John Alexander Gunn

INTRODUCTORY : Freedom and Progress intimately connected—Confidence in Progress, a marked feature of the earlier half of the nineteenth century, was bound up with confidence in Science and Reason, and in a belief in determinism, either natural or divine—Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Comte and others proclaim Progress as a dogma.

I. The idea of progress in Vacherot, Tame and Renan—Interesting reflections of Renan based on belief in Reason.

II. Cournot and Renouvier regard Progress in a different light, owing to their ideas on Freedom—They look upon it as a possibility only, but not assured, not inevitable—Renouvier’s study of history in relation to progress and his view of immortality as Progress—No law of progress exists.

III. The new spiritualist group emphasise the lack of any law of progress, by their insistence on the spontaneity of the spirit, creativeness and contingency—Difficulties of finalsm or teleology in relation to progress as free—No law or guarantee of progress.

CONCLUSION : Complete change from earlier period regarding Progress—New view of it developed—Facile optimism rejected.

Intimately bound up with the idea of freedom is that of progress. For, although our main approach to the discussion of freedom was made by way of the natural sciences, by a critique of physical determinism, and also by way of the problem of personal action, involving a critique of psychological determinism, it must be noted that there have appeared throughout the discussion very clear indications of the vital bearing of freedom upon the wide field of humanity’s development considered as a whole—in short, its history. The philosopher must give some account of history, if he is to leave no gap in his view of the universe. The philosophy of history will obviously be vastly different if it be based on determinism rather than on freedom. When the philosopher looks at history his thoughts must inevitably centre around the idea of progress. He may believe in it or may reject it as an illusion, but his attitude to it will be very largely a reflection of the doctrine which he has formed regarding freedom.

The notion of progress is probably the most characteristic feature which distinguishes modern civilisation from those of former times. It would have seemed to the Greeks foolishness. We owe it to the people who, in the modern world, have been what Greece was in the ancient world, the glorious mother of ideas. The eighteenth century was marked in France by a growing belief in progress, which was encouraged by the Encyclopaedists and rose to enthusiasm at the Revolution. Its best expression was that given by Condorcet, himself an Encyclopaedist, and originally a supporter of the Revolution. His Sketch of an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind was written in 1793 (while its author was threatened with the guillotine^[1]), published two years later, and became, in the early years of the nineteenth century, a powerful stimulus to thought concerning progress. Much of the work is defective, but it had a great influence upon Saint-Simon, the early socialists, and upon the doctrines of Auguste Comte, which themselves are immediate antecedents of our own period. We may note briefly here, that Condorcet believed in a sure and infallible progress in knowledge and in social welfare. This is the important doctrine which Saint-Simon and Comte both accepted from him. His ideal of progress is contained in the three watchwords of the Revolution, LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ, particularly the last two. He forecasts an abandonment of militarism, prophesies an era of universal peace, and the reign of equality between the sexes. Equality is a point which he insists upon very keenly, and, although he did not speak of sociology as did Comte, nor of socialism as did Saint-Simon, he claimed that the true history of mankind is the history of the great mass of workers: it is not diplomatic and military, not the record of dazzling deeds of great men. Condorcet, however, was dogmatic in his belief in progress, and he did not work out any “law” of progress, although he believed progress to be a law of the universe, in general, and an undeniable truth in regard to the life-history of mankind.

[1] He was ultimately imprisoned and driven to suicide.

Later, his friend Cabanis upheld a similarly optimistic view, and endeavoured to argue for it, against the Traditionalists, who we may remember endeavoured to restate Catholicism, and to make an appeal to those whom the events of the Revolution had disturbed and disillusioned. The outcome of the Terror had somewhat shaken the belief in a straightforward progress, but enthusiastic exponents of the doctrine were neither lacking nor silent. Madame de StaËl continued the thought of Condorcet, thus forming a link between him and Saint-Simon and Comte. The influence of the Traditionalists and the general current of thought and literature known as Romanticism, helped also to solve a difficulty which distinguishes Condorcet from Comte. This difficulty lay in the eighteenth-century attitude to the Middle Ages, which Condorcet had accepted, and which seriously damaged his thesis of general progress, for in the eighteenth century the Middle Ages were looked upon as a black, dark regress, for which no thinker had a good word to say. The change of view is seen most markedly when we come to Comte, whose admiration of the Middle Ages is a conspicuous feature of his work. While, however, Saint-Simon and Comte were working out their ideas, great popularity was given to the belief in progress by the influence of Cousin, Jouffroy, Guizot, and by Michelet’s translation of the Scienza nuova of the Italian thinker Vico, a book then a century old but practically unknown in France. For Cousin, the world process was a result of a necessary evolution of thought, which he conceived in rather Hegelian fashion. Jouffroy agreed with this fatal progress, although he endeavoured to reconcile it with that of personal freedom. Guizot’s main point was that progress and civilisation are the same thing, or rather, that civilisation is to be defined only by progress, for that is its fundamental idea. His definition of progress is not, however, strikingly clear, and he calls attention to two types of progress—one involving an improvement in social welfare, the other in the spiritual or intellectual life. Although Guizot tried to show that progress in both these forms is a fact, he did not touch ultimate questions, nor did he successfully show that progress is the universal key to human history. He did not really support his argument that civilisation is progress in any convincing way, but he gave a stimulus to reflection on the question of the relationship of these two. Michelet’s translation of Vico came at an appropriate time, and served a useful purpose. It showed to France a thinker who, while not denying a certain progress over short periods, denied it over the long period, and reverted rather to the old notion of an eternal recurrence. For Vico, the course of human history was not rectilineal but rather spiral, although he, too, refrained from indicating any law. He claimed clearly enough that each civilisation must give way to barbarism and anarchy, and the cycle be again begun.

Such were the ideas upon progress which were current at the time when Saint-Simon, Fourier and Comte were busily thinking out their doctrines, the main characteristics of which we have already noted in our Introduction on the immediate antecedents of our period. The thought given to the question of progress in modern France is almost unintelligible save in the light of the doctrines current from Condorcet, through Saint-Simon to Comte, for the second half of the century is again characterised by a criticism and indeed a reaction against the idea professed in the first half. This was true in regard to Science and to Freedom. We shall see a similar type of development illustrated again respecting Progress.

Already we have noted the general aim and object which both Saint-Simon and Comte had in view. The important fact for our discussion here is that Saint-Simon, by his respect for the Middle Ages, and for the power of religion, was able to rectify the defects which the ideas of the eighteenth century had left in Condorcet’s doctrine of progress. Moreover, he claimed, as Condorcet had not done, to indicate a “law of progress,” which gives rise alternately to “organic” and to “critical” periods. The Middle Ages were, in the opinion of Saint-Simon, an admirable period, displaying as they did an organic society, where there was a temporal and spiritual authority. With Luther began an anarchical, critical period. According to Saint-Simon s law of progress a new organic period will succeed this, and the characteristic of that period will be socialism. He advocated a gradual change, not a violent revolutionary one, but he saw in socialism the inevitable feature of the new era. With its triumph would come a new world organisation and a league of peoples in which war would be no more, and in which the lot of the proletariat would be free from oppression and misery. The Saint-Simonist School became practically a religious sect, and the chief note in its gospel was “Progress.”

That the notion of progress was conspicuous in the thought of this time is very evident. It was, indeed, in the foreground, and a host of writers testify to this, whom we cannot do much more than mention here. A number of them figured in the events of 1848. The social reformers all invoked “Progress” as justification for their theories being put into action. Bazard took up the ideas of Saint-Simon and expounded them in his Exposition de la Doctrine saint-simonienne (1830). Buchez, in his work on the philosophy of history, assumed progress (1833). The work of Louis Blanc on L’Organisation du Travail appeared in 1839 in a periodical calling itself Revue des ProgrÈs. The brochure from Proudhon, on property, came in 1840, and was followed later by La Philosophie du ProgrÈs (1851). Meanwhile Fourier’s ThÉorie des Quatre Mouvements et des DestinÉes gÉnÉrales attempted in rather a fantastic manner to point the road to progress. Worthless as many of his quaint pages are, they were a severe indictment of much in the existing order, and helped to increase the interest and the faith in progress. Fourier’s disciple, ConsidÉrant, was a prominent figure in 1848. The Utopia proposed by Cabet insisted upon fraternitÉ as the keynote to progress, while the volumes of Pierre Leroux, De l’HumanitÉ, which appeared in the same year as Cabet’s volume, 1840, emphasised ÉgalitÉ as the essential factor. His humanitarianism influenced the woman-novelist, George Sand. This same watchword of the Revolution had been eulogised by De Tocqueville in his important study of the American Republic in 1834, and that writer had claimed ÉgalitÉ as the goal of human progress. All these men take progress as an undoubted fact; they only vary by using a different one of the three watchwords, LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ, to denote the kind of progress they mean. Meanwhile, Michelet and his friend Quinet combated the Hegelian conception of history maintained by Cousin, and they claimed libertÉ to be the watchword of progress. The confidence of all in progress is almost pathetic in its unqualified optimism. It is not remarkable that the events of 1851 proved a rude shock. Javary, a writer who, in 1850, published a little work, De l’IdÉe du ProgrÈs, claimed that the idea is the supremely interesting question of the time in its relation to a general philosophy of history and to the ultimate destiny of mankind. This is fairly evident from the writers we have cited, without Javary’s remark, but it is worth noting as being the observation of a contemporary. With the mention of Reynaud’s Philosophie religieuse, upholding the principle of indefinite perfectability and Pelletan’s Profession du Foi du XIX^e SiÈcle, wherein he maintained confidently and dogmatically that progress is the general law of the universe, we must pass on from these minor people to consider one who had a profounder influence on the latter half of the century, and who took over the notion of progress from Saint-Simon.

This was Comte, whose attitude to progress in many respects resembles that of Saint-Simon, but he brought to his work a mental equipment lacking in the earlier writer and succeeded, by the position he gave to it in his Positive Philosophy, in making the idea of progress one which subsequent thinkers could not omit from consideration.

According to Comte, the central factor in progress is the mental. Ideas, as FouillÉe was later to assert, are the real forces in humanity’s history. These ideas develop in accordance with the “Law of the Three Stages,” already explained in our Introduction. In spite of the apparent clearness and simplicity of this law, Comte had to admit that as a general law of all development it was to some degree rendered difficult in its application by the lack of simultaneity in development in the different spheres of knowledge and social life. While recognising the mental as the keynote to progress, he also insisted upon the solidarity of the physical, intellectual, moral and social life of man, and to this extent admitted a connection and interaction between material welfare and intellectual progress. The importance of this admission lay in the fact that it led Comte to qualify what first appears as a definite and confident belief in a rectilineal progress. He admits that such a conception is not true, for there is retrogression, conflict, wavering, and not a steady development. Yet he claims that there is a general and ultimate progress about a mean line. The causes which shake and retard the steady progress are not all-powerful, they cannot upset the fundamental order of development. These causes which do give rise to variations are, we may note in passing, the effects of race, climate and political and military feats like those of Napoleon, for whom Comte did not disguise his hatred, styling him the man who had done most harm to humanity. Great men upset his sociological theories, but Comte was no democrat and strongly opposed ideas of Liberty and Equality. We have remarked upon his general attitude to his own age, as one of criticism and anarchy. In this he was probably correct, but he quite underestimated the extent and duration of that anarchy, particularly by his estimate of the decline and fall of Catholicism and of militarism, which he regarded as the two evils of Europe. The events of the twentieth century would have been a rude shock to him, particularly the international conflagration of 1914-1918. It was to Europe that Comte confined his philosophy of history and consequently narrowed it. He knew little outside this field.

He endeavoured, however, to apply his new science of sociology to the development of European history. His work contains much which is good and instructive, but fails ultimately to establish any law of progress. It does not seem to have occurred to Comte’s mind that there might not be one. This was the question which was presented to the thinkers after him, and occupies the chief place in the subsequent discussion of progress.

I

In the second half of the century the belief in a definite and inevitable progress appears in the work of those thinkers inspired by the positivist spirit, Vacherot, Taine and Renan. Vacherot’s views on the subject are given in one of his Essais de Philosophie critique,^[2] entitled “Doctrine du ProgrÈs.” These pages, in which sublime confidence shines undimmed, were intended as part of a longer work on the Philosophy of History. Many of Renan’s essays, and especially the concluding chapters of his work L’Avenir de la Science, likewise profess an extreme confidence in progressive development. Yet Taine and Renan are both free from the excessive and glowing confidence expressed by Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Comte. Undoubtedly the events of their own time reacted upon their doctrine of progress, and we have already noted the pessimism and disappointment which coloured their thoughts regarding contemporary political events. Both, however, are rationalists, and have unshaken faith in the ultimate triumph of reason.

[2] Published in 1864.

The attitude which Taine adopts to history finds a parallel in the fatalism and determinism of Spinoza, for he looks upon the entire life of mankind as the unrolling of a rigidly predetermined series of events. “Our preferences,” he remarks, “are futile; nature and history have determined things in advance; we must accommodate ourselves to them, for it is certain that they will not accommodate themselves to us.” Taine’s view of history reflects his rejection of freedom, for he maintains that it is a vast regulated chain which operates independently of individuals. Fatalism colours it entirely. It is precisely this attitude of Taine which raises the wrath of Renouvier, and also that of both Cournot and FouillÉe, whose discussions we shall examine presently. They see in such a doctrine an untrue view of history and a theory vicious and detestable from a moral standpoint, although it doubtless, as FouillÉe sarcastically remarks, has been a very advantageous one for the exploiters of humanity in all ages to teach and to preach to the people.

In passing from Taine’s fatalistic view of history to note his views on progress we find him asserting that man’s nature does not in itself inspire great optimism, for that nature is largely animal, and man is ever ready, however “civilised” he may appear to be, to return to his native primitive ferocity and barbarism. Man is not, according to Taine, even a sane animal, for he is by nature mad and foolish. Health and wisdom only occasionally reign, and so we have no great ground for optimism when we examine closely the nature of man, as it really is. Taine’s treatment of the French Revolution^[3] shows his hostility to democracy, and he is sceptical about the value or meaning of the watchwords, “Rights of Man,” or LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ. This last, he claims, is merely a verbal fiction useful for disguising the reality, which is actual warfare of all against all.

[3] “La RÉvolution,” in his large work, Les Origines de la France contemporaine.

Yet in spite of these considerations Taine believes in a definitely guaranteed progress. Man’s lower nature does not inspire optimism, but his high power of reason does, and it is on this faith in reason that Taine confidently founds his assertions regarding progress. He sees in reason the ultimate end and meaning of all else. The triumph of reason is an ideal goal to which, in spite of so many obstacles, all the forces of the universe are striving. In this intellectual progress, this gradual rationalisation of mankind, Taine sees the essential element of progress upon which all other goods depend. The betterment of social conditions will naturally follow; it is the spiritual and mental factor which is the keynote of progress Reason, he contends, will give us a new ethic, a new politic and a new religion.

Renan shares with Taine the belief in reason and its ultimate triumph. His views on progress are, however, more discursive, and are extremely interesting and suggestive. He was in his later years shrewd enough to discover the difficulties of his own doctrine. Thus although he believed in a “guaranteed” progress, Renan marks a stage midway between the idea of progress as held by Comte and Taine on the one hand, and by Cournot and Renouvier on the other.

His early book, L’Avenir de la Science, glows with ardent belief in this assured progress, which is bound up with his confidence in science and rationality. “Our creed,” he there declares, “is the reasonableness of progress.” This idea of progress is almost as central a point in Renan’s thought as it was in that of Comte, and he gave it a more metaphysical significance. His general philosophy owes much to history, and for him the philosophy of history is the explanation of progress. By this term he means an ever-growing tendency to perfection, to fuller consciousness and life, to nobler, better and more beautiful ends. He thinks it necessary to conceive of a sort of inner spring, urging all things on to fuller life. He seems here to anticipate vaguely the central conception of Guyau and of Bergson. But, like Taine, Renan founds his doctrine of progress on rationalism. He well expresses this in one of his Drames philosophiques (L’Eau de Jouvence), through the mouth of Prospero, who represents rational thought. This character declares that “it is science which brings about social progress, and not progress which gives rise to science. Science only asks from society to have granted to it the conditions necessary to its life and to produce a sufficient number of minds capable of understanding it.”^[4] In the preface written for this drama he declares that science or reason will ultimately succeed in creating the power and force of government in humanity.

[4] L’Eau de Jouvence, Act 4, Scene I., Conclusion.

These thoughts re-echo many of the sentiments voiced on behalf of progress by Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Comte. It is interesting, however, to note an important point on which Renan not only parts company with them, but ranges himself in opposition to them. This point is that of socialism or democracy, call it what one will.

In the spring of 1871 Renan was detained at Versailles during the uproar of the Commune in Paris, and there wrote his Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques, which were published five years later. In these pages certain doctrines of progress and history are set forth, notably in the “dialogues of three philosophers of that school whose ground-principles are the cult of the ideal, the negation of the supernatural and the investigation of reality.” Renan raises a discussion of the end of the world’s development. The universe, he maintains, is not devoid of purpose: it pursues an ideal end. This goal to which the evolutionary process moves is the reign of reason. But there are striking limitations to this advance. From this kingdom of reason on the earth the mass of men are shut out. Renan does not believe in a gradual improvement of the mass of mankind accompanied by a general rationalisation which is democratic. The truth is that Renan was an intellectual aristocrat and, as such, he abhorred Demos. His gospel of culture, upon which he lays the greatest stress, is for the few who are called and chosen, while the many remain outside the pale, beyond the power of the salvation he offers. The development of the democratic idea he looks upon as thoroughly mischievous, inasmuch as it involves, in his opinion, degeneration, a levelling down to mediocrity. In his philosophy of history he adopts an attitude somewhat akin to that of Carlyle in his worship of Great Men. The end of history is, Renan states, the production of men of genius. The great mass of men, the common stuff of humanity, he likens to the soil from which these Great Ones grow. The majority of men have their existence justified only by the appearance upon the scene of “Heroes of Culture.” In this teaching the parallelism to the gospel of the Superman is apparent, yet it seems clear that although Renan’s man of culture despises the ignorance and vulgarity of the crowd, he does so condescendingly as a benefactor, and is free from the passionate hatred and scorn to which Nietzsche’s Superman is addicted. Nevertheless, Renan’s attitude of uncompromising hostility to democratic development is very marked. He couples his confidence in Science to his anti-democratic views, and affirms the “Herd” to be incapable of culture. Although the process of rationalisation and the establishment of the kingdom of reason is applicable only to the patrician and not to the plebs, this process is claimed by Renan to be capable of great extension, not in the number of its adherents but in the extent of culture. In this final reign of reason, instinctive action and impulse will be replaced by deliberation, and science will succeed religion.

His famous letter to Berthelot includes a brief statement of his views on progressive culture, which, for him, constitutes the sign of progress. “One ought never,” he writes, “to regret seeing clearer into the depths.” By endeavouring to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up capital of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors, who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time. The true men of progress, he claims, are those who profess as their starting-point a profound respect for the past. Renan himself was a great lover of the past, yet we find him remarking in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse that he has no wish to be taken for an uncompromising reactionist. “I love the past, but I envy the future,” and he thinks that it would be extremely pleasant to live upon this planet at as late a period as possible. He appears jealous of the future and of the young, whose fate it will be to know what will be the outcome of the activities of the German Emperor, what will be the climax of the conflict of European nationalities, what development socialism will take. His shrewd mind had alreadv foreseen in a measure the possible development of German militarism and of Bolshevism. He regards the world as moving towards a kind of “Americanism,” by which he means a type of life in which culture and refinement shall have little place. Yet, although he has a horror and a dread of democracy, he feels also that the evils accompanying it may be, after all, no worse than those involved in the reactionary dominance of nobles and clergy.

Humanity has not hitherto marched, he thinks, with much method. Order he considers to be desirable, but only in view of progress. Revolutions are only absurd and odious, he asserts in L’Avenir de la Science, to those who do not believe in progress. Yet he claims that reaction has its place in the plan of Providence, for it works unwittingly for the general good. “There are,” to quote his metaphor, “declivities down which the rÔle of the traction engine consists solely in holding back.”

Renan thinks that if democratic ideas should secure a clear triumph, science and scientific teaching would soon find the modest subsidies now accorded them cut off. He fears the approach of an era of mediocrity, of vulgarity, in fact, which will persecute the intellectuals and deprive the world of liberty. He is not thoughtlessly optimistic; he was far too shrewd an intellect for that. Our age, he suggests, may be regarded in future as the turning point of humanity’s history, that point where its deterioration set in, the prelude to its decline and fall. But he asserts, as against this, that Nature does not know the meaning of the word “discouragement.” Humanity, proving itself incapable of progress, but only capable of further deterioration, would be replaced by other forms. “We must not, because of our personal tastes, our prejudices perhaps, set ourselves to oppose the action of our time. This action goes on without regard to us and probably is right.”^[5] The future of science is assured. With its progress, Renan points out, we must reckon upon the decay of organised religion, as professed by sects or churches. The disappearance of this organised religion will, however, result most assuredly in a temporary moral degeneration, since morality has been so conventionally bound up with the Church. An era of egoism, military and economic in character, will arise and for a time prevail.

[5] Preface to Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse.

Yet we must not, Renan reminds us, grumble at having too much unrest and conflict. The great object in life is the development of the mind, and this requires liberty or freedom. The worst type of society is the theocratic state, or the ancient pontifical dominion or any modern replica of these where dogma reigns supreme. A humanity which could not be revolutionary, which had lost the attraction of “Utopias,” believing itself to have established the perfect form of existence would be intolerable. This raises also the query that if progress be the main feature of our universe, then we have a dilemma to face, for either it leads us to a terminus ad quem, and so finally contradicts itself, or else it goes on for ever, and it is doubtful then in what sense it can be a progress.

Renan’s own belief was essentially religious, and was coloured by Christian and Hebrew conceptions. It was a rationalised belief in a Divine Providence. He professed a confidence in the final triumph of truth and goodness, and has faith in a dim, far-off divine event which he terms “the complete advent of God.” The objections which are so frequently urged by learned men against finalism or teleology of any kind whatsoever Renan deemed superficial and claimed, rightly enough, that they are not so much directed against teleology but against theology, against obsolete ideas of God, particularly against the dogma of a deliberate and omnipotent Creator. Renan’s own doctrine of the Deity is by no means clear, but he believed in a spiritual power capable of becoming some day conscious, omniscient and omnipotent. God will then have come to himself. From this point of view the universe is a progress to God, to an increasing realisation of the Divinity in truth, beauty and goodness.

The universe, Renan claims, must be ultimately rooted and grounded in goodness; there must be, in spite of all existing “evils,” a balance on the side of goodness, otherwise the universe would, like a vast banking-concern, fail. This balance of goodness is the raison d’Être of the world and the means of its existence. The general life of the universe can be illustrated, according to Renan, by that of the oyster, and the formation within it of the pearl, by a malady, a process vague, obscure and painful. The pearl is the spirit which is the end, the final cause and last result, and assuredly the most brilliant outcome of this universe. Through suffering the pearl is formed; and likewise, through constant pain and conflict, suffering and hardship, the spirit of man moves intellectually and morally onward and upward, to the completed realisation of justice, beauty, truth and infinite goodness and love, to the complete and triumphant realisation of God. We must have patience, claims Renan, and have faith in these things, and have hope and take courage. “One day virtue will prove itself to have been the better part.” Such is his doctrine of progress.

II

With Cournot and Renouvier our discussion takes a new form. Renan, Taine, Vacherot and the host of social and political writers, together with August Comte himself, had accepted the fact of progress and clung to the idea of a law of progress. With these two thinkers, however, there is a more careful consideration given to the problem of progress. It was recognised as a problem and this was an immense advance upon the previous period, whose thinkers accepted it as a dogma.

True to the philosophic spirit of criticism and examination which involves the rejection of dogma as such, Cournot and Renouvier approach the idea of progress with reserve and free from the confidently optimistic assertions of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Scorning the rhetoric of political socialists, positivists and rationalists, they endeavour to view progress as the central problem of the philosophy of history, to ascertain what it involves, and to see whether such a phrase as “law of progress” has a meaning before they invoke it and repeat it in the overconfident manner which characterised their predecessors. We have maintained throughout this work that the central problem of our period was that of freedom. By surveying the general character of the thought of the time, and in following this by an examination of the relation of science and philosophy, we were able to show how vital and how central this problem was. From another side we are again to emphasise this. Having seen the way in which the problem of freedom was dealt with, we are in a position to observe how this coloured the solutions of other problems. The illustration is vivid here, for Cournot and Renouvier develop their philosophy of history from their consideration of freedom, and base their doctrines of progress upon their maintenance of freedom.

It is obvious that the acceptance of such views as those expressed on freedom by both Cournot and Renouvier must have far-reaching effects upon their general attitude to history, for how is the dogma of progress, as it had been preached, to be reconciled with free action? It is much easier to believe in progress if one be a fatalist. The difficulty here was apparent to Comte when he admitted the influence of variations, disturbing causes, which resulted in the development of mankind assuming an oscillating character rather than that of a straight-forward progress. He did not, however, come sufficiently close to this problem, and left the difficulty of freedom on one side by asserting that the operation of freedom, chance or contingency (call it what we will), issuing in non-predetermined actions, was so limited as not to interfere with the general course of progress.

Cournot and Renouvier take up the problem where Comte left it at this point. Each of them takes it a stage further onward in the development. The fundamental ideas of Cournot we have briefly noted as being those of order, chance and probability. The relation of these to progress he discusses, not only in his Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances and the TraitÉ de l’EnchaÎnement d’IdÉes, but also in a most interesting manner in his two volumes entitled ConsidÉrations sur la Marche des IdÉes et des EvÈnements dans les Temps modernes. Like Comte, he is faithful, as far as his principles will allow, to the idea of order. There is order in the universe to a certain degree; science shows it to us. There is also, he maintains, freedom, hazard or chance. Looking at history he sees, as did Comte, phenomena which, upon taking a long perspective, appear as interferences. Pure reason is, he claims, really incapable of deciding the vital question whether these disturbances are due to a pure contingency, chance or freedom, or whether they mark the points of the influence of the supernatural upon mankind’s development. He refers to the enchaÎnement de circonstances providentielles which helped the early Jews and led to the propagation of their monotheism; which helped also the development of the Christian religion in the Roman Empire. Hazard itself, he claims,^[6] may be the agent or minister of Providence. Such a view claims to be loyal at once to freedom and to order.

[6] Essai sur les Fondaments de nos Connaissances, vol. i, chap. 5.

Cournot continues his discussion further and submits many other considerations upon progress. He claims that it is absurd to see in every single occurrence the operations of a divine providence or the work of a divine architect. Such a view would exalt his conception of order, undoubtedly, but only at the expense of his view of freedom. He will not give up his belief in freedom, and in consequence declares that there is no pre-arranged order or plan in the sense of a “law.” He sets down many considerations which appear as dilemmas to the pure reason, and which only action, he thinks, will solve. He points out the difficulty of economic and social progress owing to our being unable to test theories until they are in action on a large field. He shows too how conflicting various developments may be, and how progress in one direction may involve degeneration in another. Equality may be good in some ways, unnatural and evil in others. Increase of population may be applauded as a progress from a military standpoint, but may be an economic evil with disastrous suffering as its consequence. The “progress” to peace and stability in a society usually involves a decrease in vitality and initiative. By much wealth of argument, no less than by his general attitude, Cournot was able to apply the breaks to the excessive confidence in progress and to call a halt for sounder investigation of the matter.

Renouvier did much more in this direction. In his Second Essay of General Criticism he touched upon the problem of progress in relation to freedom, and his fourth and fifth essays constitute five large volumes dealing with the “Philosophy of History.” He also devotes the last two chapters of La Nouvelle Monadologie to progress in relation to societies, and brings out the central point of his social ethics, that justice is the criterion of progress. Indeed, all that Renouvier says regarding history and progress leads up, in a manner peculiarly his own, to his treatment of ethics, which will claim attention in our next chapter.

The Analytic Philosophy of History forms an important item in the philosophical repertoire of Renouvier. He claims it to be a necessary feature of the neo-critical, and indeed of any serious, philosophy. It is, he claims, not a branch of knowledge which has an isolated place, for it is as intimately connected to life as is any theory to the facts which it embraces. That is not to say, and Renouvier is careful to make this clear, that we approach history assuming that there are laws governing it, or a single law or formula by which human development can be expressed. The “Philosophy of History” assumes no such thing; it is precisely this investigation which it undertakes, loyal to the principles of General Criticism of which it, in a sense, forms a part. In a classification it strictly stands between General Criticism or Pure Philosophy and History itself.

“History,” says Renouvier, “is the experience which humanity has of itself,”^[7] and his conclusions regarding progress depend on the views he holds regarding human personality and its essential attribute, freedom. The philosophy of history has to consider whether, in observing the development of humanity on the earth, one may assert the presence of any general law or laws. Can one say legitimately that there has been development? Is there really such a thing as progress? If so, what is our idea of progress? What is the trend of humanity’s history? These are great questions.

[7] Introduction À la Philosophie de l’Histoire, PrÉface.

The attitude which Renouvier adopts to the whole course of human history is based upon his fundamental doctrines of discontinuity, freedom and personality. There are, he claims, real beginnings, unpredicable occurrences, happenings which cannot be explained as having been caused by preceding events. We must not, he urges, allow ourselves to be hypnotised by the name “History,” as if it were in itself some great power, sweeping all of us onward in its course, or a vast ocean in which we are merely waves. Renouvier stands firm in his loyalty to personality, and sees in history, not a power of this sort, but simply the total result of human actions. History is the collective work of the human spirit or of free personalities.^[8]

[8] Renouvier’s great objection to Comte’s work was due to his disagreement with Comte’s conception of Humanity. To Renouvier, with his intense valuation of personality, this Comtian conception was too much of an abstraction.

It is erroneous to look upon it as either the fatalistic functioning of a law of things or as the results of the action of an all-powerful Deity or Providence. Neither the “scientific” view of determinism nor the theological conception of God playing with loaded dice, says Renouvier, will explain history. It is the outcome of human action, of personal acts which have real worth and significance in its formation. History is no mere display of marionettes, no Punch-and-Judy show with a divine operator pulling strings from his concealed position behind the curtain. Equally Renouvier disagrees with the view that history is merely an unrolling in time of a plan conceived from eternity. Human society and civilisation (of which history is the record) are products of man’s own thought and action, and in consequence manifest discontinuity, freedom and contingency. Renouvier thus opposes strongly all those thinkers, such as the Saint-Simonists, Hegelians and Positivists, who see in history only a fatalistic development. He joins battle especially with those who claim that there is a fatalistic or necessitated progress. History has no law, he claims, and there is not and cannot be any law of progress.

The idea of progress is certainly, he admits, one with which the philosopher is brought very vitally into contact in his survey of history. Indeed an elucidation of, this notion might itself be a part of the historian’s task. If so, the historians have sadly neglected part of their work. Renouvier calls attention to the fact that all those historians or philosophers who accept a comforting doctrine of humanity’s assured progress make very plausible statements, but they never seem able to state with any clearness or definiteness what constitutes progress, or what significance lies in their oft-repeated phrase, “the law of progress.” He rightly points out that this insistence upon a law, coupled with a manifest inability to indicate what it is, causes naturally a certain scepticism as to there being any such law at all.

Renouvier brands the search for any law of progress a futile one, since we cannot scientifically or logically define the goal of humanity or the course of its development because of the fact of freedom and because of our ignorance. We must realise that we, personally at firsthand, see only an infinitesimal part of humanity’s life on this planet alone, not to speak of a destiny possible beyond this globe, and that, at second-hand, we have only evidence of a portion of the great procession of human events. We do not know humanity’s beginning and primitive history, nor do we know its goal, if it has one. These factors alone are grave hindrances to the formulation of any conception of progress. Reflection upon them might have saved men, Renouvier observes, from the presumptuous belief in assured progress. We cannot presume even to estimate the tendencies, the direction of its course, because of the enormous and ever-increasing complexity of free human activity.

By his large work on the “Philosophy of History,” Renouvier shows that the facts of history themselves are against the theory of a universal and continuous progress, for the record shows us conflict, advance, retrogression, peoples rising, others degenerating, empires establishing themselves and passing away by inward ruin or outer assaults, or both, and civilisations evolving and disintegrating in their turn. The spectacle does not readily promote an optimistic view of human development at all, much less support the doctrine of a sure and certain progress. Renouvier does not blind himself to the constant struggle and suffering. The theatre, or rather the arena, of history presents a curious spectacle. In politics and in religion he shows us that there are conflicts of authority and of free thought, a warfare of majorities with minorities, a method of fighting issues slightly less savage than the appeal to pure force, but amounting to what he terms “a pacific application of the principle of force.” History shows us the corruption, tyranny and blindness of many majorities, and the tragic and necessary resort to force as the only path to liberty for down-trodden minorities. How, Renouvier asks, can we fit this in with a doctrine of assured progress, or, indeed, progress at all?

Further, he does not find it difficult to show that much unthinking utterance on the part of the optimists may be somewhat checked by calm reflection on even one or two questions. For example, Was progress involved in the change from ancient slavery to the wage-slavery of modern industrialism? Was Christianity, as Nietzsche and others have attempted to maintain, a retrogression? Or, again, Was the change from Greek city life to the conditions of the Middle Ages in any way to be regarded as a progress?

Renouvier considers it quite erroneous to assert, as did Comte, that there is a steady and continuous development underlying the oscillations, and that the variations, as it were, from the direct line of progress cancel one another or balance each other, leaving, as Renan claimed, a balance always and inevitably on the side of goodness.

Such a confidence in the great world banking concern Renouvier does not possess. There is no guarantee that the account of goodness may not be overdrawn and found wanting. He reminds us sternly and solemnly of the terrible solidarity which characterises evil. Deceit, greed, lust, violence and war have an enormous power of breeding each other and of supporting one another increasingly. The optimistic doctrines of progress are simply untrue statements of the facts of history, and falsely coloured views of human nature. It is an appalling error in “social dynamics” to overlook the clash of interest, the greed of nation and of class, the fundamental passionate hate and war. With it is coupled an error in “social statics,” in which faith is put in institutions, in the mechanism of society. These, declares Renouvier, will not save humanity; they will, indeed, ruin it if it allow itself, through spiritual and moral lethargy, to be dominated by them. They have been serviceable creations of humanity at some time or other, and they must serve men, but men must not be bound down to serve them. This servitude is evil, and it has profoundly evil consequences.

Having attacked Comte’s view of progress and of order in its static and dynamic point of view, Renouvier then brings up his heavy artillery of argument against Comte’s idealisation of the Middle Ages. To assert that this period was an advance on the life of the Greek city, Renouvier considers to be little short of impudence. The art and science and philosophy of the Greeks are our best heritage, while the Middle Ages, dominated by a vicious and intolerant Church, with its infallible theology and its crushing power of the clergy, was a “dead hand” upon the human spirit. While it provided an organic society, it only succeeded in doing so by narrowing and crushing the human intellect. The Renascence and the Reformation proved that there were essential elements of human life being crushed down. They reached a point, however, where they exploded.

Not only does Renouvier thus declare the Middle Ages to be a regress, but he goes the length of asserting that the development of European history could have been different. This is his doctrine of freedom applied to history. There is no reason at all for our regarding the Middle Ages or any such period as necessitated in the order of mankind’s development. There is no law governing that development; consequently, had mankind, or even a few of its number, willed and acted upon their freedom differently, the whole trend of the period we call the Dark Ages might have been quite other than it was. Renouvier does not shirk the development of this point, which is a central one for his purpose. It may seem fantastic to the historians, who must of course accept the past as given and consequently regard reflection on “what might have been” as wasted time. Certainly the past cannot be altered—that is not Renouvier’s point. He intends to give a lesson to humanity, a stern lesson to cure it of its belief in fatalism in regard to history. This is the whole purpose of the curious volume he published in 1876, entitled Uchronie, which had as its explanatory sub-title L’Utopie dans l’Histoire, Esquisse historique du DÉveloppement de la Civilisation europÉenne, tel qu’il n’a pas ÉtÉ, tel qu’il avail pu Être. The book, consisting of two manuscripts supposed to be kept in the care of an old Dutch monk, is actually an imaginary construction by Renouvier himself of European history in the period 100 to 800 A.D., written to show the real possibility that the sequence of events from the Emperor Nerva to the Emperor Charlemagne might have been radically different from what it actually was.

All this is intended by Renouvier to combat the “universal justification of the past.” He sees that the doctrine of progress as usually stated is not only a lie, but that it is an extremely dangerous one, for it justifies the past, or at least condones it as inevitable, and thus makes evil a condition of goodness, demoralises history, nullifies ethics and encourages the damnation of humanity itself. This fatalistic doctrine, asserts Renouvier with great earnestness, must be abandoned; freedom must be recognised as operative, and the human will as making history.There is no law of progress, and the sooner humanity can come to realise this the better it will be for it. Only by such a realisation can it work out its own salvation. “The real law lies”, declares Renouvier,”only in an equal possibility of progress or deterioration for both societies and individuals.” If there is to be progress it can only come because, and when, humanity recognises itself as collectively responsible for its own history, and when each person feels his own responsibility regarding that action. No acceptance of events will avail; we must will progress and consciously set ourselves to realise it. It is possible, but it depends on us. Here Renouvier’s considerations lead him from history to ethics. “Almost all the Great Men, men of great will, have been fatalists. So slowly does humanity emerge from its shadows and beget for itself a just notion of its autonomy. The phantom of necessity weighs heavily,” he laments, “over the night of history.”^[9] With freedom and a recognition of its freedom by humanity generally we may see the dawn of better things. Humanity will then consciously and deliberately make its history, and not be led by the operations of herd-instinct and fatalistic beliefs which in the past have so disgraced and marred its record.

[9] Psychologie ralionnelle, vol. 2, p. 91.

The existing condition of human society can only be described frankly, in Renouvier’s opinion, as a state of war. Each individual, each class, each nation, each race, is actually at war with others. It matters not whether a diplomatic state of peace, as it is called, exists or not; that must not blind us to the facts. By institutions, customs, laws, hidden fraud, diplomacy, and open violence, this conflict is kept up. It is all war, says Renouvier. Modern society is based on war, economic, military or judicial. Indeed, military and naval warfare is a clear issue, but only a symbol of what always goes on. Might always has the upper hand, hence ordinary life in modern society is just a state of war. Our civilisation does not rest on justice, or on the conception of justice; it rests on power and might. Until it is founded on justice, peace, he urges, will not be possible; humanity will be enslaved in further struggles disastrous o itself. This doctrine of the État de guerre, as descriptive of modern society, he makes a feature of his ethics, upon which we must not here encroach, but may point out that he insists upon justice as the ultimate social criterion, and claims that this is higher than charity, which is inadequate as a basis for society, however much it may alleviate its ills. One of the chief necessities, he points out, an essential to any progressive measure would be to moralise our modern notion of the state.^[10] In the notes to his last chapter of the Nouvelle Monadologie Renouvier attacks the Marxian doctrine of the materialistic determination of history.

[10] This point was further emphasised by Henri Michel in his work, L’IdÉe de l’Etat.

This same book, however, we must note, marks a stage in Renouvier’s own thought different from his doctrines in the earlier Essais de Critique gÉnÉrale, and this later philosophy, of which the Monadologie and Personnalisme are the two most notable volumes, displays an attempt to look upon progress from a more ultimate standpoint. His thÉodicÉe here involves the notion, seen in Ravaisson, of an early perfection, involving a subsequent “fall,” the world now, with its guerre universelle, being an intermediate stage between a perfect or harmonious state in the past and one which lies in the future.

The march of humanity is an uncertain one because it is free. The philosophy of history thus reiterates the central importance of freedom. The actual end or purpose of this freedom is not simply, says Renouvier, the attainment of perfection, but rather the possibility of progress. It was this thought which led him on in his reflections further than any of the thinkers of our period, or at least more deliberately than any, to indicate his views on the doctrine of a future life for humanity. So far from this being a purely religious problem, Renouvier rightly looks upon it as merely a carrying further afield of the conception of progress.

For him, and this is the significant point for us here, any notion of a future life for humanity, in the accepted sense of immortality, is bound up with, and indeed based upon, the conception of progressive development. It is true that Renouvier, like Kant, looks upon the problems of “God, Freedom and Immortality” as the central ones in philosophy, true also that he recognises the significance of this belief in a Future Life as an extremely important one for religious teaching; but his main attitude to the question is merely a continuation of his general doctrine of progress, coupled with his appreciation of personality. It is in this light only that Renouvier reflects upon the problem of Immortality. He makes no appeal to a world beyond our experience—a fact which follows from his rejection of the Kantian world of “noumena”; nor does he wish the discussion to be based on the assertions of religious faith. He admits that belief in a Future Life involves faith, in a sense, but it is a rational belief, a philosophical hypothesis and, more particularly, according to Renouvier, a moral hypothesis. He asserts against critics that the undertaking of such a discussion is a necessary part of any Critical Philosophy, which would be incomplete without it, as its omission would involve an inadequate account of human experience.

Renouvier claims that, in the first instance, the question of a future existence arises naturally in the human mind from the discrepancy which is manifest in our experience between nature on the one hand and conscience on the other. The course of events is not in accord with what we feel to be morally right, and the demands of the moral law are, to Renouvier’s mind, supreme. He realises how acutely this discrepancy is sometimes felt by the human mind, and his remarks on this point recall those of the sensitive soul, who, feeling this acutely, cried out:

“Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”

These lines well express the sharpness of Renouvier’s own feelings, and he claims that, such a conspiracy being impossible, the belief in Immortality becomes a necessary moral postulate or probability.

The grounds for such a postulate are to be found, he claims, even in the processes of nature itself. The law of finality or teleology manifests itself throughout the universe: purpose is to be seen at work in the Cosmos. It is true that in the lower stages of existence it seems obscure and uncertain, but an observer cannot fail to see “ends” being achieved in the biological realm. The functions of organisms, more particularly those of the animal world, show us a realm of ends and means at work for achieving those ends. This development in the direction of an end, this teleology, implies, says Renouvier, a destiny. The whole of existence is a gradual procession of beings at higher and higher levels of development, ends and means to each other, and all inheriting an immense past, which is itself a means to their existence as ends in themselves. May one not then, suggests Renouvier, make a valid induction from the destiny thus recognised and partially fulfilled of certain individual creatures, to a destiny common to all these creatures indefinitely prolonged?^[11]

[11] Psychologic rationnelle, vol. 2, pp. 220-221.

The objection is here made that Nature does not concern herself with individuals; for her the individual is merely a means for the carrying on and propagation of the species. Individuals come into being, live for a time and pass away, the species lives on perpetually; only species are in the plan of the universe, individuals are of little or no worth. To this Renouvier replies that species live long but are not perpetual; whole species have been wiped out by happenings on our planet, many now are dying out. The insinuation about the worthlessness of individuals rouses his wrath, for it strikes at the very root of his philosophy, of which personality is the keynote. This, he says, is to lapse into Pantheism, into doctrines of Buddhists and of Spinoza. Pantheism and all kindred views are to be rejected. It is not in the indefinable, All-existing, the eternal and infinite One, that we find help with regard to the significance of ends in nature. Ends are to be sought in the individuals or the species. But while it behoves us to look upon the world as existing for the species and not the species for the sake of the world, we must remember that the species exists for the sake of the individuals in it. It is false to look upon the individuals as existing merely for the sake of the species.

If we subordinate the individual to the species, sacrificing his inherent worth and unique value, and then subordinate species to genus and all genera to the All, we lose ourselves in the Infinite substance in which everything is swallowed up. Again, Pantheism tends to speak of the perfection of individuals, and speaks loudly of progress from one generation to another. But it tells only of a future which involves the entire sacrifice of all that has worth or value in the past. It shows endless sacrifice, improvement too, but all for naught. “What does it matter to say that the best is yet to be, if the best must perish as the good, to give place to a yet better ‘best’ which will not have the virtue of enduring any more than the others? Do we offer any real consolation to Sisyphus,” asks Renouvier, “by promising him annihilation, which is coupled with the promise of successors capable of lifting his old rock higher and still higher up the fatal slope, by offering him the eternal falling of this rock and successors who will continually be annihilated and endlessly be replaced by others?” The rock is the personal life. On this theory, however high the rock be pushed, it always is destined to fall back to the same depth, as low as if it had never been pushed up hill at all. We refuse to reconcile a world containing real ends and purposes within it with such a game, vast and miserable, in which no actor plays for his own sake, and all the false winners lose all their gains by being obliged to leave the party while the play goes on for ever. This is to throw away all individual worth, the value of all personal work and effort, to declare individuality a sham, and to embrace fatality. It is this mischievous Pantheism which is the curse of many religions and many philosophies. Against it Renouvier wages a ceaseless warfare. The individuals, he asserts exist both for their own sake and worth, also for the sake and welfare of others. In the person, the law of finality finds its highest expression. Personality is of supreme and unique value.

This being so, it becomes a necessary postulate of our philosophy, if we really believe in the significance of personalities and in progress (which Renouvier considers to have no meaning apart from them), to conclude that death is but an event in the career of these personalities. They are perpetuated beyond death.

For Renouvier, as for Kant, the chief arguments for survival are based on considerations of a moral character, upon the demands of the moral ideal for self- realisation, for the attainment of holiness or, more properly, “wholeness.” This progress can only be made possible by the continued existence after bodily death of the identical personality, unique and of eternal worth in the scheme of things, capable of further development than is possible amid the conditions of life as we know it.

We must, however, present to ourselves Immortality as given by the development of appearances in this world of phenomena, under the general laws with which we are acquainted to-day, thus correcting the method of Kant, who placed Immortality in a noumenal world. The salvation of a philosopher should not be of such a kind. We must treat Immortality as a Law, not as a miracle. The thinker who accepts the latter view quits the realm of science—that is, of experience and reason—to establish a mystic order in contradiction with the laws of nature. The appeal to the “supernatural” is the denial of nature, and the appellant ruins his own case by his appeal. If Immortality is a fact, it must be considered rationally.

Is Death—that is, the destruction of individuals as such, or the annihilation of personalities—a reality? Renouvier reminds those who jeer at the doctrine of Immortality that “the reality of death (as so defined) has not been, and cannot be, proved.” Our considerations must of necessity be hypothetical, but they can be worthy of rational beings. We must then keep our hopes and investigations within the realm of the universe and not seek to place our hope of immortality in a region where nothing exists, “not even an ether to support the wings of our hope.”

Renouvier’s general considerations led him to view all individuals as having a destiny in which their individuality should be conserved and developed. When we turn in particular to man, these points are to be seen in fuller light. The instinctive belief in Immortality is bound up with his nature as a thinking being who is capable of setting up, and of striving after, ends. This continual striving is a marked characteristic of all human life, a counting oneself not to have attained, a missing of the mark.

The human consciousness protests against annihilation. At times this is very keenly expressed. “At the period of the great aspirations of the heart, the ecstasy of noble passions is accompanied by the conviction of Immortality. Life at its highest, realising its richest personality, protests, in virtue of its own worth, and in the name of the depths of power it still feels latent in itself, against the menace of annihilation.”^[12] It cries out with its unconquerable soul:

“Give me the glory of going on and not to die!”

[12] Psychologie rationnelle, vol. 2, p. 249.

Renouvier finds a further witness in the testimony of Love—that is to say, in nature itself arrived at the consciousness of that passion in virtue of which it exists and assuring itself by this passion, of the power to surmount all these short-comings and failures. Love casteth out fear, the dread of annihilation, and shows itself “stronger than death.” Hope and Love unite in strengthening the initial belief in Immortality and the “will to survive.”

Renouvier admits that this is a priori reasoning, and speedily a posteriori arguments can be brought up as mighty battering-rams against the fortress of immortal life, but although they mav shake its walls, they are unable to destroy the citadel. Nothing can demonstrate the impossibility of future existence, whereas the whole weight of the moral law and the teleological elements at work in the universe are, according to Renouvier, in favour of such a belief.

Morality, like every other science, is entitled to, nay obliged to, employ the hypothesis of harmony. Now in this connection the hypothesis of harmony (or, as Kant styled it, the concurrence of happiness and virtue necessary to a conception of order) finds reinforcement from the consideration of the meaning and significance of freedom. For the actual end or purpose of freedom is not simply the attainment of perfection, but rather the possibility of progress. Immortality becomes a necessary postulate, reinforced by instinct, reason, morality, by the fact of freedom, and the notion of progress. Further, Renouvier feels that if we posit death as the end of all we thereby give an absolute victory to physical evil in the universe.

The postulate of Immortality has a certain dignity and worth. The discussion of future life must, however, be kept within the possibilities of law and phenomena. Religious views, such as those of Priestley, by their appeal to the miraculous debase the notion of Immortality itself. Talk of an immortal essence, and a mortal essence is meaningless, for unless the same identical person, with his unique character and memory, persists, then our conception of immortality is of little or no value. The idea of an indestructible spiritual substance is not any better or more acceptable. Our notion of a future life must be based upon the inherent and inalienable rights of the moral person to persistence and to chances of further development or progress. Although we must beware of losing ourselves in vain speculations, which really empty our thought of all its content, Renouvier claims that we are quite entitled to lay down hypotheses.

The same general laws which we see in operation and which have brought the universe and the beings in it to the stage of development in which they now are may, without contradiction, be conceived as operating in further developments after the change we call bodily death. There is no incongruity in conceiving the self-same personality continuing in a second and different organism. Renouvier cites the case of the grub and the butterfly and other metamorphoses. In man himself he points to organic crises, which give the organism a very different character and effect a radical change in its constitution. For example, there is the critical exit from the mother’s womb, involving the change from a being living in an enclosure to that of an independent creature. When once the crisis of the first breath be passed the organism starts upon another life. There are other crises, as, for instance, the radical changes which operate in both sexes at the stage of puberty. Just as the personality persists in its identity through all these changes, may it not pass through that of bodily death?

The Stoics believed in a cosmic resurrection. Substituting the idea of progress for their view of a new beginning, Renouvier claims that we may attain the hypothesis that all human history is but a fragment in a development incomparably greater and grander. Again, we may conceive of life in two worlds co-existing, indeed interpenetrating, so that the dead are not gone far from us into some remote heaven.

But, whatever form we give to our hypothesis regarding progress into another existence beyond this present one, Renouvier does not easily allow us to forget that it must be based upon the significance of freedom, progress and personality supported by moral considerations. Even this progress is not guaranteed, and even if it should be the achievement of some spirits there is no proof that it is universal. Our destiny, he finally reminds us, lies in our own hands, for progress here means an increased capacity for progress later, while spiritual and moral indifference will result finally, and indeed, necessarily, in annihilation. Here, as so often in his work, Renouvier puts moral arguments and appeals in the forefront of his thought. Progress in relation to humanity’s life on earth drew from him an appeal for the establishment of justice: progress in a further world implies equally a moral appeal. Our duty is to keep the ideal of progress socially and individually ever before us, and to be worthy of immortality if it be a fact, rather than to lose ourselves in the mistaken piety of “other- worldliness.” About neither progress can we be dogmatic; it is not assured, Renouvier has shown, and we must work for it by the right use of our freedom, our intelligence and our will.

III

No thinker discussed the problem of progress with greater energy or penetration than Renouvier. The new spiritualist group, however, developed certain views arising from the question of contingency, or the relation of freedom to progress. These thinkers were concerned more with psychological and metaphysical work, and with the exception of FouillÉe and Guyau, they wrote little which bore directly upon the problem of progress. Many of their ideas, however, have an indirect bearing upon important points at issue.

In Ravaisson, Lachelier and Boutroux, we find the question of teleology presented, and also that of the opposition of spirit and matter. From the outset the new spiritualism had to wrestle with two difficulties inherent in the thought of Ravaisson. These were, firstly, the reconciliation of the freedom and spontaneity of the spirit with the operations of a Divine Providence or teleology of some kind; and, secondly, the dualism assumed in the warfare of spirit and matter, although spirit was held to be superior and anterior to matter. This last involved a complication for any doctrine of progress, as it required a primitive “fall” to account for matter, even a fall of the Deity himself. This Ravaisson himself admits, and he thinks that in creating the world God had to sacrifice some of his own being. In this case “progress” is set over against a transcendental existence, and is but the reawakening of what once existed in God, and in a sense now and eternally exists. Progress there is, claims Ravaisson, towards truth and beauty and goodness. This is the operation of a Divine Providence acting by attracting men freely to these ideals, and as these are symbols of God himself, progress is the return of the spirit through self-conscious personalities to the fuller realisation of harmony, beauty and love—that is, to the glory of God, who has ever been, now is, and ever shall be, perfect beauty, goodness and love.

Thus, although from a temporal and finite standpoint Ravaisson can speak of progress, it is doubtful if he is justified in doing so ultimately, sub specie Æternitatis. To solve the problem in the way he presents it, one would need to know more about the ultimate value and significance of the personalities themselves, and their destiny in relation to the Divinity who is, as he claims, perfect harmony, beauty and love. It was this point, so dear to an upholder of personality, which had led Renouvier to continue his discussion of progress in relation to history as generally understood, until it embraced a wider field of eternal destiny, and to consider the idea of a future life as arising from, and based upon, the conception of progress. It is this same point which later perplexes Bergson, when he recognises this self-conscious personality as the ultimate development of the Évolution crÉatrice, and so constituting in a sense the goal of the spirit, although he is careful to state that there is no finalism involved at all. Ravaisson stands for this finalism, however, in claiming that there are ends. He does not see how otherwise we could speak of progress, as we should have no criterion, no terminus ad quem; all would be simply process, not progress.

“DÉtachement de Dieu, retour À Dieu, clÔture du grand cercle cosmique, restitution de l’universel Équilibre, telle est l’histoire du monde.” Such is Ravaisson’s doctrine, much of which is akin to, and indeed re-echoes, much in Christian theology from St. Augustine, with his idea of an eternal and restless movement of return to the divinity, to the Westminster divines in their answer to the important query about the chief end of man, which they considered to be not only to glorify God but to enjoy Him for ever. This last and rather strange phrase only seems to have significance if we conceive, in Ravaisson’s manner, of beauty, truth and goodness as expressions or manifestations of the Divinity to whom the world-process may freely tend.

For Lachelier the universal process presents a triple aspect, mechanism which is coupled with finalism and with freedom. These three principles are in action simultaneously in the world and in the individual. Each of us is at once matter, living soul and personality—that is, necessity, finality and freedom. The laws of the universe, so far from being expressed entirely by mechanical formulae, can only be expressed, as Ravaisson had claimed, by an approach to harmony and beauty, not in terms of logic or geometry. All this involves a real progress, a creativeness, which differs from Ravaisson’s return, as it were, to the bosom of God.

Boutroux combines the views of Ravaisson and Lachelier by insisting on freedom and contingency, but maintaining at the same time a teleological doctrine. Already in discussing his conception of freedom we have referred to his metaphor of the sailors in the ship. His doctrine of contingency is directly opposed to any rigid pre-ordained plan of reality or progress, but it does not prevent the spirit from a creative teleology, the formation of a plan as it advances. This is precisely, is it not, the combination of free action and of teleology which we find in our own lives? Boutroux is thus able to side with Ravaisson in his claim to see tendencies to beauty and truth and goodness, the fruits of the spirit, which it creates and to which it draws us, while at the same time he maintains freedom in a manner quite as emphatic as Lachelier. He is careful to remind us that “not all developments are towards perfection.”^[13] In particular he dislikes the type of social theory or of sociology which undervalues the personal life.^[14]