Page:Philosophical Review Volume 30.djvu/543

No. 5] intersperses two chapters dealing with English and German speculations on progress, Godwin being chief among the Englishmen discussed, and Herder, Kant, Fichte and Hegel among the Germans. He then returns to France, "the nursing-mother of ideas," and expounds the views of Cousin, Jouffroy, Guizot, Saint-Simon and Comte. Brief chapters on the French Revolution of 1848, the "Exhibition of 1851" and "Progress in the Light of Evolution" are added, the last, of course, dealing with the views of Darwin and Spencer. Then follows a short Epilogue and an Appendix of valuable notes to the text arranged by chapters. The volume closes with a good index. The title is a misnomer. It leads one to expect a discussion of the idea of progress in general, whereas one finds an historical survey of the belief that civilization will continue to advance indefinitely in future. "To speculate how theories of progress may be modified by recent philosophical speculation, lies beyond the scope of this volume, which is only concerned with tracing the origin of the idea and its growth up to the time when it became a current creed" (p. 348). And the precise content of the idea whose growth is traced is succinctly stated: "You may conceive civilization as having gradually advanced in the past, but you have not got the idea of progress until you go on to conceive that it is destined to advance indefinitely in the future" (p. 7).

It is this limiting of the content of the idea—a limitation which rigidly excludes the concept of a non-temporal, logical development as well as the notion of a progress of the individual human being from lower to higher types of experience—which justifies Professor Bury in writing: "The preponderance of France's part in developing the idea is an outstanding feature of its history" (p. xi). In truth, practically the whole book is a sympathetic discussion of the philosophical movement in France, culminating first in the writings of the Encyclopaedists, but reaching a second and higher culmination in Positivism. Indeed, the book could just as appropriately have been entitled Positivism and its Precursors. And Professor Bury obviously agrees with the general philosophical position of this succession of thinkers, even though he does make some trenchant criticisms of Comte, and rejects the theory that the idea of progress is ultimate. This explains his prejudice against every theory of progress based upon a metaphysical theory differing from Positivism, a prejudice which comes to sharpest expression in his too brief chapter entitled "German Speculations", and appears as a deep-seated antipathy, begotten by misunderstanding, in his evaluation of Hegel's contribution to the idea.

In less than fifteen pages of introduction the author attempts to prove that the ancients not only did not have, but could not possibly have had, an idea of progress. One of the main reasons given is that "the instinctive pessimism of the Greeks" as expressed in their theories of "Moira, of degeneration and cycles, suggested a view of the world which was the