NATURE 



733 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 1920. 



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Progress ! 



THE word "progress" primarily signifies "a 

 stepping forwards " — forwards not in rela- 

 tion to some real or imaginary goal the arrival 

 at which we assume to be desirable, but merely 

 in regard to the individual moving — in fact, a 

 stepping " frontwards " as opposed to standing 

 still or to stepping "backwards." In the course 

 of the past few centuries it has, however, acquired 

 a definite secondary limitation — that of the move- 

 ment or development of human society towards a 

 desirable goal — namely, earthly felicity, happi- 

 ness, even perfection— or towards the attainment 

 of perfect happiness in a future state of existence. 

 The measure of "progress " thus necessarily has 

 varied according to the conception of happiness — 

 about which there have always been divergent 

 opinions, and never an accepted definition. The 

 philosophers of antiquity were pessimists : they 

 did not entertain a belief in progress, but, on the 

 contrary, held (with the notable exception of ■ the 

 Epicureans) that we are receding from a long- 

 past golden age of happiness. 



The notion of earthly progress was opposed 

 by the Christian Church, which endeavoured to 

 fix men's minds on a future state of rewards and 

 punishments. A behef in the distribution of these 

 by its intervention was the chief basis of the 

 authority and power of the Church. The spirit 

 of the Renaissance — ^^the challenge to the 

 authority of the ancients and of the Church, the 

 emancipation of the natural man in the fields of 

 art and of literature, and, later, in the sphere of 

 philosophical thought — was accompanied by the 

 development of the idea of progress. Ramus, a 

 NO. 2650, VOL. 105] 



mathematician, writes in the year 1569: "In one 

 century we have seen a greater progress in men 

 and works of learning than our ancestors had 

 seen in the whole course of the previous fourteen 

 centuries." The French historian, Jean Bodin, 

 about the same time, reviewing the history of the 

 world, was the first definitely to deny the de- 

 generation of man, and comes (as Prof. Bury tells 

 us in the fascinating book which we have used ^ 

 as the text of this article) nearer to the idea of 

 progress than anyone before him. "He is," says 

 Prof. Bury, "on the threshold." And then Prof. 

 Bury proceeds to trace through the writings of 

 successive generations of later philosophers and 

 historians— such as Le Roy, Francis Bacon, Des- 

 cartes, the founders of the Royal Society, and 

 others, such as Leibnitz, Fontenelle, de Saint 

 Pierre, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Turgot, Rousseau, 

 Condorcet, Saint Simon, and Comte — the various 

 forms which this idea of "progress" assumed, 

 its expansions and restrictions, its rejection and 

 its defence, until we come to the Great Exhibition 

 of 1851, and, later still, to the new aspect given 

 to the idfea of progress by the doctrine of 

 evolution and the theories of Darwin and of 

 Spencer. , 



These chapters provide the reader with a valu- 

 able history of an important line of human 

 thought. But the most interesting part to many 

 of us must be the closing pages in which the 

 actual state of the idea of progress as it appears 

 in the light of evolution is sketched, and the ques- 

 tions are raised, which it has not been Prof. Bury's 

 purpose to discuss, viz. Granted that there has 

 been progress, in what 'does it consist? Is it 

 likely to continue? Does the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion, now so firmly established, lead us to sup- 

 pose that " progress " will continue, and, if so, 

 what will be its character? Or is it (however we 

 define it) coming to an end? Will stagnation, or 

 will decay and degeneration, as some suppose, 

 necessarily follow? Or is "progress" (whatever 

 one may mean by that word) a law of human 

 nature? 



The doctrine of the gradual evolution of the 

 inorganic universe had already gained wide 

 acceptance before the epoch when Darwin's 

 " Origin of Species " brought man into the area 

 of evolution, and established the accepted belief 

 in the "progress" of man from an animal 

 ancestry to the present phase of the more 



* " The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth." By 

 Prof. J. B. Bury. Pp. xv + 377. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 

 1920.) Price us. net. 



