Progress 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



558 



ideas in the eyes of his comrades " haven't 

 traveled from a distance." The ancient say- 

 ing, " A prophet is not without honor save 

 in his own country," illumines the situation. 

 This borrowing would be still more frequent 

 if the petty tribal animosities, which among 

 peoples of higher culture take the form of 

 national pride, did not hinder a more ener- 

 getic leaning toward foreign standards. 

 SCHUBTZ Urgeschichte der Kultur, p. 58. 

 (Translated for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



2750. PROGRESS CHARACTERIZES 



TRUE SCIENCE The beauty of all truly 

 scientific work is to get to ever deeper levels. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 25, p. 448. 

 (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2751. PROGRESS FROM IMPLEMENT 

 TO MACHINE From Hand-power to Use of 

 Elemental Forces. The ingenuity of man 

 has been eminent in the art of destroying 

 his fellow men. In surveying the last group 

 of deadly weapons, from the stone hurled 

 by hand to the rifled cannon, there comes 

 well into view one of the great advances 

 of culture. This is the progress from the 

 simple tool or implement, such as the club 

 or knife, which enables man to strike or 

 cut more effectively than with hands or 

 teeth, to the machine which, when supplied 

 with force, only needs to be set and directed 

 by man to do his work. Man often himself 

 provides the power which the machine dis- 

 tributes more conveniently, as when the pot- 

 ter turns the wheel with his own foot, using 

 his hands to mold the whirling clay. The 

 highest class of machines are those which 

 are driven by the stored-up forces of Na- 

 ture, like the sawmill, where the running 

 stream does the hard labor, and the sawyer 

 has only to provide the timber and direct 

 the cutting. TYLOB Anthropology, ch. 8, p. 

 197. (A., 1899.) 



2752. PROGRESS, MENTAL, SUPER- 

 SEDES PHYSICAL Mind Gives Man Do- 

 minion. No fact in Nature is fraught with 

 deeper meaning than this two-sided fact of 

 the extreme physical similarity and enor- 

 mous psychical divergence between man and 

 the group of animals to which he traces 

 his pedigree. It shows that when humanity 

 began to be evolved an entirely new chapter 

 in the history of the universe was opened. 

 Henceforth the life of the nascent soul came 

 to be first in importance, and the bodily life 

 became subordinated to it. Henceforth it 

 appeared that, in this direction at least, 

 the process of zoological change had come 

 to an end, and a process of psychological 

 change was to take its place. Henceforth 

 along this supreme line of generation there 

 was to be no further evolution of new 

 species through physical variation, but 

 through the accumulation of psychical vari- 

 ations one particular species was to be 

 indefinitely perfected and raised to a totally 

 different plane from that on which all life 

 had hitherto existed. Henceforth, in short, 



the dominant aspect of evolution was to be 

 not the genesis of species, but the progress 

 of civilization. FISKE Destiny of Man, ch. 

 3, p. 29. (H. M. & Co., 1900.) 



2753. PROGRESS OF HUMANITY 



Guides for the Study of Types of Ancient 

 Culture Now Existent. There are five 

 guides [from helplessness to power] whose 

 services we have to engage on our interest- 

 ing journey. The first is History, who does 

 not know the way very far back not over 

 three thousand years with much certainty. 

 The second is Philosophy, the study of which 

 in our own century has enabled us to find 

 the cradle-land of many peoples. The third 

 is Folk-lore, the survival of belief and cus- 

 tom among the uneducated. The fourth is 

 Archeology, history written in things. The 

 fifth is Ethnology, which informs us that 

 in describing this arc of civilization some 

 races have only marked time, while others 

 have moved with radii of varying lengths. 

 The result of this is that we now have on 

 the earth types of every sort of culture 

 it has ever known. MASON The Birth of In- 

 vention (Address at Centenary of American 

 Patent System, Washington, D. C., 1891; 

 Proceedings of the Congress, p. 406). 



2754. 



Improvement by In- 



dividual Effort Civilization a Condition of 

 Unstable Equilibrium Hopeful Result of 

 Education. There have been various centers 

 and periods of civilization. Egypt, Greece, 

 and Rome, tho they have left an impress 

 upon the world which extends even to our 

 time, and modifies all the present, have 

 themselves " moldered down." It appears, 

 therefore, that civilization itself may be 

 considered as a condition of unstable equi- 

 librium, which requires constant effort to be 

 sustained, and a still greater effort to be 

 advanced. It is not, in my view, the mani- 

 fest destiny of humanity to improve by the 

 operation of an inevitable necessary law of 

 progress; but while I believe that it is the 

 design of Providence that man should be 

 improved, this improvement must be the re- 

 sult of individual effort, or of the com- 

 bined effort of many individuals, animated 

 by the same feeling, and cooperating for the 

 attainment of the same end. The world is 

 still in a degraded condition; ignorance, 

 want, rapine, murder, superstition, fraud, 

 uncleanliness, inhumanity, and malignity 

 abound. We thank God, however, that he 

 has given us the promise, and in some cases 

 the foretaste, of a happier and holier con- 

 dition; that he has vouchsafed to us as 

 individuals, each in his own sphere, the 

 privilege, and has enjoined upon us the 

 duty, of becoming his instruments, and thus 

 coworkers in ameliorating the condition of 

 ourselves and our fellow men ; and above all, 

 that he has enabled us through education to 

 improve the generations which are to follow 

 us. If we sow judiciously in the present the 

 world will assuredly reap a beneficent har- 



