has
thought of it abstractly as something to be desired for its own sake.
Today the word progress is in everyone's mouth; still there is no
general agreement as to what progress is, and particularly in recent
years, with all the commonly accepted evidences of progress about them,
skeptics have appeared, who, like the farmer who saw for the first time
a camel with two humps, insisted "there's no such animal."

The reason there is no general understanding in regard to the meaning of
progress, as it has been defined by the philosophers, is not because
there is no progress in detail, but because the conception of progress
in general involves a balancing of the goods against the ills of life.
It raises the question whether the gains which society makes as a whole
are compensation for the individual defeats and losses which progress
inevitably involves. One reason why we believe in progress, perhaps, is
that history is invariably written by the survivors.

In certain aspects and with people of a certain temperament, what we
ordinarily call progress, considering what it costs, will always seem a
very dubious matter. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral,
London, seems to be the most eminent modern example of the skeptic.

Human nature has not been changed by civilization. It has
neither been leveled up nor leveled down, to an average
mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international
fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a
splendid fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a
bloodthirsty savage. Human nature is at once sublime and
horrible, holy and satanic. Apart from the accumulation of
knowledge and experience, which are external and precarious
acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much since
the first stone age.[323]

It must be remembered in this connection that progress, in so far as it
makes the world more comfortable, makes it more complicated. Every new
mechanical device, every advance in business organization or in science,
which makes the world more tolerable for most of us, makes it impossible
for others. Not all the world is able to keep pace with the general
progress of the world. Most of the primitive races have been
exterminated by the advance of civilization, and it is still uncertain
where, and upon what terms, the civilized man will let the remnant of
the primitive peoples live.

It has been estimat