It seems incredible that there should have been a time when mankind had no conception of progress. Ever since men first consciously united their common efforts to improve and conserve their common life, it would seem there must have been some recognition that life had not always been as they found it and that it could not be in the future what it then was. Nevertheless, it has been said that the notion of progress was unknown in the oriental world, that the opposite conception of deterioration pervaded all ancient Asiatic thought. In India the prevailing notion was that of vast cycles of time "through which the universe and its inhabitants must pass from perfection to destruction, from strength and innocence to weakness and depravity until a new mahá-yuga begins."[322]
The Greeks conceived the course of history in various ways, as progress and as deterioration, but in general they thought of it as a cycle. The first clear description of the history of mankind as a progression by various stages, from a condition of primitive savagery to civilization, is in Lucretius' great poem De Rerum Natura. But Lucretius does not conceive this progress will continue. On the contrary he recognizes that the world has grown old and already shows signs of decrepitude which foreshadow its ultimate destruction.
It is only in comparatively recent times that the world has sought to define progress philosophically, as part of the cosmic process, and 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 estimated that, in the complicated life of modern cities, at least one-tenth of the population is not competent to maintain an independent, economic existence, but requires an increasing amount of care and assistance from the other nine-tenths.[324] To the inferior, incompetent, and unfortunate, unable to keep pace with progress, the more rapid advance of the world means disease, despair, and death. In medicine and surgery alone does progress seem wholly beneficent, but the eugenists are even now warning us that our indiscriminate efforts to protect the weak and preserve the incompetent are increasing the burdens of the superior and competent, who are alone fit to live.
On the other hand, every new invention is a response to some specific need. Every new form of social control is intended to correct some existing evil. So far as they are successful they represent progress. Progress in the concrete has reference to recognized social values. Values, as Cooley points out, have no meaning except with reference to an organism.
"The organism is necessary to give meaning to the idea [value]; there must be worth to something. It need not be a person; a group, an institution, a doctrine, any organized form of life will do; and that it be conscious of the values that motivates it is not at all essential."[325]