XXIII. IS THE HUMAN RACE ON THE DOWN GRADE?
As to individual nations, it is matter of notoriety that they are often improgressive. As a whole, it may be true that the human race is under a necessity of slowly advancing; and it may be a necessity, also, that the current of the moving waters should finally absorb into its motion that part of the waters which, left to itself, would stagnate. All this may be true—and yet it will not follow that the human race must be moving constantly upon an ascending line, as thus:
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A
nor even upon such a line, with continual pauses or rests interposed, as thus:
where there is no going back, though a constant interruption to the going forward; but a third hypothesis is possible: there may be continual loss of ground, yet so that continually the loss is more than compensated, and the total result, for any considerable period of observation, may be that progress is maintained:
