mind to the conception that
civilisation is naturally progressive, and that continuous improvement
is part of the order of things.

So far the hopes of 1851 have been fulfilled. But against all this
technical progress, with the enormous expansion of industry and
commerce, dazzling to the man in the market-place when he pauses to
reflect, have to be set the exploitation and sufferings of industrial
workers, the distress of intense economic competition, the heavier
burdens of preparation for modern war. The very increase of "material
ease" seemed unavoidably to involve conditions inconsistent with
universal happiness; and the communications which linked the peoples of
the world together modified the methods of warfare instead of bringing
peace. "Toutes nos merveilleuses inventions sont aussi puissantes pour
le mal que pour le bien." [Footnote: H. de Ferron, Theorie du progres
(1867), ii. 439.] One fact indeed might be taken as an index that
humanity was morally advancing--the abolition of slavery in America
at the price of a long and sanguinary war. Yet some triumphs of
philanthropy hardly seemed to endanger the conclusion that, while
knowledge is indefinitely progressive, there is no good reason for
sanguine hopes that man is "perfectible" or that universal happiness is
attainable. A thoughtful writer observed, discussing Progress in 1864,
that the innumerable individual steps in the growth of knowledge and
business organisation have not been combined, so far, to produce a
general advance in the happiness of life; each step brings increase of
pressure. [Footnote: Lotze, Microcosmus (Eng. tr.), vol. ii. p. 396.]

Yet in spite of all adverse facts and many eminent dissenters the belief
in social Progress has on the whole prevailed. This triumph of optimism
was promoted by the victory of a revolutionary hypothesis in another
field of inquiry, which suddenly electrified the world. [Footnote:
Against Lotze we might set many opinions which do not seem to have been
influenced by the doctrine of evolution. For instance, the optimism of
M. Marcellin-Berthelot in a letter to Renan in 1863. He says (Renan,
Dialogues, p. 233) that one of the general results of historical study
is "the fact of the incessant progress of human societies in science, in
material conditions, and in morality, three correlatives.... Societies
become more and more civilised, and I will venture to say more and more
virtuous. The sum of good is always increa