Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/244

 VI DISCUSSION. HABIT AND PROGRESS. By ALFEED W. BENN. In the recently published work of Sir Henry Maine on Popular Government 3 there is one chapter which trenches on the sphere of mental philosophy, and which therefore offers a fitting subject for discussion in MIND. This chapter is entitled "The Age of Pro- gress " (pp. 127-95), and suggests by its heading the point to which I wish to call attention. For, unless I very much mistake his meaning, Sir H. Maine would maintain that Progress in the sense of continuous improvement, so far from being what most of us have hitherto considered it to be, the very law of history, is merely a local and temporary phenomenon, destined perhaps to be succeeded at no distant date by a stage of immobility or retro- gression. It is true that the author's views are expressed in language so tentative, so ambiguous or so vague, and are hedged round with so many limitations, that the general drift of his argument is by no means clear. By Progress he sometimes seems to understand no more than change, and by change the desire to have things altered rather than the objective fact of their being altered quite independently of our wishes on the subject ; while again, the passion for innovation is supposed to prevail only within the sphere of legislative activity. Still the following passages point to conclusions of a much more sweeping character : " An absolute intolerance even of that description of change which we call political characterises much the largest part of the human race, and has characterised the whole of it during the largest part of its history. Are there any reasons for thinking that the love for change, which in our day is commonly supposed to be overpowering, and the capacity for it which is vulgarly assumed to be infinite, are, after all, limited to a very narrow sphere of human action, that which we call politics, and perhaps not even [sic] to the whole of this sphere?" (p. 136). " The natural condition of mankind (if that word ' natural ' is used) is not the progressive condition. It is a condition not of changeableness but of unchangeablftness. The immobility of society is the rule ; its mobility is the exception. The toleration of change and the belief in its advantages are still confined to the smallest portion of the human race, and even with that portion they are extremely modern. . . . When they are found, the sort of change which they contemplate is of a highly special kind, being exclusively political change" (p. 170). In discussing such questions as the present it is important to define our terms. Sir H. Maine professes never to have seen any definition of the word Progress (p. 131) ; which looks as if he had 1 Popular Government : Four Essays. By Sir HENRY SCMNER MAINE, K.C.S.L, LL.D., F.R.S., &c. London : John Murray, 1886. Pp. xii., 261, Svo.