cle of the material
improvements of modern civilisation and the results of science, set no
limits to man's power or his hopes; while others, unable to deny the
facts, say that this progress serves only the lower part of human
nature, and refuse to look with complacency on a movement which means,
they assert, a continuous decadence of the nobler part. To which it is
replied that, If moral decadence is a fact, it is only transient; it
is a necessary phase of a development which means moral progress in
the end, for it is due to the process by which the beliefs, ideas,
and institutions of the past disappear and make way for new and better
principles.

And Javary notes a prevailing tendency in France to interpret every
contemporary movement as progressive, while all the social doctrinaires
justify their particular reforms by invoking the law of Progress. It was
quite true that during the July monarchy nearly all serious speculations
on society and history were related to that idea. It was common to
Michelet and Quinet, who saw in the march of civilisation the gradual
triumph of liberty; to Leroux and Cabet, who preached humanitarian
communism; to Louis Blanc and to Proudhon; to the bourgeois, who were
satisfied with the regime of Louis Philippe and grew rich, following
the precept of Guizot, as well as to the workers who overthrew it. It is
significant that the journal of Louis Blanc, in which he published his
book on the ORGANISATION OF WORK (1839), was entitled REVUS DES PROGRES.
The political question as to the due limits between government and
individual freedom was discussed in terms of Progress: is personal
liberty or state authority the efficient means of progressing? The
metaphysical question of necessity and freewill acquired a new interest:
is Progress a fatality, independent of human purposes, determined
by general, ineluctable, historical laws? Quinet and Michelet argued
vigorously against the optimism of Cousin, who with Hegel held that
history is just what it ought to be and could not be improved.

2.

Among the competing theories of the time, and sharply opposed to the
views of Comte, was the idea, derived from the Revolution, that the
world is moving towards universal equality and the obliteration of class
distinctions, that this is the true direction of Progress. This view,
represented by leaders of the popular movement against the bourgeois
ascendency, derived powerful reinforcement from one of the most