It will be seen therefore that we dismiss altogether any doctrine of an
'illusion of progress' as a necessary decoy to progressive action.
Progress is a fact as well as an ideal, and the ideal, though it springs
from an objective reality, will always be in advance of it. So it is
with all man's activities when he comes to man's estate. In science he
has always an ideal of a more perfect knowledge before him though he
becomes scientific by experience. In art he is always striving to
idealize fresh things, though he first becomes an artist from the pure
spontaneous pleasure of expressing what is in him. The deliberate
projection of the ideal into the future, seeing how far it will take us
and whether we are journeying in the right direction, is a late stage.
As to progress, the largest general ideal which can affect man's action,
it is only recently that mankind as a whole has been brought to grips
with the conception, also enlarged to the full. He was standing,
somewhat bewildered, somewhat dazzled, before it, when the war, like an
eclipse of the sun, came suddenly and darkened the view. But an eclipse
has been found an invaluable time for studying some of the problems of
the sun's nature and of light itself.
One of the most acute critics of the mid-Victorian prophets of progress,
Dr. John Grote, did very well in disentangling the ideal element which
is inherent in every sound doctrine of progress as a guide to conduct.
He took the theory of a continuous inevitable progress in human affairs,
and showed how this by itself might lead to a weakening of the will, on
which alone in his view progress in the proper sense depends. He took
the mechanical theory of utilitarianism and subjected it to a similar
analysis. We cannot evaluate progress as an increase in a sum-total of
happiness. This is incapable of calculation, and if we aim directly at
it, we are likely to lose the higher things on which it depends, and
which are capable of being made the objects of that direct striving
which is essential to progress. Dr. Grote's analysis has long since
passed into current philosophical teaching, but he will always be well
worth reading for his fresh and vigorous reasoning and for the way in
which he builds up his own position without denying the solid
contributions of those whom he criticizes. Complete truth in the matter
seems to us to involve a larger share for the historical element than
Dr. Grote explicitly allows. We grant fully the paramount necessity for
an ideal of progress and for constantly revising, purifying, and
strengthening it. But in its formation we should trace more than he does
to the collective forces of mankind as expressed in history. These have
given us the ideal and will carry us on towards it by a force which is
greater than, and in one sense independent of, any individual will. This
is the cardinal truth of sociology, and is obvious if we consider how in
matters of everyday experience we are all compelled by some social force
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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