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CHAPTER XXVII

HUMAN PROGRESS: PAST AND FUTURE

THE word progress, as used above, has two distinct meanings, not always recognized, whence has arisen some confusion of ideas. It may mean either an advance in material civilization, or in the mental and moral nature of man, and these are far from being synonymous. Material civilization is essentially cumulative. Each generation benefits by the trials and failures of the preceding generation; and since the discovery of printing has facilitated the preservation and circulation of all new knowledge, progress of this kind has gone on at an ever accelerated pace. But this does not imply any general increase of mental power. Step by step the science of mathematics has advanced immensely since the time of Newton, but the advance does not prove that the mathematicians of to-day have a greater genius for mathematicsare really greater mathematicians-than Newton and his contemporaries, or even than the Greeks of the time of Euclid and Archimedes. Our modern steam engines and locomotives far surpass those of Watt and Robert Stephenson, but of the hundreds who have laboured to improve them perhaps none have surpassed those great men in mechanical genius. And so it is with every item which goes to form that which we term our civilization. We have risen, step by step, on the ladders and scaffolds erected by our predecessors, and if we can now mount higher and see further than they could, it does not in the least prove that we are, on the average, greater men, intellectually, than they were. The question I propose to discuss is one quite apart from that of civilization as usually understood. It is, whether mankind have advanced as intellectual and moral beings; and, if so, by what agencies and under what laws have they so advanced in the past, and what are the conditions under which that advance may be continued in the future.

Has Human Nature improved during Historic Times ?

We have, first, to inquire whether there is any evidence of such an advance in human nature during historic times; and this is by no means so simple a problem and one so easily answered as is sometimes supposed. If there has been any cause constantly at work tending to elevate human nature, we should expect it to manifest itself by a perceptible rise in the culminating points reached by mankind, in the intellectual and moral spheres, at successive periods. But no such continuous rise of the high-water mark of humanity is perceptible. The earliest known architectural work, the great pyramid of Egypt, in the mathematical accuracy of its form and dimensions, in its precise orientation, and in the perfect workmanship shown by its internal structure, indicates an amount of astronomical, mathematical, and mechanical knowledge, and an amount of experience and practical skill, which could only have been attained at that early period of man's history by the exertion of mental ability no way inferior to that of our best modern engineers. In purely intellectual achievements the Vedas and the Mahabharata of ancient India, the Iliad of Homer, the book of Job, and the writings of Plato, will rank with the noblest works of modern authors. In sculpture and in architecture the ancient Greeks attained to a height of beauty, harmony and dignity, that has never been equalled in modern times; and taking account also of the great statesmen, commanders, philosophers, and poets of the age of Pericles, Mr. Francis Galton is of opinion "that the average ability of the Athenian race was, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher that our own-that is,

about as much as our race is above that of the African negro." 1

There is, therefore, some reason to think that the intellectual high-water level of humanity has sunk rather than risen during the last two thousand years; but this is not absolutely incompatible with the elevation of the mean level of the human ocean both intellectually and morally. We must, therefore, briefly consider the various agencies that have been at work, some tending to raise others to depress this level; and by balancing the one against the other, and taking account of certain modern developments of human nature in civilized societies, we may be able to arrive at an approximate conclusion as to the final result.

During the whole course of human history the struggle of tribe with tribe and race with race has inevitably caused the destruction of the weaker and lower, leaving the stronger and higher, whether physically or mentally stronger, to survive. Another, and perhaps not less potent cause of the destruction of lower tribes is the greater vital energy and more rapid increase of the higher races, which crowds the lower out of existence even when no violent destruction of life takes place. To this latter cause quite as much as to actual warfare must we ascribe the total disappearance of the Tasmanians, and the continuous diminution of population among the Maoris of New Zealand and the inhabitants of the Eastern Pacific Islands, as well as of the Red Indians of the North American continent. Here we see survival of the fittest among competing peoples necessarily leading to a continuous elevation of the human race as a whole, even though the higher portion of the higher races may remain stationary or may even deteriorate.

But a similar and even more complex process is ever going on within each race, by the survival of the more fit and the elimination of the less fit under the actual conditions of society. On the whole, we cannot doubt that the prudent, the sober, the healthy, and the virtuous, live longer lives than the reckless, the drunkards, the unhealthy, and the vicious; and also that the former, on 1 Hereditary Genius, p. 342.

the average, leave more descendants than the latter. It is true that the latter not unfrequently marry earlier and have larger families; but many of these die young, and as, on the average, children resemble their parents, fewer of these will survive and leave offspring. Thus, accidents, violence, and the effects of a reckless and vicious life, are natural checks to the increase of population among these classes, and this inevitably gives an advantage to the more intellectual, the more prudent, and the more moral portion of each race. The latter will, therefore, increase at the expense of the former, and thus again tend to raise the mean level of humanity.

But society has always, in one way or another, interfered with these beneficent processes, and has thus retarded the general advance. The celibacy of the clergy and the refuge offered by monasteries and nunneries to many to whom the rude struggle of the world was distasteful, and whose gentle natures fitted them for deeds of charity or to excel in literature or art, prevented the increase of these nobler individuals; and thus, as Mr. Galton well remarks, "the Church, by a policy singularly unwise and suicidal, brutalized the breed of our forefathers." By a still more deplorable policy, independent thought and that true nobility which refuses to purchase life by a lifelong lie, was almost exterminated in Europe by religious persecution. It is calculated that for the three centuries between 1471 and 1781, a thousand persons annually were either executed or imprisoned by the Inquisition in Spain alone. In Italy it was even worse; while in France during the seventeenth century three or four hundred thousand Protestants perished in prison, at the galleys, or on the scaffold.

Another cause which has had a prejudicial effect at all times, and which continues in action in the civilized societies of to-day, is the system of inherited wealth, which often gives to the weak and vicious an undue advantage both in the certainty of subsistence without labour, and in the greater opportunity for early marriage and leaving a numerous offspring. We also interfere with the course of nature by preserving the weak, the

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sickly, or the malformed infants; but in this, probably, humanity gains rather than loses, since many who are in infancy weak or distorted exhibit superior mental or moral qualities which are a gain to civilization, while the cultivation of humane and sympathetic feelings in their care and nurture is itself of the greatest value.

Balancing, as well as we are able, these various opposing influences, it seems probable that there has been, on the whole, a decided gain. Health, perseverance, self-restraint, and intelligence have increased by slowly weeding out the unhealthy, the idle, the grossly vicious, the cruel, and the weak-minded; and it may be in part owing to the increased numbers of the higher and gentler natures thus brought about that we must impute the undoubted growth of humanity-of sympathy with the sufferings of men and animals, which is perhaps the most marked and most cheering of the characteristics of our age.

The Effect of Education.

But although the natural process of elimination does actually raise the mean level of humanity by the destruction of the worst and most degraded individuals, it can have little or no tendency to develop higher types in each successive age; and this agrees with the undoubted fact that the great men who appeared at the dawn of history and at the culminating epochs of the various ancient civilizations, were not, on the whole, inferior to those of our own age. It remains, therefore, a mystery how and why mankind reached to such lofty pinnacles of greatness in early times, when there seems to be no agency at work, then or now, calculated to do more than weed out the lower types. Leaving this great problem as, for the present, an insoluble one, we may turn to that aspect of the question which is of the most vital present day interest-whether any agencies are now at work or can be suggested as practicable, which will produce a steady advance, not only in the average of human nature, but in those higher developments which now, as in former ages, are the exceptions rather than the rule.

VOL. II.

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