7. With the idea of progress, prolongevity makes
its way to the center of the stage in Western civili-
zation. According to Becker (Heavenly City..., pp.
119ff.), the great ideas of the Enlightenment are based
on a secularization of the Christian drama of salvation,
its transformation into advance towards a “heaven” on
earth. No sooner does man's confidence in supernatural
salvation begin to weaken than energies are diverted
to an intensified effort to lengthen life.
Although Descartes differs from Bacon on method-
ology, he holds similar views in favor of meliorism,
including prolongevity. In the concluding section of
the Discourse on Method (1637), he pledges his talent
to finding ways of retarding or overcoming senescence.
Buoyed by confidence in his philosophic method, he
has an intense desire to lengthen his life, and there
is evidence that at times he hopes to gain for himself
100 to 500 years (Gruman [1966], pp. 77-80). At other
times, he is torn by deep religious conflicts and favors
apologist ideas.
With the triumph of Newtonian science, the writings
of Francis Bacon took on a sort of prophetic sanctity
which gave new prestige to prolongevity, the “most
noble” goal of medicine. In the Advancement of
Learning (1605) he admonishes physicians to cherish
this part of their work, and in the New Atlantis (1624)
he depicts his savants adding to longevity, experi-
menting in resuscitation of persons “dead in appear-
ance,” and replacing vital organs. By comparison, his
History of Life and Death (1623) is disappointingly
unoriginal.
Esteemed by Condorcet as “the modern Prome-
theus,” Benjamin Franklin witnessed so many “ad-
vances” that he felt a strong desire for greater longevity
and expected science to prolong life beyond the patri-
archal 969 years. Franklin speculated about anabiosis
(as did the surgeon John Hunter who attempted to
preserve animals by freezing them), and he encouraged
research into resuscitation of persons apparently dead
(Gruman [1966], pp. 83-84). The Enlightenment
movement for resuscitation attained institutional form
in the Humane Societies, pioneers of artificial respira-
tion and other “heroic measures” of modern medicine.
The Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) of
William Godwin includes the idea that a “free” indi-
vidual can exert the supremacy of mind over matter
and bring bodily processes under conscious, rational
control. Life will be lengthened by one's cultivating
benevolent and optimistic attitudes and a clear, well-
ordered state of mind (cf. Aristotelian “harmony”).
Bodily processes increasingly can be made subject to
the will until sleep, aging, and death are banished. In
reply, Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population
(1798) not only disparages the possibility of significant
control of body by mind but also raises the spectre
of overpopulation.
In his History of the Progress of the Human Mind
(1795) and his unpublished commentaries on Bacon's
New Atlantis, M. J. de Condorcet envisions an almost
limitless extension of longevity through improvement
of the environment, inheritance of acquired charac-
teristics, and a comprehensive program of scientific
research supported by the government. The last prop-
osition is the most important, for Condorcet realizes
the limitations of eighteenth-century medicine and
looks to the future for the reliable data needed for
prolongevity. Malthus (Essay..., 1798) criticizes all
three points and attacks Condorcet's advocacy of birth
control. Also Malthus points out (as Becker does later)
that the philosophes are not skeptics but men of faith,
and he attacks (as neo-orthodox writers still do) the
injustice of progress which benefits only some future
generation of supermen. But the essentials of modern
beliefs about prolongevity had become widespread by
the time of Condorcet; Napoleon could state in 1817
that, viewing the progress of science, a way will be
“found to prolong life indefinitely.”
