Progress and History

by Unknown

The knowledge thus reached or believed to be attainable was more and more discriminated from what was offered or supplied by Art or Science or Religion, though it was still often confused with each and all of them. As opposed to that of Art, it was not direct or immediate vision flashed as it were upon the inner eye in moments of inspiration or excitement; as opposed to that of Science, it was a knowledge that pierced below the surface and the seeming of Nature and History; as opposed to that of Religion (which was rather faith than knowledge), it was sober, unimaginative, cleansed of emotional accompaniment and admixture, the 'dry light' of the wise soul. True to the principle which I have stated, ancient Philosophy proclaimed that the only knowledge in the end worth having was knowledge of Fact—of what lay behind all seeming however fair—Fact unmodified and unmodifiable by human wish or will; it bade us know the world in which we live and move and have our being, know it as it is truly and in itself, and knowing it love it, loyally acquiescing in its purposes and subserving its ends. In all this there was progress (was there not?) to a view, to a truth (how else shall we speak of it?) which has always, when apprehended, begotten a high temper in heroic hearts. Surely in having reached in thought so high and so far the mind of man had progressed in knowledge and in wisdom.

But now a change took place, from which we must date the rise or birth of modern philosophy. Hitherto on the whole the mind of man had looked outward and sought knowledge of what lay or seemed to lie outside itself. So looking and gazing ever deeper it had encountered a spectacle of admirable and awe-compelling order, yet one which for that very reason seemed appallingly remote from, if not alien to, all human businesses and concerns. Now it turned inward and found within itself not only matter of more immediate or pressing interest, but a world that compelled attention, excited curiosity, rewarded study. Slowly and gradually the knowledge of this, the inner world—the world of the thinker's self—became the central object of philosophic reflection. The knowledge that was most required—that was all-important and indispensable (so man began explicitly to realize)—was knowledge of the Self, not of the outer world that at best could never be more than known, but of the self that knew or could know it, that could both know and be known. Henceforward what is studied is not knowledge of reality—of any and every reality—or of external reality, but knowledge of the Self which can know as well as be known. And the process by which it is sought is reflection, for the self-knowledge is not the knowledge of other selves, but the knowledge of just that Self which knows itself and no other. Thus the knowledge sought is once more and now finally distinguished from the knowledge offered or supplied by Art or Science or Religion: not by Art, for the Self cannot appear and has no seeming nor can it any way be pictured or described or imagined; not by Science, for it lies beyond and beneath and behind all observation, nor can it be counted or measured or weighed; not by Religion, for knowledge of it comes from within and the disclosure of its nature is by the self-witness of the Self to its self, not by revelation of any other to it. Thus there is disclosed the slowly-won and slowly-revealed secret of modern Philosophy, that the knowledge which is indispensable, which is necessary as the consummation and key-stone of all other knowledge, is knowledge of the knowing-self, self-knowledge, or, as it is sometimes more technically called, self-consciousness, with the corollary that this knowledge cannot be won by any methods known to or specially characteristic of Science or Art or Religion. To become self-conscious, to progress in self-consciousness is the end, and the way or means to it is by reflection—the special method of Philosophy.

This is the step in advance made by the modern spirit beyond all discoveries of the ancients; it is the truth by the apprehension of which the modern spirit and its world is made what it is. Not outside us lies Truth or the Truth: Truth dwelleth in the inner man—in interiore hominis habitat veritas. Is this not progress, progress in wisdom, and to what else can we ascribe the advance save to Philosophy?

It was one of the earliest utterances of modern Philosophy, and one which it has never found reason to retract, that the Self which knows can and does know itself better than aught else whatsoever, and in that knowledge can without end make confident and sure-footed advance. To itself the Self is the most certain and the most knowable of all realities—with this it is most acquainted, this it has light in itself to explore, of this it can confidently foresee and foretell the method of advance to further and further knowledge. It knows not only its existence but its essence, its nature, and it knows by what procedure, by what ordered effort or exercise of will it can progress to height beyond height of its self-knowledge. I say, it knows it, but it also knows that that knowledge cannot be attained all at once or taken complete and ready-made, for it is itself a progress, a self-created and self-determined progress, and on that condition progress alone is or is real. For it to be is not to be at the beginning or at the end of this process, but to be always coming to be, coming to be what it is not and yet also what it has in it to be. Of nothing else is Progress so intimately the essence and very being; if we ask 'What progresses or evolves?', the most certain answer is 'The spirit which is in man, and what it progresses in, is knowledge of itself, which is wisdom'. Speaking of and for Philosophy I venture to maintain that nothing is more certain than that that spirit which has created it has grown, is growing, and will ever grow in wisdom, and that by reflection upon itself and its history—nor can the gates of darkness and error prevail against the irresistible march of its triumphant progress.

As we look back the history of Philosophy seems strewn with the debris of outworn or outlived errors, but out of them all emerges this clear and assured truth, that in self-knowledge lies the master-light of all our seeing, inexhaustibly casting its rays into the retreating shadow world that now surrounds us, melting all mists and dispelling all clouds, and that the way to it is unveiled, mapped and charted in advance so that henceforward we can walk sure-footedly therein. Yet that does not mean that the work of Philosophy is done, that it can fold its hands and sit down, for only in the seeking is its prize found and there is no goal or end other than the process itself. For this too is its discovery, that not by, but in, endless reflection is the Truth concerning it known, the Truth that each generation must ever anew win and earn it for itself. The result is not without the process, nor the end without the means: the fact is the process and other fact there is none. In other forms of so-called 'knowledge' we can sever the conclusion from its premisses, and the result can be given without the process, but with self-knowledge it is not so and no generation, or individual, can communicate it ready-made to another, but can only point the way and bid others help themselves. And if this, so put, seems hard doctrine, I can only remind you that to philosophize has always meant 'to think by and for oneself'.

It is perhaps more necessary to formulate the warning that what is here called self-knowledge and pronounced to constitute the very essence of the spirit that is in man, is far removed from what sometimes bears its name, the extended and minute acquaintance by the individual mind with its individual peculiarities or idiosyncrasies, its weaknesses and vanities, its whims and eccentricities; nor is it to be confused with the still wider acquaintance with those that make up our common human nature in all its folly and frailty which is sometimes called 'knowledge of human nature'; no, nor with such knowledge as psychological science, with its methods of observation and induction and experiment, offers or supplies. It is knowledge of something that lies far deeper within us—'the inward man', which is not merely alike or akin but is the same in all of us; beneath all our differences, strong against all our weaknesses, wise against all our follies, what each of us rightly calls his true self and yet what is not his alone, but all men's also. As we reflect upon it duly, what discloses or reveals itself to us is a self which is both our very own and yet common or universal, the self of each and yet the self of all. The more we get to apprehend and understand it, the more we become and know ourselves, not so much as being but as becoming one with one another; the differences that sunder us in feeling and thought and action melting away like mist. The removal of these differences is just the unveiling of it, in which it at once comes to be and to be known. In coming to know it we create it. The unity of the spirit thus becomes and is known as indubitable fact, or rather (I must repeat) not as fact, as if it were or were anything before being known, but as something which is ever more and more coming to be, in the measure in which it is coming to be known—known to itself. For this is the hard lesson of modern philosophy, that our inmost nature and most genuine self is not aught ready-made or given, but something which is created in and by the process of our coming to know it, which progresses in existence and substantiality and value as our knowledge of it progresses in width and depth and self-assurance. The process is one of creative—self-creative—evolution, in which each advance deposits a result which prescribes the next step and supplies all the conditions for it, and so constantly furnishes all that is required for an endless progress in reality and worth. This is the process in which the spirit of man capitalizes and substantiates its activities, committing its gains to secure custody, amassing and using them for its self-enrichment—in which it depends on no other than itself and is sovereign master of its future and its fate. This is the way in which selves are made, or rather, make themselves.

This is the discovery of modern Philosophy, the now patent secret which it offers for the interpretation of all mysteries and the solving of all problems—and it offers it with unquestioning assurance, for it has explored the ground and has awakened to the true method of progress within it. And as I have said or implied, to the reflective mind regress is impossible, it cannot go back upon itself, and with due tenderness and gratitude it has set behind it the things of its unreflective childhood. It stands on the stable foundation of the witness of the spirit within us to itself, to its own nature, its own powers and its own rights; it knows itself as the knower, the interpreter, the teacher, and therefore the master and maker of itself. Yet we must not identify or confuse this our deeper or deepest self which we thus create with the separate selves or souls which each of us is; it is not any one of them nor all of them together, unless we give to the word 'together' a new and more pregnant sense than it has yet come to bear. It is not the 'tribal' or 'collective' or 'social' self, for it is not made by congregation or collection or association, but by some far more intimate unification than is signified by any of these terms, namely by coming together in and by knowledge. It is the spirit which is in us all and in which we all are, which is more yet not other than we, without which we are nothing and do nothing and yet which is veritably the spirit of man, the immortal hero of all the tragedy and comedy—the whole drama—of human history; it is of this spirit as it is by it, that Philosophy has in repeated and resolute reflection come to know the nature and the method of its progress. Such knowledge has come into the world and prevails more widely and more potently than ever before; possessed in fullness by but a few, it is open and available to all and radiates as from a beacon light over the whole field of human experience; at that fire every man can light his candle. This is the light in which alone the record of man's thoughts and achievements can be construed and which exhibits them as steps and stages on that triumphant march to higher and higher levels such as alone we can rightly name Progress. Where else than in History, and, above all, in the History of Knowledge, is Progress manifested, and in that where more certainly than in the unretreating and unrevoked advance towards a deeper, a truer, a wiser knowledge of itself by the spirit that is in and is, Man?

Yes, such knowledge, truth and wisdom now exists and is securely ours, though to inherit it each generation and each individual must win it afresh and having won it must develop and promote it, or it ceases not only to work but to be. For it exists only as it is made or rather only in the act and fact of its progress, and so for it not to progress is at once to return to impotence and nothingness. And it is we who maintain it in being, maintaining it by endless reiterated efforts of reflection, and so maintaining it we maintain ourselves, resting or relying upon it and using it as a source of strength and a fulcrum or a platform for further effort. Upon self-knowledge in this sense all other 'knowledge' reposes; upon it and the knowledge of other selves and the world, which flows from it, depends the possibility of all practical advance. In the dark all progress is impossible.

But since this discovery was made and made good, the spirit of Philosophy has not stood still; it has gone on, and is still going on, to extend and deepen and secure its conquests. Once more it has turned from its fruitful and enlightening concentration on the inner self and its life to review what lies or seems to lie around and outside it. It finds that those who have stayed, or fallen, behind its audacious but justified advance in self-knowledge, still cherish a view of what is external to this (the true or real self so now made patent), thoughts or fancies which misconceive and misrepresent it—thoughts persisted in against the feebler protesting voices of Art and Religion and so held precariously and unstably though apparently grounded upon the authority of Science. To the unphilosophic or not yet philosophic mind the spirit of man, already in imagination multiplied and segregated into individual 'souls', appears to be surrounded with an environment of alien character, often harsh to man's emotions, often rebellious or untractable to his purposes, often impenetrable to his understanding, and in a word indifferent or hostile to his ideals and aspirations after progress and good. Nay, the individual souls seem to act towards one another separately and collectively as such hindrances, and again, each individual soul seems to be encrusted with insuperable impediments. Even the light within is enclosed in an opaque screen which prevents or counteracts its outflow, so that the spirit within is as it were entombed or imprisoned. 'Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems us in,' we cannot communicate with one another or join with one another in thought or deed; and the hope of progress seems defeated by the recalcitrant matter that shell upon shell encases us. The world of our bodies, of the bodies and spirits of others, and all the vast compages of things and forces which we call 'Nature' blinds and baffles us, mocks our hopes and breaks our hearts. How idle to dream that amidst and against all this neutrality or hostility any substantial or secure advance can be made!

In answer to all these thoughts, these doubts and fears, Philosophy is beginning with increasing boldness to speak a word, not of mere comfort and consolation, but of secure and confident wisdom. All this so-called 'external' nature and environment is not hostile or alien to the self or spirit which is in man, it is akin and allied to it as we now know it to be. Whatever is real and not merely apparent in History or Nature is rational, is of the same stuff and character as that which is within us. It too is spiritual, the appearance and embodiment of what is one in nature and mode of being with what lies deepest and is most potent in us. So far as it is not that, it is appearance and not reality, woven like a dream by imagination or endowed with an unstable and shifting quasi-reality by our thoughts and suppositions and fancies about we know not what. Not that it is an illusion, still less a delusion, rather what it is is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality, a symbol beautiful, orderly, awe-inspiring yet mutilated, partial, confused, of something deeper and more real, the expression, the face and gesture, of a spirit that, as ours does, knows itself, its own profound being and meaning, and does what it does in the light of such knowledge, a spirit which above all progresses endlessly towards and in a richer and fuller knowledge of itself. What we call Fact—historical or natural—is essentially such an expression, on the one hand a finished expression, set in the past and therefore for ever beyond the possibility of change and so of progress, an exhausted or dead expression, on the other hand a passing into the light of what was before unknown even to the expresser's self, an act by which was made and secured a self-discovery or self-revelation, a creative act of self-knowledge and so significant and interpretable. This double character of events in History and Nature is dimly descried in what we specially call 'nature', but comes more fully into view in the sphere of human history, where each step is at once a deed and a discovery, a contribution to the constitution of the world of fact and a fulguration of the light within illuminating facts as the condition of its own inexhaustible continuance. The world of Fact, artistic or aesthetic, scientific, moral, political, economic, is what the spirit builds round itself, creating it out of its own substance, while it itself in creating it grows within, evolving out of itself into itself and advancing in knowledge or wisdom and power. And out of its now securely won self-knowledge it declares that it—itself—is the source and spring of all real fact whatsoever, which is its self-created expression, made by it in its own interests, and for its own good, the better and better to know itself. Nothing is or can be alien, still less hostile to it, for 'in wisdom has it made them all'. Looking back and around it re-reads in all fact the results of its own power of self-expression. Nothing is but what it has made.