INTRODUCTION 



The Meaning of Progress. — Progress is a word frequently used 

 though not always with critical precision. The nineteenth cen- 

 tury was an era of marvelous increase in the production of wealth, 

 in the acquirement of knowledge intensively and extensively, in 

 methods of social reform and in agencies for the betterment of 

 unfortunate man. But is this the essence of social progress ? 

 Ask the meditative Brahman or the static celestial! Is movement 

 always forward movement ? Is mere increase a sign of pros- 

 perity ? Dr. Watkinson 1 speaks aptly of the fallacy of bigness. 

 The boulder is vastly bigger than the diamond. Enlargement of 

 the human body is often a sign of disease. Many feel that 

 Carlyle did well to inveigh against the gospel of Mammonism 

 and ridicule the theory of the leisure class of his day; that John 

 Ruskin's prophetic voice rang true when he summoned econo- 

 mists to a different evaluation of wealth than that of mere inter- 

 changeable goods. 



Increase of knowledge is not always advantageous either to the 

 individual or to society. Walter Bagehot in praising the virtues 

 of stupidity says that nations, just as individuals, may be too 

 clever to be practical and not dull enough to be free. " Knowledge 

 puffeth up," — sometimes to a man's eternal damnation. A 

 strong prejudice against college education for the young man of 

 only average ability prevails among a certain class of men of 

 affairs and it is true that there are many whose superior education 

 has unfitted them, apparently, to adapt themselves to life condi- 

 tions. Nor do all agree that it is a sure sign of progress that our 

 enlarged sympathy has built almshouses, asylums and orphanages 

 to prolong the lives of the weak and unfortunate and apparently 

 thwart nature's plan of eliminating the unfit in the struggle for 

 existence. 



1 The great Wesleyan preacher in his book The Education of the Heart. 



3 



