movement 



PROGRESS A DOUBLE MOVEMENT 93 



bear to each other ? In a direct way they are not Book i 



related at all. They neither conflict with each other Cha P ter 



nor overlap each other. They are both of them The 



true ; but true as explaining different sets of pheno- 



mena. One of the great errors of which our modern 



sociologists are guilty consists in their failure to 



perceive that social progress is not a single move- 



ment but the joint result of two, which differ from 



each other to repeat what was said just now quite 



as much as do the two movements of the earth. 



The difference between them will become instantly 



clear to us if we will turn our attention merely to one movement 



the single obvious fact that the two take place at siowfthTother 



different rates of speed, the one set of changes being rapld ' 



slow, like the succession of years ; the other set of 



changes being rapid, like the succession of days. 



The general rise in capacity which distinguishes 



the modern civilised nations from primitive man, or 



from the lowest savages of to-day, and which has 



been due to what Mr. Kidd calls "the preponder- The survival of 



ating reproduction of individuals slightly above the causes the 



average" has been the work of an incalculable 



number of centuries. It has been so slow that, in 



many respects at all events, it has been indistin- 



guishable during the course of several thousand 



years. The great thinkers amongst the ancient 



Egyptians were not congenitally inferior to the great 



thinkers of to-day. The brain of Aristotle was 



equal to the brain of Newton ; whilst the masons 



whose hands constructed the Coliseum and the 



Parthenon knew as much of their craft as those who 



slow move- 

 ment. 



