The notion of progress is a modern invention….The doctrine of progress was made…inevitable [by]  the enormous expansion of man’s material resources during the age of industrialism…Living in the midst of the extraordinary phenomena represented by these figures, men might be excused if they came to believe in progress... The satisfaction which looks at abstract figures about humanity at large finds it fairly easy to believe in moral progress.

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Whether that progress is destined to be continued under the entirely novel conditions imposed on the human species by our social organization it is impossible to say. The forces which, in the past, made for progress may perhaps, in the new circumstances, make for deterioration; one cannot guess.

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We may remark in passing that the colossal material expansion of recent years is destined, in all probability, to be a temporary and transient phenomenon. We are rich because we are living on our capital. The coal, the oil, the niter, the phosphates which we are so recklessly using can never be replaced. When the supplies are exhausted, men will have to do without. Our prosperity had been achieved at the expense of our children.

 

“We can only hope that our race may be spared a decline as precipitous as is the upward slope along which we have been carried, heedless, for the most part, both of our privileges and of the threatened privation ahead. While such a sudden decline might, from a detached standpoint, appear as in accord with the eternal equities, since previous gains would in cold terms balance the losses, yet it would be felt as a superlative catastrophe. Our descendants, if such as this should be their fate, will see poor compensation for their ills in the fact that we did live in abundance and luxury.”

 

One of the results of this return to equilibrium conditions will certainly be a diminution of the belief in progress. Enthusiastic business men and advertising agents seem to imagine that expansion can go on indefinitely at the present rate. The corollary to this pleasing fancy is that men become steadily cleverer and more virtuous every generation. When facts have ruthlessly destroyed the primary illusion, its corollary will seen less obviously true.

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Even in the material world the idea of progress is untenable. We are today very rich because we are living on our cosmic capital. When that capital is exhausted, mankind will be bankrupt. Nothing could be more obvious.

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It is time to consider the idea of progress apart from its material cause and accompaniment. Material expansion may explain the rise of the idea of progress on the spiritual plane; but it does no in itself justify that idea. There is no necessary relation between quantity and quality of human activity, or between wealth and virtue. The idea of progress must be considered by itself and on its own merits.