76 W. G. Lanrworthy Taylor 



their mutual relation. The laws of progress must explain the 

 general movement upwards as well as coincident modifications in 

 the relation of subject with object. 



III. Progress may provisionally be described as a journey from 

 house to house, or from environment to environment of a pro- 

 gressively cultured or psychic character, i. e., adapted to psychic 

 advance of man. The lower environments are materialistic; in 

 them man must conform himself very strictly to materialistic 

 conditions. The higher are psychic; in them man conforms him- 

 self to conditions predominantly psychic. Since the latter condi- 

 tions are dependent upon himself, he may create or even alter 

 them, if he will but make the necessary sacrifice of time or consent 

 to retrace his steps temporarily. 



IV. In a normal course of progress, free from retrogression, 

 both the materialistic and psychic conditions present a perma- 

 nently environmental character. They are long-time causes, 

 changing little. Such change as does take place in them may be 

 compared to the change made annually in the volume of coined 

 money by the mintage, while the mass of the coins have been in 

 circulation for decades, and some individual coins may be made 

 of gold taken from the mines of Philip of Macedon. The mate- 

 rialistic and psychic parts of an environment may, for con- 

 venience, be treated separately. 



V. In the higher environments change is rapid, and new con- 

 junctures swiftly succeed each other. The process of change 

 may here be seen weaving the conjunctures within which it will 

 continue its work. A complete treatment would describe the 

 assimilation of conjunctures into the environment. 



VI. The process of progress must be such that it can occur 

 within the existing environment, including in that term the exist- 

 ing conjuncture. The environment being partly material and 

 partly psychic, the process avails itself of the contrast and of the 

 continuity between these two economic elements. 



VII. Our own nature is such as to render it probably impos- 

 sible for us to apprehend any process except with the aid of at 

 least two sets of analogies : those of physics and those of biology. 



76 



