The Idea of Progress: An Inguiry into Its Origin and Growth. J. B. Bury
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There was yet a third preliminary condition. There can be no certainty that knowledge will continually progress until science has been placed on sure foundations. And science does not rest for us on sure foundations unless the invariability of the laws of nature is admitted. If we do not accept this hypothesis, if we consider it possible that the uniformities of the natural world may be changed from time to time, we have no guarantee that science can progress indefinitely. The philosophy of Descartes established this principle, which is the palladium of science; and thus the third preliminary condition was fulfilled.
2.
During the Renaissance period the authority of the Greeks and Romans had been supreme in the realm of thought, and in the interest of further free development it was necessary that this authority should be weakened. Bacon and others had begun the movement to break down this tyranny, but the influence of Descartes was weightier and more decisive, and his attitude was more uncompromising. He had none of Bacon's reverence for classical literature; he was proud of having forgotten the Greek which he had learned as a boy. The inspiration of his work was the idea of breaking sharply and completely with the past, and constructing a system which borrows nothing from the dead. He looked forward to an advancement of knowledge in the future, on the basis of his own method and his own discoveries, [Footnote: Cf. for instance his remarks on medicine, at the end of the Discours de la methode.] and he conceived that this intellectual advance would have far-reaching effects on the condition of mankind. The first title he had proposed to give to his Discourse on Method was "The Project of a Universal Science which can elevate our Nature to its highest degree of Perfection." He regarded moral and material improvement as depending on philosophy and science.
The justification of an independent attitude towards antiquity, on the ground that the world is now older and more mature, was becoming a current view. [Footnote: Descartes wrote: Non est quod antiquis multum tribuamus propter antiquitatem, sed nos potius iis seniores dicendi. Jam enim senior est mundus quam tune majoremque habemus rerum experientiam. (A fragment quoted by Baillet, Vie de Descartes, viii. 10.) Passages to the same effect occur in Malebranche, Arnauld, and Nicole. (See Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne, i. 482–3.)
A passage in La Mothe Le Vayer's essay Sur l'opiniatrete in Orasius Tubero (ii. 218) is in point, if, as seems probable, the date of that work is 1632–33. "Some defer to the ancients and allow themselves to be led by them like children; others hold that the ancients lived in the youth of the world, and it is those who live to-day who are really the ancients, and consequently ought to carry most weight." See Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, p. 52.
The passage of Pascal occurs in the Fragment d'un traite du vide, not published till 1779 (now included in the Pensees, Premiere Partie, Art. I), and therefore without influence on the origination of the theory of progress. It has been pointed out that Guillaume Colletet had in 1636 expressed a similar view (Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, v. 185–6).]
Descartes expressed it like Bacon, and it was taken up and repeated by many whom Descartes influenced. Pascal, who till 1654 was a man of science and a convert to Cartesian ideas, put it in a striking way. The whole sequence of men (he says) during so many centuries should be considered as a single man, continually existing and continually learning. At each stage of his life this universal man profited by the knowledge he had acquired in the preceding stages, and he is now in his old age. This is a fuller, and probably an independent, development of the comparison of the race to an individual which we found in Bacon. It occurs in a fragment which remained unpublished for more than a hundred years, and is often quoted as a recognition, not of a general progress of man, but of a progress in human knowledge.
To those who reproached Descartes with disrespect towards ancient thinkers he might have replied that, in repudiating their authority, he was really paying them the compliment of imitation and acting far more in their own spirit than those who slavishly followed them. Pascal saw this point. "What can be more unjust," he wrote, "than to treat our ancients with greater consideration than they showed towards their own predecessors, and to have for them this incredible respect which they deserve from us only because they entertained no such regard for those who had the same advantage (of antiquity) over them?" [Footnote: Pensees, ib.]
At the same time Pascal recognised that we are indebted to the ancients for our very superiority to them in the extent of our knowledge. "They reached a certain point, and the slightest effort enables us to mount higher; so that we find ourselves on a loftier plane with less trouble and less glory." The attitude of Descartes was very different. Aspiring to begin ab integro and reform the foundations of knowledge, he ignored or made little of what had been achieved in the past. He attempted to cut the threads of continuity as with the shears of Atropos. This illusion [Footnote: He may be reproached himself with scholasticism in his metaphysical reasoning.] hindered him from stating a doctrine of the progress of knowledge as otherwise he might have done. For any such doctrine must take account of the past as well as of the future.
But a theory of progress was to grow out of his philosophy, though he did not construct it. It was to be developed by men who were imbued with the Cartesian spirit.
3.
The theological world in France was at first divided on the question whether the system of Descartes could be reconciled with orthodoxy or not. The Jesuits said no, the Fathers of the Oratory said yes. The Jansenists of Port Royal were enthusiastic Cartesians. Yet it was probably the influence of the great spiritual force of Jansenism that did most to check the immediate spread of Cartesian ideas. It was preponderant in France for fifty years. The date of the Discourse of Method is 1637. The Augustinus of Jansenius was published in 1640, and in 1643 Arnauld's Frequent Communion made Jansenism a popular power. The Jansenist movement was in France in some measure what the Puritan movement was in England, and it caught hold of serious minds in much the same way. The Jesuits had undertaken the task of making Christianity easy, of finding a compromise between worldliness and religion, and they flooded the world with a casuistic literature designed for this purpose. Ex opinionum varietate jugum Christi suavius deportatur. The doctrine of Jansenius was directed against this corruption of faith and morals. He maintained that there can be no compromise with the world; that casuistry is incompatible with morality; that man is naturally corrupt; and that in his most virtuous acts some corruption is present.
Now the significance of these two forces—the stern ideal of the Jansenists and the casuistry of the Jesuit teachers—is that they both attempted to meet, by opposed methods, the wave of libertine thought and conduct which is a noticeable feature in the history of French society from the reign of Henry IV. to that of Louis XV. [Footnote: For the prevalence of "libertine" thought in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century see the work of the Pere Garasse, La Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps ou pretendus tels, etc. (1623). Cp. also Brunetiere's illuminating study, "Jansenistes et Cartesiens" in Etudes critiques, 4me serie.] This libertinism had its philosophy, a sort of philosophy of nature, of which the most brilliant exponents were Rabelais and Moliere. The maxim, "Be true to nature," was evidently opposed sharply to the principles of the Christian religion, and it was associated with sceptical views which prevailed widely in France from the early years of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits sought to make terms by saying virtually: "Our religious principles and your philosophy of nature are not after all so incompatible in practice. When it comes to the application of principles, opinions differ. Theology is as elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground that her yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other hand, fought uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the time, maintaining the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise or condescension. And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped it. Its influence can be traced in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld and the Caracteres of La Bruyere. It was through its influence that Moliere found it difficult to get some of his plays staged. It explains the fact that the court of Louis XIV., however corrupt, was decorous compared with the courts of Henry IV. and Louis XV.; a severe standard was set up, if it was not observed.
The genius of Pascal made the fortunes of Jansenism. He outlived his Cartesianism and became its most influential spokesman. His Provinciales (1656) rendered abstruse questions