6 
natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, 
all corporeal and mental endowments would tend to progress 
towards perfection.” 
That was so in harmony with men’s desires, hopes, and 
aspirations, that it half justified his theory of evolution. 
If Progress be not a faith, a belief,—it must approve itself to 
the reason ; it must be an inference from undeniable facts; it 
must command assent from all by virtue of incontestable proofs. 
It behoves us, therefore, to endeavour to obtain some exact 
definition of progress, to discover what conceptions are involved 
in it, what images it calls up, what ideas are implied. 
If a body be moving in an orbit, a circle, or an ellipse, in 
fact in any curve which is closed or returns into itself, we speak 
of it as pro-gressing or 7ve-gressing according as we imagine that 
it moves from us or tous. I say imagine, for in a closed curve 
the movement from us is just as much a movement to us. 
A friend sets out on a journey round the world. Every mile he 
travels from the starting point brings him a mile nearer home. 
Whether he may be described as “ going from” us or ‘‘ coming 
to” us may afford matter for discussion—as similar problems 
have so often done before. Progress and regress then merely 
express a manner of looking at the object we are contemplating. 
The terms have reference to our position, our point of view, 
perhaps, to our predilections or fancies. ‘A circular motion” 
says Lord Bacon, “ hath much the appearance of a progressive 
one.” 
And further, our language and the notions and ideas it 
expresses with regard to direction are also misleading and decep- 
tive. They are no more conformable to the truth of things than our 
ideas of motion. We speak of the sun and moon being above us. 
We think of the stars seen by our antipodes in New Zealand as 
being below us. But Nature knows nothing of high or low. 
These are illusions ; illusions which, such is the strange problem 
in which man’s mental constitution is involved, that he is 
obliged continually to accept as truth and reality. 
But there is something more than mere motion involved in 
the word progress, as generally used. It implies not movement 
only, but movement from a lower plane to a higher one; from a 
less good to a better condition ; from a simple to a more complex 
organization. Nay, more, in its general acceptation it implies a 
gain uncompensated by any loss. If equivalent payment is 
made for an advantage obtained, then progress is robbed of its 
meaning. The word has no longer any charm for us. 
But these expressions,—high, low, good, better, &c.,—which 
we use to indicate progress, have a moral rather than a physical 
significance, and as such are incapable of exact definition. 
They vary with the ever-varying opinions of those who use them. 
Who is the judge of what is good? Is there an absolute good 
