lution made its first appearance._]

The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes
it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation in the
number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads.
Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products--as when the
advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the
superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the
new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we
speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the
individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Science,
or Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of
human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception
of progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It
takes in not so much the reality of progress as its accompaniments--not
so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen
during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the
philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number
of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists
in those internal modifications of which this larger knowledge is the
expression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the making of a
greater quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying
men's wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in
widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress
consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have
entailed these consequences. The current conception is a teleological
one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human
happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress which
directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness; and they are
thought to constitute progress simply _because_ they tend to heighten
human happiness. But rightly to understand progress, we must learn the
nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing,
for example, to regard the successive geological modifications that have
taken place in the Earth, as modifications that have gradually fitted it
for the habitation of Man, and as _therefore_ constituting geological
progress, we must ascertain the character common to these
modifications--the law to which they al