True and False Progress
In 1864, Frédéric Le Play published his magnum opus, Social Reform in France, which offered a comprehensive response to the progressive social theories of the Enlightenment rooted in his extensive sociological studies of multi-generational families in Eastern Europe. The following selection is reprinted from Critics of the Enlightenment (ISI Books, 2004), which is due to be released later this year in a second edition by Cluny Media.
I shall refute two theories—mutually opposed and equally erroneous—that would compromise social reform either by giving us exaggerated confidence or by casting us into despair.
According to the first opinion, man is naturally led to the good, and it suffices to leave human societies freely to follow their propensities for progress to occur. And because the facts thwart this theory, it is supplemented by declaring the government to be the source of evil and always inclined to pervert the individual tendency to good. This view concludes by declaring that we can throw ourselves confidently into those revolutions that remove the popular masses from the influence of the ruling classes.
The two connected ideas on which this first theory is founded—the original perfection of individuals and the beneficent influence of revolutions—seem to me to be refuted by the observation of human nature and the events of the past two centuries. Evil is not introduced to the world only by governments, for the people who are best preserved from evils are precisely those who have had the least recourse to revolutions. Evil is born chiefly in the ignorance and depraved instincts of the younger generations. It is incontestable that the nations in whom the movement of progress is the most marked in our day are those whose social organization permits them effectively to combat this permanent source of corruption through education and the ascendancy of the mature and the elderly. Progress can only be obtained under these conditions. Surely it is slowed or compromised when the ruling classes cede to the causes of corruption brought on by prosperity, especially the influence of wealth, and do not rest upon the heights of their mission. Yet this is impossible in any society in which the new generations are abandoned to their natural propensities. The state of nature, so highly extolled at the end of the last century, is a chimerical idea conceived outside of all methodical observation. As to revolutions, they can be a heroic remedy for the people when the ruling classes have fallen into corruption. But they are only fruitful upon the condition of being immediately followed by a long period of good morals and stable government. This truth is to be seen in the success that the English have attained since 1688 and by our hard trials since the end of the last century.
Unlike the first, the second opinion does not spring from a false principle, but it deduces false consequences from a true principle. Accepting that the propensity to evil is inseparable from human nature, it infers that the nations are, in the long run, condemned to decadence and destruction as fatally as our individual lives are bound to decrepitude and death. According to the common expression, there are young nations with a long future before them, and there are old ones that have accomplished a certain mission in the work of universal civilization and must now be extinguished. The former have firm religious beliefs, leadership by elders, frugal and simple customs, physical strength and martial courage, and, finally, a power of expansion that makes their race overflow its native region through conquest or colonization. In the latter, the opposite characteristics are found: religious indifference, disdain for elders and relaxation of family bonds, the abuse of luxury and wealth, sterility and the physical weakening of the race, and the inability to populate its colonies and recruit for its armies. A fatality that man cannot master obliges nations to pass successively through these two states, just as water from a spring must travel past all the banks of the river until it reaches the ocean. This image is frequently reproduced in our common language to affirm that no nation can swim against the tide of civilization.
While at first sight this theory is more in conformity with history than the first, it is nevertheless falsified by reason and experience. In the first place, it is evident that the equation made between individuals and societies cannot be adopted in its literal sense, because societies do not age, but remain in absolute conditions of stability so far as the age of their members is concerned. Yet the state of equilibrium that is spontaneously produced in physical organization always tends to be upset in the moral and intellectual order. For death harvests the mature and elderly, and therefore constantly deprives society of the treasures of wisdom and experience, while birth tends constantly to infuse these same societies with original barbarism. This cause of decadence acts equally upon all peoples, while the first weighs especially upon the most advanced. How many times have those of us who have lived a half-century had to groan to see extinguished by death those good men who are the principal vital forces of the country! The most perfect societies are evidently those which, under this double influence, have the most to lose and the least to gain; they are, consequently, the most exposed to decline. Yet this difficulty is not insoluble, and it does not increase with the number of centuries in a nation’s history. To the extent a people elevates itself, it is more exposed to decline, but it will find in its successes new forces by which to resist corruption and thus preserve itself from decadence. Many populations without histories or recently implanted upon a virgin soil cannot escape barbarism, while the oldest European nations are able to keep themselves in the first rank. Others, such as Spain and Italy, after having languished for centuries, give new testimonies to their youth and vitality. The possession of a glorious past, far from being a cause of weakness in them, is, on the contrary, a source for renewal. The special object of this work is to seek the forces that allow nations to progress and reform, and I will prove that these are especially found in those social regimes in which each citizen has the power to overcome the original vice of his children and to transmit to them the habits of work and virtue created by their elders. For the moment I will merely note that this task is no more difficult for the old imperial nations than it is for their newest colonies.
In conclusion, nations, like individuals, enjoy freedom. They are fatally bound neither to good nor to evil, and we cannot discern in the history of any nation the necessary succession of youth or progress by old age or decadence. Whatever their past may have been, they remain the masters of their own future. They may always expect success, even after a long period of abasement, if they once again observe the moral laws, while their prosperity will come to an end as soon as they let these laws fall into neglect.
