discusses Progress, there is no suggestion of fatalism. In France, the
chief philosophical writers who accepted Progress as a fact protested
against a fatalistic interpretation (Renouvier, Cournot, Caro; and cf. L.
Carrau's article on Progress in the Revue des deux Mondes (Oct. 1875)).

Progress was discussed by Fiske in his Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy
(1874), vol. ii. 192 sqq. For him (p. 201) "the fundamental
characteristic of social progress is the continuous weakening of
selfishness and the continuous strengthening of sympathy."]

Thus in the seventies and eighties of the last century the idea of
Progress was becoming a general article of faith. Some might hold it
in the fatalistic form that humanity moves in a desirable direction,
whatever men do or may leave undone; others might believe that the
future will depend largely on our own conscious efforts, but that there
is nothing in the nature of things to disappoint the prospect of steady
and indefinite advance. The majority did not inquire too curiously
into such points of doctrine, but received it in a vague sense as a
comfortable addition to their convictions. But it became a part of the
general mental outlook of educated people.

When Mr. Frederic Harrison delivered in 1889 at Manchester an eloquent
discourse on the "New Era," in which the dominant note is "the faith in
human progress in lieu of celestial rewards of the separate soul,"
his general argument could appeal to immensely wider circles than the
Positivists whom he was specially addressing.

The dogma--for a dogma it remains, in spite of the confidence of Comte
or of Spencer that he had made it a scientific hypothesis--has produced
an important ethical principle. Consideration for posterity has
throughout history operated as a motive of conduct, but feebly,
occasionally, and in a very limited sense. With the doctrine of Progress
it assumes, logically, a preponderating importance; for the centre of
interest is transferred to the life of future generations who are to
enjoy conditions of happiness denied to us, but which our labours and
sufferings are to help to bring about. If the doctrine is held in an
extreme fatalistic form, then our duty is to resign ourselves cheerfully
to sacrifices for the sake of unknown descendants, just as ordinary
altruism enjoins the cheerful acceptance of sacrifices for the sake of
living fellow-creatures. Winwood Reade indicated this when he wrote,
"Our own prosperity