AS AN IDEAL OF ACTION
PREFACE
This volume is a sequel to The Unity of Western Civilization published last year and arose in the same way, from a course of lectures given at the Woodbrooke Settlement, Birmingham.
The former book attempted to describe some of the permanent unifying factors which hold our Western civilization together in spite of such catastrophic divisions as the present war. This book attempts to show these forces in growth. The former aimed rather at a statical, the present at a dynamical view of the same problem. Both are historical in spirit.
It is hoped that these courses may serve as an introduction to a series of cognate studies, of which clearly both the supply and the scope are infinite, for under the general conception of 'Progress in Unity' all great human topics might be embraced. One subject has been suggested for early treatment which would have especial interest at the present time, viz. 'Recent Progress in European Thought'. We are by the war brought more closely than before into contact with other nations of Europe who are pursuing with inevitable differences the same main lines of evolution. To indicate these in general, with stress on the factor of betterment, is the aim of the present volume.
F.S.M.
I
THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
F. S. Marvin
The editor of these essays was busy in the autumn of last year collating the opinions attached by different people to the word 'progress'. One Sunday afternoon he happened to be walking with two friends in Oxford, one a professor of philosophy, the other a lady. The professor of philosophy declared that to him human progress must always mean primarily the increase of knowledge; the editor urged the increase of power as its most characteristic feature, but the lady added at once that to her progress had always meant, and could only mean, increase in our appreciation of the humanity of others.
The first two thoughts, harmonized and directed by the third, may be taken to cover the whole field, and this volume to be merely a commentary upon them. What we have to consider is, when and how this idea of progress, as a general thing affecting mankind as a whole, first appeared in the world, how far it has been realized in history, and how far it gives us any guidance and hope for the future. In the midst of a catastrophe which appears at first sight to be a deadly blow to the ideal, such an inquiry has a special interest and may have some permanent value.
Words are the thought of ages crystallized, or rather embodied with a constantly growing soul. The word 'Progress', like the word 'Humanity', is one of the most significant. It is a Latin word, not used in its current abstract sense until after the Roman incorporation of the Mediterranean world. It contains Greek thought summed up and applied by Roman minds. Many of the earlier Greek thinkers, Xenophanes and Empedocles as well as Plato and Aristotle, had thought and spoken of a steady process in things, including man himself, from lower to higher forms; but the first writer who expounds the notion with sufficient breadth of view and sufficiently accurate and concrete observation to provide a preliminary sketch, was the great Roman poet who attributed all the best that was in him to the Greeks and yet has given us a highly original picture of the upward tendency of the world and of human society upon it. He, too, so far as one can discover, was the first to use the word 'progress' in the sense of our inquiry. The passage in Lucretius at the end of his fifth book on the Nature of Things is so true and brilliant and anticipates so many points in later thought that it is worth quoting at some length, and the poet's close relation with Cicero, the typical Greco-Roman thinker, gives his ideas the more weight as an historical document.
He begins by describing a struggle for existence in which the less well-adapted creatures died off, those who wanted either the power to protect themselves or the means of adapting themselves to the purposes of man. In this stage, however, man was a hardier creature than he afterwards became. He lived like the beasts of the field and was ignorant of tillage or fire or clothes or houses. He had no laws or government or marriage, and though he did not fear the dark, he feared the real danger of fiercer beasts. Men often died a miserable death, but not in multitudes on a single day as they do now by battle or shipwreck.
The next stage sees huts and skins and fire which softened their bodies, and marriage and the ties of family which softened their tempers. And tribes began to make treaties of alliance with other tribes.
Speech arose from the need which all creatures feel to exercise their natural powers, just as the calf will butt before his horns protrude. Men began to apply different sounds to denote different things, just as brute beasts will do to express different passions, as any one must have noticed in the cases of dogs and horses and birds. No one man set out to invent speech.
Fire was first learnt from lightning and the friction of trees, and cooking from the softening and ripening of things by the sun.
Then men of genius invented improved methods of life, the building of cities and private property in lands and cattle. But gold gave power to the wealthy and destroyed the sense of contentment in simple happiness. It must always be so whenever men allow themselves to become the slaves of things which should be their dependants and instruments.
They began to believe in and worship gods, because they saw in dreams shapes of preterhuman strength and beauty and deemed them immortal; and as they noted the changes of the seasons and all the wonders of the heavens, they placed their gods there and feared them when they spoke in the thunder.
Metals were discovered through the burning of the woods, which caused the ores to run. Copper and brass came first and were rated above gold and silver. And then the metals took the place of hands, nails, teeth, and clubs, which had been men's earliest arms and tools. Weaving followed the discovery of the use of iron.
Sowing, planting, and grafting were learnt from nature herself, and gradually the cultivation of the soil was carried farther and farther up the hills.
Men learnt to sing from the birds, and to blow on pipes from the whistling of the zephyr through the reeds: and those simple tunes gave as much rustic jollity as our more elaborate tunes do now.
Then, in a summary passage at the end, Lucretius enumerates all the chief discoveries which men have made in the age-long process—ships, agriculture, walled cities, laws, roads, clothes, songs, pictures, statues, and all the pleasures of life—and adds, 'these things practice and the experience of the unresting mind have taught mankind gradually as they have progressed from point to point'.[1]
It is the first definition and use of the word in literature. If we accept it as a typical presentation of the Greco-Roman view, seen by a man of exceptional genius and insight at the climax of the period, there are two or three points which must arrest our attention. Lucretius
