: CONDORCET

CHAPTER XII THE THEORY OF PROGRESS IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER XIII GERMAN SPECULATIONS ON PROGRESS

CHAPTER XIV CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER XV THE SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: I. SAINT-SIMON

CHAPTER XVI SEARCH FOR A LAW OF PROGRESS: II. COMTE

CHAPTER XVII "PROGRESS" IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
(1830-1851)

CHAPTER XVIII MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851

CHAPTER XIX PROGRESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION

EPILOGUE

APPENDIX: NOTES TO THE TEXT
[Proofreaders note: these notes have been
interspersed in the main text as Footnotes]

INTRODUCTION

When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in
history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human
aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as
liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism. Some of these
have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of them should
not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were the
united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it. They are
approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not
because they are true or false. But there is another order of ideas
that play a great part in determining and directing the course of man's
conduct but do not depend on his will--ideas which bear upon the mystery
of life, such as Fate, Providence, or personal immortality. Such ideas
may operate in important ways on the forms of social action, but they
involve a question of fact and they are accepted or rejected not because
they are believed to be useful or injurious, but because they are
believed to be true or false.

The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it
is important to be quite clear on the point. We now take it so much for
granted, we are so conscious of constantly progressing in knowledge,
arts, organising capacity, utilities of all sorts, that it is easy to
look upon Progress as an aim, like liberty or a world-federation, which
it only depends on our own efforts and good-will to achieve. But though
all increases of power and knowledge depend on human effort, the idea
of the Progress of humanity, from which all these particular progresses
derive their value, raises a definite question of fact, which man's
wishes or labours cannot affect a