end and aim of progress is to increase the number of human beings up to the limit which the planet is able to support; though some doctrines if pressed to their conclusion would lead to that, notably the doctrine that all morality rests ultimately on the instinct for the preservation and the reproduction of life. We have first to be convinced that the human race is not on the wrong road before we can look with complacency on the increase of its numbers. We may note in this connexion that mankind possesses no sort of collective control over its own mass or volume. The mass or total number of lives involved is determined by forces which are not subject to the unitary direction of any existing human will either individual or collective. This applies not only to the human race as a whole, but to particular communities. Their growth is unregulated. They just come to be what they are in point of size. This fact seems to me a very important one to bear in mind when we talk of the progress of science giving us control over the forces of nature. So far no state, no government, no community has won any effective control over that group of the forces of nature which determine the total size of the community in question. It is an aspect of human destiny which appears to be left to chance; and yet when we consider what it means, is there any aspect of human destiny on which such tremendous consequences depend? And ought we not to consider this before claiming, as we so often claim, that the progress of science has given us control of the forces of nature? It is strange that this point has not been more considered, especially by thinkers who are fond of the word 'humanity'—'the good of humanity'—or the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Humanity has an arithmetical or quantitative side, and the good of humanity surely depends, to some extent, on how much humanity there is. I can imagine many things which might be good for a Greek city state of 10,000 souls which would not be good, or not good in the same sense, for a community of 100,000,000 souls. Surely it needs no reasoning to prove that our power to do our duty to others is affected by the number of others to whom duty has to be done—it makes a difference where there are 10,000 of men or 100,000,000. Similarly with the greatest happiness of the greatest number. What is the greatest number? A great deal that has been said about this would not have been said if we had considered that the greatest number itself is left at the disposal of forces outside the present scope of our own will. Even the proposal to sell our goods and give the proceeds to the poor would surely be affected, from the moral point of view, by the number of the poor who were to receive the distribution. Were this so small that the poor would get five pounds apiece it would be one question; were it so large that they would receive a halfpenny apiece it would be another question. Thus we may conclude that the progress of the mechanical arts with the consequent increase in the bulk of the human race has not solved the problem of moral progress, but only placed that problem in a new and more perplexing context. A similar conclusion would meet us if we were to consider the parallel increase of the wealth of the world. The moral question is not about the amount of wealth the world possesses, but about the way men spend it and the use they make of it. Industrially speaking, the human race has made its fortune during the last hundred years. But has it made up its mind what to do with the fortune? And has its mind been made up in the right way? To raise these questions is to see that progress from the economic point of view may be the reverse of progress from the moral. But I shall not further enlarge upon this—the theme being too familiar.

The third question which relates itself to moral progress is that of Government. Now Government, I need hardly say, is not an end in itself. It is a device which man has set up to help him in attaining the true end of his life. To make up our minds how we ought to be governed is therefore impossible unless we have previously made up our minds how we ought to live. What might be a good government for a people whose end is industrial success might be a very bad one for a people who had some other end in view. Well, then, are we well governed at the present time? Are we better governed than we were? Has progress taken place in this department? Plainly we cannot answer these questions unless we have chosen our end in life and are morally satisfied with it. In the history of modern states we discover a tendency, more strongly marked in some quarters than in others, towards that form of democracy which is called responsible self-government. Government of the people, for the people, by the people. The people are going to govern themselves. But they may do so in a thousand different ways—each of which has a different moral value. A people may go wrong just as fatally in governing itself as in being governed by some external authority. I confess that nothing I can learn from the history of government entirely reassures me on this point. I see everywhere progress towards organization, but then one is bound to ask on what ulterior end is this organization directed? I see everywhere a growing subordination of the individual to the State. This may or may not be a very good thing. What kind of State is it to which the individual is becoming subordinated? There are great differences among them—some seem to me, one in particular at the present time, thoroughly bad, and I cannot see that the individual gains morally by being subordinated to such a State—at least if he gains in one direction he loses more in another.

Even the social unity which Governments are capable of achieving must not be too hastily translated into moral progress. We are entitled to ask several questions before the one can be equated with the other. To begin with, do men know what they want to achieve by their unified life? And if they do know what they want, have we not still the right to criticize its moral value and say 'this is right' or this is wrong? Should the time ever come when the common will of mankind should get itself expressed by the decrees of a universal democracy, would moral criticism be at an end so far as the said decrees were concerned? For my part I cannot see that it would. Perhaps it were truer to say that only then would moral criticism effectively begin. As things now are, we are prevented from criticizing the common will because none of us knows what exactly the common will demands. But if it could get itself expressed and defined by the decrees of a perfect democracy we should know. Those decrees would reveal the human community to itself, and it is possible that the revelation would not be altogether agreeable to our moral sense. We might then discover that the common will is capable of being grossly immoral. So far it has been impossible for us to make this discovery because no organ exists for expressing the common will on the human scale, and even those which express it on the national scale are not perfect. I am far from saying the discovery would be made; but I know of no line of argument which rules it out as impossible. Meanwhile we are scarcely justified in regarding the common will as necessarily moral until we know more than we do of what precisely it is that the common will aims at and intends to achieve. To back the common will through thick and thin, as some of our philosophers seem disposed to do, is a dangerous speculation—it might perhaps be described as putting your money on a dark horse.

This leads me to say a word concerning a phrase which has been much in use of late—the Collective Wisdom of Mankind, or the Collective Wisdom of the State. Progress is sometimes defined as a gradual approach to a state of things where this collective wisdom rules the course of events. And collective wisdom is sometimes represented as vastly wiser than that possessed by any individual, even the wisest.

Now if this really is so it seems pretty obvious that, when the collective wisdom speaks, no individual can have the right of appeal. What are you, what am I, that either of us should set up our private intelligence against the intelligence of forty million of our fellow citizens? That surely would be a preposterous claim. The collective wisdom must know best: at least it knows much better than you or I.

But is the collective wisdom of the State so immensely superior to that of the individual, and of necessity so? Have we any means of bringing the matter to the test? It is extremely difficult to do so. Not until we make the experiment do we find how rare are the occasions of which we can say that then and there the collective wisdom of the community fairly and fully expressed itself. Acts of Parliament are not good examples. They usually represent not the collective wisdom of the whole community, but the wisdom of the majority after it has been checked, modified, and perhaps nullified by the opposing wisdom of an almost equal minority. Take as an example the history of the Irish Question. How difficult it is to put one's finger on any moment in that tangled story and say that then and there the collective wisdom of the community knew what it wanted to do and did it! So with almost everything else.

Now if there be such a thing as the collective wisdom of the State I suppose that the moment when we are most likely to find it in action is the moment when one State has dealings with another State. That surely is a fair test. If States possess collective wisdom they ought to show its existence and measure when they confront one another as States—when State calls to State across the great deeps of international policy. What should we say of any State which claimed collective wisdom only when dealing with its own individual members—with you and me—but dropped the claim when the question was one of reasonable intercourse with another State similarly endowed? This we should say is a very dubious claim.