GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

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* ETHICS
issues involved which have a particular relevance to the
topic which led us to concern ourselves with the subject,
namely, the validity of the deliverances of the moral
sense in the light of their admitted relation to the needs,
their admitted conduciveness to the maintenance of a
society.
(B) That the View that Societies Progress is an Unsubstantiated
Dogma.
It will be convenient to divide the observations that
follow under four heads.
(i) IT is NOT CLEAR THAT SOCIETIES DO IN FACT
PROGRESS. To the question, does human life grow better,
there is no agreed answer. Every age would, I suspect,
tend to answer it differently. Until the middle of the
eighteenth century the conception of progress
was com-
paratively unknown. The Victorians, who were dominated
by it, would have answered the question in a sense
favourable to themselves. Shocked by the war and alarmed
by the future, many of the most sensitive minds ofour own
generation would, I suspect, answer in a contrary sense.
(ii) The evidence of history seems on the whole to tell
in favour not of a law of continuing progress, but of cycles
of progress and decay. Again and again human civilization
has reached a certain point; but it has never passed beyond
it. Presently it has slipped back, and an era of comparative
barbarism has succeeded. One might almost be justified
in taking the view that human life, capable of rising to a
certain level, is incapable of transcending it, or even of
maintaining itself for any period of time at the highest
level which it is capable of reaching. This generalization
is clearly controversial, and to support it is beyond my
competence. For my part, I am sceptical as to die possibility
of deducing any law ofhuman development, whether
cyclical or progressive, from the teaching of history. It
is, however, impossible to avoid being impressed by the