The Growth of Thought as Affecting the Progress of Society — Inside the Classic

Self-Love as a Neutral Motive

Withington treats self-love not as a vice but as an essential part of human nature, a motive of the indifferent kind. He examines it under a three-fold aspect, though the excerpts only hint at this framework. The key claim is that self-love can be educated: as men better understand their own welfare, they will choose with reference to the whole of their nature and the duration of their existence. This education is the task of philosophy, which corrects mistaken apprehensions of temporal good and reveals the ties binding the human family to one lot.

The author draws a striking analogy: when a pestilential disease breaks out, the urgency compels all to see that the sickness of one endangers all. Charity that was too cold now acts with alacrity. This law—that if one member suffers, all suffer—will be more fully recognized as self-love is educated. Withington thus grounds his moral argument in a practical, almost epidemiological, observation of social interdependence.

Chivalry vs. Commercialism

Withington directly compares the age of chivalry with the modern age of speculation, money-making, and industrial enterprise. He concedes that the mercantile spirit may not make a better man than chivalry did, but it better comports with the welfare of society. The materialism of the present age, with all its faults, is preferable to the perpetual turmoil of knightly glory. He notes that the past age's estimation of life's supreme good required the exclusion of the many from its benefits; the present age's estimation admits the exclusion of others, but at least tends to keep the world at peace.

This section is notable for its concrete historical reference: the crusades. Withington imagines a hypothetical critic who, at the time of the crusades, foresaw modern Europe and America manufacturing, trading, flocking to California as if to a holy sepulcher. That critic would have urged staying home to multiply the means of content to quiet life. Withington uses this to argue that the materialism of the current age must pass away, just as chivalry did, because the progress of thought outgrows each stage.

The Coming Age and Its Spirit

Withington predicts a new age with another spirit, but he is cautious about its character. He dismisses dreamy sentimentalism that boasts flights beyond common material ideas. Instead, he traces the character of the coming age in an increasing estimation of health, knowledge, mental cultivation, intellectual life, and the flow of social affections as the prime of earthly felicities. Money, he argues, will be seen as the means of meeting one's capacities of enjoyment, no longer worshipped as the idol or the end.

This passage is striking for its specificity: Withington names California as a destination of mercantile enterprise, grounding his abstract argument in contemporary events. He also references Shakespeare's description of man as 'a being of large discourse, looking before and after,' and quotes Bush's Statement of Reasons to illustrate the contemporary mind's anxiety about future being. The tone is prophetic but restrained, insisting that his inquiries have been into what it is given to know, not into things unseen.

Religion as the Third Agency

The fourth part of the treatise introduces religion as the agency that supplies the defects of social institutions and philosophy. Withington lists nine particulars in which religion contributes to general welfare, though the excerpts do not detail them. The conclusion includes a recapitulation and suggestions to Christian ministers, indicating the work's intended audience and practical aim.

The author's method is systematic: each agency builds on the previous one. Social institutions manage self-love through enlightened policy; philosophy educates self-love by correcting mistaken apprehensions of temporal good; religion addresses the whole of human being, the extent of duties, and the duration of existence. Withington's argument is cumulative, and the reader should note how he returns to the theme of self-love throughout, refining its treatment as each new agency is introduced.

Withington's treatise rewards a reader attentive to his method of argument: he defines terms precisely, contrasts historical epochs concretely, and builds his case through cumulative layers. The excerpts reveal a writer deeply concerned with applying abstract principles to practical life, and his voice is that of a moral philosopher engaging with the political economy of his day. Readers may find it useful to track how the concept of self-love evolves across the four parts, and to consider how Withington's predictions about the coming age resonate with later social thought.

Reading Withington’s optimism about thought reshaping society, I remembered sitting in a dusty library, tracing how his century’s faith in progress felt so quiet and sure. A similar warmth came from The Non-religion of the Future: A Sociological Study — Reading Notes, where belief’s slow fading felt less like loss, more like autumn’s gentle hush.