Progress and Perfectibility. “Man is susceptible of
improvement and has in himself a principle of
progression and a desire for perfection.... He is in
some measure the artificer of his own frame as well
as his fortune, and is destined from the first age of his
being to invent and contrive.... He is perpetually
busied in reformations, and is continually wedded to
his errors” (Ferguson [1767], Part I, Sec. I). The human
condition is not necessarily immutable or retrogressive
owing to the Fall. On the contrary, undeniable and
cumulative progress can be seen to occur in the fields
of science, technology, and the applied arts. Progress
is a fact of history. The cosmos evolves, the species
is transformed, the individual grows from helpless
imperfection to his full stature. Mechanical and bio-
logical models and analogies irresistibly influence the
understanding of the historical process. What distin-
guishes mankind particularly from the animal world,
says Buffon, is the perfectibility of the species and of
the institutions of society (Buffon,
Histoire naturelle,
XIII, Paris [1765], 3-4). The concept of perfectibility
as a process implies the actual imperfection of society,
just as enlightenment, according to Kant (
Was ist
Aufklärung?, 1784) denotes a process rather than an
end product. In his influential writings on history,
Turgot compares progress to a storm-lashed sea; men
must commit a thousand errors to arrive at the truth
(“Plan de deux discours sur l'histoire universelle”
[1751], in
Oeuvres de Turgot, Paris, I [1913], 277, 314).
D'Alembert emphasizes the provisional and, perhaps,
exceptional character of enlightened progress: “It took
centuries to make a beginning; it will take centuries
to bring it to an end.... Barbarism lasts for centuries;
it seems to be our natural element; reason and good
taste are only passing” (Discours préliminaire,
Ency-
clopédie, 1751). “Man's progress... has been irregular
and various... yet the experience of four thousand
years should enlarge our hopes and diminish our
apprehensions... [though] the merit of discovery has
too often been stained with cruelty and fanaticism: and
the intercourse of nations has produced the communi-
cation of disease and prejudice” (Gibbon,
Decline and
Fall, Ch. 38). Bentham expressly rejects Dr. Priestley's
“expectation that man will ultimately attain a degree
of happiness and knowledge which far surpasses our
present conditions.... Perfect happiness belongs to
the imaginary regions of philosophy... it may be
possible to diminish the influence of, but not to destroy,
the sad and mischievous passions” (
Influence of Time
and Place in Matters of Legislation [1802], Ch. V,
Works, I, 193-94). The conception of progress is based
upon historical experience, and not any longer on
metaphysical speculation; therefore it is not necessarily
cyclical or unilinear; it is a matter of judgment and
probabilities like all other phenomena.
