JOSEPH T. STUART

Christopher Dawsonand the Idea of Progress

THE ENGLISH HISTORIAN OF CULTURE Christopher Dawson (i 889—1970) took up in a unique way the intellectual burdens of his age.'One of those burdens was the "idea of Progress."' In notes hand-written sometime during World War I, Dawson mused on the "radi-cal change hrought about by the war." Even an inconclusive peace,he thought, "could not hring back the old state of things. We areirrevocahly committed to a new age and new systems.""It is impos-sihle," he continued, "to foresee what the future may hring, it mayhe disaster, it may be renewed life. What is possible and necessary isto take stock of the factors of the new situation and see as far as pos-sible what alternatives are before this new age." One of these newfactors was that the Great War helped make human progress itselfinto a philosophical and historical problem. Dawson's response tothis problem was his hook Progress and Religion (1929), which wasreceived with wide acclaim hy hoth Catholics and non-Catholics.'^The hook is a wide-ranging treatment of the spiritual, intellectual,and material factors in cultural development and an interpretationof world history. In this article I will first examine in more detailvarious responses to the problem of human, progress during the

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CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS J £

1920s. I will then explain the basic argument of Pro res and Religionby contrasting it with the argument of the historian J. B. Bury inhis The Idea ojProgress, published in 1920. I will show that Daw-son's unique interpretation of human progress involved two broademphases: man's relationship to the natural environment and hisrelationship to the intellectual and spiritual realm.

Progress as a Problem

There were three general responses to the problem of human prog-ress after the Great War in Britain: pessimism, optimism, and Daw-son's realism, which combined elements of the first two.

First, while for some people during the 1920s life was fullof fast cars, parties, and sex (as analyzed in F. Scott Fitzgerald'sThe Great Gatsby of 192^ and satirized in Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bod-ies of 1930), below this surface some thoughtful writers sensed aheightened pessimism. Richard O very has recently chronicled thisin The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars.^ The war had killed and

wounded millions of soldiers. It had linked the words "machine"and "gun" in the popular imagination. It had dulled the optimismof the nineteenth century. Most representative of this pessimisticposition was Oswald Spengler's two-volume work The Decline of theWest, which appeared in English between 1926 and 1929. Copiesof The Decline of the West sold especially in Germany by the tens ofthousands. Spengler sought to create a true German philosophy ofhistorical development, attempting to penetrate beneath the sur-face of history and politics to ask, what moves history forward? Inhis view, however, there was no real "forward": all the cultures ofthe world were independent, natural growths, akin to natural or-ganisms. They are born and they die; they rise and they fall. Humancultures, wrote Spengler, "grow with the same superb aimlessnessas the flowers of the field." Civilizations are "a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming. . . . They are an end, ir-revocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and again." This

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meant that progress was an illusion: "The future of the West is nota limitless tending upwards and onwards for all time towards ourpresent ideals, but a single phenomenon of history."*

Second, despite the pessimism present in Europe after the GreatWar, the idea of progress continued to hold a powerful sway overmany minds. Dawson wrote in his 1929 book that "today, to theaverage European, and still more to the average American, Prog-ress consists in the spread of the new urban-mechanical civilization:it means more cinemas, motor-cars for all, wireless installations,more elaborate methods of killing people, purchase on the hire sys-tem, preserved foods and picture papers."^ Derivative senses of theword "progress" proliferated in British business and manufacturinglanguage for years during and after the war: "progress committee"(from 1914), "progress clerk" (192 i—a person who pushed for-ward work through various stages until it was ready for delivery),"progress department" (1925 ), "progress manager" (192^), and"progress report" (1929).^

Firm and largely unquestioned support for the idea of progressfilled the books of figures such as the rationalist "preacher" JosephMcCabe (1867—19^^), the scientific romance writer H. G. Wells( 18 6 6— 1946), and the classical historian John Bagnell Bury ( i 8 61 —1927), all of whom tried to influence the sphere of public reason bywriting directly on the idea of progress or incorporating a largelyimplicit understanding of it into their views on history and society.For them, "progress" was the general idea that "civilization hasmoved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction."' To noneof these members of the older generation born in the 1860s did thewar make a significant difference for their fundamental assumptionsabout the question of progress. Traditional religions, they thoughtor implied, impeded human progress, which is secured only by thespread of reason and science. McCabe, for example, was a formerFranciscan friar-turned-celebrity rationalist who, in addition tothousands of articles, wrote over two hundred books and mono-graphs, such as ¡82S—192S:A Century of Stupendous Progress, and gave

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 77

thousands of lectures all over the English-speaking world popular-izing "free-thought" and his belief that the combination of freedom,reason, and science would lead to a new era of peace and prosperity.He was widely recognized as the foremost British opponent of reli-gion in the first half of the twentieth century.'"

Third, Dawson, a younger man than these optimists, came tointellectual maturity during and after the Great War and subjectedthe idea of progress to a severe but constructive critique. Whileavoiding the extremes of cyclical pessimism and linear optimism,he combined concern for the natural and human landscapes withunique perspectives on the historical role of religion in the questionof progress. Before further examining Dawson's position, however,the idea of progress must be examined a little more deeply.

What is the idea of progress? While there is no agreement onthe answer to this question, most commentators agree with Bury'sgeneral definition that the idea of progress is the belief that "civilisa-tion has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction."' 'Drawing from the helpful analysis ofW. Warren Wagar,' it is alsopossihle to identify several aspects to the vague concept of progress.

The first is the subject of progress. Who or what is consideredto be progressing? The cosmos? Biological life on earth? Humanlife on earth? A single race or region or civilization? The individual?Society? The pessimist Spengler equated biological life with humanlife; thus there was no "subject" of progress hecause progress didnot occur. For the optimists and for Dawson the suhject of progresswas typically human society.

A second aspect is the content of progress, that is, how progressis different from simple change. In what direction does progress lie?Toward knowledge and reasoning? Toward material wealth? Towardsocial unity and health? Or toward government, the arts, justice,freedom, or spirituality? In order for progress to be real there mustbe an ideal, an end toward which movement occurs. For Spenglerthere was no end and therefore no progress. For the optimists theend was typically greater rationality or increasing social unity or

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material wealtb. Dawson would bave agreed witb tbis up to a point.

"But it is important to remember," be wrote, "tbat tbis process of

[material] cbange is a strictly relative one." He continued: "So far

from being tbe necessary result of a universal process of evolution

wbicb embraces tbe wbole life of bumanity, it is an exceptional and

indeed unique acbievement of a single society at a particular stage

of its development. It is not necessarily more permanent tban tbe

otber acbievements of past ages and cultures. It may even be ques-

tioned, as indeed it bas been questioned by many, wbetber tbe mod-

ern advance of material civilization is progressive in tbe true sense

of tbe word."" Dawson was a severe critic of tbe popular and ma-

terialistic conception of science and progress (glorified by people

sucb as McCabe) because of its focus on industrial and mecbanical

forms of progress tbat led to pollution of tbe environment and de-

struction of local regions, rural life, and aestbetically pleasing and

bealtby cities.'* Witb words strikingly appropriate for tbe twenty-

first century reader, Dawson wrote of tbose wbo in tbe 1920s ques-

tioned progress:

They have seen the destruction of the finer forms of locallife, and the disappearance of popular art and craftsmanshipbefore a standardized mechanical civilization, as well as thehavoc that has been wrought among the primitive peoples byEuropean trade and conquest. They have realized the waste-fulness of a system which recklessly exhausts the resources ofnature for immediate gain, which destroys virgin forests toproduce halfpenny newspapers, and dissipates the stored-upmineral energy of ages in an orgy of stench and smoke. Todayfew thinkers would be so bold as to identify the material ad-vance of modern European civilization with Progress in theabsolute sense.'^

A tbird aspect is tbe agency of progress. Wbat causes progress?

God or gods? Religion? Rationality? Tbe laws of bistory or nature?

Social effort? Great individuals? Institutions? For Dawson, agency

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 79

was a combination of all of these. The optimists tended to focus ex-clusively on scientific rationality and evolutionary forces. The viewof religion as an agent of true human progress is what sets Dawson'sProgress and Religion in contrast with J. B. Bury's The Idea of Progress.

f. B. Bury and Christopher Dawson

Bury was a classicist and historian of the late Roman and Byzantineempires. Born in County Monaghan, Ireland, to a clerical father anda well-read mother. Bury learned classical languages from an earlyage. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and in Germany. In 1902he was appointed regius professor of modern history at Cambridge,a position he held until his death.

Bury's rationalistic beliefs, his scientific ideal, and his under-standing of the idea of progress as the increase of knowledge pro-vided the imity to his understanding of history.'^ This was evidentin his History of Freedom of Thought (1914), written for a popularaudience. The table of contents was indicative: chapter 2 was titled"Reason Free" (Greece and Rome) ; chapter 3, "Reason in Prison"(the Middle Ages); chapter 4, "Prospect of Deliverance" (the Re-naissance and the Reformation); and chapter 7, "The Progress ofRationalism" (Nineteenth Century). This rationalist perspectiveon history, with its intellectual hostility to religion and the Me-dieval Age, also structured The Idea of Progress, which Bury dedi-cated to the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Condorcet, Auguste Comte,Herbert Spencer, and "other optimists mentioned in this volume.""

The subject of the book was the history of the idea of prog-ress, not of the fact, content, or value of the theory of progress;'* itwas simply a historical treatment of the life-story of the belief thathumanity is advancing in a "definite and desirable direction." Theidea of progress was both a "synthesis of the past and a prophecyof the future.""The majority of the book focused on various think-ers from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, such asBacon, Helvétius, and Spencer. Bury expressed the first part of his

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thesis in these words: "Ideas have their intellectual climates, and Ipropose to show briefly in this Introduction that the intellectual cli-mates of classical antiquity and the ensuing ages were not propitiousto the birth of the doctrine of Progress. It is not until the sixteenthcentury that the obstacles to its appearance definitely begin to betranscended and a favourable atmosphere to be gradually prepared."The cyclical theories of the Greeks hindered any growth of the ideaof progress. In the Middle Ages, the situation was even worse, for,"the whole spirit of medieval Christianity excluded it [the idea ofprogress] ."This was because a belief in Providence meant that menfocused on the supernatural world while expecting a sudden endto the natural world, and this effectively made any idea of progressimpossihle.^" Bury further implied that the lack of the idea meantthat there could be no real progress in the Middle Ages either.

The second part of his thesis, which was developed in the restof the book, was that the idea of progress was essentially bound tothe intellectual atmosphere of the modern world as one continu-ous rationalistic movement beginning with Francis Bacon and RenéDescartes in the seventeenth century.

Dawson disagreed with Bury's explanation for the origin of theidea of progress. For Bury, the idea of progress could only havearisen when three conditions were met: when science rested firmlyon the invariable laws of nature, when the intellectual authority ofthe Greeks and Romans was challenged, and when religion steppedaside as a controlling idea in human life, as it had been in the MiddleAges.These conditions occurred in the seventeenth century.^' How-ever, Bury did not explain where the idea itself came from, that is,why confidence in reason should become linked to immanent socialteleology and thus form the idea of progress as a particular perspec-tive on reality. For Bury, the idea was a thing in itself, existing on itsown merit, waiting only to be freed from its chains. He seemed toassume that with the destruction of various psychological and intel-lectual ohstacles such as religion it would burst upon the world likea bird exploding from an open cage door."

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 81

Dawson agreed with Bury on the importance of modern science

for the rise of the idea of progress." However, he thought that the

real roots of the idea of progress were in something deeper. An-

ticipating arguments developed two years later by Carl Becker, '*

Dawson wrote that while

the philosophers of the i 8th century attempted to substitutetheir new rationalist doctrines for the ancient faith of Chris-tendom, they were in reality simply abstracting from it thoseelements which had entered so deeply into their own thoughtthat they no longer recognized their origin. . . . Above allthis was the case with the idea of Progress, for while the newphilosophy had no place for the supernaturalism of the Chris-tian eschatology, it could not divest itself of the Christianteleological conception of life. Thus the belief in the moralperfectibility and the indefinite progress of the human racetook the place of the Christian faith in the life of the world tocome, as the final goal of human effort.^'

For Dawson, the rise of the idea of progress was related to the secu-

larization of positive Christian beliefs. The man identified by both

Bury and Dawson to have first formulated the idea of progress—the

Abbé de St. Pierre (165^8—1743)—was, as Dawson pointed out, a

radical Catholic priest.^*Thus, Dawson challenged not only Bury's

historical accovuit, but his rationalist perspective as well; for, on

Dawson's view, optimistic eighteenth-century rationalism rested

not only in reason and science, but also the Christian teleological

conception of reality.

Dawson and Human Progress

If Bury focused on the idea of progress as the cause of human prog-

ress, Dawson viewed the idea of progress as itself caused by histori-

cal developments. The question of human progress as a fact was a

much larger question than Bury imagined, embracing the history of •

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the world. And in that history reUgion held a central place. That wasDawson's thesis. Religion had, historically, played a central role inhuman development. He advanced a two-part argument: that thereligions of the ancient world had helped lay the foundations of hu-man development, and that Christianity had played a unique role inthe development of a particular people in a particular place, namelyEurope.

In Progress and Religion Dawson attempted to demonstrate therelationship between religion and cultural life in history, fromthe earliest of times through his own day. Dawson drew from ahost of sources such as American anthropologists like A. L. Kroe-ber (1876—1960), Clark Wissler (1870—1947), and R. H. Lowie(1883—19^7); British travel accounts like those of Mary Kingsley(1862—1900); and the seventeenth-centuryye^uit Relations to showthat "the whole mentality of primitive man is religious. His concep-tion of reality is never limited to what he sees and touches."" Inthis way, Dawson tried to demonstrate that early man was not amater iahst concerned only with physical needs, as modern scholarstypically viewed him. Dawson challenged rationalistic interpreta-tions of religion. The British anthropologist Mary Douglas wrote inher Introduction to the 2001 edition oí Progress and Religion that he"artfully stages a dialogue between the eighteenth-century philoso-phers, Condorcet, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, and the people theythought of as primitive: the Sioux, Dakota and Tlingit Indians, na-tive Australians, African Bushmen, Zulus, and Shamans of the Arcticand world wide, are given a chance to put in their word."^* Thismethod contrasted greatly to that of Bury, who solely focused onWestern thinkers and philosophers since the eighteenth century.

In the case of primitive cultures, Dawson wrote, "[the] wholelife of society had a rehgious orientation, and religion was the vi-tal centre of the social organism."" The priesthood and religiousritual were the crucial Hnks between personal religious experienceand social life. This became evident in the temples of the Sumeriancity-states. "The temple, the house of the god, was the centre of the

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 83

life of the community, for tbe god was tbe cbief landowner, traderand banker and kept a great staff of servants and administrators."^"Dawson even suggested tbat ritualistic imitation of tbe processes ofnature, as among tbe Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico,may bave actually given rise to a knowledge of agriculture." Wbentbe development of a ritual cycle, based on tbe agricultural year,embraced tbe wbole social and intellectual life of society (as amongtbe Maya and Aztec peoples), tbis "led to tbe amazing progress inastronomical and cbronological science wbicb is embodied in thegreat Maya calendar."'

To the great ritual cultures of tbe ancient world from Mesopo-tamia and Egypt and Soutb America bumankind owed tbe inventionof writing, tbe calendar, tbe discovery of tbe use of metals, architec-ture and engineering, and many of the arts and crafts of daily life,Dawson pointed out. However, despite the great material progressthey embodied, tbese cultures eventually stagnated in an uncbang-ing ritual order, as in Egypt. But during tbe first millennium B.C.new spiritual forces appeared tbat would transform tbe world againtbrougb tbe Hebrew prophets, tbe Greek pbilosopbers, Buddba,Confucius, and LaoTzu." Soon after came Cbrist and Mubammad.Tbe world religions were born.

In cbapter 7 of Progress and Religion, Dawson focused on Chris-tianity and European cultural development, a subject be would de-velop at lengtb in several later books, most notably The Making ofEurope (1932). In an article for tbe Dublin Review, be quoted fromEcclesiastes, from tbe early second century B.C. : "Tbat wbicb batbbeen is tbat wbicb sball be; and tbat wbicb batb been done is tbatwhicb sball be done: and there is no new thing under tbe sun."'* Onefinds sucb cyclical tbinking, Dawson wrote, in ancient Greece, Bab-ylonia, Syria, Mesopotamia, India, and Cbina. Indeed, tbe doctrineof tbe Great Year and tbe cyclical nature of bistory was tbe commonpossession of all the great civilizations of the ancient world and evencontinued into tbe modern world." Despite Ecclesiastes, bowever,to the Hebrew religion, history possessed a unique and absolute

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value "such as no other people of antiquity had conceived.... Whilethe philosophers of India and Greece were meditating on the illuso-riness or the eternity of the cosmic process, the prophets of Israelwere affirming the moral purpose in history and were interpretingthe passing events of their age as the revelation of the divine will."^*Christianity grew out of this radically historico-centric view of re-ality, and based itself not on a mythological figure or abstract cosmicprinciples, but on a historic person, Jesus Christ.

In contrast, then, to the pessimistic and cyclical conceptions ofreality found in the ancient world, Dawson highlighted the Judeo-Christian tradition in which ritual and the importance of teleologyand history, rather than metaphysical speculation, played centralroles." Even the rationalist Bury recognized this distinction be-tween Greek and Christian thought.'^ But Dawson extended theargument to focus on the Christian behef in the Incarnation of JesusChrist, by which a new principle of divine life "entered the humanrace and the natural world by which mankind is raised to a high-er order." A new orientation of human beings toward each otherand their God-man in Christianity, as well as this religion's focuson the "progressive transformation of human nature," implanted anew "progressive" conception of reality vis-à-vis that of the ancientworld. 3'

For Dawson, the ultimate agent of progress was not ConsciousEvolution, "Collective Forces," or the eighteenth-century idea ofprogress as it was for the optimists. The agent was the Alpha andthe Omega, the One who created the beginning and the end asthe very foundation for the possibility of progress. "Unless menbelieve that they have an all-powerful ally outside time," Dawsonpredicted, "they will inevitahly abandon the ideal of a supernaturalor anti-natural moral progress and make the best of the world asthey find it, conforming themselves to the law of self-interest andself-preservation which governs the rest of nature."'*" However, forDawson, "the life of the Church consists in the progressive exten-sion of the Incarnation by the gradual incorporation of mankind

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS

into [a] higher unity."*' At the end of the book he wrote, "It must berecognized that our faith in progress and in the unique value of hu-man experience rests on religious foundations, and that they cannotbe severed from historical religion and used as a substitute for it,as men have attempted to do during the last two centuries ."This isbecause "a religion without Revelation is a religion without History,and it is just the historical element in Christianity which gives it itspeculiar character."*^ This teleological, transformative view of thesoul and of the world that Dawson traced through the influence ofChristianity on the course of European history in the medieval agesultimately lay behind the very idea of progress claimed by Bury andthe eighteenth-century rationalists as their own possession, contrareligion.

Some progressive intellectuals viewed the idea of progress it-self almost as a religion. The then agnostic classical scholar Gil-bert Murray wrote in 1922, "And as to Progress, it is no doubt areal fact. To many of us it is a truth that lies somewhere near theroots of our religion."*' The positivist F. S. Marvin, referring tothe evolving human mind as the hope of salvation for humanity,wrote in 1938 that "if not itself a religion, such an attitude hasa profound religious root."** The Great War did not end hope inprogress. The underlying message of the rationalistic optimists af-ter the war was that assurance of continued progress depended onclutching tightly to the belief that the idea of progress would itselfsomehow motivate the continued fact of progress.

Dawson rejected the claims of such rationalistic creeds. The ideaof progress was a historical construct resting on the foundations ofcenturies of cultural influence by Christianity and its unique tele-ology and valuation of the material world. "Hence it is in historicChristianity," he wrote, "far more than in any purely rational creed,that the Religion of Progress finds its satisfaction. For here we havenot an abstract intellectualized progress, but the emergence of newspiritual values in a concrete historical sense. A new kind of life hasinserted itself into the cosmic process at a particular point in time

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under definite historical circumstances and has become the prin-ciple of a new order of spiritual progress.""*^

What was true human progress for Dawson? There were twomovements in Dawson's idea of progress: one relating to the en-vironment (the material world) and one to the intellect and spirit(science and religion). Regarding the first, Dawson considered hu-manity's relationship with the natural world as crucial for sustain-able development. He wrote:

We do not regard the dependence of an artist on his materialas a sign of weakness and lack of skill. On the contrary, thegreater the artist, the more fully does he enter into his mate-rial, and the more completely does his work conform itself tothe qualities of the medium in which it is embodied. In thesame way the conformity of a culture to its natural environ-ment is no sign of barbarism. The more a culture advances,the more fully does it express itself in and through its ma-terial conditions, and the more intimate is the co-operationbetween man and nature."*

To the second, true progress meant the growth of scientific knowl-edge coordinated with ethical clarity.

Unless both movements of spirit and matter cooperated in theinterest of cultural unity and harmony with the natural environ-ment to produce long-term progress, degeneration was a threat.Unless ethics and a teleological, religious conception of reahtygave direction—an ultimate end—to material progress and humanthought, science could easily become a tool against humanity andprogress. Dawson suggests, "It is in vain that we look to science fora power which will unite and guide the divided forces of Europeansociety. Science provides, not a moral dynamic, but an intellectualtechnique."*'The optimists such as McCabe and Wells and Bury ul-timately rested their case on only one term: reason and its scientificexpression. Dawson used historical and anthropological evidenceto show that a second term in the equation had always been present

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 87

in the fact of human progress throughout world history: religion.Dawson ended his courageous book Progress and Religion with a boldcall: modern people must return to the religious roots of Westernculture for true progress to prevail.*^

In his encylical Spe salvi. Pope Benedict XVI suggests that hopeis a kind of knowledge or faith by which we can "face our present:the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if itleads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goalis great enough to justify the effort of the journey."*' All men andwomen need a hope, a vision, by which to direct their lives. Theidea of progress provided that vision for many in the early twenti-eth century and still does today. Dawson provided a highly originalcritique of this idea. But he did this not by joining the pessimistsand arguing that no human progress was possible. Rather, he tooka middle position and demonstrated that movements of both prog-ress and regress are present in history. For the possibility of truehuman progress, two conditions had to be met: first, to safeguardthe biological foundations of society in a sustainable relationship tonature, and second, to safeguard a religious vision that truly givesdirection and meaning to the mental and physical efforts of humanheings to improve their lives.

Notes

1. A version of this article was delivered as a public lecture on October 13, 2009, as

part of the Fall Colloquium sponsored by the Catholic Studies program at Aquinas

College (Grand Rapids, MI). For a more wide-ranging article considering Dawson,

the idea of progress, and the 1920s, see JosephT. Stuart, "The Question of Human

Progress in Britain after the Great War," British Scholar i (2008): Í3—78.

2. For two helpful and brief introductions to the topic of "progress," see Morris Gins-

berg, "Progress in the Modern Era," in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P.

Weiner (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973); Jerry Weinberger, "Progress,

Idea of," in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (New

York:Thomson Gale, 2004).

3. Christopher Dawson's reflections on "Social Reconstruction & the War," University

of St.Thomas Archives, Christopher Dawson Collection, box 4, folder 111.

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4. Evelp Underhill, "A Philosophy of Civilization," review of Progress and Religion,

Spectator, 18 May 1929; Rachel AnnandTaylor, review of Progress and Re/igion, Socio-

logical Review 2 2 (1930); Vera Brittain, "Modern Europe Adrift," review of Progress

and Religion, Time andTide 10 (1929); H. F. Davis, review oí Progress and Religion,

Clergy Review i ( 19 3 i ).

¡. Pessimism already had strong roots in the West by the late nineteenth century; see

Georg G. Iggers,"The Idea of Progress: A Critical Reassessment,"/American Historical

Review 71 (196^): i, ¡. For the interwar years, see Richard Overy, The Morbid Age:

Britain Between the Wars (London: Allen Lane, 2009).

6. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, trans. Charles Francis

Atkinson, 2 vols., vol. i (London: George Allen & Unwin , 1926), ix, 2 1 , 3 1 , 39.

7. Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion:An Historical Enquiry (1929;Washington,

DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 17.

8. Oxford English Dictionary (¡^8^), "progress ,"sf).,sense7,http://www.oed.com(ac-

cessed June 2011).

9. J. B. Bury, The Idea ofProgress:An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (London: Macmil-

lan, 1920), 2.

10. Nicolas Walter, "Joseph McCabe," in Oxford Dictionary oJ National Biography (2004),

http://www.oxforddnb.com (accessed June 2011). For McCabe's account of his

years spent in a monastery, see Joseph McCabe, Twelve Years in a Monastery (London:

Smith, Elder, 1897). This book appeared in several reprints and three editions during

the following decades. Bill Cooke, A Rebel to His Last Breath:Joseph McCabe and Rational-

ism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2001), 36, 74, 77, 203. For McCabe's role in

the Rationalist Press Association, see Bill Cooke, The Blasphemy Depot: A HundredYears

of the Rationalist Press Association (Great Britain: Rationalist Press Association, 2003),

32—33. Christopher Dawson gave a paper before the Conway Discussion Group of the

Rationalist Press Association (year unknown); see Christopher Dawson, "Rationalism

and Intellectualism:The Rehgious Elements in the Rationalist Tradition," in Enquiries

into Religion and Culture (London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933).

11. Bury, The Idea of Progress, 2. See also Dawson, Progress and Religion, 16; W. Warren

Wagar, GoodTidings:The Belief in Progress from Darwin to Marcuse (Bloomington: Indi-

ana University Press, 1972), 4; Morris Ginsberg, The idea of Progress: A Revaluation

(London: Methuen, 19Î3), 3. G. K. Chesterton put it humorously: in contrast with

the Dark Ages full of the notion of "A Good Time Going," "the whole culture of our

time has been full of the notion of'A Good Time Coming.'" G. K. Chesterton, A

Short History of England (ist T, London: Chatto &Windus, 1924), 21.

I 2. Wagar, Good Tidings, 4— .

13. Dxwson, Progress and Religion, 18.

14. Christopher Dawson, "The Evolution of the Modern City," Town Planning Review

10(1923); Christopher Dawson, "The World Crisis and the English Tradition," En-

glish Review ¡6 (1933); Christopher Dawson, "Catholicism and the Bourgeois Mind,"

Coloseum 2 (193Í).

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 89

t¡. Dawson, Progress and Religion, 19.

16. For Bury's own description of rationalism, see the Introduction to J. B. Bury, A

History of Freedom ofThought, Home University Library of Modern Knowledge (Lon-

don: Williams & Norgate, 1913). "The uncompromising assertion by reason of her

absolute rights throughout the whole domain of thought is termed rationalism" (18).

Italics in the original.

1 7. Bury, The Idea of Progress, v. Bury did, however, possess sociological appreciation for

the transformative power of Christianity in the late Roman world in his fair and sen-

sitive study of St. Patrick; see J. B. Bury, The Life of St. Patrick and His Place in History

(London: Macmillan, 190^). Bury had been interested in historical development

and the idea of progress many years before the publication of The Idea of Progress; see

his Introduction in Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire, ed. J. B. Bury (1896—1900; London: Methuen, 1909). Christopher Dawson

also wrote an Introduction to an edition of Gibbon (in which he praised Bury as

Gibbon's "most learned" editor; see Edward Gibbon, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the

Roman Empire (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 19J4). Dawson once wrote of Bury's

History of the Freedom ofThought:

It is true that so distinguished an historian as the late J. B. Bury could still de-

scribe medieval thought under the rubric Reason in Prison, but the book in ques-

tion was written with a pronounced rationalistic bias, and as a rule even those

who regard medieval metaphysics as of purely historical interest, nevertheless

recognize, like Prof. Whitehead, that the European mind received from medi-

eval scholasticism that fundamental training in rational thought on which all its

later achievements are dependent.

See Christopher Dawson, Medieval Essajs (19^4; Washington, DC: Catholic Univer-

sity of America Press, 2002), 119. He referred to Alfred North Whitehead's Science

and the ModernWorld (i^ls).

18. Bury was criticized by P. V. M. Benecke, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for

leaving out the most essential task: the examination of the value of the theory of

progress. See P. V. M. Benecke, review of The Idea of Progress, English Historical Review

3Í ( I 9 2 O ) : Í 8 I .

19. Bury, The Idea of Progress, ¡.

20. Ibid., 7, 29. F. S. Marvin criticized Bury for his "negative attitude towards those

who have contributed to the doctrine of Progress from the theological . . . point

of view IMarvin mentioned, for example, St. Augustine]. . . . One notices, in fact,

at the present time, when the triumphs of science are somewhat discounted by

its use in war, that the belief in Progress finds some of its strongest supporters

in those who try to take the eternal or superhuman view of the tragedies of the

moment and hold that there is a Providence overruling them and the human pas-

sions." F. S. Marvin, "Progress:The Idea and the Reality," Contemporary Review i 1 8

(1920): 234, 23i.

2 1. B u r y , The Idea of Progress, 2 2 , 6 6 .

9 0 LOGOS

22. Ibid., 6^—66: "We have seen several reasons why the idea could not emerge in the

ancient or in the Middle Ages. Nor could it have easily appeared in the period of

the Renaissance. Certain preliminary conditions were required, and these were not

fulfilled till the seventeenth century." Quentin Skinner has criticized Bury for writ-

ing of the idea of progress as a thing-in-itself, an "it"; see Quentin Skinner, Regarding

Method, vol. I, Visions of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 62.

2 3. Dawson, Progress and Religion, 143—4^.

24. See Becker's 1931 Storrs Lectures given at the School of Law, Yale University, and

published as Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932). Becker's thesis was that "the Philosophes

were nearer the Middle Ages, less emancipated from the preconceptions of medi-

eval Christian thought, than they quite realized or we have commonly supposed"

(29). Becker underlined the relativity of the idea of progress and the pessimistic im-

plications of the universe as presented by modern science—a universe in perpetual

flux—for belief in progress as a fact; see Carl L. Becker, "Progress," in Encyclopedia

of the Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R. A. Seligman and Alvin Johnson (London: Macmil-

lan, 1934), vol. 12.1 am not the first to link Becker and Dawson and the significance

of their new perspective on the eighteenth century; see W. Warren Wagar, "Modern

Views of the Origins of the Idea of Progress," Journal of the History of Ideas 28(1967):

62—63. Becker's thesis attracted much attention and debate; see Wagar's article just

mentioned, and, most famously, Peter Gay, "Carl Becker's Heavenly City," in Carl

Becker's Heavenly City Revisited, ed. Raymond O. Rockwood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 19^8).

2 ¡. Dawson, Progress and Religion, 149. See also Christopher Dawson, "Christianity and

the Idea of Progress,"Du Win Review 180 (1927): 28.

26. Dawson, Progress anJ Re/i^ion, i^o.

27. Ibid., 71. During the 1920s anthropology reached its mature form in the work of

these anthropologists and others who gave the concept "culture" a new position as a

theoretical entity with explanatory power over human action and thought; see Mark

W. Risjord, "Ethnography and Culture," in Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology,

ed. Stephen P.Turner and MarkW. Risjord (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2007).

28. Dawson, Progress and Religion, xxiii. Dawson may have been conscious of this aspect

of his method. In Religion and Culture he mentioned Joseph de Maistre, who, in his

reaction against the Enlightenment, viewed with greater sympathy all that which

had hitherto been regarded by philosophers and historians as irrational and barba-

rous. "Sacrifice, Karma, asceticism, tabu, all became comprehensible and religiously

valid in de Maistre's philosophy of history. It is significant that in the Evenings at

St. Petersburg the discussion centres on a long quotation from the Laws of Manu

which cannot have been very familiar reading to the literary public ofthat date, and

throughout the dialogues he calls in the wisdom of the East to answer the reasoning of the

West." Christopher Dawson, Religion and Culture (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1948),

13, emphasis added.

CHRISTOPHER DAWSON AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 9 I

29. Dawson, Progress and Religion, 82.

30. Ibid., 9^ .

3 1 . Ibid., 89 , 91—92.

32. Ibid., 92 .

33 . Ibid., 9 7 - 9 9 .

34. Dawson, "Christianity and the Idea of Progress," 23 . Ecclesiastes 1:9.

3 Í . Dawson, Progress and Religion, i i j .

36. Ibid,, I 23.

37. Ibid., ioj—6, 120—22, 188.

3 8. Bury, The Idea of Progress, 19, 21. In fact. Bury was greatly interested in the transfor-

mation by Christianity of the Roman Empire and of what came to be Europe; see

Bury, Tile Life of St. Patrick and His Place in History.

39. Diwson, Progress and Religion, 124, 129.

4 0 . Ib id . , 28 .

41. Ibid., 124.

42. Ibid., 188. The American sociologist Robert Nisbet (1913—96) later developed a

position on religion and progress similar to Dawson's:

It was belief in the sacred and the mythological that in the beginning ofWestern

history made possible belief in and assimilation of ideas of time, history, devel-

opment, and either progress or regress. Only on the basis of confidence in the

existence of a divine power was confidence possible with respect to design or

pattern in the world and in the history of the world. In the beginning all knowl-

edge was sacred by virtue of its content—the divine, the mythological. It was

persistence of this sense of the sacredness of knowledge that accorded the arts

and sciences high status in Western civilization long after they had ceased to be

concerned solely with the gods.

Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (London: Heinemann, 1980), 3^^.

43. Gilbert Murray, "Religio Grammatici:The Religion of a 'Man of Letters,'" in Essays

and Addresses (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1922), 19.

44. F. S. Marvin, The NewVision of Man (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938), 164.

4 j . Dawson, Progress and Re/igion, 189.

46. Ibid., ¡4..

47. Ibid., 176.

48. Ibid., 188.

49. Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, http://www.vatican.va (accessed June 2011), 1.

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