An Illusion with a Future

Author(s): John Gray

Source: Daedalus, Vol. 133, No. 3, On Progress (Summer, 2004), pp. 10-17
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
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John Gray
An illusionwith afuture

at the
the idea of progress
v_/uestioning
a
start of the twenty-first
is
bit
century
on
of the
the existence
like casting doubt
in Victorian
times. The stock reac
Deity
tion is one of incredulity,
followed by
It
is not so
then
moral
anger,
panic.
is unshak
that belief in progress
much
able as that we

are terrified

of losing it.
the
embodies

beyond anything dreamt of in earlier

can be bet
times, the human condition
ter in the future than it has ever been in
the past.
This is a very recent creed. Nothing
in Eu
like it existed before it emerged
two
Yet
centuries
around
rope
ago.
today
it seems to have become
indispensable.
one

to be inevita
imagines progress
ble, but to deny that it is possible seems
tantamount
to snuffing out all hope. In

idea of progress
for it is a faith, not the result of
faith
that the
kind
of empirical
any
inquiry
in science can
advance that has occurred

No

in ethics and politics. The

be replicated
:
as follows
line of reasoning proceeds
a
is cumulative
Science
activity. Today

mans,
worst

The

we know more

than any previous

gener
limit to
ation, and there is no obvious
what we may come to know in the fu
ture. In the same way, we can indefinite
Just as
ly improve the human condition.
to increase
continues
human knowledge
John Gray isprofessor of European thought at
theLondon School of Economics. The author of
many books on political theory, he is a regular
contributor to "TheNew Statesman" and "The
"
Independent. His most recent books are "Straw
Dogs: Thoughts onHumans and Other Animals"
(2002), "AIQaeda andWhat ItMeans To Be
Modern" (2003), and "Heresies :Against Prog
ress and Other Illusions" (2004).
? 2004 by the American
& Sciences
?O D

dalus

Summer

Academy

of Arts

terms of mass

killing of humans by hu
the twentieth
century was the
in history
itwill be
but
;
surely
- we must
that
such
believe
objected
can
in
future.
avoided
the
horrors
be

go on ?
To reject the very idea of progress
must appear extreme,
if not willfully
is
Yet
the
idea
found in none
perverse.
How

else can we

and was

the world's

of

unknown

religions
For
among the ancient philosophers.
was
a
series
of
Aristotle,
process
history
no more mean
es of
growth and decline
we observe
in the lives
ingful than those
of plants and animals. Early modern
and some
thinkers such as Machiavelli
thinkers

of the Enlightenment
Hume believed

this view. David

shared
that his

tory is cyclical, with periods of peace

and freedom being regularly followed by
war and tyranny. For the great Scottish
skeptic,

the oscillation

between

2004

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civiliza

tion and barbarism

man

was

coeval with

If today lifewithout the possibility of

hu

in ethical

and political
history;
terms the future was bound to be much
like the past. The same view is found in
and even Voltaire was at times
Hobbes,
to it.

inclined

These thinkers never doubted

that
some
are better than
of
periods
history
others. None of them was tempted to

in the fu
be times of peace and freedom
as
in
been
the
there
had
ture,
past; but
was
that what
gained in
they believed
one generation would
surely be lost in
another. They believed
that in ethics and
no progress,
is
there
politics
only recur
ring gain and loss.
This seems to me

to be the lesson

of

that is
any view of the human prospect
not
hopes. Prog
befogged
by groundless
ress is an illusion - a view of human
life
and history that answers to the needs of
the heart, not reason. In his book The
Future of an Illusion, published
in 1927,
Freud argued that religion is an illusion.
Illusions need not be all false ; they may
contain grains of truth. Even so, they are
believed

not because

of any truth they

answer to
but
because
may contain,
they
the human need for meaning
and conso
lation.

Believers
fundamental

in progress

have

identified

truth about modern

life

its continuous
transformation
by sci
ence ;but
un
have
invested
this
they
doubted
fact with hopes and values in
herited

from religion.
idea of progress what
the idea of providence

They seek in the

theists found in
- an assurance

that history need not be meaningless.

Those who hold to the possibility
of
insist that they do because his
tory supports it. They cling to it because
it allows them to believe
that history can
be more than a tale told by an idiot.

progress

progress

it isworth

insupportable,
this state of affairs has come

asking how
about. Most human beings who have
ever lived lacked any such
hope, and yet
a great many of them had
happy lives.
are we so different?
Why
lies in our history. The
is the offspring
modern
faith in progress
of amarriage
between
seeming rivals
the lingering
influence of Christian
faith
and the growing power of science
in
From
Europe.
early-nineteenth-century
The

it
where
deny the fact of improvement,
it could
existed; but they never imagined
be continuous.
They knew there would

seems

answer

the eschatological
hopes of Christianity
we inherit the belief that
and
meaning
even salvation can be found in the flux of
advance
history. From the accelerating
we acquire the
of scientific knowledge
belief in a similar advance by humanity
itself.
From one angle, the idea of progress
is
a secular version of Christian
eschatol
ogy. In Christianity,
history cannot be
: it is amoral drama,
senseless
beginning
with a rebellion against God and ending
with the Last Judgment. Christians
therefore
think of salvation as a histori
on
For Hindus
and Buddhists,
the other hand, itmeans
liberation from
time. Itmeant
the same inMithraism
amystery
cult that for a time among the
Romans
rivaled Christianity.
Thus the
cal event.

mystical
entered

vision

of liberation

from

time

deeply into European philoso

with
Plato affirming
that only eter
phy,
nal things can be fully real. History was
a realm of illusions, a dream or a
night
mare from which
the wise seek to
awaken.

Before the coming of Christianity

it
was taken for
that
is
granted
history
without meaning.
True, the belief that
God reveals himself
in history can be
found in the Old Testament,
but it is a
reading of the history of the Jewish peo
ple, not of that of the species. Itwas only
after Saint Paul turned the teaching of
D

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2004

11

An
illusion

with a
future

John Gray
on
progress

Jesus into a universal

religion that the
as an ac
was
Old Testament
interpreted
count of history as awhole. This move
seen as a
to universalism
is commonly
am
unconvinced.
major advance, but I
that
such
The political
wrought
religions
were
sec
havoc in the twentieth
century
ular versions
universal

of the Christian
A world

salvation.

of

promise
without

political hopes would

from ethnic and reli
;but mass murder would
with the aim
committed

such transcendent

suffered

still have

gious violence
not have been

of perfecting
humanity.
The role of eschatological
modern
political movements
been much

in

beliefs

has not

studied.

Amongst
analytical
a
ignorance of religion is
philosophers,
social
while
of
honor,
point
professional
to be dominated
science continues
by
that were falsi
theories of secularization
fied generations
ago. Yet the connection
and
between
Christian
eschatology
movements
has
revolutionary
not gone entirely unnoticed.
It is the
Cohn's book,
central theme of Norman
:Revolution
The Pursuit of theMillennium
and Mystical Anarchists of
aryMillenarians
in 1957,
theMiddle Ages. First published

modern

Cohn's

study

masterly
to understanding

Christian

eschatology:
to an

coming

movements

Cohn

to a radical version

held

end,

and

of the
was

the old world

a new

one

was

into being without

any of the
coming
human
flaws that had disfigured
society
same view of
history. The
throughout
was repro
history and the human future
radical ideologies.
duced in modern
anarchists

Cohn's

believed

mystical
that God would bring about this trans
in human affairs. Bakunin
formation
- even more
incredi
and Marx believed
so
unaid
that humankind
could do
bly
ed. A similar

12 D

fantasy

dalus

Summer

animated

announcement

absurd

history.
It is no accident

Fukuya

of the end of

that Europe is the

and America
of

of Marxism,

birthplace
Neither
neoliberalism.
could have aris
outside
en, or even be fully understood,
a culture
the
belief
that sal
pervaded
by
vation is an event in history. Modern
are
projects of universal
emancipation
earthly

of the Christian

renditions

of salvation.

promise
In contrast,
the pagan world was
markable
for the extreme modesty

re
of its

and Epicu
hopes. For Marcus Aurelius
the
life
would
rus,
always remain
good
a
The
notion
the privilege
of
that
few.
- or
mass
the
of humanity
could be saved
was worth
was unknown.
saving
Only
with Christianity
did the notion enter
that all humankind
European
antiquity
- or
all of it that accepted
the Christian
could be saved. In holding out
message
in the
the prospect
of an improvement
human condition,
secular humanists
are
the vast hopes kindled by
renewing
in
the ancient world.
Christianity
-

xiithough
Fukuyama
of history,

and
Bakunin, Marx,
an end
don't
they
proclaim
most of our secular humanists
unlike

do look forward

twentieth-century

politics.
The late medieval
describes

is indispensable

ma's

to a better world

than

any that history records. The catastro

century may have
phes of the twentieth
is amatter
them
social
progress
taught
of inching along rather than of great
to be
leaps forward, but they continue
lieve that human action can remake the
world.
social
Marx

The method
engineering
or Bakunin

may be piecemeal
- as in
rather than
trans
revolutionary

but the aim is the same.

formation;
is
The current conception
of progress
a secular
it
and
has another
religion, but
source in science. In
no less important
termittent
the growth
continuous

most

of history,
is now
knowledge
and accelerating.
Short of a

throughout
of human

2004

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than any that can be

the advance of
imagined,

greater

catastrophe

realistically
science is unstoppable.
This
second source of the modern

fact is the
faith in

progress.

The

reality
demonstrated
power.
today

is
progress
by increasing human
are more humans alive

of scientific

There

than ever. The

face of Earth

is

by human
species of flora

transformed

expansion.
being
and fauna
Unnumbered
are
and the
being driven into extinction,
root
is
The
of
climate
global
changing.
this increase in human power is the
Philoso
growth of human knowledge.
the validity of scien
phers may dispute
tific knowledge
cultural
;
anthropologists
science as one belief sys
may represent
tem among others - yet, faced with the
fact of growing human
cism about the validity
is pointless.
knowledge

as gain in the
is no built-in

human well-being
of knowledge.
The most

of scientific
predictable
by-product
an increase in
for
is
instance,
progress,
im
the intensity of war. The long-term
pact could be to make
able to humans. Even
deny

scientific

Earth uninhabit
so, it is frivolous
-

progress

modernist
thinkers seem
The error in the dominant

as

some

to want

to

post

to do.

modern

is not that it affirms progress

in science to be a reality when
it is not.
to
is
its
mistake
Rather,
imagine that the
in science can
that
has
occurred
progress
in other areas of human
be replicated

worldview

life. Human
man

needs

knowledge
stay much

changes, but hu
the same. Humans

styles vary widely. Lacking uni

there would be no way
versal standards,
to judge that one culture or period in his
on any other.
tory was an improvement
are
art and
There
affinities between

whose

The notion
that one way of life
is like saying
could be best for everybody
that one style of art could be better than
absurd,
every other. That is obviously
but it does not mean we cannot judge
and eras. No way of
for everybody,
but some are
bad for everyone.
as for other animals there
For humans
are
species-wide
goods and evils. Draw
a
not
is
list
easy, but fortunately
ing up
that is not necessary. As soon as we find
a value that looks universal, we see that
different

cultures

life is best

between

harmony
and the growth

to evaluate history
in terms of progress
- or
decline. Ethics would be like art, in
can be made
which
judgments
regarding
progress and decline within
particular
traditions
traditions, but not between

ethics.

power, skepti
of scientific

Still, there is loss as well

advance of science. There

An
actually occurred. Nor does it entail
illusion
with a
rejecting the reality of universal human
values. There are postmodernist
thinkers
future
who maintain
that we cannot pass moral
:
on other cultures and
judgments
epochs
there are only different
forms of life,
each with its own ideals and standards.
If this were so, it would make no sense
have

it clashes with

other, equally universal

clashes with mercy,
equal
autonomy
ity with excellence,
personal
with social cohesion.
Freedom
from ar
a
so is
is
but
great good
bitrary power
the avoidance
of anarchy. Moreover,
on evils :peace on con
goods may rest
values.

Justice

cultural

quest,

high

gross

inequalities.

harmony
life.

among

on
achievement
There is no natural

the goods

of human

use their
to satisfy
growing knowledge
their conflicting
needs. As they do, they
remain as prone to frailty and folly as
ever been.
they have

Conflicts
among basic human values
do not arise only in extreme situations.
In good times
but
they may be masked,

To question
to cast doubt

conflicts of
they flow from the endemic
human needs, and they are permanent.

the idea of progress

on the
improvements

is not
that

dalus

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2004

13

John Gray
on
progress

Ethics

and politics are practical

skills
to cope with
have devised

that humans

these conflicts.

Unlike

scientific

knowl
are
edge, the skills of ethics and politics
not easily transmitted.
They have to be
learnt afresh with each new generation,
and they are easily lost.
are
jLlumans
curious, but
intensely
fear
the
truth
;
they
they long for peace,
but they are excited by violence
; they
dream of a world of harmony,
but they
are at war with
less efforts
here in a

themselves.

to show

Despite
that their values

tire
co

single vision of the good, they

do not and never will. Each value ex
presses an enduring human need but
clashes with other human needs, equally
urgent and no less permanent.
are some
The perception
that humans
how radically defective
appears in the
of
cultures
separated by long
myths
stretches of time and space. Formulated
in the doctrine
of Original
Sin, human
is
expressed most pow
imperfectability

erfully in the biblical myth of the Fall.

In the form of an assertion

of ingrained
it is also found in Hin
delusion,
It forms part of
duism and Buddhism.
what may be called a human orthodoxy,
that the human animal
which
recognizes
human

is incorrigibly
flawed.
In contrast,
secular humanists
believe
can some
that the growth of knowledge
how make humans more rational. From
Comte and John Stuart Mill to
Auguste
it has
and Bertrand Russell,
John Dewey
in science
that progress
been believed
in socie
would be matched
by progress
that if intel
ty. These thinkers accepted
were
to falter or stop,
lectual progress
cease too. Yet
in society would
progress
none of them ever
that while
imagined
to
continued
the growth of knowledge
life could
ethical and political
accelerate,
was
Yet
that
the
regress.
reality during
most of the last century, and there is no
14 D

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Summer

reason to think the present

reality will
be any different.
The most dangerous
threats confront
us
are the results of the inter
ing
today
action of expanding
human knowledge
with

human needs. The

unchanging
of
of mass destruction
weapons
spread
con
to intractable political
is a response

of the
;but it is also a by-product
diffusion
of scientific knowledge.
Sci
ence has enabled
to be
standards
living
raised in advanced
societies
industrial
;
but worldwide
is trig
industrialization
a
gering
struggle for the control of scarce
It is the practical
natural resources.
ap
of science that has made
the
plication

flicts

size of the human

present
possible;

population
of population
industrialization
advancing
cause of climate
change.

but the mix

growth with
is the human
Science

but knowl
brings knowledge,
can be
an
unmixed
edge is not
good. It
as much
a curse as a
blessing.
JLhis is a thought that goes very much
against the grain of Western
philosophy,
in the faith
after all, was founded
which,
that knowledge
and virtue go together.
Socrates was able to affirm that the un
examined
life is not worth
living be
cause

in Plato's

at any

account,

rate

he did not doubt that the true and the

are one and the same ; that
good
beyond
the shifting realm of the senses there is
in which
another world
all goods are rec
in perfect harmony;
onciled
that by
this other realm we can be free.
knowing
This mystical
faith pervades Western
and
the modern
underpins
philosophy
in which
creed of progress,
growing
as the
seen
to
is
pathway
knowledge
human

emancipation.
The myth of Genesis
In the biblical
message.
Man follows his eating

has a different
story, the Fall of
from

the fruit of

the tree of knowledge.

The result is an
sense of power, accompa
intoxicating

2004

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nied by all the ills that come when

to pur
flawed creatures use knowledge
sue their
ends. Greek myth
conflicting
it tells of
teaches the same lesson when
chained to a rock for steal
Prometheus

Simon

debris

This

onstrated

in the history

ity, science
al civilization
which

has known.

suc

for the idea of

propagandists
progress were the French positivists
Henri de Saint-Simon
and Auguste

Comte, who in the first half of the nine

a cult - the
teenth century developed
as
of Humanity,
Religion
they called it
that offered

salvation
through science.
is a complex
body of ideas,
but the tenet of the positivist
creed that
Positivism

to my present
theme is the
belief that the growth of scientific
con
enables the intractable
knowledge
flicts of history to be left behind.
Saint
is relevant

the conflicts

that it answered
They recognized
to enduring human needs, and
they set
a new faith :a bizarre but,
about devising
for a time, hugely successful
cult, with
its own priesthood
and liturgy, daily ob
servances based on the 'science' of
phre
a
nology, and even
special sort of cos
sewn up
tume fashioned
with buttons
the back so that dressing
and undressing

myth and dem

of the twentieth

But the most

without

this new moral

into being a glob
poverty or war, in

world.

century.

history
cessful

Applying
could bring

of the past would be

memories.
only
Unlike many who were influenced by
their ideas, the positivists
did not think
in the new
that religion would disappear

is the truth

the evidence of experience,

Despite
over
has
had many evangelists
progress
two
the past
hundred years. In their dif
ferent ways, Hegel and Marx, Bakunin
and Mill, Popper and Hayek, Habermas
and Fukuyama
all preach the same faith
is
; science can be
knowledge
liberating
used to create aworld better than any

the

of metaphysics

be formulated.

we must somehow
cope
knowledge
with the consequences.
The core of the idea of progress
is the
illusion that knowledge
enhances hu
mere
man freedom. The
reality is that it
can
increases
Science
human
power.
ly
not end history;
it can only add another,
to history's
extremely potent
ingredient
conflicts.

that with

and religion had

been cleared away, science would be the
source of our view of the world. A new
- a
terrestrial morality
scheme of values
of
science
the
would
having
authority

to the proclamations
go back. Contrary
of Rousseau
and some Green thinkers
we cannot revert to a
today,
simple life.
Once we have eaten from the tree of

in the biblical

believed

of knowledge,
ethics and poli
tics could become
sciences. Once the

is one
ing fire from the gods. Knowledge
the
life
another.
thing,
good
comes
The power of these myths
cannot
from the insight that humanity

continuing
intimated

and Comte

advance

could only be done with the help of oth

ers - to promote
social cooperation.
The Religion
of Humanity
is a ridicu

lous confection,
but the central ideas of
the positivists
have had an enormous
influence.
and Her
J. S.Mill, Karl Marx,
bert Spencer are only a few of the nine
thinkers who absorbed
teenth-century
the positivist
belief
enable the abolition

that science would

of poverty and war.

project of a stateless socialist

an echo of Marx's
formula
society was
that when
communism
is achieved
the
men
of
will
be
government
replaced by
- a
the administration
of things
formula
Marx owed (via the French Utopian so
cialist Louis Blanc) to Saint-Simon.
At
Lenin's

the end of the twentieth

belief

century,
that the diffusion

positivist
ence and
technology
universal
civilization
neoliberal

of sci
a
engender
in the
resurfaced

would

cult of the global

dalus

the

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free market.

2004

15

An
illusion
with a
future

John Gray
on
progress

Now, as in the past, the Enlightenment

has trig
civilization
ideal of a universal
a violent backlash.
In
the
late eigh
gered
teenth and early nineteenth
centuries,
and Counter-Enlightenment
thinkers such as J. G. Herder and Joseph
the value of faith
de Maistre
proclaimed
romantic

In the
of cultures.
and the singularity
race
Nazis
the
exalted
twentieth
century,
and instinct. Today religious fundamen
talists seek to resist the advance of sci
con
ence
to a prelapsarian
by returning
Such
innocence.
dition of doubt-free
claim to reject the modern
that
and the faith in progress
a
shows
examination
but
little
it,

movements
world
drives

this to be self-deception.
The Nazis certainly rejected Enlight
enment values of human equality, per

of criminal anthropology,
an element
in Nazi

entific

racism. The Nazi

sci
of

conception
much of humanity
condemned
progress
to slavery or extermination
; itwas not
it
the worst
that
produced
by accident
in history. Even so, the Nazis
genocide
shared with
science

the goal of
the positivists
to develop a new human

using
- a
project. With
ity
peculiarly modern
modern
faith
the
shared
Nietzsche
they
that human
life can be transformed
by
an act of will.
is evident in radical
as a
its inception
body of
in
the
mid-twentieth
century,
thought
radical Islam has seen itself- and been
anti
seen by others - as a profoundly
in
movement.
But
fact
Western
many of
from
its themes have been borrowed
A similar belief

Islam. From

radical Western
thought. The idea that
the world can be regenerated
by spectac

l6 D

dalus

Summer

the ortho

century
Move
chism, and Lenin's Bolshevism.
ments
and radical Islam
such as Nazism
to the modern
do not offer an alternative
faith

in progress

but an exacerbation

of

it.

and the Re
progress
are illusions. But

JL/ike older faiths,

ligion of Humanity

the illusions

whereas

of older

faiths

the
realities,
embody enduring
on
faith in progress depends
suppressing
the conflicts
of human
them. It represses
moral
needs and denies the unalterable
human

of human
ismore

knowledge.

than
commonplace
that what we do with sci
is up to us. But we
entific knowledge
thinkers, friends of reason
enlightened
- are
few and feeble, and
and humanity
as the rest of the
no doubt as deluded
Nothing
the insistence

old could be created. Comte's project of

a science of sociology based on physiolo
gy was taken up by Cesare Lombroso,
the founder

doxy

echoes

nineteenth
Jacobinism,
anar
Russian
and
European

of French

ambiguity

sonal liberty, and toleration

;but they
idea that a
affirmed the Enlightenment
new humanity without
the flaws of the

and later became

ular acts of violence

more
so. The hopes to
species, if not
are
in progress
which believers
cling
time
their
and
values
of
the
place,
only
current of
shifting eddies in the shallow
conventional
opinion. Today bien-pensant
are adamant
that human
economists
a uni
can
be
secured
by
prosperity
only
a
versal regime of free markets
; genera
tion ago they believed
managed
only
could do the trick. A generation
markets
before

that, many

were missionaries
Current

for

about
planning.
are
and globalization
free markets
just
fash
the latest in a series of intellectual
central

beliefs

of its finality, every

ions, each convinced
one of them
superseded
by events. Only
those who are blessed with short memo
ries can believe
that the history
is a tale of progress.

of ideas

is a
Still, giving up the idea of progress
an
drastic step. Itmay be
illusion, but it
been a benign one.
has sometimes
of
Would we have seen the abolition
or the
of
torture,
prohibition
slavery,

2004

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

the hope of a better future ? In

stead of giving up the idea of progress,
why not suitably revise it?

obscures

without

There
ress more

are alternative
attractive

perception

of prog
than the discredited

is

everywhere.
not the terminus of history; different
countries with varying histories
and
may
present circumstances
ent economic
arrangements.
follow Marxists

need

differ
neo
Again,
in thinking of

in terms of
development
increasing human power over the natu
- as
the former
ral environment;
but
economic

Soviet Union demonstrated

all too clear
is
the
end
result
of
that
ly
approach
Neoliberals
will
devastation.
ecological
insist (they always insist) that free mar
kets can deal with natural scarcity; but
leaders appear not to
political
share their confidence.
The last major
war of the twentieth
the Gulf
century
- was a
War
conflict over the control of

Western

oil. The present century looks as if itwill

contain more conflicts of this kind
over energy supplies, but also
mainly
fresh water.

Rather

than leave Earth's

resources
to the vaga
depleting
ries of the price mechanism
punctuated
resource wars, would
it not be better
by
to seek to moderate
the human
impact
on the
amore
and
planet,
thereby foster
sustainable
kind of development?
I am sure itwould be better ifwe had a
natural

vision

that respected
the lim
of progress
its of Earth. In other writings,
I have
tried to sketch some such view. Yet I

have come

to doubt that such theoretical

can ever
constructions
prevail against
the power of human passions. When
vi

hu
tal necessities
appear threatened,
:
mans will act as
have
done
they
always
- even
secure
now
to
will
them
try
They
if the result iswar, and the ruin of all.
Belief

in progress

Far more

than
our

it clouds
condition.

is harmful

because

In his great poem "Aubade," Philip

Larkin wrote of religious faith as "that
- a
vast moth-eaten
musical
brocade"
to shield
contrived
system of falsehoods
humans
from their fear of death. His
may once have contained
description
some truth, but it is better
nowa
applied
to
in
the
secular
faith
progress.
days
Whatever
their faults, traditional
reli
are
less
fantastical.
gions
They may
a better world
the grave,
promise
beyond
but they do not imagine that science can
deliver humanity
from itself.
Can modern men and women
do with
out the moth-eaten

musical

brocade

of

progressive
hope?
the liberating power

I think not. Faith

in

into modern

encrypted
some of
Europe's

is
of knowledge
on
life. Drawing

most

ancient

tradi

and daily reinforced

by the quick
cannot be
it
advance
of
science,
ening
an
act
of
The
interac
will.
given up by
tion of quickening
scientific advance
tions,

human needs is a fate

unchanging
that we may perhaps
temper, but cannot

with

overcome.

In time, no doubt, the religion of prog

ress will
as the way of life it
disappear,
animates
faiths will

fades from the world. Other

appear, more or less remote

from human

realities, but equally irra

now remembers Mithraism,
tional. Who
or the curious faith of the Gnostics
?
These

sustained
and consoled
religions
of people over many centuries,
to vanish almost without
trace. Yet

millions

only
those who

to the possibility
of
progress need not fear. The illusion that
can remake the
through science humans
is an integral part of the modern
world
condition.
the eschatological
Renewing
hold

hopes of the past, progress

with a future.

is an illusion

it
D

dalus

Summer

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

2004

An
illusion

with a
future

visions

But the free market

liberals

realities.

of the past,
of the human

the religions

dogmas of the last twenty years. Like the

Marxists
of a couple of generations
ago,
neoliberals
believe one economic
system
is best

these

Y]