XIII. Is Progress Real?
Against this panorama of nations, morals, and religions rising and
falling, the idea of progress finds itself in dubious shape. Is it only the vain
and traditional boast of each “modern” generation? Since we have admitted
no substantial change in man’s nature during historic times, all
technological advances will have to be written off as merely new means of
achieving old ends–the acquisition of goods, the pursuit of one sex by the
other (or by the same), the overcoming of competition, the fighting of wars.
One of the discouraging discoveries of our disillusioning century is that
science is neutral: it will kill for us as readily as it will heal, and will
destroy for us more readily than it can build. How inadequate now seems
the proud motto of Francis Bacon, “Knowledge is power”! Sometimes we
feel that the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which stressed mythology
and art rather than science and power, may have been wiser than we, who
repeatedly enlarge our instrumentalities without improving our purposes.
Our progress in science and technique has involved some tincture of evil
with good. Our comforts and conveniences may have weakened our
physical stamina and our moral fiber. We have immensely developed our
means of locomotion, but some of us use them to facilitate crime and to kill
our fellow men or ourselves. We double, triple, centuple our speed, but we
shatter our nerves in the process, and are the same trousered apes at two
thousand miles an hour as when we had legs. We applaud the cures and
incisions of modern medicine if they bring no side effects worse than the
malady; we appreciate the assiduity of our physicians in their mad race
with the resilience of microbes and the inventiveness of disease; we are
grateful for the added years that medical science gives us if they are not a
burdensome prolongation of illness, disability, and gloom. We have
multiplied a hundred times our ability to learn and report the events of the
day and the planet, but at times we envy our ancestors, whose peace was
only gently disturbed by the news of their village. We have laudably
