The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and GrowthBury, J. B. (John Bagnell)
Philosophy
The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth
Bury, J. B. (John Bagnell)
History -- Philosophy; Progress
Progress then is not an accident, but a necessity. Civilisation is a
part of nature, being a development of man's latent capabilities under
the action of favourable circumstances which were certain at some time
or other to occur. Here Spencer's argument assumes a final cause. The
ultimate purpose of creation, he asserts, is to produce the greatest
amount of happiness, and to fulfil this aim it is necessary that each
member of the race should possess faculties enabling him to experience
the highest enjoyment of life, yet in such a way as not to diminish the
power of others to receive like satisfaction. Beings thus constituted
cannot multiply in a world tenanted by inferior creatures; these,
therefore, must be dispossessed to make room; and to dispossess them
aboriginal man must have an inferior constitution to begin with; he
must be predatory, he must have the desire to kill. In general, given
an unsubdued earth, and the human being "appointed" to overspread and
occupy it, then, the laws of life being what they are, no other series
of changes than that which has actually occurred could have occurred.
The argument might be put in a form free from the assumption of a final
cause, and without introducing the conception of a divine Providence
which in this work Spencer adopted, though in his later philosophy it
was superseded by the conception of the Unknowable existing behind all
phenomena. But the ROLE of the Divine ruler is simply to set in motion
immutable forces to realise his design. "In the moral as in the material
world accumulated evidence is gradually generating the conviction that
events are not at bottom fortuitous, but that they are wrought out in a
certain inevitable way by unchanging forces."
The optimism of Spencer's view could not be surpassed. "After patient
study," he writes, "this chaos of phenomena into the midst of which
he [man] was born has begun to generalise itself to him"; instead of
confusion he begins to discern "the dim outlines of a gigantic plan. No
accidents, no chance, but everywhere order and completeness One by one
exceptions vanish, and all becomes systematic."
Always towards perfection is the mighty movement--towards a complete
development and a more unmixed good; subordinating in its universality
all petty irregularities and fallings back, as the curvature of the
earth subordinates mountains and valleys. Even in evils the student
learns to recognise only a struggling beneficence. But above all he is
struck with the inherent sufficingness of things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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