science had made war practically impossible. We now know that
science has not only rendered the machinery of war more deadly but has
also increased the powers of resistance and endurance when war comes.
If all this does not demonstrate that the forces which have brought
about complicated and extensive changes in the fabric of society do not
of themselves generate progress, I do not know what a demonstration
would be. Has man subjugated physical nature only to release forces
beyond his control?

The doctrine of evolution has been popularly used to give a kind of
cosmic sanction to the notion of an automatic and wholesale progress in
human affairs. Our part, the human part, was simply to enjoy the
usufruct. Evolution inherited all the goods of divine Providence and had
the advantage of being in fashion. Even a great and devastating war is
not too great a price to pay for an awakening from such an infantile and
selfish dream. Progress is not automatic; it depends upon human intent
and aim and upon acceptance of responsibility for its production. It is
not a wholesale matter, but a retail job, to be contracted for and
executed in sections.

Spite of the dogma which measures progress by increase in altruism,
kindliness, peaceful feelings, there is no reason that I know of to
suppose that the basic fund of these emotions has increased appreciably
in thousands and thousands of years. Man is equipped with these feelings
at birth, as well as with emotions of fear, anger, emulation, and
resentment. What appears to be an increase in one set and a decrease in
the other set is, in reality, a change in their social occasions and
social channels. Civilized man has not a better endowment of ear and eye
than savage man; but his social surroundings give him more important
things to see and hear than the savage has, and he has the wit to devise
instruments to reinforce his eye and ear--the telegraph and telephone,
the microscope and telescope. But there is no reason for thinking that
he has less natural aggressiveness or more natural altruism--or will
ever have--than the barbarian. But he may live in social conditions that
create a relatively greater demand for the display of kindliness and
which turn his aggressive instincts into less destructive channels.

There is at any time a sufficient amount of kindly impulses possessed by
man to enable him to live in amicable peace with all his fellows; and
there is at any time a sufficient equi