Progress and History Part 15

_The Darwin Centenary Volume._

Bergson, _Creative Evolution_.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] See Lewes, 'Aristotle, a chapter in the History of Science'.

[81] H. Boua.s.se, _La Methode dans les Sciences_, Alcan.

XI

PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY

J.A. SMITH

To contend that there has been progress in Philosophy may seem but a desperate endeavour. For the reproach against it of unprogressiveness is of long standing: where other forms of human knowledge have undoubtedly advanced, Philosophy, in modern times at any rate, has (so it is said) remained stationary, propounding its outworn problems, its vain and empty solutions. Because of this failure it has by common consent been deposed from its once proud position at the head of the sciences and obliged to confess, in the words of the Trojan queen:

modo maxima rerum Nunc trahor exul inops.

The charge of unprogressiveness is not made against it by its foes alone; the truth of it is admitted by some of its best friends. If Voltaire exclaims 'O metaphysique, metaphysique, nous sommes aussi avances qu'aux temps des Druides', Kant sadly admits the fact, sets himself to diagnose its cause, and if possible to discover or devise a remedy. Yet we must remember that it was philosophers who first descried those currents in the world of events which the non-philosophic, borrowing the name from them, call Progress, who first attempted to determine their direction and the possible goal of their convergence, and laboured to clear their own and others' minds in regard to the meaning, to capture which the name was thrown out as a net into the ocean of experience. Nor must we forget that it was in their own chosen field--the world of human thoughts and actions--that they from the beginning seemed to themselves to find the surest evidence of the reality of Progress. While the world that surrounded and hemmed them and their fellows in might or must be regarded as unchanging and unchangeable, doomed for ever to reproduce and monotonously reiterate whatsoever it had once done and been, the mind or spirit of Man in its own realm seemed capable of going beyond all its past achievements and rising to new heights, not merely here and there or in isolated instances but in such numbers or ma.s.ses as to raise for long periods of history the general level of human efficiency and welfare. It is true that many of those who noted these advances or profited by them did not always admit that they took place in, or were due to the agency of, Philosophy. The advances were most often credited to other powers and the new territory claimed by their representatives. The contributions made by Philosophy to the general improvement of human life were and are obscure, difficult to trace, easily missed or forgotten. It came about that the philosopher was misconceived as one indifferent to ordinary human interests and disdainful of the more obvious advantages secured by others, pressing and urging forward and upward into a cloudland where the light was too dim for the eyes of man and the paths too uncertain for his feet. Unsatisfied with the region where Man had learned by the slow and painful lessons of experience to build himself a habitable city he dreamed of something higher, aspiring to explore beyond and above where the light of that experience shone and illuminated. Perhaps the main idea that the name of Philosophy now to most suggests is that of a Utopian ideal of knowledge so wide and so high that it must be by sane and sober minds p.r.o.nounced for ever set beyond the reach of human faculty, an ideal which perhaps we cannot help forming and which constantly tempts us forward like a mirage, but which like a mirage leads us into waste and barren places, so much so that it is no small part of human wisdom to resist its subtle seductions and to confine our efforts to the pursuit of such ends as we may reasonably regard as well within the compa.s.s of our powers of thought and action. It is folly, we are told, to adventure ourselves upon the uncharted seas into which philosophers invite us, to waste our lives and perhaps break our hearts in the vain search for a knowledge that is for ever denied us. After all, there is much that we can know, and in the knowledge of which we can better the estate of Man, relieving him from many of his most pressing terrors and distresses. To cherish other hopes is to deceive ourselves to our own and our fellows' undoing, to refuse them our help and fail to play our part in the common business of mankind. There is surely in the world enough suffering and sorrow and sin to engage all our energies in dealing with them, nor are our endeavours to do so so plainly fruitless as to discourage from perseverance in them. Where in this task our hearts do faint and fail, are there not other means than the discredited nostrum of Philosophy to revive our hopes and recruit our forces? It was only, we are sometimes reminded, in the darkest days of human history that men turned desperately to Philosophy for comfort and consolation--how surely and demonstrably, we are told, in vain! When other duties are so urgent and immediate, have we even the right to consume our energies otherwise than in their direct discharge? And is it not presumption to ask for any further light than that which is vouchsafed to us in the ordinary course of experience or, if that is insufficient, in and by Religion?

Much in this plea for a final relinquishment of aid from Philosophy in the furtherance of human progress is plausible and more than plausible.

Yet the hope or, if you will, the dream of attaining some form or kind or degree of knowledge which the sciences do not and cannot supply and perhaps deny to be possible, some steadiness and firmness of a.s.surance other and beyond the confidence of religious faith, is not yet extinct, is perhaps inextinguishable, and though it often takes extravagant and even morbid and repulsive forms, still haunts and tantalizes many, nor these the least wise or sane of our kind, so that they count all the labour they spend upon its search worth all the pains. Not for themselves alone do they seek it; they view themselves as not alone in the quest, but engaged in a matter of universally human moment. In the measure in which they count themselves to have attained any result they do not h.o.a.rd it or grudge it to others. The notion of philosophic truth as something to be shared and enjoyed only by a few--as what is called 'esoteric'--is no longer in vogue and is indeed felt to involve an essential self-contradiction; rather it is conceived as something the value of which is a.s.sured and enhanced by being imparted. Those who believe themselves to be by nature or (it may be) accident appointed to the office of its quest, by no means feel that they are thereby divided from their fellows as a peculiar people or a privileged and exclusive priesthood, but much rather as fellow servants enlisted and engaged in the public service of mankind. Least of all do they believe that their efforts are foredoomed to inevitable failure, that progress therein is not to be looked for, or that they and their predecessors have hitherto made no advance towards what they and, as they also believe, all men sought and still seek. To them the history of Philosophy for say the last two thousand years is not the dreary and dispiriting narrative of repeated error and defeat, but the record of a slow but secure and steady advance in which, as nowhere else, the mind of Man celebrates and enjoys triumphs over the mightiest obstacles, kindling itself to an ever-brightening flame. Reviewing its own past in history the spirit of Philosophy sees its own inner light, which is its act and its essence, constantly increasing, spreading ever wider into the circ.u.mambient dark, and touching far-off and hitherto undiscovered peaks with the fire of a coming dawn. In place of the starlight of Science or the moonlight of Religion it sees a sun arise flooding the world with light and warmth and life. High hopes, high claims; but can they be made good, or even rationally entertained? Suffice it here that they be openly avowed and proclaimed to be laid up in the heart of the philosophic spirit, 'dreaming', and yet with waking eyes, 'of things to come'. Or rather shall we not say, seeing that its eyes are unsealed and the vision therefore no dream, beholding a present--an ever-present--Reality?

It was Philosophy, or philosophers, as I have said, that first discerned the fact of Progress, named it, and divined its lineaments. To Philosophy the name and notion of Progress belongs as of right--the right of first occupation. Merely to have invented a name for the fact is no small service, for thus the fact was fixed for further study and examination. But with the name Philosophy gave us the idea, the notion, and therewith the fact began to be understood and to become amenable to further and further explanation. To this further explanation Philosophy gave notable a.s.sistance. To 'elaborate our concepts' has been said to be the whole business of Philosophy, that is, to arrest the vague and s.h.i.+fting meanings that float before our minds loosely attached to the words of ordinary careless speech, to fix their outlines, distinguis.h.i.+ng, defining, ordering and organizing until each ma.s.s of meaning is improved and refined into a thought worthy to be called a notion, a fit member of the world of mind, a seat and source of intellectual light. In this work Philosophy proceeds and succeeds simply by reflecting on whatever meaning it has in whatever manner already acquired; it employs no strange apparatus or recondite methods, only continues more thoughtfully and conscientiously to use the familiar means by which the earlier simpler meanings were appropriated and developed, following the beaten tracks of the mind's native and spontaneous movement. Much more rarely than the sciences has it recourse to a technical vocabulary, being content to express itself in ordinary words though using them and their collocations with a careful delicacy and painstaking adroitness. To follow it in these uses demands an effort, for nothing is perhaps more difficult than to force our thoughts to run counter to our customary heedless use of words and to learn to employ them even for a short time with a steady precision of significance. Yet unless this effort is resolutely made we must remain the easy prey of manifold confusions and errors which trip us in the dark. Our words degrade into tokens which experience will not cash--tangles of symbols which we cannot retranslate.

But Philosophy is more than the attempt to refine and subtilize our ordinary words so as to fit them for the higher service of interpretative thought, more even than the endeavour to improve the stock of ideas no matter how come by, by which we interpret to ourselves whatever it imports us to understand. All this it is and does, or strives to do, but only as subsidiary to its true business and real aim.

All this it might do and do successfully, and yet make or bring about no substantial progress in itself or elsewhere. And when progress in Philosophy is spoken of, it is not either such improvement in language nor such improvement in ideas that alone or mainly is meant.

What is claimed for (or denied to it) under the name of Progress is an advance in knowledge, knowledge clear-sighted, grounded, and a.s.sured, knowledge of some authentic and indubitable reality. It is by the attainment of such knowledge, by progress in and towards it, that the claim of Philosophy to be progressive must stand or fall. To the question whether it can make good its claim to the possession and increase of this knowledge we must give special attention, for if Philosophy fails in this it fails in all.

The oldest name for the knowledge in question was simply Wisdom and, in some ways, in spite of its apparent arrogance this is the best name for what is sought--or missed. Yet from the beginning the name was felt not sufficiently to distinguish what was meant from the high skill of the cunning craftsman and the worldly wisdom of the man of affairs, the statesman or soldier or trader. In the case of all these it was difficult to disengage the knowledge involved from natural or trained practical dexterity. What was desired and required was knowledge distinguished but not divorced from practice and application--'pure knowledge' as it was sometimes called; not divorced, I repeat, for it was not conceived as without bearing upon the conduct of life, but still distinguished, as furnis.h.i.+ng light rather than profit. For good or evil Philosophy began by considering what it sought and hoped to reach as pre-eminently knowledge in some distinctive sense, and having so begun it turned to reflect once more upon what it meant by so conceiving it and to make this meaning more precise and clear. So it came to present to itself as its aim or goal a special kind or degree of knowledge, to be inspired and guided by the hope of that. Practical as in many ways was the concern of ancient philosophy--its whole bent was towards the bettering of human life--it sought to achieve this by the extension and deepening of knowledge, and not either through the cultivation or refinement of emotion or the organization of practical, civil or social or philanthropic activities. It laboured--and laboured not in vain--to further the increase of knowledge by defining to itself in advance the kind or degree of knowledge which would accomplish the ultimate aim of its endeavour or subserve its accomplishment. Hence we must learn to view with a sympathetic eye its repeated essays to give precision and detail to the conception or ideal of knowledge.

In form the answer rendered to its request to itself for a definition, was determined by the principle that the knowledge which was sought and alone, if found, could satisfy, was knowledge of the real, or as it was at first more simply expressed, of what is, or what really and veritably is. Refusing the name of knowledge except to what had this as its object, men turned to consider the nature of the object which stood or could stand in this relation. With this they contrasted what we, after them, call the phenomena, the appearances, the manifold aspects, constantly s.h.i.+fting with the s.h.i.+fting points of view of the observer or many observers of it, inconstant, unsteady, superficial, mirrored through the senses and imagination, multiplied and distorted in divergent and changing opinions, or misrepresented and even caricatured in the turbid medium of ordinary speech, like a clouded image on the broken waters of a rus.h.i.+ng stream. 'It'--so at first they spoke of the object of true or 'philosophic' knowledge--was one and single, eternal and unchangeable, a universe or world-order of parts fixed for ever in their external relations and inward structure. In each and all of us there was, as it were, a tiny mirror that could be cleared so as to reflect all this, and in so far as such reflection took place an inner light was kindled in each which was a lamp to his path. Knowing--for to know was so to reflect the world as it really was--knowing, man came to self-possession and self-satisfaction--to peace and joy--and was even 'on this bank and shoal of time' raised beyond the reach of all accidents and evils of mortal existence--looking around and down upon all that could harm or hurt him and seeing it to be in its law-abiding orderliness and eternal changelessness the embodiment of good. So viewing it, man learned to feel the Universe his true home, and was inspired not only with awe but with a high loyalty and public spirit.

'The poet says "Dear City of Cecrops", and shall I not say "Dear City of G.o.d"?'

The knowledge thus reached or believed to be attainable was more and more discriminated from what was offered or supplied by Art or Science or Religion, though it was still often confused with each and all of them. As opposed to that of Art, it was not direct or immediate vision flashed as it were upon the inner eye in moments of inspiration or excitement; as opposed to that of Science, it was a knowledge that pierced below the surface and the seeming of Nature and History; as opposed to that of Religion (which was rather faith than knowledge), it was sober, unimaginative, cleansed of emotional accompaniment and admixture, the 'dry light' of the wise soul. True to the principle which I have stated, ancient Philosophy proclaimed that the only knowledge in the end worth having was knowledge of Fact--of what lay behind all seeming however fair--Fact unmodified and unmodifiable by human wish or will; it bade us know the world in which we live and move and have our being, know it as it is truly and in itself, and knowing it love it, loyally acquiescing in its purposes and subserving its ends. In all this there was progress (was there not?) to a view, to a truth (how else shall we speak of it?) which has always, when apprehended, begotten a high temper in heroic hearts. Surely in having reached in thought so high and so far the mind of man had progressed in knowledge and in wisdom.

But now a change took place, from which we must date the rise or birth of modern philosophy. Hitherto on the whole the mind of man had looked outward and sought knowledge of what lay or seemed to lie outside itself. So looking and gazing ever deeper it had encountered a spectacle of admirable and awe-compelling order, yet one which for that very reason seemed appallingly remote from, if not alien to, all human businesses and concerns. Now it turned inward and found within itself not only matter of more immediate or pressing interest, but a world that compelled attention, excited curiosity, rewarded study. Slowly and gradually the knowledge of this, the inner world--the world of the thinker's self--became the central object of philosophic reflection. The knowledge that was most required--that was all-important and indispensable (so man began explicitly to realize)--was knowledge of the Self, not of the outer world that at best could never be more than known, but of the self that knew or could know it, that could both know and be known. Henceforward what is studied is not knowledge of reality--of any and every reality--or of external reality, but knowledge of the Self which can know as well as be known. And the process by which it is sought is reflection, for the self-knowledge is not the knowledge of other selves, but the knowledge of just that Self which knows itself and no other. Thus the knowledge sought is once more and now finally distinguished from the knowledge offered or supplied by Art or Science or Religion: not by Art, for the Self cannot appear and has no seeming nor can it any way be pictured or described or imagined; not by Science, for it lies beyond and beneath and behind all observation, nor can it be counted or measured or weighed; not by Religion, for knowledge of it comes from within and the disclosure of its nature is by the self-witness of the Self to its self, not by revelation of any other to it. Thus there is disclosed the slowly-won and slowly-revealed secret of modern Philosophy, that the knowledge which is indispensable, which is necessary as the consummation and key-stone of all other knowledge, is knowledge of the knowing-self, self-knowledge, or, as it is sometimes more technically called, self-consciousness, with the corollary that this knowledge cannot be won by any methods known to or specially characteristic of Science or Art or Religion. To become self-conscious, to progress in self-consciousness is the end, and the way or means to it is by reflection--the special method of Philosophy.

This is the step in advance made by the modern spirit beyond all discoveries of the ancients; it is the truth by the apprehension of which the modern spirit and its world is made what it is. Not outside us lies Truth or the Truth: Truth dwelleth in the inner man--_in interiore hominis habitat veritas_. Is this not progress, progress in wisdom, and to what else can we ascribe the advance save to Philosophy?

It was one of the earliest utterances of modern Philosophy, and one which it has never found reason to retract, that the Self which knows can and does know itself better than aught else whatsoever, and in that knowledge can without end make confident and sure-footed advance. To itself the Self is the most certain and the most knowable of all realities--with this it is most acquainted, this it has light in itself to explore, of this it can confidently foresee and foretell the method of advance to further and further knowledge. It knows not only its existence but its essence, its nature, and it knows by what procedure, by what ordered effort or exercise of will it can progress to height beyond height of its self-knowledge. I say, it knows it, but it also knows that that knowledge cannot be attained all at once or taken complete and ready-made, for it _is_ itself a progress, a self-created and self-determined progress, and on that condition progress alone is or is real. For it to be is not to be at the beginning or at the end of this process, but to be always coming to be, coming to be what it is not and yet also what it has in it to be. Of nothing else is Progress so intimately the essence and very being; if we ask 'What progresses or evolves?', the most certain answer is 'The spirit which is in man, and what it progresses in, is knowledge of itself, which is wisdom'.

Speaking of and for Philosophy I venture to maintain that nothing is more certain than that that spirit which has created it has grown, is growing, and will ever grow in wisdom, and that by reflection upon itself and its history--nor can the gates of darkness and error prevail against the irresistible march of its triumphant progress.

As we look back the history of Philosophy seems strewn with the debris of outworn or outlived errors, but out of them all emerges this clear and a.s.sured truth, that in self-knowledge lies the master-light of all our seeing, inexhaustibly casting its rays into the retreating shadow world that now surrounds us, melting all mists and dispelling all clouds, and that the way to it is unveiled, mapped and charted in advance so that henceforward we can walk sure-footedly therein. Yet that does not mean that the work of Philosophy is done, that it can fold its hands and sit down, for only in the seeking is its prize found and there is no goal or end other than the process itself. For this too is its discovery, that not by, but in, endless reflection is the Truth concerning it known, the Truth that each generation must ever anew win and earn it for itself. The result is not without the process, nor the end without the means: the fact _is_ the process and other fact there is none. In other forms of so-called 'knowledge' we can sever the conclusion from its premisses, and the result can be given without the process, but with self-knowledge it is not so and no generation, or individual, can communicate it ready-made to another, but can only point the way and bid others help themselves. And if this, so put, seems hard doctrine, I can only remind you that to philosophize has always meant 'to think by and for oneself'.

It is perhaps more necessary to formulate the warning that what is here called self-knowledge and p.r.o.nounced to const.i.tute the very essence of the spirit that is in man, is far removed from what sometimes bears its name, the extended and minute acquaintance by the individual mind with its individual peculiarities or idiosyncrasies, its weaknesses and vanities, its whims and eccentricities; nor is it to be confused with the still wider acquaintance with those that make up our common human nature in all its folly and frailty which is sometimes called 'knowledge of human nature'; no, nor with such knowledge as psychological science, with its methods of observation and induction and experiment, offers or supplies. It is knowledge of something that lies far deeper within us--'the inward man', which is not merely alike or akin but is the same in all of us; beneath all our differences, strong against all our weaknesses, wise against all our follies, what each of us rightly calls his true self and yet what is not his alone, but all men's also. As we reflect upon it duly, what discloses or reveals itself to us is a self which is both our very own and yet common or universal, the self of each and yet the self of all. The more we get to apprehend and understand it, the more we become and know ourselves, not so much as being but as becoming one with one another; the differences that sunder us in feeling and thought and action melting away like mist. The removal of these differences is just the unveiling of it, in which it at once comes to be and to be known. In coming to know it we create it. The unity of the spirit thus becomes and is known as indubitable fact, or rather (I must repeat) not as fact, as if it were or were anything before being known, but as something which is ever more and more coming to be, in the measure in which it is coming to be known--known to itself. For this is the hard lesson of modern philosophy, that our inmost nature and most genuine self is not aught ready-made or given, but something which is created in and by the process of our coming to know it, which progresses in existence and substantiality and value as our knowledge of it progresses in width and depth and self-a.s.surance. The process is one of creative--self-creative--evolution, in which each advance deposits a result which prescribes the next step and supplies all the conditions for it, and so constantly furnishes all that is required for an endless progress in reality and worth. This is the process in which the spirit of man capitalizes and substantiates its activities, committing its gains to secure custody, ama.s.sing and using them for its self-enrichment--in which it depends on no other than itself and is sovereign master of its future and its fate. This is the way in which selves are made, or rather, make themselves.

This is the discovery of modern Philosophy, the now patent secret which it offers for the interpretation of all mysteries and the solving of all problems--and it offers it with unquestioning a.s.surance, for it has explored the ground and has awakened to the true method of progress within it. And as I have said or implied, to the reflective mind regress is impossible, it cannot go back upon itself, and with due tenderness and grat.i.tude it has set behind it the things of its unreflective childhood. It stands on the stable foundation of the witness of the spirit within us to itself, to its own nature, its own powers and its own rights; it knows itself as the knower, the interpreter, the teacher, and therefore the master and maker of itself. Yet we must not identify or confuse this our deeper or deepest self which we thus create with the separate selves or souls which each of us is; it is not any one of them nor all of them together, unless we give to the word 'together' a new and more pregnant sense than it has yet come to bear. It is not the 'tribal' or 'collective' or 'social' self, for it is not made by congregation or collection or a.s.sociation, but by some far more intimate unification than is signified by any of these terms, namely by coming together in and by knowledge. It is the spirit which is in us all and in which we all are, which is more yet not other than we, without which we are nothing and do nothing and yet which is veritably the spirit of man, the immortal hero of all the tragedy and comedy--the whole drama--of human history; it is of this spirit as it is by it, that Philosophy has in repeated and resolute reflection come to know the nature and the method of its progress. Such knowledge has come into the world and prevails more widely and more potently than ever before; possessed in fullness by but a few, it is open and available to all and radiates as from a beacon light over the whole field of human experience; at that fire every man can light his candle. This is the light in which alone the record of man's thoughts and achievements can be construed and which exhibits them as steps and stages on that triumphant march to higher and higher levels such as alone we can rightly name Progress. Where else than in History, and, above all, in the History of Knowledge, is Progress manifested, and in that where more certainly than in the unretreating and unrevoked advance towards a deeper, a truer, a wiser knowledge of itself by the spirit that is in and is, Man?

Yes, such knowledge, truth and wisdom now exists and is securely ours, though to inherit it each generation and each individual must win it afresh and having won it must develop and promote it, or it ceases not only to work but to be. For it exists only as it is made or rather only in the act and fact of its progress, and so for it not to progress is at once to return to impotence and nothingness. And it is we who maintain it in being, maintaining it by endless reiterated efforts of reflection, and so maintaining it we maintain ourselves, resting or relying upon it and using it as a source of strength and a fulcrum or a platform for further effort. Upon self-knowledge in this sense all other 'knowledge'

reposes; upon it and the knowledge of other selves and the world, which flows from it, depends the possibility of all practical advance. In the dark all progress is impossible.

But since this discovery was made and made good, the spirit of Philosophy has not stood still; it has gone on, and is still going on, to extend and deepen and secure its conquests. Once more it has turned from its fruitful and enlightening concentration on the inner self and its life to review what lies or seems to lie around and outside it. It finds that those who have stayed, or fallen, behind its audacious but justified advance in self-knowledge, still cherish a view of what is external to this (the true or real self so now made patent), thoughts or fancies which misconceive and misrepresent it--thoughts persisted in against the feebler protesting voices of Art and Religion and so held precariously and unstably though apparently grounded upon the authority of Science. To the unphilosophic or not yet philosophic mind the spirit of man, already in imagination multiplied and segregated into individual 'souls', appears to be surrounded with an environment of alien character, often harsh to man's emotions, often rebellious or untractable to his purposes, often impenetrable to his understanding, and in a word indifferent or hostile to his ideals and aspirations after progress and good. Nay, the individual souls seem to act towards one another separately and collectively as such hindrances, and again, each individual soul seems to be encrusted with insuperable impediments. Even the light within is enclosed in an opaque screen which prevents or counteracts its outflow, so that the spirit within is as it were entombed or imprisoned. 'Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems us in,' we cannot communicate with one another or join with one another in thought or deed; and the hope of progress seems defeated by the recalcitrant matter that sh.e.l.l upon sh.e.l.l encases us. The world of our bodies, of the bodies and spirits of others, and all the vast _compages_ of things and forces which we call 'Nature' blinds and baffles us, mocks our hopes and breaks our hearts. How idle to dream that amidst and against all this neutrality or hostility any substantial or secure advance can be made!

In answer to all these thoughts, these doubts and fears, Philosophy is beginning with increasing boldness to speak a word, not of mere comfort and consolation, but of secure and confident wisdom. All this so-called 'external' nature and environment is not hostile or alien to the self or spirit which is in man, it is akin and allied to it as we now know it to be. Whatever is real and not merely apparent in History or Nature is rational, is of the same stuff and character as that which is within us.

It too is spiritual, the appearance and embodiment of what is one in nature and mode of being with what lies deepest and is most potent in us. So far as it is not that, it is appearance and not reality, woven like a dream by imagination or endowed with an unstable and s.h.i.+fting quasi-reality by our thoughts and suppositions and fancies about we know not what. Not that it is an illusion, still less a delusion, rather what it is is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality, a symbol beautiful, orderly, awe-inspiring yet mutilated, partial, confused, of something deeper and more real, the expression, the face and gesture, of a spirit that, as ours does, knows itself, its own profound being and meaning, and does what it does in the light of such knowledge, a spirit which above all progresses endlessly towards and in a richer and fuller knowledge of itself. What we call Fact--historical or natural--is essentially such an expression, on the one hand a finished expression, set in the past and therefore for ever beyond the possibility of change and so of progress, an exhausted or dead expression, on the other hand a pa.s.sing into the light of what was before unknown even to the expresser's self, an act by which was made and secured a self-discovery or self-revelation, a creative act of self-knowledge and so significant and interpretable. This double character of events in History and Nature is dimly descried in what we specially call 'nature', but comes more fully into view in the sphere of human history, where each step is at once a deed and a discovery, a contribution to the const.i.tution of the world of fact and a fulguration of the light within illuminating facts as the condition of its own inexhaustible continuance. The world of Fact, artistic or aesthetic, scientific, moral, political, economic, is what the spirit builds round itself, creating it out of its own substance, while it itself in creating it grows within, evolving out of itself into itself and advancing in knowledge or wisdom and power. And out of its now securely won self-knowledge it declares that it--itself--is the source and spring of all real fact whatsoever, which is its self-created expression, made by it in its own interests, and for its own good, the better and better to know itself. Nothing is or can be alien, still less hostile to it, for 'in wisdom has it made them all'. Looking back and around it re-reads in all fact the results of its own power of self-expression.

Nothing is but what it has made.

All this might perhaps have been put very simply by saying that ever since man has set himself to know his own mind in the right way, he has succeeded better and better, and that in knowing his own mind he has come to know and is still coming to know all else beside, including all that at first sight seems other than, or even counter to, his own mind.

He has learned what manner of being he is, how that being has been made and how it continues to be made and developed, and again, how in the course of its self-creation and self-advance it deposits itself in 'fact' and reflecting on that fact rises beyond and above itself in knowledge and power. He is mind or spirit, and what lies behind and around him is spiritual. As he reflects upon this the meaning of it becomes ever more clear and distinct, ordered and organized, and at the same time more substantial, more real, more lively and potent. In becoming known what was before dead and dark and threatening or obstructive or hostile is made transparent, alive, utilisable, contributing to the constantly growing self that knows and is known.

Here is the growing point of reality, the _fons emanationis_ of truth and worth and being, evidencing its power not as it were in increase of bulk, but in the enhancing of value. And surely here is Progress, which consists not in mere enlargement or expansion but in the heightening of forces to a new power--in a word, in their elevation to a more spiritual, a more intelligent and therefore more potent, level.

To the artistic eye the universe presents itself as a vast and moving spectacle, to the scientific mind as the theatre of forces which repeat their work with a mechanical uniformity or perhaps fatally run down to a predestined and predictable final arrest, to the devout or religious soul as the constant efflux of a beneficent will, unweariedly kind, caring for the humblest of its creatures, august, wors.h.i.+pful, deserving of endless adoration and love, while to the philosophic mind it is known and ever more to be known as the self-expression of a mind in essence one with all minds that know it in knowing themselves, know it as the work or product of a mind engaged or absorbed in knowing itself, and so creating itself and all that is requisite that it may learn more and more what is hidden or stored from all eternity within its plenitude. At least we may say that the conception of a Mind which in order to know itself creates the conditions of such knowledge, which wills to learn whatever can be learned of itself from whatever it does, supplies the best pattern or original after which to model our vaguer and more blurred conceptions of progressive existence and being elsewhere. It furnishes to us an ideal of a progress which realizes or maintains and advances itself, for it is independent upon external conditions. The Progress of Philosophy or of Wisdom is a palmary instance of progress achieved out of the internal resources of that which progresses. And after this pattern we least untruly and least unworthily conceive the mode of that eternal and universal Progress which is the life of the Whole within and as part of which we live.

The aim of Philosophy is not edification but the possession and enjoyment of Truth, and the Truth may wear an aspect which, while it enlightens, also blinds or even at first appals and paralyses. And certainly Reality or Philosophy as has come to know it and proclaims it to be, is not such as either directly to warm our hearts or stimulate our energies. Not to do either has Philosophy come into the world, nor so does it help to bring Progress about; nor does it offer prizes to those who pursue either moral improvement or business success, nor again does it increase that information concerning 'nature' and men which is the condition of the one and the other, yet to those who love Truth and who will buy no good at the sacrifice of it, what it offers is enough, and to progress towards and in it is for them worth all the world beside; it is, if not the only real progress, that in the absence of which all other progress is without worth or substance or reality. In the end, if any advance anywhere is claimed or a.s.serted, must we not ask: Is the claim founded on truth, is the good or profit seemingly attained a (or the) true good? To whom or to what is it good? Can we stop short of the endeavour to a.s.sure ourselves beyond question or doubt that we are right in what answers we render? And where or by what means can we reach this save by turning inward on meditation or reflection, that is by philosophizing? [Greek: Ei philosopheteon philosopheteon, ei de me, philosopheteon; pantos ara philosopheteon]. Thither the mind of man has always turned when the burden of the mystery of its nature and fate has weighed all but intolerably upon it, and turning has never found itself betrayed, but from knowledge of itself has drawn fresh hope and strength to resume the uninterrupted march of Progress which is its life and its history, its being, its self-formation, in courage moving forwards in and towards the light. It is as if such light were not merely the condition of its welfare, but the food on which it lived, the stuff which it trans.m.u.ted into substance and energy, out of it making, maintaining and building its very self. So under whatever name, whether we call what we are doing Philosophy or something else, the search for more and more light upon ourselves and our world is the most indispensable activity to which the leagued and co-operative powers of Man can be devoted. Fortunately it is also that in which success or failure depends most certainly upon ourselves and in which Progress can with most confidence be looked for. In it we cannot fail if we will to take sufficient trouble; the means to it are open and available; it is our fault if we do not employ them and profit by them. If we have less wisdom than we might have, it is never any one's fault but our own. The door of the treasure-house of Wisdom stands ever open.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

C. C. J. Webb, _History of Philosophy_ (Home University Library).

Burnet, _History of Greek Philosophy_.

E. J. Bevan, _Stoics and Sceptics_.

Hoffding, _History of Modern Philosophy_ (translated).

Royce, _The Spirit of Philosophy_.

Merz, _History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century_.

XII

PROGRESS AS AN IDEAL OF ACTION

J. A. SMITH