Darwin’s theories have been criticized subsequently by other scientists, but his general ideas still hold. One of the results of a general acceptance of his theories was to make people believe in the idea of progress, which meant that man and society, and the world as a whole, were marching towards perfection and becoming better and better. This idea of progress was not the result of Darwin’s theory alone. The whole trend of scientific discovery and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution and afterwards had prepared people’s minds for it. Darwin’s theory confirmed it, and people began to imagine themselves as marching proudly from victory to victory to the goal of human perfection, whatever that might be. It is interesting to note that this idea of progress was quite a new one. There seems to have been no such idea in the past in Europe or Asia, or in any of the old civilizations. In Europe, right up to the Industrial Revolution, people looked upon the past as the ideal period. The old Greek and Roman classical period was supposed to be finer and more advanced and cultured than subsequent periods. There was progressive deterioration or worsening of the race, so people thought, or at any rate there was no marked change.
In India there is much the same idea of deterioration, of a golden age that is past. Indian mythology measures time in enormous periods, like the geological periods, but always it begins with the great age, Satya Yuga, and comes down to the present age of evil, the Kali Yuga.
So we see that the idea of human progress is quite a modern notion. Our knowledge of past history, such as it is, makes us believe in this idea. But, then, our knowledge is still very limited, and it may be that with fuller knowledge our outlook might change. Even today there is not quite the same enthusiasm about “progress” as there was in the second half of the nineteenth century. If progress leads us to destroy each other on a vast scale, as was done in the World War, there is something wrong with such progress. Another thing worth remembering is that Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” does not necessarily mean the survival of the best. All these are speculations for the learned. What we have to note is that the old and widespread idea of a static or unchanging, or even deteriorating, society was pushed aside by modern science in the nineteenth century, and in its place came the idea of a dynamic and changing society. Also there came the idea of progress. And indeed society did change out of all recognition during this period.
As I have been telling you of Darwin’s theory of the origin of species, it might interest you to know what a Chinese philosopher wrote on the subject 2500 years ago. Tson Tse was his name, and he wrote in the sixth century before Christ, about the time of the Buddha:
All organizations are originated from a single species. This single species had undergone many gradual and continuous changes, and then gave rise to all organisms of different forms. Such organisms were not differentiated immediately, but, on the contrary, they acquired their differences through gradual change, generation after generation.
This is near enough to Darwin’s theory, and it is amazing that the old Chinese biologist should have arrived at a conclusion which it took the world two and a half millennia to rediscover.
As the nineteenth century progressed the rate of change became ever faster. Science produced wonder after wonder, and an endless pageant of discovery and invention dazzled people’s eyes. Many of these discoveries changed the life of the people greatly, like the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile and later the aeroplane. Science dared to measure the farthest heavens and also the invisible atom and its still smaller components. It lessened the drudgery of man, and life became easier for millions. Because of science there was a tremendous increase in the population of the world, and especially of the industrial countries. At the same time science evolved the most thoroughgoing methods of destruction. But this was not the fault of science. It increased man’s command over Nature, but man with all this power did not know how to command himself. And so he misbehaved often and wasted the gifts of science. But the triumphant march of science went on, and within 160 years this changed the world more than all the previous many thousand years had done. Indeed, in every direction and in every department of life science has revolutionized the world.
This march of science is continuing even now, and it seems to rush on faster than ever. There is no rest for it. A railway is built. By the time it is ready to function it is already out of date. A machine is bought and fixed up; within a year or two better and more efficient machines of that very kind are being made. And so the mad race goes on, and now in our time electricity is replacing steam, and thus bringing about as great a revolution as the Industrial Revolution of a century and a half ago.
Vast numbers of scientists and experts are continually at work in the numerous highways and byways of science. The greatest name in their ranks today is that of Albert Einstein, who has succeeded in modifying to some extent the famous theory of Newton.
So vast has been the recent progress in science and so great the additions and changes in scientific theory, that scientists themselves have been taken aback. They have lost all their old complacency and pride of certainty. They are hesitant now about their conclusions and their prophecies for the future.
But this is a development of the twentieth century and our own day. In the nineteenth century there was full assurance, and science, priding itself on its innumerable successes, imposed itself on the people, and they bowed down to it as to a god.
131
The Advance of Democracy
February 10, 1933
In my last letter I tried to give you a glimpse of the progress of science in the nineteenth century. Let us now look at another aspect of this century—the growth of the democratic idea.
You will remember my telling you of the war of ideas in eighteenth-century France; of Voltaire, the greatest thinker and writer of his day, and of others in France, who challenged many old notions of religion and society and boldly advanced new theories. Such political thinking was largely confined to France at the time. In Germany there were the philosophers who interested themselves in more abstruse questions of philosophy. In England, business and trade were increasing and most people were not fond of thinking unless circumstances made them do so. One notable book, however, came out in England in the second half of the eighteenth century. This was Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. It was not a book on politics as such, but on political economy or economics. This subject, like all other subjects at the time, was mixed up with religion and ethics, and there was thus a great deal of confusion about it. Adam Smith dealt with it in a scientific way and, disregarding all ethical complications, tried to find natural laws which governed economics. Economics, as you perhaps know, deals with the management of the income and expenditure of the people or a country as a whole, of what they produce and what they consume, and their relations with each other and other countries and peoples. Adam Smith believed that all these rather complicated operations took place according to fixed natural laws, which he set down in his book. He also believed that full liberty should be given for the development of industry so that these laws might not be interfered with. This was the beginning of the doctrine of laissez-faire about which I have already told you something. Adam Smith’s book had nothing to do with the new democratic ideas which were germinating in France at the time. But his attempt at scientific treatment of one of the most important problems which affected men and nations shows that men were going in a new direction, away from the old theological way of looking at everything. Adam Smith is considered the father of the science of economics, and he inspired many English economists of the nineteenth century.
The new science of economics was confined to professors and a few well-read men. But meanwhile the new ideas of democracy were spreading, and the American and French Revolutions gave them tremendous popularity and advertisement. The fine-sounding words and phrases of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of Rights stirred people to the depths. To the millions who were oppressed and exploited they b
rought a thrill and a message of deliverance. Both the declarations spoke of liberty and equality and of the right to happiness which everyone has. The proud declaration of these precious rights did not result in the people obtaining them. Even now, a century and a half after these declarations, few can be said to enjoy them. But even the declaration of these principles was extraordinary and life-giving.
The old idea in Europe as elsewhere, in Christianity as in other religions, was that sin and unhappiness were the common and inevitable lot of man. Religion seemed to give a permanent and even an honoured place to poverty and misery in this world. The promises and rewards of religion were all for some other world; here we were told to bear our lot with resignation and not to seek any fundamental change. Charity was encouraged, the giving of crumbs to the poor, but there was no idea of doing away with poverty, or with a system which resulted in poverty. The very ideas of liberty and equality were opposed to the authoritarian outlook of the Church and society.
Democracy did not, of course, say that all men were in fact equal. It could not say this, because it is obvious enough that there are inequalities between different men: physical inequalities which result in some being stronger than others, mental inequalities which are seen in some people being abler or wiser than others, and moral inequalities which make some unselfish and others not so. It is quite possible that many of these inequalities are due to different kinds of upbringing and education or want of education. Of two boys or girls who are similar in ability, give one a good education and the other no education, and after some years there will be a vast difference between the two. Or give one of them healthy food and the other bad and insufficient food, and the former will grow properly, while the latter will be weak and ailing and under-developed. So one’s upbringing and surroundings and training and education make a vast deal of difference, and it may be that if we could give the same training and opportunities to everybody, there would be far less inequality than there is now. This is indeed very likely. But so far as democracy is concerned, it admitted that men were as a matter of fact unequal, and yet it stated that each one of them should be treated as having an equal political and social value. If we accept this democratic theory in its entirety, we are led to all manner of revolutionary conclusions. We need not go into these at this stage, but one obvious consequence of the theory was that each person should have a vote for the election of a representative to the governing assembly or parliament. The vote was the symbol of political power, and it was assumed that if everyone had a vote, each such person would have an equal share in political power. Therefore one of the principal demands of democracy, right through the nineteenth century, was the extension of the franchise—that is, the right to vote. Adult suffrage or franchise meant that every adult or grownup person should have the vote. For a long time women were not allowed to vote, and there was not very long ago a tremendous agitation by them, especially in Britain. In most advanced countries now there is adult suffrage for both men and women.
But, curiously enough, when most people had got the vote they found that it did not make very much difference to them. In spite of having the vote, they had no power, or very little power, in the State. A vote is of little use to a hungry man. The people with real power were those who could take advantage of his hunger and make him work to do anything else that they wanted to their own advantage. Thus political power, which the vote was supposed to give, was seen to be a shadow with no substance, without economic power, and the brave dreams of the early democrats, that equality would follow from the vote, came to nothing.
This was, however, a much later development. In the early days—the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries— there was great enthusiasm among the democrats. Democracy was going to make everybody a free and equal citizen and the government of the State would work for the happiness of everybody. There was a great reaction against the autocracy of kings and governments of the eighteenth century and the way they had abused their absolute power. This led people to proclaim the rights of individuals in their declarations. Probably these statements of the rights of individuals in the American and French declarations erred somewhat on the other side. In a complex society it is not an easy matter to separate individuals and give them perfect freedom. The interests of such an individual and of society may and do clash. However this may be, democracy stood for a great deal of individual freedom.
England, which was backward in political ideas in the eighteenth century, was greatly affected by the American and French Revolutions. The first reaction was one of fear against the new democratic ideas and the possibility of a social revolution at home. The ruling classes became even more conservative and reactionary. But still the new ideas spread among the intellectuals. Thomas Paine was an interesting Englishman of this period. He was in America at the time of the War of Independence and helped the Americans. He seems to have been partly responsible for converting the Americans to the idea of complete independence. On his return to England he wrote a book, The Rights of Man, in defence of the French Revolution which had just begun. In this book he attacked monarchy and pleaded for democracy. The British Government outlawed him because of this, and he had to fly to France. In Paris he soon became a member of the National Convention, but in 1793 he was put in prison by the Jacobins because he had opposed the execution of Louis XVI. In the Paris gaol he wrote another book called The Age of Reason, in which he criticized the religious outlook. Paine being out of reach of the English courts (he was discharged from the Paris prison after the death of Robespierre), his English publisher was sentenced to imprisonment for issuing this book. Such a book was considered dangerous to society, as religion was supposed to be necessary to keep the poor in their place. Several publishers of Paine’s book, including women, were sent to prison. It is interesting to find that Shelley, the poet, wrote a letter of protest to the judge.
In Europe the French Revolution was the parent of the democratic ideas that spread throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the very ideas of the Revolution persisted, although conditions were rapidly changing. These democratic ideas were the intellectual reaction against kings and autocracy. They were based on conditions prior to industrialization. But the new industry—steam and big machinery—were completely upsetting the old order. Yet, strange to say, the radicals and democrats of the early nineteenth century ignored these changes and went on talking in the fine phrases of the Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. To them perhaps these changes were purely material and did not affect the high spiritual and moral and political demands of democracy. But material things have a way of refusing to be ignored. It is very interesting to find how extraordinarily difficult it is for people to give up old ideas and accept new ones. They will shut their eyes and their minds and refuse to see; they will fight to hold on to the old even when it harms them. They will do almost anything but accept the new ideas and adapt themselves to new conditions. The power of conservatism is prodigious. Even the radicals, who imagine themselves very advanced, often stick to old and exploded ideas, and shut their eyes to changing conditions. It is no wonder that progress is slow, and often there is a great lag between actual conditions and people’s ideas—resulting in revolutionary situations.
Democracy was thus for many decades the carrying on of the traditions and ideas of the French Revolution. This failure to adapt itself to the new conditions led to the weakening of democracy towards the end of the century, and later, in the twentieth century, to its repudiation by many people. In India today many of our advanced politicians still talk in terms of the French Revolution and the Rights of Man, not appreciating that much has happened since then.
The early democrats naturally took to rationalism. Their demand for freedom of thought and speech could hardly be reconciled with dogmatic religion and theology. Thus democracy joined with science to weaken the hold of theological dogmas. People began to dare to examine the Bible, as if it was an ordinary book an
d not something that must be accepted blindly and without questioning. This criticism of the Bible was called the “higher criticism”. The critics came to the conclusion that the Bible was a collection of documents written by different persons in different ages. They also were of the opinion that Jesus had no intention of founding a religion. Many of the old beliefs were shaken by this criticism.
As the old religious foundations were being weakened by science and democratic ideas, attempts were made to formulate a philosophy to take the place of the old religion. One of these attempts was by a French philosopher, Auguste Comte who lived from 1798 to 1857. Comte felt that the old theology and dogmatic religions were out of date, but he was convinced that some kind of religion was a social necessity. He therefore proposed a “religion of humanity” and called it “Positivism.” This was to be based on love, order and progress. There was nothing supernatural about it; it was based on science. At its back, as indeed at the back of nearly all current ideas of the nineteenth century, was the idea of the progress of the human race. Comte’s religion remained the belief of a few intellectuals only, but his general influence on European thought was great. He may be said to begin the study of the science of sociology, which deals with human society and culture.
Glimpses of World History Page 78
