Progress and History

by Unknown

J.A. Smith

To contend that there has been progress in Philosophy may seem but a desperate endeavour. For the reproach against it of unprogressiveness is of long standing: where other forms of human knowledge have undoubtedly advanced, Philosophy, in modern times at any rate, has (so it is said) remained stationary, propounding its outworn problems, its vain and empty solutions. Because of this failure it has by common consent been deposed from its once proud position at the head of the sciences and obliged to confess, in the words of the Trojan queen:

modo maxima rerum
Nunc trahor exul inops.

The charge of unprogressiveness is not made against it by its foes alone; the truth of it is admitted by some of its best friends. If Voltaire exclaims 'O métaphysique, métaphysique, nous sommes aussi avancés qu'aux temps des Druides', Kant sadly admits the fact, sets himself to diagnose its cause, and if possible to discover or devise a remedy. Yet we must remember that it was philosophers who first descried those currents in the world of events which the non-philosophic, borrowing the name from them, call Progress, who first attempted to determine their direction and the possible goal of their convergence, and laboured to clear their own and others' minds in regard to the meaning, to capture which the name was thrown out as a net into the ocean of experience. Nor must we forget that it was in their own chosen field—the world of human thoughts and actions—that they from the beginning seemed to themselves to find the surest evidence of the reality of Progress. While the world that surrounded and hemmed them and their fellows in might or must be regarded as unchanging and unchangeable, doomed for ever to reproduce and monotonously reiterate whatsoever it had once done and been, the mind or spirit of Man in its own realm seemed capable of going beyond all its past achievements and rising to new heights, not merely here and there or in isolated instances but in such numbers or masses as to raise for long periods of history the general level of human efficiency and welfare. It is true that many of those who noted these advances or profited by them did not always admit that they took place in, or were due to the agency of, Philosophy. The advances were most often credited to other powers and the new territory claimed by their representatives. The contributions made by Philosophy to the general improvement of human life were and are obscure, difficult to trace, easily missed or forgotten. It came about that the philosopher was misconceived as one indifferent to ordinary human interests and disdainful of the more obvious advantages secured by others, pressing and urging forward and upward into a cloudland where the light was too dim for the eyes of man and the paths too uncertain for his feet. Unsatisfied with the region where Man had learned by the slow and painful lessons of experience to build himself a habitable city he dreamed of something higher, aspiring to explore beyond and above where the light of that experience shone and illuminated. Perhaps the main idea that the name of Philosophy now to most suggests is that of a Utopian ideal of knowledge so wide and so high that it must be by sane and sober minds pronounced for ever set beyond the reach of human faculty, an ideal which perhaps we cannot help forming and which constantly tempts us forward like a mirage, but which like a mirage leads us into waste and barren places, so much so that it is no small part of human wisdom to resist its subtle seductions and to confine our efforts to the pursuit of such ends as we may reasonably regard as well within the compass of our powers of thought and action. It is folly, we are told, to adventure ourselves upon the uncharted seas into which philosophers invite us, to waste our lives and perhaps break our hearts in the vain search for a knowledge that is for ever denied us. After all, there is much that we can know, and in the knowledge of which we can better the estate of Man, relieving him from many of his most pressing terrors and distresses. To cherish other hopes is to deceive ourselves to our own and our fellows' undoing, to refuse them our help and fail to play our part in the common business of mankind. There is surely in the world enough suffering and sorrow and sin to engage all our energies in dealing with them, nor are our endeavours to do so so plainly fruitless as to discourage from perseverance in them. Where in this task our hearts do faint and fail, are there not other means than the discredited nostrum of Philosophy to revive our hopes and recruit our forces? It was only, we are sometimes reminded, in the darkest days of human history that men turned desperately to Philosophy for comfort and consolation—how surely and demonstrably, we are told, in vain! When other duties are so urgent and immediate, have we even the right to consume our energies otherwise than in their direct discharge? And is it not presumption to ask for any further light than that which is vouchsafed to us in the ordinary course of experience or, if that is insufficient, in and by Religion?

Much in this plea for a final relinquishment of aid from Philosophy in the furtherance of human progress is plausible and more than plausible. Yet the hope or, if you will, the dream of attaining some form or kind or degree of knowledge which the sciences do not and cannot supply and perhaps deny to be possible, some steadiness and firmness of assurance other and beyond the confidence of religious faith, is not yet extinct, is perhaps inextinguishable, and though it often takes extravagant and even morbid and repulsive forms, still haunts and tantalizes many, nor these the least wise or sane of our kind, so that they count all the labour they spend upon its search worth all the pains. Not for themselves alone do they seek it; they view themselves as not alone in the quest, but engaged in a matter of universally human moment. In the measure in which they count themselves to have attained any result they do not hoard it or grudge it to others. The notion of philosophic truth as something to be shared and enjoyed only by a few—as what is called 'esoteric'—is no longer in vogue and is indeed felt to involve an essential self-contradiction; rather it is conceived as something the value of which is assured and enhanced by being imparted. Those who believe themselves to be by nature or (it may be) accident appointed to the office of its quest, by no means feel that they are thereby divided from their fellows as a peculiar people or a privileged and exclusive priesthood, but much rather as fellow servants enlisted and engaged in the public service of mankind. Least of all do they believe that their efforts are foredoomed to inevitable failure, that progress therein is not to be looked for, or that they and their predecessors have hitherto made no advance towards what they and, as they also believe, all men sought and still seek. To them the history of Philosophy for say the last two thousand years is not the dreary and dispiriting narrative of repeated error and defeat, but the record of a slow but secure and steady advance in which, as nowhere else, the mind of Man celebrates and enjoys triumphs over the mightiest obstacles, kindling itself to an ever-brightening flame. Reviewing its own past in history the spirit of Philosophy sees its own inner light, which is its act and its essence, constantly increasing, spreading ever wider into the circumambient dark, and touching far-off and hitherto undiscovered peaks with the fire of a coming dawn. In place of the starlight of Science or the moonlight of Religion it sees a sun arise flooding the world with light and warmth and life. High hopes, high claims; but can they be made good, or even rationally entertained? Suffice it here that they be openly avowed and proclaimed to be laid up in the heart of the philosophic spirit, 'dreaming', and yet with waking eyes, 'of things to come'. Or rather shall we not say, seeing that its eyes are unsealed and the vision therefore no dream, beholding a present—an ever-present—Reality?

It was Philosophy, or philosophers, as I have said, that first discerned the fact of Progress, named it, and divined its lineaments. To Philosophy the name and notion of Progress belongs as of right—the right of first occupation. Merely to have invented a name for the fact is no small service, for thus the fact was fixed for further study and examination. But with the name Philosophy gave us the idea, the notion, and therewith the fact began to be understood and to become amenable to further and further explanation. To this further explanation Philosophy gave notable assistance. To 'elaborate our concepts' has been said to be the whole business of Philosophy, that is, to arrest the vague and shifting meanings that float before our minds loosely attached to the words of ordinary careless speech, to fix their outlines, distinguishing, defining, ordering and organizing until each mass of meaning is improved and refined into a thought worthy to be called a notion, a fit member of the world of mind, a seat and source of intellectual light. In this work Philosophy proceeds and succeeds simply by reflecting on whatever meaning it has in whatever manner already acquired; it employs no strange apparatus or recondite methods, only continues more thoughtfully and conscientiously to use the familiar means by which the earlier simpler meanings were appropriated and developed, following the beaten tracks of the mind's native and spontaneous movement. Much more rarely than the sciences has it recourse to a technical vocabulary, being content to express itself in ordinary words though using them and their collocations with a careful delicacy and painstaking adroitness. To follow it in these uses demands an effort, for nothing is perhaps more difficult than to force our thoughts to run counter to our customary heedless use of words and to learn to employ them even for a short time with a steady precision of significance. Yet unless this effort is resolutely made we must remain the easy prey of manifold confusions and errors which trip us in the dark. Our words degrade into tokens which experience will not cash—tangles of symbols which we cannot retranslate.

But Philosophy is more than the attempt to refine and subtilize our ordinary words so as to fit them for the higher service of interpretative thought, more even than the endeavour to improve the stock of ideas no matter how come by, by which we interpret to ourselves whatever it imports us to understand. All this it is and does, or strives to do, but only as subsidiary to its true business and real aim. All this it might do and do successfully, and yet make or bring about no substantial progress in itself or elsewhere. And when progress in Philosophy is spoken of, it is not either such improvement in language nor such improvement in ideas that alone or mainly is meant.

What is claimed for (or denied to it) under the name of Progress is an advance in knowledge, knowledge clear-sighted, grounded, and assured, knowledge of some authentic and indubitable reality. It is by the attainment of such knowledge, by progress in and towards it, that the claim of Philosophy to be progressive must stand or fall. To the question whether it can make good its claim to the possession and increase of this knowledge we must give special attention, for if Philosophy fails in this it fails in all.

The oldest name for the knowledge in question was simply Wisdom and, in some ways, in spite of its apparent arrogance this is the best name for what is sought—or missed. Yet from the beginning the name was felt not sufficiently to distinguish what was meant from the high skill of the cunning craftsman and the worldly wisdom of the man of affairs, the statesman or soldier or trader. In the case of all these it was difficult to disengage the knowledge involved from natural or trained practical dexterity. What was desired and required was knowledge distinguished but not divorced from practice and application—'pure knowledge' as it was sometimes called; not divorced, I repeat, for it was not conceived as without bearing upon the conduct of life, but still distinguished, as furnishing light rather than profit. For good or evil Philosophy began by considering what it sought and hoped to reach as pre-eminently knowledge in some distinctive sense, and having so begun it turned to reflect once more upon what it meant by so conceiving it and to make this meaning more precise and clear. So it came to present to itself as its aim or goal a special kind or degree of knowledge, to be inspired and guided by the hope of that. Practical as in many ways was the concern of ancient philosophy—its whole bent was towards the bettering of human life—it sought to achieve this by the extension and deepening of knowledge, and not either through the cultivation or refinement of emotion or the organization of practical, civil or social or philanthropic activities. It laboured—and laboured not in vain—to further the increase of knowledge by defining to itself in advance the kind or degree of knowledge which would accomplish the ultimate aim of its endeavour or subserve its accomplishment. Hence we must learn to view with a sympathetic eye its repeated essays to give precision and detail to the conception or ideal of knowledge.

In form the answer rendered to its request to itself for a definition, was determined by the principle that the knowledge which was sought and alone, if found, could satisfy, was knowledge of the real, or as it was at first more simply expressed, of what is, or what really and veritably is. Refusing the name of knowledge except to what had this as its object, men turned to consider the nature of the object which stood or could stand in this relation. With this they contrasted what we, after them, call the phenomena, the appearances, the manifold aspects, constantly shifting with the shifting points of view of the observer or many observers of it, inconstant, unsteady, superficial, mirrored through the senses and imagination, multiplied and distorted in divergent and changing opinions, or misrepresented and even caricatured in the turbid medium of ordinary speech, like a clouded image on the broken waters of a rushing stream. 'It'—so at first they spoke of the object of true or 'philosophic' knowledge—was one and single, eternal and unchangeable, a universe or world-order of parts fixed for ever in their external relations and inward structure. In each and all of us there was, as it were, a tiny mirror that could be cleared so as to reflect all this, and in so far as such reflection took place an inner light was kindled in each which was a lamp to his path. Knowing—for to know was so to reflect the world as it really was—knowing, man came to self-possession and self-satisfaction—to peace and joy—and was even 'on this bank and shoal of time' raised beyond the reach of all accidents and evils of mortal existence—looking around and down upon all that could harm or hurt him and seeing it to be in its law-abiding orderliness and eternal changelessness the embodiment of good. So viewing it, man learned to feel the Universe his true home, and was inspired not only with awe but with a high loyalty and public spirit. 'The poet says "Dear City of Cecrops", and shall I not say "Dear City of God"?'