solely of our
making, the very thought of it self-begotten in our mind, every step to
its actual existence the self-created deed of our will. Not that either
idea or act comes into being in a void or without suggestion and
assistance from without us, but still so that the initiative lies in
what we think or do, and so that without us it is unreal and impossible.
It is enough, indeed, that we should be contributory, but the ideal must
be such that without our irreplaceable co-operation it must fail. The
only Progress in which we can take an active interest or make an ideal
of action, is one which we conceive and execute, and that the fact we
call Progress is not.

So far we have found much argument to show that what we have hitherto
called Progress is not and cannot be an ideal of action, or at least of
our action. And now we must face another argument more plain and
apparently fatal, indeed, specially or peculiarly fatal. For the very
notion of Progress is of a process which continues without end, or we
have the dilemma that it is either endless or runs to an end in which
there is no longer Progress but something else. In either case it is not
itself an end or the end, and whatever an ideal of action is, it must be
an end--something beyond which there is nothing, which has no Beyond at
all. To set before oneself as an ideal of action what one certainly
knows to be incapable of attainment or accomplishment, incapable of
coming to an end--that is surely futile and vain. Without a best, better
or better-and-better has no meaning, and when the best is reached
Progress is no more.

The objection may be put in various ways, as thus. What we seek or want
or work for, is to be satisfied, and satisfaction is a state, not a
process or a progress. Or again, acting is a process of seeking, seeking
and striving for something, and surely the seeking cannot itself be the
object of the search. Or once more, what we act for is, as we must
conceive it, something complete, finished, perfect, but Progress is
essentially something incomplete, unfinished, imperfect. We all feel
this, and at times at least the thought that what we seek flies ever
before, affrights and paralyses: recoiling from such a prospect, we set
before our imaginations as the reward or result of our labours, not
movement but rest, not creation or production but consumption and
fruition. We dream of one day coming to participate in a life or
experience so good that ther