12i ■ TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Material progress results entirely from mental and manual labor 

 laid out on invention and construction. Moral progress is a pro- 

 duct of feeling, material progress one of thought ; the action ac- 

 companying the former is called conduct, that accompanying the 

 latter is called lal^or. Conduct is confined to the avoidance of inter- 

 ference with liberty of action in others. Labor is directed to the 

 production and distribution of the objects of desire. Moral action 

 aims at the restraint or control of the forces of society, of human 

 desires, prejudices, and passions. Invention and labor aim at the 

 control and utilization of physical and mechanical forces, and of such 

 vital processes as underlie pastoral and agricultural pursuits. 



The contrast in the essential nature of these two classes of social 

 phenomena is thus seen to be very wide, but it is not greater than 

 is the difference in their mode of operating. We have seen that 

 moral progress always takes place by rhythmic action, and that its 

 secular slowness is not due to its own inherent sluggishness, but 

 to the fact that only the algebraic sum, of its many fluxes and 

 refluxes can be counted. In material development nothing of the 

 kind is found. Every step is a permanent gain. Every mechani- 

 cal invention is an inalienable contribution to the material pros- 

 perity of society. If the particular device first produced becomes 

 at length obsolete, as is usually the case, it is only because from it 

 as a basis better devices, involving additional principles and doing 

 more efficient service, have grown up. And such, in fact, is the 

 nature of all inventions. 



But the machine is only the material embodiment of intellectual 

 conceptions, and it is these that lie at the foundation of all material 

 progress. Indeed, much of this progress has consisted of such 

 conceptions without any definite materialization. Of this class is 

 all real knowledge of nature, only part of which can be directly 

 applied to man's material ameiioration. Every natural truth 

 acquired proves advantageous, and the progress of pure science, 

 like the progress of invention, has been steady though not uniform, 

 never intermittent nor ryhthmical. The misguided forces of feeling 

 which underlie the fluctuating moral activities of society have often 

 resisted the progress of science, have seriously checked it, some- 

 times apparently arrested it during long periods, but they have never 

 succeeded in forcing it backwards. The same is true of art, espec- 

 ially of practical or useful art. This fact is strikingly exemplified 

 in the interest attaching to the few alleged "lost arts", as though 



