To the question, What, then, ought we to do? I can only reply first and foremost, Labour to retain this truth, fostering and developing it, verifying it as we have been doing in all the varied departments of human experience, exercising our imaginations while at the same time sobering and controlling them by the light that comes from it. If we are true to it and do not through slackness forget and lose it, we shall find arising spontaneously out of the depths of our self worthy and feasible ideals of action, the pursuit of which will not betray us or leave us without an ever-growing assurance that in bending and directing all our powers to their realization we are the agents of that Progress which is the source of all being and all worth whatsoever. If we will to learn from our own past, we can convert anything that is evil in it into an occasion, an opportunity, a means to good which without it were not possible. Thus we can even do what seems utterly impossible, for we can without forgetting or ignoring or denying, forgive ourselves even the evil which we have done. Yes, even the darkest and worst evil, the disloyalty to ourselves, to the best and deepest within us, which all but achieved the impossibility of finally defeating the march of Progress. For the basis and ground of our belief in the reality, and therefore the eternity, of Progress lies in this, that the now known nature of the Spirit which is in Man and not in Man alone, is that it can heal any wounds that it can inflict upon itself, can find in its own errors and failures, in its own mistakes and misdeeds, if it only will, the materials of richer and fuller and worthier life.
Transcriber's Notes
Page [26]: Opening and closing quotes added to "Beg humbly that he unlock the door."
Page [89]: Suma Theologica sic
Page [92]: course amended to coarse
Page [165]: preventible amended to preventable
Page [299]: missing word "is" added ("so far as it is realized")
The footnote number is for footnote 81 is missing in the original text. The location of the number that has been added is only an assumption.
Discrepancies between the Table of Contents and chapter headings ("Government"/"Progress in Government"; "Industry"/"Progress in Industry"; "Art"/"Progress in Art"; "Science"/"Progress in Science" and "Philosophy"/"Progress in Philosophy") have been retained.