The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1911. MOVEMENT AND PROGRESS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1180, 15 July 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1911. MOVEMENT AND PROGRESS.

Behind every social, religious, economic and political controversy there lies an assumption which .the vast majority of people would probably be surprised to hear disputed, but which is nevertheless only an assumption, and one that many capable writers dispute. This is tho assumption that the human race has made, and is continuing to make, enormous

"progress," and that all our concern should be to intensify "the upward movement. There is at least a case for tho cloctrinc, if that can be called a doctrine which is no more than the belief of a small minority of mankind, that history affords abundance of evidence of change and of some kinds' of improvement but no proof of the moral improvement of the race or of its intellectual improvement. Those who hold this view ask the believers in "perfectibility" whether there are greater brains to-day than Plato or Aristotle, or whether, in any department of human effort outside practical mechanics, there is any positive proof that mankind may not even nave degenerated within rccordcc! time. The "perfectibilists" are prompt to retort that while the brain-stuff and physique of modern civilised man may be no better than they were live thousand years ago, yet there can be no question that "conditions" have improved. There is an abundance, of modern horrors, they admit—horrors that they may even allow would not have been able to exist in the long ago past—but, generally, the surroundings of life have been sweetened and purified. For every modern horror, every modern reappearance of the primal spirit of savagery, they will quote some.ancient horror. This Mit. J. A. Spender, for example, in one of his "Bagshot" papers, says: "It is nothing to the point to say that there wore moral heroes in ancient days; there were, happily, scores of them.. It is the general opinion of mankind, judged by the things it took lor granted, which is tho lest of contemporary morals, and'for this we must read literature with a vigilant eye to the pi is dc. la pcn.u'c. There is not a Koinan or a Greek, a schoolman or a pietist of medieval times, a Catholic or a Protestant of the ago of the Jteformation, a jurist, historian or poet of the Itenaissanco, who docs not complaccntly accept moral assumptions which arc repulsive to tho modern mind." But. that the .question; there are as many

tilings acccptcd to-day _ which would have boon repulsive to the ancient mind; and Mr. Spender does not help himself very much when he adds (the italics are his) that "outbreaks of savagery and even of persecution are possible" in modern times, hut the world- docs not consent," for one can immediately ask, Did the ancient world content to the ancient horrors and tyrannies? What ically are the "conditions" that measure the "progress" of the races ? In a recent hook, In Mankind Advancing, which has been much discussed, a clever American woman admits the complexity of our modern civilisation, but sho will not call mere complexity real betterment. She divides modern inventive achievements into four classes: to make and have more things; to move about and communicate more quickly; to kill men faster; to alleviate suffering. And she is not a bit impressed :

"The leisure wo gain by time-saving machinery (sho says) seems to be tainted. Like the gambler's winnings, secured too easily, it is never put to any good use, but "is soon expended in a hundred new follies. There arc more cities, move houses, more paintings, tools, laws, clothes, corn, animals, luxuries, diseases, furniture, crimes, books; all these 'more things' following on more people. ' But along with this vast multiplication of things there has not been an increase of other, at least equally desirable, possessions; we liavo not more time, more health, more beauty, more strength, rnoro happiness, more genius."

This is a mass of fact, and it _ is curious how tho petitio principii creeps into nearly every "perfectibilist" reply to it. Wc have shown the petitio principii in Mil.Spender's paper. It appears again in a direct reply by one of the Columbia University professors to the passage wc have just quoted. The fact is, he says, that wc arc like nouvcaux riches, unable to make "a dignified and rational use of our wealth," and he finds evidence <?f progress in "the very idea of the possibility of indefinite human progress" which was "alien to the Greeks." The question could hardly be more flagrantly begged. After all, the main point is, not the "perfectibility" issue, but the general drift of the policy of the "perfectibilists," and it is here that our problem brings us into touch with the actual politics of the time. One can roughly divide social reformers into those who want only to treat the conditions and those who prefer to treat tho individual in those conditions. These are the rival camps of Radicalism or Socialism and Individualism, and their aims and methods and beliefs differ as their conceptions of the duty of man. The Radical is the champion of short views and of tho theory that the only end; should be the improvement of Society; the other takes * the long view and holds that the thing to care about and work for is, not Society, but the race. We have more ■than once quoted, a striking passage from 1 an article written in the New Age about a year ago by Mr.. Stephen Reynolds, and wc shall quote it again as being something like a summary of tho whole matter:

A\ o seem (ho wrote) to have come to a point'when the welfare of Society .and the wclfaro of tho race are far from identical, and we liavo now to choose between. the two. ... Any Society whoso wclfaro involves racial harm will go to pieces; and any reform which involves tho Mowing down of life will be destroyed by life itself. ... Tho greatest tyranny to beware of in the next era is that of tho intellectuals ordering other people's lives—they arc to well-intentioned and so cruel."

In'one 'of the most famous of his writings Burke issued a denunciation of tho French Jacobins that is still topical as a denunciation _ of tho modern short-view doctrinaires absorbed in "conditions" and contemptuous or forgetful of human nature.

. For they do take short views, for all their frothy talk . about "progress" towards a glorious arid perfect world. As Burke says: "Their humanity is. at their horizon—and like the horizon, it always ilies before them." In its own small way New. Zealand has been illustrating this immortal truth. It is not really in essence better off than it was twenty years ago; in some vital respects it is worse pff. And it is only the natural unreadiness of the bulk of the community to take long views that makes this fact, appear to bo disputable. (That just now the public is waking up and revising its views is simply evidence of the vigour with which folly has wielded the sceptre of government: it has gone past all bounds, and' aroused even apathy to action.) Many people here have been inclined to fancy that a great stride forward has been taken when an Act is placed on the Statute Book. They sometimes will not await a trial. At the most the cautious will say "The problem is solved" after ten years' operation of a measure. Sometimes plain facts, as in the case of the Arbitration Act, convince them of their error. In other eases, however, the plain facts cannot come; and what they regard as a beneficent piece of progress is all the time slowly injuring the race. Making things pleasant for the Society of the time, perhaps, but none the less .slowly rotting away qualities and forces that will be sorely missed in a later day. The funda mental spirit of human nature is for ever the same, but the capacities of humanity can be weakened (to struggle painfully back to strength in another age) by acts and developments hailed as a part of the great force of progress. Nor can anything bo said or clone to keep Society as a .whole always on the right lines: one cannot handle the tides of the sea. At least wo should be able to expect that those who profess to be thinkers should not, when they talk of pro. gross which is worth talking about,, talk cant.