THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY

By ERASMUS DARWIN

INTRODUCTION

1. Darwin's unfinished historical poem The Progress of Society was probably drafted in 1798-9, about the same time as Phytologia (published 1800): one loose sheet of paper contains rough passages from both works. Throughout successive drafts the "Progress" title vies for preference with "The Temple of Nature," only clearly emerging as first choice in the last, most finished version; and one important source of the poem's interest is the light it throws on the published Temple of Nature's use of the Temple image. In Progress, the Temple of Nature replaces the Garden of Eden after the Fall of Adam and Eve forced Humanity to fend for itself, and contains explanations and depictions of the development of human technology through the five "successive ages" of Hunting, Pasturage, Agriculture, Commerce and Philosophy. In Temple, the Temple of Nature likewise replaces Eden, but now as the site of explanations of the creation of the universe and the evolution of life which are clearly alternative, rather than simply subsequent, to the Biblical Eden story. Despite this crucial change of function, however, the published poem incorporates much of the draft poem's description of the Temple itself, including many details which belong far more clearly to the original version than to the published one.

2. These details include the numerous art-works which adorn the Temple's walls. While a promise to explain these remains largely unfulfilled in Temple, in Progress they are clearly accounted for as versions of the actual art-works with which each successive age celebrated its characteristic achievements. In earlier ages at least, these works often depict legendary classical or Biblical figures in line with the idea that such figures actually celebrate human technical advances—often in weaponry, as with Hercules's club, David's sling or Apollo's bow. The theory that the ancient gods "were derived from men famous in those early times, as in the ages of hunting, pasturage, and agriculture," sometimes called Euhemerism, is rather strangely invoked in the Preface to the published Temple, where this hangover from the mythography of Progress is not at all appropriate: in the published poem, as in Botanic Garden, mythology is usually explained in terms of scientifically observed natural processes, not in terms of specific human models or achievements.

3. To give due prominence to its stress on the technological impetus behind art, myth and poetry, Progress shows examples of these being produced by the "Genies" or spirits of each age, whom we also see inspiring primitive societies with the technologies themselves. Perhaps as a way of avoiding too much realistic stress on the ugly hardship of primitive life, the poem's physical representation of social development is placed almost completely in the hands of these ethereal, fluttering beings, first as they act out the production of such things as fire and the dugout canoe, and then in terms of the myths and works of art through which such achievements are celebrated.

4. The Genies disappear completely from Temple, but the published poem does follow Progress in putting its main informational content into the mouth of an instructress variously called the Priestess of Nature, the Muse Urania and "the Hierophant" or explicator of the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries; though this last term is Progress's only gesture to the Mysteries which Temple claims as the chief source of its own "machinery." More clearly than in Temple, however, Progress constructs the Temple of Nature as a physical space, with the "halls" of the Ages of Hunting, Pasturage, Agriculture and Commerce facing to the four points of the compass, and that of the Age of Philosophy—a mixture of the present and a yet-unrealised future—at their centre. Despite some uncertainty as to the exact placing of the four surrounding halls—Pasturage moves from South to East in successive drafts—our experience of the poem is constructed round our "Muse's" accompaniment of the Priestess of Nature to the external doors of each hall in turn, which she flings open to reveal the art-works within, as produced by the Genies whom we have already seen enacting the relevant age's achievements.

5. The Progress of Society is not only of interest for the light it throws on The Temple of Nature. Its central subject—human history—is tackled nowhere else in Darwin's oeuvre, and it is interesting to speculate whether he abandoned it in anticipation of the growing difficulty of presenting this material with his usual tone of confident optimism: an optimism promised here by his machinery of sportive genies, and by his opening paean to the improvements of each of his five ages. As discussed in my Introduction to Temple, one clear model for his attempt at social history can be found in Book 5 of Lucretius's great scientific poem De Rerum Natura, which traces human development through similar stages of hunting, pasturage, agriculture and commerce; for Lucretius, however, the continuance of superstition, war and class-conflict leaves any eventual emergence into the sunlit uplands of an "Age of Philosophy" an unlikely prospect. These elements are just as pronounced in Richard Payne Knight's explicitly Lucretian The Progress of Civil Society: A Didactic Poem (1797), which so strangely anticipates Darwin's own Progress. Apocalyptically climaxing his quasi-Marxist vision of class-war with the French Reign of Terror, Knight adds the further dimension of an ongoing racial war between light-skinned Aryans and what he sees as their dark-skinned, ape-related inferiors.

6. Never buying into the ideas of racial superiority fostered by Knight or other proto-evolutionists such as Lord Monboddo and the Comte de Buffon, Darwin clearly sees the institution of slavery—which they ideologically support—as a blot on the very idea of unalloyed progress. In a brief drafted outline for the content of Progress as a whole, slavery emerges in the Age of Agriculture and becomes a systematic trade in the Age of Commerce, which Darwin situates in the bleak Northern Hall and for which he seems to have pre-composed the single line "And gold triumphant rules the world enslaved." The move from this dark vision to a final Age of Philosophy, in which swords are turned to ploughshares amid the "ruins of superstition," while a state of universal liberty induces all to do as they would be done by, seems to combine desperate wishful thinking with the kind of revolutionary rhetoric which had recently led to the government's suppression of Tom Paine's The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. Had Darwin published a poem in this vein, it is not hard to imagine what ideological enemies like The Anti-Jacobin team—whose "Loves of the Triangles" had already half-predicted such a poem from him by conflating his own earlier Loves of the Plants with Knight's Progress of Civil Society—would have done with it.

7. The drafts of The Progress of Society fill four small notebooks housed in Cambridge University Library, catalogued as DAR 227.2.22-25. In terms of composition, the order seems to be 23, 24, 22, 25. The text of Canto I given below is based on the most apparently finished version (22); that of Canto II on the rougher, tentative start made in 25, the only version of the canto. These are followed by the outline of the whole poem sketched in the earliest notebook, 23. The other notebook, 24, contains intermediate work on Canto I, and has mainly been used to corroborate, or occasionally fill out, the text derived from 22. My thanks are due to Cambridge University Library's Manuscripts Department for the opportunity to study and copy from these fascinating drafts.

THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY, A POEM IN FIVE CANTOS1

Prologue to the first Canto

       The observations and industry of mankind have discovered many arts, which have influenced their manners, increased their felicity, or added to their numbers. Amongst these may be numbered the discovery of the uses of fire, the calling on the strength of animals to facilitate labour, the invention of letters, preparing and spinning vegetable substances, the discovery of iron, of the magnet, and of gun-powder. But the situations or circumstances which seem more directly to have mark'd the progress of human society are first the Hunting State with its necessary arms, as the club, bow, and fishing net; in this state of the world their heroism consisted in conquering noxious animals, and their sustenance in catching the inoffensive ones. Hence the great deeds of Hercules, Apollo and [. . . .], who were afterwards worship'd as deities. The world must have been thinly inhabited in this state of mankind; in the wilds of North America it has been estimated, that one family scarce could subsist by hunting within five miles of another. Amongst the crimes of this lawless age murders were not infrequent, but Rapes seem to stand prominent, whence the fables of Apollo and Daphne, Pan and Syrinx, Pluto and Proserpine; which were afterwards ornamented by the poets, and allegorized by the philosophers.
        To this succeeded the age of Pasturage, afterwards that of Agriculture, then of Commerce and now of Philosophy, as explain'd in the Prologues to the subsequent Cantos.

The Progress of Society2

Canto I
The Age of Hunting

Invocation. Ages of Hunting, Pasturage, Agriculture, Commerce, and Philosophy. Image of Nebuchadnezer. Address to Love. Paradise Lost. Temple of Nature. Proteus bound by Ulysses. Bowers of Pleasure. Den of Oblivion. Shrine of the Goddess. The Priestess or Hierophant. Orpheus's descent into Hell. Genies of the Chase. Discover fire. Form the club, spear, javelin, bow, sling. Make canoes, nets, and fish-hooks.

       Four past eventful ages, Muse! recite,3
And give the fifth, new-born of Time, to light.
The silver tissue of their joys disclose,
Swell with deep chords the murmur of their woes;
Their laws, their labours, and their loves proclaim,
And chant their virtues to the trump of Fame.4
       Say first, how Man in boundless forests stray'd,
And pluck'd wild clusters from the intangled shade;
Assail'd with knotted club his bestial foe,
Flung the rude stone, and strain'd the stubborn bow.                        10
Next, how on shelter'd lawns by gushing springs
Dwelt in their leafy tents the Shepherd-Kings;
From vale to vale their fleecy squadrons drove
And realms reecho'd to the lute and love.
Then, how the shining ploughshare turn'd the soil,
And harness'd oxen shared the ingenious toil;
While towers and towns the admiring fields infold,
And plenty laughs amid her waving gold.
Last, how as Commerce piled with busy hand
Her treasured ores, and bade her sails expand,                    20
O'er earth and ocean roll'd her freighted cars
Warm'd by new suns, and led by stranger-stars.
Now mild Philosophy assumes his reign,
And all the Charities adorn his train;
Virtue's soft forms our glowing hearts engage,
And Liberty returns, and leads the golden age.
       Thus in dread dreams before Assyria's throne
To Night's pale orb a motley spectre shone;
Broad iron feet sustain'd the giant-mass,
Wide knees of lead, and kimbo arms of brass;                    30
In bright expanse his silver chest he raised,
And high in air his golden forehead blazed.5
       Immortal Love! whose golden fetters, hurl'd6
Round Nature's frame, connect the whirling world;
Whether you roll the sun's attractive throne
Or gird the planets in your silver zone;
With crystal cords to atom atom bind,
Link sex to sex, or marry mind to mind;
Attend my song!—with rosy lips rehearse
And with your silver arrows write my verse!—                    40
So shall my lines soft-rolling eyes engage,
And snow-white fingers turn the volant page,
The smiles of Beauty all my toils repay,
And youths and virgins chant the living lay.
       Where Eden's sacred bowers triumphant sprung,7
By angels guarded, and by prophets sung,
Wav'd o'er the east in purple pride unfurl'd,
And rock'd the golden cradle of the World;
Four sparkling torrents lav'd with wandering tides
Their velvet avenues, and flowery sides;                    50
On sun-bright lawns unclad the Graces stray'd,
And guiltless Cupids haunted every glade;
Till the fair mother of mankind, erelong,
Heard unalarm'd the Tempter's serpent-tongue;
Eyed the sweet fruit, the mandate disobey'd,
And her fond Lord with sweeter smiles betray'd.
Conscious awhile with throbbing heart he strove,
Spread his wide arms, and barter'd peace for love!—
Now rocks on rocks, in savage grandeur roll'd,8
With circling sweep the blasted plains infold;                    60
The incumbent crags eternal tempest shrouds,
And livid light'nings cleave the lambent clouds;
Loud round their base discordant whirlwinds blow
And sands in burning columns dance below.
       Here high in air, amid the desert soil,
Towers a vast Fane, unwrought by mortal toil;9
O'er many a league the ponderous domes extend,
And deep in earth the ribbed vaults descend;
A thousand jasper steps with circling sweep
Lead the slow votary up the winding steep;                    70
Ten thousand piers, now joined and now aloof,
Spread their long arms, and bear the branching roof.
       Unnumber'd ailes connect unnumber'd halls,
And sacred symbols crowd the pictur'd walls;10
With pencil rude forgotten days design,
And arts, or empires, live in every line.
While chain'd reluctant on the marble ground,
Indignant Time reclines, by Sculpture bound;11
And sternly bending o'er a scroll unroll'd,
Inscribes the future with his style of gold.                    80
—So erst, when Proteus on the briny shore,                        
New forms assum'd of eagle, pard, or boar;
The wise Ulysses12 bound in sea-weed thongs
The changeful god amid his scaly throngs;
Till in deep tones his opening lips at last
Disclosed unwill'd the future and the past.
       Here o'er piazza'd courts, and long arcades,
The bowers of Pleasure root their waving shades;13
Blow their bright colours, breathe their rich perfume,
Bend with new fruits, with flow'rs successive bloom.                    90
Here, on soft beds of thornless roses press'd,
In slight undress recumbent Graces rest;
The Queen of Beauty arms her quiver'd loves,
Schools her bright nymphs, and practises her doves;
Calls round her laughing eyes in playful turns
The glance that lightens, and the smile that burns;
Forms the still tear, the meeting whisper tries,
Heaves her white bosom with resistless sighs;
Or moulds with rosy lips the magic words,
That bind the heart in adamantine cords.                    100
       Deep-whelm'd beneath, in rock-surrounded caves,
Oblivion dwells, and labels all her graves;14
O'er each dark nich a ponderous stone is roll'd,
And seven-fold doors the dreadful den infold;
No spicy Zephyrs breathe, no sunbeams cheer,
Nor song, nor simper, ever enters here;
O'er the green floor, and round the dew-damp wall,
The slimy snail, and bloated lizard crawl;
While on white heaps of intermingled bones
The muse of Melancholy sits and moans;                    110
Showers her cold tears o'er Beauty's early wreck,
Spreads her pale arms, and bends her marble neck.
       So in rude rocks, beside the Aegean wave,
Trophonius scoop'd his sorrow-sacred cave;15
Unbarr'd to pilgrim feet the brazen door,
And the sad sage returning smil'd no more.
       High in the midst the Shrine of Nature stands,16
Extends o'er earth and sea her hundred hands;
Tower upon tower her beamy forehead crests,
And births unnumber'd milk her hundred breasts;                     120
Drawn round her brows a lucid veil depends,
O'er her fine waist the purfled woof descends;
Her stately limbs the gather'd folds surround,
And spread their golden selvage on the ground.17
       Long trains of virgins from the sacred grove,
Pair after pair, in bright procession move,
With flower-filled baskets round the altar throng,
Or swing their censers, as they wind along.
The fair Urania leads the blushing bands,18
Presents their offerings with unsullied hands;                    130
Pleas'd to their dazzled eyes in part unshrouds
The goddess-form;—the rest is hid in clouds.
       "Priestess of Nature! while with pious awe19
Thy votary bends, the mystic veil withdraw;
Charm after charm, succession bright, display,
And give the Goddess to adoring day!
So kneeling realms shall own the Power divine,
And heaven and earth pour incense on her shrine.
       "Oh grant the Muse with pausing step to press
Each sun-bright avenue, and green recess;                        140
Led by thy hand survey the trophied walls,
The statued galleries, and the pictur'd halls;
Scan the proud pyramid, and arch sublime,
Earth-cankered urn, medallion green with time,
Stern busts of Gods, with helmed heroes mix'd,
And Beauty's radiant forms, that smile betwixt.
       "Waked by thy voice, transmuted by thy wand,
Their lips shall open, and their arms expand;
The Warrior laureled, and the Lover slain,
Leap from their tombs, and sigh and fight again.                    150
"So with his potent lyre, when undismay'd
Descending Orpheus sought the infernal shade;20
Love led the sage through Death's tremendous porch;
Cheer'd with his smiles, and lighted with his torch;
—Pleased round the God the shadowy squadrons throng,
And sigh, or simper, as he steps along;
Sad swains & love-lorn nymphs on Lethe's brink
Hug their past sorrows, and refuse to drink;
Hell's triple dog his curled ears erects,
Sheathes his soft claws, and smooths his bristly necks,                    160
Howls in soft tones, his playful jaws expands,
Fawns round the God, and licks his baby hands.
Night's dazzled empress feels the golden flame
Warm her cold blood, and thaw her icy frame;
Charms with soft accents, sooths with amorous wiles
Her iron-hearted Lord,—and Pluto smiles.—
His trembling Fair the Bard triumphant led
From the pale mansions of the astonish'd dead;
Gave to admiring day his beauteous wife,
Ah! soon again to sink from light & life!"                    170
       Her snow-white arm, indulgent to my song,
Waves the fair Hierophant,21 and moves along.—
High plumes, that bending shade her amber hair,
Nod, as she steps, their silver leaves in air;
Bright chains of pearl, with golden buckles brac'd,
Clasp her white neck, and zone her slender waist;
Thin folds of silk in soft meanders wind
Down her fine form, and undulate behind;
The purple border, on the pavement roll'd,
Swells in the gale, and spreads its fringe of gold.                    180
       —"Here," with sweet voice the pausing Beauty calls,22
And dulcet accents murmur round the walls,
"In green pavillions, or in marble courts,
The Genies of the Chase prelude their sports,23
Rise on aurelian wings in glittering throngs,
Stretch their light limbs, and try their tender tongues;
To climes uncultured lead their marshal'd swarms,
And teach the nascent nations arts and arms.24
       "Here Vestal forms by quick attrition raise
From puny rods the evanescent blaze;25                         190
Blow with transparent cheeks the glowing light,
And give new lustres to the astonish'd night;
Round earthen cauldrons pile the crackling wood,
And gaze delighted on the bubbling flood;
Feed with bright hands the innocuous flame by turns,
And watch with virgin smiles their sacred urns.
       "These Genie-trains with jasper axes wound
The stubborn oak, and wrest it from the ground;
Tear the rough bark, with flinty fragments rub
The rugged knots, and form the murderous club;26                        200
Heave up from earth, on sinewy shoulders bear,
Or whirl the whistling terror in the air.
Those shape from poplar boughs the spear uncouth
With wasting flame, and arm with ivory tooth;
Launch the long balanced javelin on the skies,
And watch the floating shadow as it flies.
       "These with sharp flints and smouldering fires o'erwhelm,
And scoop the broad breast of the bulky elm;
Trail from the rock along the adhesive plain,27
And launch the unwieldy wonder on the main;                    210
Hinge the strong rudder, raise the sculptured prow,
And fringe with oars the burnish'd sides below.
       "Those in light skiffs the impending rocks explore
And pluck long sea-weed from the winding shore;
Weave the fine mesh, with circling weights beset,
And buoy with dancing corks the tramel'd net;
       "There on steep rocks a softer Genie springs,
And spreads in bright expanse her spotted wings;
Treads with soft female form the printless strands,
The tall rod bending in her graceful hands;                        220
Flings with light lash the viewless hair, and tries
The dimpling mirror with delusive flies;
—So some bright nymph our heedless hearts beguiles
With tuneful accents, and alluring smiles;
Charm'd with broad eye we watch the sportive fair,28
And Beauty draws us with a single hair.
       "These bend the yielding bow with sinews strong,
Strain the wide horns, and stretch the twisted thong;
The feather'd shaft with venom'd gums anoint,
Or gild with serpent-form the dangerous point.29                        230
—Those with strong arms in rapid circles swing
The tangent pebble from the whirling sling;
High o'er the woods ascends the flinty ball
And gazing armies tremble at its fall.
       "So when in Elah's vale Goliah trod,
Scorning the armies of the living God;
Onward with strides colossal tower'd along,
And waved his falchion o'er the shrinking throng,
While his broad eyes with crimson fury gleam,
His shield a boat, his spear a weaver's beam,                        240
A shepherd youth from Carmel's flowery rocks,30
Left to the prowling wolves his vagrant flocks;
Sought the affrighted camp, to arms unknown,
Cull'd from the transient stream a polished stone,
And as his cheek with kindling ardour shone,
Measured with dauntless eye the giant-foe,
"And this," he cry'd, "shall lay the Vaunted low."
Then heaven-inspired his pliant sling he whirl'd,
And high in air the flinty fragment hurl'd;
Deep in his ample forehead sunk the wound,                        250
And the proud warrior thunder'd on the ground.
—Long virgin trains in bright procession move
And touch their harps to victory and Love;
Present their garlands, as they pass along,
And shouting armies join the applauding song."—
       Charm'd round the nymph attend the Genie-throngs
And hail the Beauty with their silver tongues.
Cling round her fringed robe in playful bands,
Bend their fair brows and clap their echoing hands,
Swim round her beamy brow in airy rings,                    260
Or hovering hang upon their velvet wings,
On her fair lips with fond attention gaze,
Court her sweet smile, and live upon her praise.
—Now to the shadowy portico she bends
Her stately step, the marble curve ascends,
Lo! self-unbar'd on hinge of burnish'd gold
The ponderous gates their silver valves unfold;31
Onward, sublime, she waves her beckoning hand,
Calls with soft voice, and points with lifted wand,
"Here, on rude pedestals, or pictured woofs,                        270
Mosaic floors or laqueated roofs,
The Genies of the Chase their toils record,32
In sacred symbol, or unletter'd word;
Stamp with fine dye, or raise with chisel bold
The historic marble or poetic gold.
       "First, nich'd in parian stone, Diana moves
With warrior-grace, the goddess of the groves;
Imprints the spangled lawn with buskin'd tread,
The beamy crescent trembling on her head;
O'er her fair bosom cross the silken strings,                        280
And, as she steps, the golden quiver rings;
Her opening hounds the affrighted lair proclaim,33
And her keen shafts transfix the flying game.
       "Next, crown'd with golden rays Apollo stands,34
His bow still vibrates in his graceful hands,
Onward with lofty step He seems to spring,
And sends the unerring arrow from the string,
Fierce Python writhing feels the feather'd dart,35
Pierce his hard scales, and tremble in his heart,
Bites with his foaming teeth the shaft in vain,                         290
And curls in death his undulating train.
       "Round the twin pair the wreaths of fame would blow,
Bright as the polish'd shaft, and silver bow,
Fair as the rising blush, that lights the morn,
Soft as the beam of Night's unwaning horn,
But mean revenge with unextinguish'd shame
—And on an helpless woman!—blots their name.
Lo! where pale Niobe her children shrouds,36
And hears the bow-string twang amid the clouds;
One with quick step the rising tempest shuns,                         300
The winged shaft o'ertakes her, as she runs,
On her fair neck inflicts the fatal wound,
And struggling Beauty pants upon the ground;
In fearful agony another stands,37
Spreads to relentless heaven her tremulous hands,
The shaft unerring drinks her rosy breath,
And her pale throbbing bosom heaves in death.
"Unjust the Gods!" a youth indignant cries,
Bends o'er his sister, and upbraids the skies,
Through his cleft throat descends the feather'd wood,                         310
And the green herbage drinks his gushing blood.
Two tender twins, embracing in the storm,
In sex they differ, but agree in form,
Sink with fond kiss in ivory arms caress'd,
One barbed arrow nails them breast to breast.
Sighs the sad queen, and suppliant as she kneels,
Her last sweet hope beneath her robe conceals.