The Idea of Progress: An Inguiry into Its Origin and Growth. J. B. Bury
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by all wise men, that "we are not far from the times of Anti-Christ." Thus the intellectual reforms which he urged would have the effect, and no more, of preparing Christendom to resist more successfully the corruption in which the rule of Anti-Christ would involve the world. "Truth will prevail," by which he meant science will make advances, "though with difficulty, until Anti-Christ and his forerunners appear;" and on his own showing the interval would probably be short.
The frequency with which Bacon recurs to this subject, and the emphasis he lays on it, show that the appearance of Anti-Christ was a fixed point in his mental horizon. When he looked forward into the future, the vision which confronted him was a scene of corruption, tyranny, and struggle under the reign of a barbarous enemy of Christendom; and after that, the end of the world. [Footnote: (1) His coming may be fixed by astrology: Opus Majus, iv. p. 269 (inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi; cp. p. 402). (2) His coming means the end of the world: ib. p. 262. (3) We are not far from it: ib. p. 402. One of the reasons which seem to have made this view probable to Bacon was the irruption of the Mongols into Europe during his lifetime; cp. p. 268 and vii. p. 234. Another was the prevalent corruption, especially of the clergy, which impressed him deeply; see Compendium studii philosophiae, ed. Brewer, p. 402. (4) "Truth will prevail," etc.: Opus Majus, i. pp. 19, 20. He claimed for experimental science that it would produce inventions which could be usefully employed against Antichrist: ib. vii. p. 221.] It is from this point of view that we must appreciate the observations which he made on the advancement of knowledge. "It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients have left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours, which, unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better results"; Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers; Avicenna and Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and have added much that is new; and so it will go on till the end of the world. And Bacon quotes passages from Seneca's "Physical Inquiries" to show that the acquisition of knowledge is gradual. Attention has been already called to those passages, and it was shown how perverse it is, on the strength of such remarks, to claim Seneca as a teacher of the doctrine of Progress. The same claim has been made for Bacon with greater confidence, and it is no less perverse. The idea of Progress is glaringly incongruous with his vision of the world. If his programme of revolutionising secular learning had been accepted—it fell completely dead, and his work was forgotten for many ages—he would have been the author of a progressive reform; but how many reformers have there been before and after Bacon on whose minds the idea of Progress never dawned?
[Footnote: Bacon quotes Seneca: See Opus Majus, i. pp. 37, 55, 14.
Much has been made out of a well-known passage in his short Epistle de secretis operibus artis et naturae et de militate magiae, c. iv. (ed. Brewer, p. 533), in which he is said to PREDICT inventions which have been realised in the locomotives, steam navigation, and aeroplanes of modern times. But Bacon predicts nothing. He is showing that science can invent curious and, to the vulgar, incredible things without the aid of magic. All the inventions which he enumerates have, he declares, been actually made in ancient times, with the exception of a flying-machine (instrumentum volandi quod non vidi nec hominem qui vidisset cognovi, sed sapientem qui hoc artificium excogitavit explere cognosco).
Compare the remarks of S. Vogl, Die Physik Roger Bacos (1906), 98 sqq.]
4.
Thus Friar Bacon's theories of scientific reform, so far from amounting to an anticipation of the idea of Progress, illustrate how impossible it was that this idea could appear in the Middle Ages. The whole spirit of medieval Christianity excluded it. The conceptions which were entertained of the working of divine Providence, the belief that the world, surprised like a sleeping household by a thief in the night, might at any moment come to a sudden end, had the same effect as the Greek theories of the nature of change and of recurring cycles of the world. Or rather, they had a more powerful effect, because they were not reasoned conclusions, but dogmas guaranteed by divine authority. And medieval pessimism as to man's mundane condition was darker and sterner than the pessimism of the Greeks. There was the prospect of happiness in another sphere to compensate, but this, engrossing the imagination, only rendered it less likely that any one should think of speculating about man's destinies on earth.
III 1.
The civilised countries of Europe spent about three hundred years in passing from the mental atmosphere of the Middle Ages into the mental atmosphere of the modern world. These centuries were one of the conspicuously progressive periods in history, but the conditions were not favourable to the appearance of an idea of Progress, though the intellectual milieu was being prepared in which that idea could be born. This progressive period, which is conveniently called the Renaissance, lasted from the fourteenth into the seventeenth century. The great results, significant for our present purpose, which the human mind achieved at this stage of its development were two. Self-confidence was restored to human reason, and life on this planet was recognised as possessing a value independent of any hopes or fears connected with a life beyond the grave.
But in discarding medieval naivete and superstition, in assuming a freer attitude towards theological authority, and in developing a new conception of the value of individual personality, men looked to the guidance of Greek and Roman thinkers, and called up the spirit of the ancient world to exorcise the ghosts of the dark ages. Their minds were thus directed backwards to a past civilisation which, in the ardour of new discovery, and in the reaction against medievalism, they enthroned as ideal; and a new authority was set up, the authority of ancient writers. In general speculation the men of the Renaissance followed the tendencies and adopted many of the prejudices of Greek philosophy. Although some great discoveries, with far-reaching, revolutionary consequences, were made in this period, most active minds were engaged in rediscovering, elaborating, criticising, and imitating what was old. It was not till the closing years of the Renaissance that speculation began to seek and feel its way towards new points of departure. It was not till then that a serious reaction set in against the deeper influences of medieval thought.
2.
To illustrate the limitations of this period let us take Machiavelli, one of the most original thinkers that Italy ever produced.
There are certain fundamental principles underlying Machiavelli's science of politics, which he has indicated incidentally in his unsystematic way, but which are essential to the comprehension of his doctrines. The first is that at all times the world of human beings has been the same, varying indeed from land to land, but always presenting the same aspect of some societies advancing towards prosperity, and others declining. Those which are on the upward grade will always reach a point beyond which they cannot rise further, but they will not remain permanently on this level, they will begin to decline; for human things are always in motion and therefore must go up or down. Similarly, declining states will ultimately touch bottom and then begin to ascend. Thus a good constitution or social organisation can last only for a short time. [Footnote: Machiavelli's principle of advance and decline: Discorsi, ii. Introduction; Istorie fiorentine, v. ad init. For the cycle of constitutions through which all states tend to move see Discorsi, ii. 2 (here we see the influence of Polybius).]
It is obvious that in this view of history Machiavelli was inspired and instructed by the ancients. And it followed from his premisses that the study of the past is of the highest value because it enables men to see what is to come; since to all social events at any period there are correspondences in ancient times. "For these events are due to men, who have and always had the same passions, and therefore of necessity the effects must be the same." [Footnote: Discorsi, iii. 43.]
Again, Machiavelli follows his ancient masters in assuming as evident that a good organisation of society can be effected only by the deliberate design of a wise legislator. [Footnote: Ib. iii. 1. The lawgiver must assume for his purposes that all men are bad: ib. i. 3. Villari has useful remarks on these principles in his Machiavelli, Book ii. cap. iii.] Forms of government and religions are the personal creations of a single brain; and the only chance for a satisfactory constitution or for a religion to maintain itself for any length of time is constantly to repress any tendencies to depart from the original conceptions of its creator.
It is evident that these two assumptions are logically connected. The lawgiver builds on the immutability of human nature; what is good