Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Cartitat, Marquis de
Condorcet
Progress of the Human Mind (1795)
Introduction: Outlines of an Historical View, etc.
Man is born with the faculty
of receiving sensations. In those which he receives, he is capable of
perceiving and of distinguishing the simple sensations of which they are
composed. He can retain, recognize, combine them. He can preserve or recal them
to his memory; he can compare their different combinations; he can ascertain
what they possess in common, and what characterises each; lastly, he can affix
signs to all these objects, the better to know them, and the more easily to
form from them new combinations.
This faculty is developed in
him by the action of external objects, that is, by the presence of certain
complex sensations, the constancy of which, whether in their identical whole,
or in the laws of their change, is independent of himself. It is also exercised
by communication with other similarly organised individuals, and by all the
artificial means which, from the first developement of this faculty, men have
succeeded in inventing.
Sensations are accompanied
with pleasure or pain, and man has the further faculty of converting these
momentary impressions into durable sentiments of a corresponding nature, and of
experiencing these sentiments either at the sight or recollection of the
pleasure or pain of beings sensitive like himself. And from this faculty,
united with that of forming and combining ideas, arise, between him and his
fellow creatures, the ties of interest and duty, to which nature has affixed
the most exquisite portion of our felicity, and the most poignant of our
sufferings.
Were we to confine our
observations to an enquiry into the general facts and unvarying laws which the
developement of these faculties presents to us, in what is common to the
different individuals of the human species, our enquiry would bear the name of
metaphysics.
But if we consider this
development in its results, relative to the mass of individuals co-existing at
the same time on a given space, and follow it from generation to generation, it
then exhibits a picture of the progress of human intellect. This progress is
subject to the same general laws, observable in the individual development of
our faculties; being the result of that very developement considered at once in
a great number of individuals united in society. But the result which every
instant presents, depends upon that of the preceding instants, and has an
influence on the instants which follow.
This picture, therefore, is
historical; since subjected as it will be to perpetual variations, it is formed
by the successive observation of human societies at the different eras through
which they have passed. It will accordingly exhibit the order in which the
changes have taken place, explain the influence of every past period upon that
which follows it, and thus show, by the modifications which the human species
has experienced, in its incessant renovation through the immensity of ages, the
course which it has pursued, and the steps which it has advanced towards
knowledge and happiness. From these observations on what man has heretofore
been, and what he is at present, we shall be led to the means of securing and
of accelerating the still further progress, of which, from his nature, we may
indulge the hope.
Such is the object of the
work I have undertaken; the result of which will be to show, from reasoning and
from facts, that no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human
faculties; that the pefectability of man is absolutely indefinite; that the
progress of this perfectibility, henceforth above the control of every power
that would impede it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon
which nature has placed us. The course of this progress may doubtless be more
or less rapid, but it can never be retrograde; at least while the earth retains
its situation in the system of the universe, and the laws of this system shall
neither effect upon the globe a general overthrow, nor introduce such changes
as would no longer permit the human race to preserve and exercise therein the
same faculties, and find the same resources.
The first state of
civilization observable in the human species, is that of a society of men, few
in number, subsisting by means of hunting and fishing, unacquainted with every
art but the imperfect one of fabricating in an uncouth manner their arms and
some household utensils, and of constructing or digging for themselves an
habitation; yet already in possession of a language for the communication of
their wants, and a small number of moral ideas, from which are deduced their common
rules of conduct, living in families, conforming themselves to general customs
that serve instead of laws, and having even a rude form of government.
In this state it is apparent
that the uncertainty and difficulty of procuring subsistence, and the unavoidable
alternative of extreme fatigue or an absolute repose, leave not to man the
leisure in which, by resigning himself to meditation, he might enrich his mind
with new combinations. The means of satisfying his wants are even too dependent
upon chance and the seasons, usefully to excite an industry, the progressive
improvement of which might be transmitted to his progeny; and accordingly the
attention of each is confined to the improvement of his individual skill and
address.
For this reason, the progress
of the human species must in this stage have been extremely slow; it could make
no advance but at distant intervals, and when favored by extraordinary
circumstances. Meanwhile, to the subsistence derived from hunting and fishing,
or from the fruits which the earth spontaneously offered, succeeds the
sustenance afforded by the animals which man has tamed, and which he knows how
to preserve and multiply. To these means is afterwards added an imperfect
agriculture; he is no longer content with the fruit or the plants which chance
throws in his way; he learns to form a stock of them, to collect them around
him, to sow or to plant them, to favor their reproduction by the labor of
culture.
Property, which, in the first
state, was confined to his household utensils, his arms, his nets, and the
animals he killed, is now extended to his flock, and next to the land which he
has cleared and cultivated. Upon the death of its head, this property naturally
devolves to the family. Some individuals possess a superfluity capable of being
preserved. If it be absolute, it gives rise to new wants. If confined to a
single article, while the proprietor feels the want of other articles, this
want suggests the idea of exchange. Hence moral relations multiply, and become
complicate. A greater security, a more certain and more constant leisure,
afford time for meditation, or at least for a continued series of observations.
The custom is introduced, as to some individuals, of giving a part of their
superfluity in exchange for labor, by which they might be exempt from labor
themselves. There accordingly exists a class of men whose time is not engrossed
by corporeal exertions, and whose desires extend beyond their simple wants.
Industry awakes; the arts already known, expand and improve: the facts which
chance presents to the observation of the most attentive and best cultivated
minds, bring to light new arts; as the means of living become less dangerous
and less precarious, population increases; agriculture, which can provide for a
greater number of individuals upon the same space of ground, supplies the place
of the other sources of subsistence; it favors the multiplication of the
species, by which it is favored in its turn; in a society become more
sedentary, more connected, more intimate, ideas that have been acquired
communicate themselves more quickly, and are perpetuated with more certainty.
And now the dawn of the sciences begins to appear; man exhibits an appearance
distinct from the other classes of animals, and is no longer like them confined
to an improvement purely individual.
The more extensive, more
numerous and more complicated relations which men now form with each other,
cause them to feel the necessity of having a mode of communicating their ideas
to the absent, of preserving the remembrance of a fact with more precision than
by oral tradition, of fixing the conditions of an agreement more securely than
by the memory of witnesses, of stating, in a way less liable to change, those
respected customs to which the members of any society agree to submit their
conduct.
Accordingly the want of
writing is felt, and the art invented. It appears at first to have been an
absolute painting, to which succeeded a conventional painting, preserving such
traits only as were characteristic of the objects. Afterwards, by a kind of
metaphor analogous to that which was already introduced into their language,
the image of a physical object became expressive of moral ideas. The origin of
those signs, like the origin of words, were liable in time to be forgotten; and
writing became the art of affixing signs of convention to every idea, every
word, and of consequence to every combination of ideas and words.
There was now a language that
was written, and a language that was spoken, which it was necessary equally to
learn, between which there must be established a reciprocal correspondence.
Some men of genius, the
eternal benefactors of the human race, but whose names and even country are for
ever buried in oblivion, observed that all the words of a language were only
the combinations of a very limited number of primitive articulations; but that
this number, small as it was, was sufficient to form a quantity almost infinite
of different combinations. Hence they conceived the idea of representing by
visible signs, not the ideas or the words that answered to them, but those
simple elements of which the words are composed.
Alphabetical writing was then
introduced. A small number of signs served to express every thing in this mode,
as a small number of sounds sufficed to express every thing orally. The
language written and the language spoken were the same; all that was necessary
was to be able to know, and to form, the few given signs; and this last step
secured for ever the progress of the human race.
It would perhaps be desirable
at the present day, to institute a written language, which, devoted to the sole
use of the sciences, expressing only such combinations of simple ideas as are
found to be exactly the same in every mind, employed only upon reasonings of
logical strictness, upon operations of the mind precise and determinate, might
be understood by men of every country, and be translated into all their idioms,
without being, like those idioms, liable to corruption, by passing into common
use.
Then, singular as it may
appear, this kind of writing, the preservation of which would only have served
to prolong ignorance, would become, in the hands of philosophy, an useful
instrument for the speedy propagation of knowledge, and advancement of the
sciences.
It is between this degree of
civilization and that in which we still find the savage tribes, that we must
place every people whose history has been handed down to us, and who, sometimes
making new advancements, sometimes plunging themselves again into ignorance,
sometimes floating between the two alternatives or stopping at a certain limit,
sometimes totally disappearing from the earth under the sword of conquerors,
mixing with those conquerors, or living in slavery; lastly, sometimes receiving
knowledge from a more enlightened people, to transmit it to other nations,Ñform
an unbroken chain of connection between the earliest periods of history and the
age in which we live, between the first people known to us, and the present
nations of Europe.
In the picture then which I
mean to sketch, three distinct parts are perceptible.
In the first, in which the
relations of travelers exhibit to us the condition of mankind in the least
civilized nations, we are obliged to guess by what steps man in an isolated
state, or rather confined to the society necessary for the propagation of the
species, was able to acquire those first degrees of improvement, the last term
of which is the use of an articulate language: an acquisition that presents the
most striking feature, and indeed the only one, a few more extensive moral
ideas and a slight commencement of social order excepted, which distinguishes
him from animals living like himself in regular and permanent society. In this
part of our picture, then, we can have no other guide than an investigation of
the development of our faculties.
To this first guide, in order
to follow man to the point in which he exercises arts, in which the rays of
science begin to enlighten him, in which nations are united by commercial
intercourse; in which, in fine, alphabetical writing is invented, we may add
the history of the several societies that have been observed in almost every
intermediate state: though we can follow no individual one through all the
space which separates these two grand epochs of the human race.
Here the picture begins to
take its coloring in great measure from the series of facts transmitted to us
by history: but it is necessary to select these facts from that of different
nations, and at the same time compare and combine them, to form the supposed
history of a single people, and delineate its progress.
From the period that
alphabetical writing was known in Greece, history is connected by an
uninterrupted series of facts and observations, with the period in which we
live, with the present state of mankind in the most enlightened countries of
Europe; and the picture of the progress and advancement of the human mind
becomes strictly historical. Philosophy has no longer any thing to guess, has
no more suppositious combinations to form; all it has to do is to collect and
arrange facts, and exhibit the useful truths which arise from them as a whole,
and from the different bearings of their several parts.
There remains only a third
picture to form,Ñthat of our hopes, or the progress reserved for future
generations, which the constancy of the laws of nature seems to secure to
mankind. And here it will be necessary to show by what steps this progress,
which at present may appear chimerical, is gradually to be rendered possible,
and even easy; how truth, in spite of the transient success of prejudices, and
the support they receive from the corruption of governments or of the people,
must in the end obtain a durable triumph; by what ties nature has indissolubly
united the advancement of knowledge with the progress of liberty, virtue, and
respect for the natural rights of man; how these blessings, the only real ones,
though so frequently seen apart as to be thought incompatible, must necessarily
amalgamate and become inseparable, the moment knowledge shall have arrived at a
certain pitch in a great number of nations at once, the moment it shall have
penetrated the whole mass of a great people, whose language shall have become
universal, and whose commercial intercourse shall embrace the whole extent of
the globe. This union having once taken place in the whole enlightened class of
men, this class will be considered as the friends of human kind, exerting
themselves in concert to advance the improvement and happiness of the species.
We shall expose the origin
and trace the history of general errors, which have more or less contributed to
retard or suspend the advance of reason, and sometimes even, as much as
political events, have been the cause of manÕs taking a retrograde course
towards ignorance.
Those operations of the mind
that lead to or retain us in error, from the subtle paralogism, by which the
most penetrating mind may be deceived, to the mad reveries of enthusiasts,
belong equally, with that just mode of reasoning that conducts us to truth, to
the theory of the development of our individual faculties; and for the same
reason, the manner in which general errors are introduced, propagated, transmitted,
and rendered permanent among nations, forms a part of the picture of the
progress of the human mind. Like truths which improve and enlighten it, they
are the consequence of its activity, and of the disproportion that always
exists between what it actually knows, what it has the desire to know, and what
it conceives there is a necessity of acquiring.
It is even apparent, that,
from the general laws of the development of our faculties, certain prejudices
must necessarily spring up in each stage of our progress, and extend their
seductive influence beyond that stage; because men retain the errors of their
infancy, their country, and the age in which they live, long after the truths
necessary to the removal of those errors are acknowledged.
In short, there exist, at all
times and in all countries, different prejudices, according to the degree of
illumination of the different classes of men, and according to their
professions. If the prejudices of philosophers be impediments to new
acquisitions of truth, those of the less enlightened classes retard the
propagation of truths already known, and those of esteemed and powerful
professions oppose like obstacles. These are the three kinds of enemies which
reason is continually obliged to encounter, and over which she frequently does
not triumph till after a long and painful struggle. The history of these
contests, together with that of the rise, triumph, and fall of prejudice, will
occupy a considerable place in this work, and will by no means form the least
important or least useful part of it.
If there be really such an
art as that of foreseeing the future improvement of the human race, and of
directing and hastening that improvement, the history of the progress it has already
made must form the principal basis of this art. Philosophy, no doubt, ought to
proscribe the superstitious idea, which supposes no rules of conduct are to be
found but in the history of past ages, and no truths but in the study of the
opinions of antiquity. But ought it not to include in the proscription, the
prejudice that would proudly reject the lessons of experience? Certainly it is
meditation alone that can, by happy combinations, conduct us to the general
principles of the science of man. But if the study of individuals of the human
species be of use to the metaphysician and moralist, why should that of
societies be less useful to them? And why not of use to the political
philosopher? If it be advantageous to observe the societies that exist at one
and the same period, and to trace their connection and resemblance, why not to
observe them in a succession of periods? Even supposing that such observation
might be neglected in the investigation of speculative truths, ought it to be
neglected when the question is to apply those truths to practice, and to deduce
from science the art that should be the useful result? Do not our prejudices,
and the evils that are the consequence of them, derive their source from the
prejudices of our ancestors? And will it not be the surest way of undeceiving
us respecting the one, and of preventing the other, to develope their origin
and effects?
Are we not arrived at the
point when there is no longer any thing to fear, either from new errors, or the
return of old ones; when no corrupt institution can be introduced by hypocrisy,
and adopted by ignorance or enthusiasm; when no vicious combination can effect
the infelicity of a great people? Accordingly would it not be of advantage to
know how nations have been deceived, corrupted, and plunged in misery?
Every thing tells us that we
are approaching the era of one of the grand revolutions of the human race. What
can better enlighten us to what we may expect, what can be a surer guide to us,
amidst its commotions, than the picture of the revolutions that have preceded
and prepared the way for it? The present state of knowledge assures us that it
will be happy. But is it not upon condition that we know how to assist it with
all our strength? And, that the happiness it promises may be less dearly
bought, that it may spread with more rapidity over a greater space, that it may
be more complete in its effects, is it not requisite to study, in the history
of the human mind, what obstacles remain to be feared, and by what means those
obstacles are to be surmounted?
I shall divide the space
through which I mean to run, into nine grand epochs; and shall presume, in a
tenth, to advance some conjectures upon the future destiny of mankind.
I shall confine myself to the
principal features that characterize each; I shall give them in the group,
without troubling myself with exceptions or detail. I shall indicate the
objects, of the results of which the work itself will present the developments
and the proofs. ...