bewails the passing of some institution really reveals, in addition to his own ignorance, is the decay of some particular form of institution. All sorts of sects, religious, political, economic, have appeared, flourished, and passed. Unfortunately the existence of endowments often prevents the decent interment of social corpses so there is always a certain amount of stench in the air. We have no reason to believe that our pet cults will not follow the same road. Much as our emotions may be stirred our common sense tells us that the form is not of permanent importance. They cannot We may see this more clearly if we remember that our ethical standards are in no sense final save as they are stated in theoretical fashion. Vice and virtue must ever be redefined in terms of present conditions. be stated in absolute terms unless we wish to disregard the truth. We say that sin is always wrong, but the real question is to determine whether a given act is sinful or not. It is by no means a foregone conclusion that the program of an institution at any given time is helping towards the realization of our ideals. Hence, the necessity of readjustment with all its attendant difficulties. In the last analysis, then, the man best serving his fellows is not he who slavishly follows the forms of existing machinery but he who constantly strives for the realization of human ideals, using or modifying present machinery (i. e., institutions) as may be best. Once more we glimpse the physical basis in the background of all our efforts. When man found himself baffled in his search for happiness and prosperity on earth he shifted the emphasis in his religion to the methods of reaching heaven. When he felt himself gaining the mastery of the world, and saw in his own maladjustments the source of social ills, his religious spirit sought to express itself in social service. The spirit is the same, the form is changed. After all, is not the essence of religion to be found in "faith in the possibilities of human achievement"? The problems of social institutions are here, not hereafter. REFERENCE I. R. VON IHERING, Struggle for Law, pp. 45-46. CHAPTER XVII THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS The more I think of it, I find this conclusion more ATTEMPTS AT DEFINITION The Great God Progress Το The most popular divinity of modern Western civilization is called Progress. At his shrine all do lip service. No infidelity is more heinous than the refusal to acknowledge his sway. It rarely occurs to any one to inquire into his history or nature. Yet in reality he is a newcomer in the pantheon of major divinities. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew him not. To them cultures flowered and faded into chaos in endless cycles. The early Christian fathers had not heard of him. To them the end of all things was near at hand. The Lord might stop life at any time, salvaging into heaven the few souls known as the elect. Not until the sixteenth century in the writings of men like Bodin do we begin to get a picture of man striving ceaselessly forward toward a far-distant goal. The development of a picture of a golden age in the future was slow and difficult. All Europe looked back to a golden age in the past. The Bible was ancient. Jesus lived long ago. Socrates and Augustine were early teachers. The art of Phidias, the poetry of Homer were hoary with age. The glory of Rome had long since passed away. The Renaissance turned the thoughts of men back to the "wisdom of the ancestors." Ideas of Middle Ages Aristotle and Aquinas sought to reveal the purpose of God in nature. They read into the cause and goal of the universe that which alone justifies it for man, its service of the good. . . . Where they seem to go beyond the warrant of experience to the physics of to-day, is in interpreting the causes that actually produce change in the world on the analogy of human aspiration, and seeing all moving and living things as drawn onward by what may be said to be love for their unrealized ideals. To the modern scientist, who prefers to enumerate the successive steps in this process, the goal is uncertain and the force of love smacks of magic. But this faith that the world can not only be made to serve man's purposes, but actually does so, that things can not only be perfected, but that the whole course of nature draws towards perfection, was precisely what the Middle Ages meant by faith in God. . . . Which is to say, modern science is physics, while medieval science was something at once less potent and more important, ethics.1 ... To the men who shared Aristotle's belief that there was in nature an "inner, perfecting principle" it followed as a matter of course that the discovery of the facts would lead almost automatically towards a fuller realization of this perfection. The center of interest lay in the purpose of things. This science would reveal. Hence the enthusiastic belief of the end of the eighteenth century in education. But this hope was destined to be short lived. There is a limitation to science. As Pareto says, "Science can only connect one fact with another and hence must always stop at some fact. Human imagination would go further; it would reason about this last fact; would learn its cause and, if it cannot discover the real cause, will invent one." This difficulty calls our attention to the fact that facts alone do not satisfy man's emotional ends. Emotions rather than facts are the driving forces in our lives. We need not enter into the discussion of the problems involved, but, on the other hand, we must not forget them. Various ideals have been, and are, held by men, at least, different names have been given to the ideals. This suggests that in all ages men have sought similar ends under different names. The emphasis on ways and means has varied. Now, with eyes ahead and hope high, we think we are traveling the road of progress. It is hardly claiming too much to say that the present faith is the creation of the industrial revolution which, in its turn, was the outgrowth of the vision of men like Roger Bacon who first appreciated experimental science. But what is progress? What Is Progress? Few words are more often used and less frequently defined. It appears to imply motion. Is it motion away from something or towards something? If the latter, how is the goal determined? Is it anything more than is suggested in the definition of a cynical friend, "Progress is the movement towards any goal considered desirable at any given time"? If this covers the case, progress to one man or group might be synonymous with retrogression in the mind of another. Evidently there is a lack of clear thinking and definition of terms. To one man progress means evolution due to something inherent in human nature and society. Just what this quality is which makes for progress, he does not stop to inquire, nor has any one given us more information. To the next man, progress and evolution are but substitutes for the word history. Many men fall into the intellectual quicksands produced by the attempt to transfer organic laws to society. One of the greatest living biologists has warned us of this danger, J. A. Thomson of Aberdeen, |