Evolutionism
René Guénon — Civilization and Progress (4)
“ It is essential to remember that Pascal only visualized an intellectual progress, within the limits of his and his time’s conception of intellectuality.
It was towards the very end of the 18th century that there appeared -with Turgot and Condorcet- the idea of progress extended to all branches of activities; and this idea was then so far from being generally accepted that Voltaire eagerly set about ridiculing it.
We cannot think of giving here the complete history of the different modifications which this same idea underwent during the 19th century, and of the pseudo-scientific complications in which it was involved when -under the name of ‘evolution’- people sought to apply it not only to humanity, but to the whole animal world.
Evolutionism -despite many more or less important divergencies- has become a real official dogma: it is taught like a law which it is forbidden to discuss, when it is nothing more than the most idle and ill-founded of all hypotheses; this applies a fortiori to the conception of human progress, which is now taken for granted as being no more than a particular case of ‘evolution’.
Human progress is now taken for granted as being no more than a particular case of ‘evolution’
Like Bacon and Pascal, Comte compared the ancients to children, and others -more recently- have thought to improve on this by likening them to the savages, whom they call ‘primitives’ but whom we on the contrary consider ‘degenerates’.
Apart from these, there are some who -unable to help noticing the ups and downs in what they know of the history of mankind- have come to talk of a ‘rhythm of progress’; it would be perhaps simpler and more logical in these circumstances to stop talking about progress altogether, but since the modern dogma must be safe-guarded at all costs, progress is supposed to exist nonetheless as the final result of all the partial progresses and all the regresses.
The different schools can come to no mutual agreement, but it remains understood that progress and evolution must be admitted; without these it seems that one would lose all right to the title of ‘civilized man’. ”
René Guénon — East and West 1924
