Thoughts Suggested By Mr. Froudes Progress | Page 8

everyday life, were, at the best, the guesses and speculations of a
remote age. There is certainly an accumulation of facts, ideas,
knowledge. Whether this makes men better, wiser, happier, is indeed
disputed.
In order to maintain the notion of a general and intended progress, it is
not necessary to show that no preceding age has excelled ours in some
special, development. Phidias has had no rival in sculpture, we may
admit. It is possible that glass was once made as flexible as leather, and
that copper could be hardened like steel. But I do not take much stock
in the "lost arts," the wondering theme of the lyceums. The knowledge
of the natural world, and of materials, was never, I believe, so extensive
and exact as it is today. It is possible that there are tricks of chemistry,
ingenious processes, secrets of color, of which we are ignorant; but I do
not believe there was ever an ancient alchemist who could not be taught
something in a modern laboratory. The vast engineering works of the
ancient Egyptians, the remains of their temples and pyramids, excite
our wonder; but I have no doubt that President Grant, if he becomes the
tyrant they say he is becoming, and commands the labor of forty
millions of slaves--a large proportion of them office-- holders--could
build a Karnak, or erect a string of pyramids across New Jersey.
Mr. Froude runs lightly over a list of subjects upon which the believer
in progress relies for his belief, and then says of them that the world
calls this progress--he calls it only change. I suppose he means by this
two things: that these great movements of our modern life are not any
evidence of a permanent advance, and that our whole structure may
tumble into a heap of incoherent sand, as systems of society have done
before; and, again, that it is questionable if, in what we call a stride in
civilization, the individual citizen is becoming any purer or more just,
or if his intelligence is directed towards learning and doing what is
right, or only to the means of more extended pleasures.
It is, perhaps, idle to speculate upon the first of these points--the
permanence of our advance, if it is an advance. But we may be
encouraged by one thing that distinguishes this period--say from the

middle of the eighteenth century--from any that has preceded it. I mean
the introduction of machinery, applied to the multiplication of man's
power in a hundred directions--to manufacturing, to locomotion, to the
diffusion of thought and of knowledge. I need not dwell upon this
familiar topic. Since this period began there has been, so far as I know,
no retrograde movement anywhere, but, besides the material, an
intellectual and spiritual kindling the world over, for which history has
no sort of parallel. Truth is always the same, and will make its way, but
this subject might be illustrated by a study of the relation of
Christianity and of the brotherhood of men to machinery. The theme
would demand an essay by itself. I leave it with the one remark, that
this great change now being wrought in the world by the multiplicity of
machinery is not more a material than it is an intellectual one, and that
we have no instance in history of a catastrophe widespread enough and
adequate to sweep away its results. That is to say, none of the
catastrophes, not even the corruptions, which brought to ruin the
ancient civilizations, would work anything like the same disaster in an
age which has the use of machinery that this age has.
For instance: Gibbon selects the period between the accession of Trajan
and the death of Marcus Aurelius as the time in which the human race
enjoyed more general happiness than they had ever known before, or
had since known. Yet, says Mr. Froude, in the midst of this prosperity
the heart of the empire was dying out of it; luxury and selfishness were
eating away the principle that held society together, and the ancient
world was on the point of collapsing into a heap of incoherent sand.
Now, it is impossible to conceive that the catastrophe which did happen
to that civilization could have happened if the world had then possessed
the steam-engine, the printing-press, and the electric telegraph. The
Roman power might have gone down, and the face of the world been
recast; but such universal chaos and such a relapse for the individual
people would seem impossible.
If we turn from these general considerations to the evidences that this is
an "era of progress" in the condition of individual men, we are met by
more specific denials. Granted, it is said, all your facilities for travel
and communication, for cheap and easy