Human progress

“ We are beginning to learn that to swap off a superstition for a fact, to ascertain the real, is to progress. All that gives us better bodies and minds and clothes and food and pictures, grander music, better heads, better hearts, and that makes us better husbands and wives and better citizens, all these things combined produce what we call the progress of the human race. ”

“ The great fact of the essential dependence of human progress upon new knowledge, is a truth, the importance of which to man cannot be over-estimated, and is one which statesmen, ministers of religion, and philanthropists should seriously study. ”

“ It may be necessary here to agree on a definition of human progress. According to the general law of organic evolution, it may be defined as follows: such progress in the individual and in his social relations as shall maintain him in health and happiness and increase the organic development of society.
If we accept such a definition of human progress, if we agree that progress is the duty of society, and that all social institutions are to be measured by it, we may proceed to our second premise. ”

“ But though all increases of power and knowledge depend on human effort, the idea of the Progress of humanity, from which all these particular progresses derive their value, raises a definite question of fact, which man's wishes or labours cannot affect any more than his wishes or labours can prolong life beyond the grave. ”

“ DIFFERENCES IN CIVILIZATION—TO WHAT DUE.
In attempting to discover the law of human progress, the first step must be to determine the essential nature of those differences which we describe as differences in civilization. ”

“ Progress and development mark everything in nature—human societies, as well as everything else. Nothing in the physical world is still; life and motion are in everything; so in the mental, moral, and political. ”

“ This is the way in which custom, and religions, and prejudices, and tastes, and languages, grow up and are perpetuated. This is the way skill is transmitted and knowledge is stored up, and the discoveries of one time are made the common stock and stepping-stone of the next. Though this is what often offers the most serious obstacles to progress, it is this that makes progress possible. ”

“ Looked at in this broad light, the history of man's common life in the world will, I think, show two great streams of progress—the progress of man over Nature, or, as we say to-day, in the control of his environment, and the progress of man in what is essentially a moral task—the art of living together with his fellows. These two aspects of human activity and effort are in constant contact and interaction. ”

“ In a cultural sense, progress may refer to the products of the industrial arts, or to the development of fine arts, or the advancement of religious life and belief—in fact, to the mastery of the resources of nature and their service to mankind in whatever form they may appear or in whatever phase of life they may be expressed. Progress may also be indicated in the improvement in social order and in government, and also the increased opportunity of the individual to receive culture through the process of mutual aid. In fact, progress must be sought for in all phases of human activity. ”

“ One is to discover the great lines of human progress; to see the course it followed, and to determine the guiding principles which inspired its advance. This is a scientific study of human development, and owes its value to the completeness of our conception of the end of social life. We must recognise that this conception is constantly being modified by the tendencies of current aspirations, which are themselves seriously affected by contemporary political ideas. ”

“ For if progress operated to fix an improvement in man's nature and thus to produce further progress, though there might be occasional interruption, yet the general rule would be that progress would be continuous - that advance would lead to advance, and civilization develop into higher civilization. ”

“ And this is the end of fifty years of incessant movement, of the progress of society, of the activity and development of the human intellect in the country which is eternally mouthing about its superior civilisation and its mission to extend the benefits of that civilisation over the whole world. ”

“ Next, the progress of a nation consists in two things: first, in the increasing development of the natural faculties of body and spirit,—intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious—with the consequent increasing enjoyment thereof; and second, in the increasing acquisition of power over the material world, making it yield use and beauty, an increase of material comfort and elegance. Progress is increase of human welfare for each and for all. That is the most progressive nation which advances fastest in this development of human faculties, and the consequent acquisition of material power. ”

“ Progress expresses itself in a variety of ideals and aims. Progress of the part and progress of the whole. Social progress involves individual development. Progress is enhanced by the interaction of groups and races. The study of uncultured races of to-day. The study of prehistoric types. Progress is indicated by early cultures. Industrial and social life of primitive man. Cultures indicate the mental development of the race. Men of genius cause mutations which permit progress. The data of progress.
III. METHODS OF RECOUNTING HUMAN PROGRESS
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“ I see a change in the human condition approaching. I see a mighty revolution in the organization of human society. I see means which can accomplish the result. There is a progress in the rudimental world. ”

“ And the quality and quantity of progress are to be estimated in different nations according to the diversity of life to be observed among individuals and groups.
What Is the Goal of Civilized Man?—And it may be well to ask, as civilization is progressive: What is our aim in life from our own standpoint? For what do men strive? What is the ultimate of life? What is the best for which humanity can live? If it were merely to obtain food and clothes and nothing more, the question could be easily answered. ”

“ The creation of the first utility, the first substantial movement to increase the food supply, the first home for protection, the first religious ceremony, or the first organized household, represents the beginnings of civilization, and these are the landmarks along the trail of man's ascendency.
Progress Is an Essential Characteristic of Civilization.—The goal is never reached, the victory is never finally achieved. Man must move on, ever on. Intellect must develop, morals improve, liberty increase, social order be perfected, and social growth continue. ”

“ We cannot, however, say more than that the factors of human progress have always had these three aspects, Folk, Place, Work, and that if progress is to continue on stable lines it must always recognise the essential correlation of fitter folk in body and mind: improved habits and functions, alike in work and leisure ”

“ Finally, in the history of the development and civilization of the human race, is it possible to point to a single item of real progress, efficiency, or achievement, that has not been the direct result of the sacrifice of something below to the more important interests of something above? ”

“ But all the while the real work of progress is being done by other agencies—by the spread of knowledge, the growth of education, the discoveries of science, the silent triumphs of art, and the gradual expansion of the human mind. ”

“ They cover every field of human effort. They have to do with political development, the relations of capital and labor, invention, science, literature, production, commerce, and a dozen other life interests, all of which will be considered in this work. The greatness of the world’s progress can be most clearly shown by pointing out the state of affairs in the several branches of human effort at the opening and closing of the century and placing them in sharp contrast. ”

“ Yes, from the point of view of the human race.
No, from the point of view of the individual.
Progress is man's mode of existence. The general life of the human race is called Progress, the collective stride of the human race is called Progress. ”

“ The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress. ”

“ It is evident from this, that much of the mental activity around us is not progress, but rather a process of maintaining present state, a prevention of decline, a continually going round and round in conventional varied step, a kind of intellectual mill. ”

“ So in one department of human thought—the investigation of natural processes—majestic progress has been made since the opening of the seventeenth century, with every promise of continued and startling advance. ”

“ The historical conception of progress is founded on historical experience of the evolution of human affairs. Its object is to understand the past as a whole, to note in every age the thing that was accomplished, the ideas which clothed themselves with power. ”

“ It contains a survey of great periods in which particular peoples attained an exceptional state of dominion and prosperity, and it anticipates later histories of civilisation by dwelling but slightly on political events and bringing into prominence human achievements in science, philosophy, and the arts. ”

“ The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level. ”

“ It is not the citizen, or a taxpayer, or voter, or office-holder, but the cultivated, free individual who is the true aim of all social progress. ”

“ From the death of the old the new proceeds, And the life of truth from the rot of creeds On the ladder of God, which upward leads, The steps of progress are human needs. ”

“ TRUTH IN ART The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart. ”

“ I do not share the belief in indefinite progress for society as a whole; I believe in man's improvement in himself. ”

“ Progress has engendered retrogression. What must be done that progress may engender nothing else but progress, that is to say, prosperity, health, security, education and intellectual development equal for all? ”

“ That understanding of the nature of the forces that shape life for us transformed the conceptions of the last century and put a new emphasis upon social efficiency in the individual as the first element of progress. ”

“ Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean whose waves touched all the shores of human thought, within which were all the tides and currents and pulses upon which lay all the lights and shadows, and over which brooded all the calms, and swept all the storms and tempests of which the soul is capable. I would rather belong to that race that commenced with that skull-less vertebrate; that produced Shakespeare, a race that has before it an infinite future, with the angel of progress leaning from the far horizon, beckoning men forward and upward forever. ”

“ Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists. ”

“ Having acquired, so far as this, a partly definite notion of morals, we may now return to take up the conception of civilization, and bring the two sets of ideas into conjunction.
I did not venture to say of civilization that it is "a certain degree of progress" in the state of man, because there are those who deny that the cumulative succession of changes, in man and society, which appear in the process called civilization, are, on the whole, progressive chances. ”

“ Ye’re all agreed that societies change—not always and everywhere—but on the whole and in the long run. Now, with all deference, I would beg t’ observe that we have got to examine the nature of changes before we have a warrant to call them progress, which word is supposed to include a bettering, though I apprehend it to be ill-chosen for that purpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice. ”

“ If the character of this progress be scrutinized, it will be found that the forces which propel in the direction of improvement, and the ideas we form of the nature of that improvement will be the same forces and ideas that propel other races and society in general. ”

“ But while these advances in material as well as political greatness are naturally subjects of honest pride with the people of this country, they likewise give rise to grave reflections, and instinctively suggest the question: Has our progress in the higher aims of life, in civilization, morality, and religion, kept pace with our extraordinary increase in wealth, population, political power, and material development? ”

“ The present condition of things appears to be, in great measure, a necessary accompaniment of our present phase of progress. Throughout the civilized world, especially in England, and above all in America, social activity is almost wholly expended in material development. ”