Thoughts Suggested By Mr. Froudes Progress | Page 7

man as a
dwelling-place, and he is on the whole fitted to get more out of it for
his own growth, is not that progress, and is it not evidence of an
intention of progress?
Now, it is sometimes said that Providence, in the economy of this
world, cares nothing for the individual, but works out its ideas and
purposes through the races, and in certain periods, slowly bringing in,
by great agencies and by processes destructive to individuals and to
millions of helpless human beings, truths and principles; so laying
stepping-stones onward to a great consummation. I do not care to dwell
upon this thought, but let us see if we can find any evidence in history
of the presence in this world of an intention of progress.
It is common to say that, if the world makes progress at all, it is by its
great men, and when anything important for the race is to be done, a
great man is raised up to do it. Yet another way to look at it is, that the
doing of something at the appointed time makes the man who does it
great, or at least celebrated. The man often appears to be only a favored
instrument of communication. As we glance back we recognize the
truth that, at this and that period, the time had come for certain
discoveries. Intelligence seemed pressing in from the invisible. Many
minds were on the alert to apprehend it. We believe, for instance, that if
Gutenberg had not invented movable types, somebody else would have
given them to the world about that time. Ideas, at certain times, throng
for admission into the world; and we are all familiar with the fact that
the same important idea (never before revealed in all the ages) occurs
to separate and widely distinct minds at about the same time. The
invention of the electric telegraph seemed to burst upon the world
simultaneously from many quarters--not perfect, perhaps, but the time

for the idea had come--and happy was it for the man who entertained it.
We have agreed to call Columbus the discoverer of America, but I
suppose there is no doubt that America had been visited by European,
and probably Asiatic, people ages before Columbus; that four or five
centuries before him people from northern Europe had settlements here;
he was fortunate, however, in "discovering" it in the fullness of time,
when the world, in its progress, was ready for it. If the Greeks had had
gunpowder, electro- magnetism, the printing press, history would need
to be rewritten. Why the inquisitive Greek mind did not find out these
things is a mystery upon any other theory than the one we are
considering.
And it is as mysterious that China, having gunpowder and the art of
printing, is not today like Germany.
There seems to me to be a progress, or an intention of progress, in the
world, independent of individual men. Things get on by all sorts of
instruments, and sometimes by very poor ones. There are times when
new thoughts or applications of known principles seem to throng from
the invisible for expression through human media, and there is hardly
ever an important invention set free in the world that men do not appear
to be ready cordially to receive it. Often we should be justified in
saying that there was a widespread expectation of it. Almost all the
great inventions and the ingenious application of principles have many
claimants for the honor of priority.
On any other theory than this, that there is present in the world an
intention of progress which outlasts individuals, and even races, I
cannot account for the fact that, while civilizations decay and pass
away, and human systems go to pieces, ideas remain and accumulate.
We, the latest age, are the inheritors of all the foregoing ages. I do not
believe that anything of importance has been lost to the world. The
Jewish civilization was torn up root and branch, but whatever was
valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of the
civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of
the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, collapsed into a heap of
incoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are
part of the world's solid possessions.
Even those who question the value to the individual of what we call
progress, admit, I suppose, the increase of knowledge in the world from

age to age, and not only its increase, but its diffusion. The intelligent
schoolboy today knows more than the ancient sages knew--more about
the visible heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, more of the human
body. The rudiments of his education, the common experiences of his