TEE MEASURE OF 'PROGRESS' 155 



THE MEASURE OF ' PROGRESS' 



By Dr. EDWARD S. HOLDEN, 



LIBRARIAN UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY 



NO words are more common in the mouths of orators than the 

 phrases: The march of Progress — the growth of Civilization. 

 When we say that the twentieth century is in advance of the sixteenth, 

 do we mean that it is so in each and every respect ? Do we mean that 

 men in general have now a keener feeling for art than in the age of 

 Michel Angelo; a finer knowledge of justice than in the century of 

 Socrates; deeper religious feelings than in the days of Wesley, or of 

 St. Thomas Aquinas? 



It is not easy to answer such questions offhand in any large way. 

 The modern feeling for art is perhaps more wide-spread, but certainly 

 far less keen, than in the Italy of the sixteenth century. If we say that 

 our sense of justice is finer than that of the Greeks who condemned 

 Socrates to death, and of all the centuries before our own, how is it 

 that successive generations of men have preserved the narrative of his 

 last day with sacred care ? What are we to say of the religious feelings 

 of the day of Wesley compared with the ethical efforts of the day of 

 Felix Adler? It is clearly not easy to give answers of real import to 

 questions of the sort. We need a better insight into the meaning to 

 be attached to words like progress, civilization and the like. Defini- 

 tions taken out of dictionaries will not answer. 



It has been my fortune, lately, to make a fairly thorough study of 

 that wonderful renaissance of science which began in the days of Roger 

 Bacon, in the thirteenth century, and to endeavor to connect it with its 

 origins in Alexandria, its precursor in Mohammedan Spain and its 

 successor in the century of Galileo. There is no space here to present 

 even a summary of such a study, 1 but it may not be out of place to 

 give a few paragraphs which bear on the general and important ques- 

 tion : how are we to measure progress ? 



In comparing the view-points of different ages with our own we 

 continually meet with surprises. The uncritical attitude of the men of 

 the thirteenth century towards miracles and wonders is little less than 

 astounding to us. Our thought seems to be ages in advance of theirs. 

 On the other hand, we often meet with an insight that has what we 

 call the distinctly modern note. An instance from literature will 

 illustrate: 



1 See Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXIV., pp. 316-342, and elsewhere. 



