Often we should be justified in saying
that there was a widespread expectation of it. Almost all the great
inventions and the ingenious application of principles have many
claimants for the honor of priority.

On any other theory than this, that there is present in the world an
intention of progress which outlasts individuals, and even races, I
cannot account for the fact that, while civilizations decay and pass
away, and human systems go to pieces, ideas remain and accumulate. We,
the latest age, are the inheritors of all the foregoing ages. I do not
believe that anything of importance has been lost to the world. The
Jewish civilization was torn up root and branch, but whatever was
valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of the
civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of
the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, collapsed into a heap of
incoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are part
of the world's solid possessions.

Even those who question the value to the individual of what we call
progress, admit, I suppose, the increase of knowledge in the world from
age to age, and not only its increase, but its diffusion. The intelligent
schoolboy today knows more than the ancient sages knew--more about the
visible heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, more of the human
body. The rudiments of his education, the common experiences of his
everyday life, were, at the best, the guesses and speculations of a
remote age. There is certainly an accumulation of facts, ideas,
knowledge. Whether this makes men better, wiser, happier, is indeed
disputed.

In order to maintain the notion of a general and intended progress, it is
not necessary to show that no preceding age has excelled ours in some
special, development. Phidias has had no rival in sculpture, we may
admit. It is possible that glass was once made as flexible as leather,
and that copper could be hardened like steel. But I do not take much
stock in the "lost arts," the wondering theme of the lyceums. The
knowledge of the natural world, and of materials, was never, I believe,
so extensive and exact as it is today. It is possible that there are
tricks of chemistry, ingenious processes, secrets of color, of which we
are ignorant; but I do not believe there was ever an ancient alchemist
who could not be taught something in a modern laboratory. The vast
engineering works of the ancient Egyptians,