UC-NRLF 
 
 F3 
 
HOT 23 W* 
 
 The Drexel Institute 
 
 MONOGRAPHS 
 
 WHAT ABOUT PROGRESS? 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE DREXEL INSTITUTE 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE SPRING CELEBRATION, 1916 
 
 BY 
 
 R. A. FALCONER, D.Litt., LL.D., C.M.G. 
 
 President of the University of Toronto 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THIRTY-SECOND AND CHESTNUT STREETS 
 1916 
 
Fa 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT ABOUT PROGRESS ? :: 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE DREXEL INSTITUTE 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE SPRING CELEBRATION, 1916 
 
 BY 
 
 R. A. FALCONER, D.Litt., LL.D., C.M.G. 
 
 President of the University of Toronto 
 
"Blow Gtit, you bugles > over the rich Dead ! 
 1 There's* none of these so lonely and poor of old. 
 But, dying y has made us rarer gifts than gold'' 
 
 Rupert Brooke. 
 
WHAT ABOUT PROGRESS? 
 
 One of the most dominant convictions of the era in West- 
 ern civilization which has just closed was that Progress is a 
 justifiable conception. The average man, especially of the 
 New World, was persuaded that this age had made progress 
 beyond all other ages, and that our future was assured. He 
 took for granted that by reason of the inherent powers of 
 Democracy and the immense natural resources of this 
 continent we were bound to reach a position of pre-eminence 
 such as no other period of the world's history had seen. 
 Accordingly institutions and individuals were judged by a 
 supposedly progressive standard. A man and the com- 
 munity in which he lives must be progressive, a business 
 must be progressive, so also the University as the director 
 of organized knowledge. Very few, I imagine, had defined 
 their terms, and when you asked this modern man what he 
 meant by Progress, he would in all likelihood give you a 
 vague and quite insufficient reply in terms of material 
 development and the application of science to industry. 
 
 This complacent state of mind prevailed up till August, 
 1914, but in that month a hurricane smote Western civili- 
 zation, and ever since, the comfortable home that we had 
 reared for ourselves out of our axioms, opinions, and 
 assumptions has been swaying so violently that broad 
 fissures are appearing in its walls, and we are often fear- 
 ful lest we shall have to abandon our former domicile. 
 Small wonder, indeed, is it that the dogma is crumbling, 
 for if you seek the manifestations of progress mainly in the 
 accomplishments of science, nowhere will you find such 
 marvelous results as in the superb instruments of modern 
 war artillery, aeroplanes, superdreadnaughts, submarines; 
 and yet these are being used to^destroy with unprecedented 
 slaughter millions of the most civilized men of Europe at 
 the most hopeful and productive age of their life. We 
 may well ask, Does Progress mark the history of man? 
 
 789263 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 Progress Not ^ ' ls <l u i te conceivable that our conviction as to the 
 universal reality of Progress may spring from temperamental optimism 
 occasioned partly by climate, partly by the extraordinary 
 discoveries of this New World, partly by the energies of 
 / youth. There have been great eras of the world's history 
 in which there was no belief in Progress. There are peoples 
 now to whom the idea is strange. China and large portions 
 of India would hardly understand the term. Some philoso- 
 .phies have been constructed on a pessimistic basis; others 
 I have assumed tharX there are cycles in the world's history in 
 I the regular return of which man's experience repeats itself. 
 ^ If we are to get a satisfactory answer to our question as 
 to the reality of Progress we must not fix our glance upon the 
 present age alone nor base our judgment solely upon the 
 depressing conditions of to-day. Fortunately .the. ,.study- -G 
 history has made great advance, partly through the practice 
 of scientific method, partly by reason of the unearthing or 
 discovery of records of the past; and a wide survey of the 
 course of human life over great stretches of time, though with 
 large gaps, has become possible. This survey.does not reveal j 
 uniform and unbroken advance, but it does show. on the whole 
 a rise in standards of living and their extension, increasing 
 comprehension by man of the laws of nature and greater 
 control of her powers, i To assume, however, from this course 
 of history that Progress attends the years of maturing 
 humanity would be to give the term an external definition, 
 as we have seen is ordinarily done by the average man. 
 We should still ask, Is there any goal in sight? If so, what 
 is its character? 
 
 i. HISTORY OF THE IDEA 
 
 p 1 **"-, 
 
 When did men begin to think about Progress ? How 
 did they define it? Reflection upon an idea comes late in 
 its history. There must be periods of actual advancement 
 before men set themselves to ask what constitutes develop- 
 ment. So it came to pass that continued reflection upon the 
 idea of Progress is quite recent, but it was prepared for by 
 great happenings. If we trace its rudimentary beginnings 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 5 
 
 and then outline briefly the steps in modern European 
 civilization that created the new world in which the idea 
 sprang into full being, we shall more clearly grasp its import. 
 
 As for so much that is most enduring in civilization we 
 must turn to the ancient Greeks for the_Qrigitts~ "Greece in Greece 
 first took up the task of equipping man with all that fits 
 him for civil life and promotes his secular well-being: of 
 unfolding and expanding every inborn faculty and energy, 
 bodily and mental: of striving restlessly after the perfection 
 of the whole, and in finding this effort after an unattainable 
 ideal that by which man becomes like unto the gods."* 
 
 Though both the idea and the fact of Progress are "far- 
 off workings" from Greece it was not a motive force even 
 in the classic age, for ancient Athens, suffused with melan- 
 choly as she looked upon the fleeting shadows of the present, 
 cast her glance backward for the golden age. It was a 
 shortlived era, that classic time, and after the conquests of 
 Alexander a wearied and disappointed society began to lose 
 confidence in its own powers, the sceptic came on the scene, 
 and earnest minds turned to Oriental mysteries or to a hope 
 of revelations from another realm than this. 
 
 Greece yielded to imperial Rome, often less human than contribution 
 i ** j i i / 11 of Bome 
 
 the captive Greece who conquered her, but far more able 
 
 to understand and rule humanity. In the Roman Empire 
 law was supreme. The individual had to submit himself to 
 the policy of the state, which, was regulated not by the 
 opinions of individual localities, but by imperial decree. 
 In addition to this, philosophical ideas as to the brother- 
 hood of man gained currency in Rome as they never had in 
 Greece, and the Stoicism of the Empire broadened out its 
 ideal until in many cultivated circles a conception of uni- 
 versal brotherhood prevailed. Though this conception was 
 not realized indeed, was for the most part a pathetic aspi- 
 ration, it prepared the way for what came to pass in Chris- 
 tianity. Within the Roman Empire freedom grew less and 
 
 less, economic and social causes induced decay, and with the? 
 
 i 
 
 *Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, P. 41. 
 
6 THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 irruption of Northern peoples the old Roman Empire 
 lost its vitality, and a new phase of human history 
 appeared. 
 
 Stive we? 1 Long before this, Jesus had sown the seed of a new life 
 m Galilee and His disciples had scattered it over the world. 
 
 But so far from Progress., being ojiejDfj^hg .regulative ideals, 
 of the Gospel, the elirTy Christian would not have understood 
 what we mean by the term. His hope was fixed upon the 
 coming of his Lord and the Kingdom of God, which was im- 
 minent and would bring with it the dissolution of the present 
 order and translation into a new state. Men were to pre- 
 pare themselves for that Day which cometh as a thief in the 
 night. They were to make haste to proclaim its advent, 
 and to spread the Gospel far and wide in the time at their 
 disposal. Signs of change were all about them. Things 
 were being shaken. Only the eternal unseen Kingdom would 
 remain. Therefore in the first two centuries they gave little 
 heed to art, literature, economic conditions, and that aspect 
 of human life which we call civilization. Nevertheless 
 "^the essential element of Progress is found in the Christian 
 proclamation of the worth iihumaaJife^ and the apostle 
 Paul comes near the root of the matter when he writes 
 to the Philippians, "Whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there 
 be any virtue, or if there be any praise, think on these 
 things."J 
 J? 6 *?"? 11 of We may pass over the intervening centuries that elapsed 
 
 the Modern tr yr , ,, c ? 1 . 1 v\ i 
 
 world before our modern world came to its birth. During this 
 
 period new ideas were maturing, new inventions were 
 devised, new discoveries made. Not the least absorbing 
 chapter of European life is the story of human freedom, 
 intellectual and political. It is a sad story, with many 
 cruelties and much fruitless effort, but also full of heroic 
 and on the whole successful endeavor. Far back in 1395 
 the Scots poet, John Barbour, glowed with the thought of 
 what freedom brings: 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 7 
 
 A! Fredome is a noble thing! 
 Fredome mays man to haif liking; 
 Fredome all solace to man giffis, 
 He lives at ese that frely livis! 
 A noble hart may haif nane ese, 
 Na ellys mocht that may him plese, 
 Gif fredome fail'th. 
 
 Feudalism decayed, new nations were formed, men of domi- 
 nant character and genius replaced the old barons in strong 
 cities, the individual got recognition. .Democracy like a 
 new land of hope was sighted as a dim cloud on the horizon. 
 
 The invention of the printing-press was an event of 
 supreme importance. Henceforth the ideas of the solitary 
 thinker were carried far and wide on the printed page and 
 they became enriched as they passed through many minds. 
 
 Moved with curiosity and inspired by a,n awakening f s e co v f ery 
 courage men peered out of their narrow environment into 
 the unknown beyond. A race of brave pioneers began to 
 assert their right to control the powers of nature and 
 they ventured forth on the ocean, the successors of the 
 "grave Tyrian Trader" who 
 
 Snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail; 
 
 And day and night held on indignantly 
 
 O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, 
 
 Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, 
 
 To where the Atlantic raves 
 
 Outside the Western straits; and unbent sails 
 
 There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, 
 
 Shy trafficers, the dark Iberians come; 
 
 And on the beach undid his corded bales." 
 
 Man's daring spirit awoke in this Age of Discovery. 
 Columbus, the supereminent, burst into the solitude of the 
 Western Ocean and turned thither the trend of exploration. 
 Vasco di Gama rounded the Cape and went to India; 
 Magellan entered the Pacific. There followed a great race of 
 sailors whose familiarity with the ocean in all its moods 
 
8 THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 dispelled fear. They knew something of what lay beyond; 
 they used the fickle winds, and when neither sun nor stars 
 appeared for many days they went by dead reckoning. 
 Man, greatly venturesome, was asserting his mastery as he 
 has continued to do until the present, and now there is no 
 region of the world into which he has not penetrated; he 
 has discovered the secrets even of the poles. Nor should 
 we judge him in this to be rashly and aimlessly heroic, for 
 he is giving proof of his indomitable resolve to comprehend 
 to the uttermost this sphere on which his lot is cast. 
 
 The discoveries of the explorer have always kindled 
 the imagination of the statesman, the man of commerce 
 or the scientist. Especially was this so when the extent of 
 the New World began to appear. A new impulse was im- 
 parted to man's sense of power. He dreamed of possible 
 conquests and of an undefiled home for the freedom which 
 had received so niggardly a welcome when it presented itself 
 for recognition in the old world of Europe; his horizon wid- 
 ened, his vision of the future brightened. 
 
 So much for the awakening of man's spirit. But he soon 
 undertook also to think out and to express the meaning of 
 this activity. And thinkers in the long run rule the world, 
 for "ideas are the chief agitators." 
 
 progress France- is the home of the modern conception of progress 
 
 Formulated 35 areffnl q< '* w H pa of civilization and human history. Like 
 a flash from a lighthouse below the horizon-line these words 
 are found in Pascal in the iyth century: "Those whom we 
 call the ancients were really those who lived in the youth 
 of the world, and the true infancy of man; and as we have 
 added the experience of the ages between us and them to 
 what they knew, it is only in ourselves that is to be found 
 that antiquity which we venerate in others." Then came 
 on the outwardly brilliant age of Louis XIV a period 
 of incubation for the idea of progress. Society underwent 
 rapid change; religion fell into contempt, supernatural 
 sanctions lost their power, men discovered law in the 
 material universe and substituted reason for faith. Con- 
 comitantly with this, tradition was scorned and the founda- 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 9 
 
 tion slipped from under the old structure of conduct. Start- 
 ing from the view that nature is a unity and intelligible, 
 Fontenelle and Leibnitz compared the movement of human- 
 ity in history with "the great and universal movement which 
 dominates nature"; but they thought of this Progress of 
 the race as coming with painful steps and slow.* 
 TThe greatest names in the formulation of this modern 
 idea are those of Turgot and Condorcet. They made popu- 
 lar the thought of the endless progress of the human racel h 
 on this earth, a limitless intellectual, moral, and phyjsical 
 advancement which can be retarded only by ignorancejfrom 
 reaching its goal of perfection^ "All epochs are fastened 
 together by a sequence of causes and effects linking the condi- 
 tion of the world to all the conditions that have gone before 
 it ... and the human race, observed from its first beginning 
 seems in the eye of the philosopher to be one vast whole 
 which like each individual in it has its infancy and its 
 growth."* * TThis progress of man or his march towards 
 perfection was to be seen in "the gradual evolution and 
 elevation ~6T man'jTnature as ajyhqlej _the enlightenment of 
 his intelligence, the expansion and purification of his feel- 
 ings, the amelioration of his worldly lot, and in a word, 
 the spread of truth, virtue, liberty, and comfort, more and 
 more among all classes of men." f It was brought about, 
 according to Turgot, by the diffusion of knowledge, in the 
 power of which he had supreme confidence. These ideas 
 were adopted and cleveloped by Condorcet who also held 
 that ignorance was 'the only barrier to the realization of the 
 perfectibility of the raceA 
 
 This idea appealed to the imagination of men, and with 
 good reason, for it is a fascinating discovery if we can trace 
 from the dawn of history an ever widening and deepening 
 stream of life, here deviating round an obstacle, there driven 
 back upon itself by some barrier only in the end to surmount 
 it, until finally it is lost in the ocean of human perfection 
 
 *See Brunetiere, La Formation de I'idee de Progres au XVIII Sitcle. Etudes critiques V. 
 
 **John Morley, Miscellanies II, p. 96. 
 
 fFlint, History of Philosophy of History, p. 282. 
 
io THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 from which the brooding clouds of ignorance have been dis- 
 sipated. Nor need we question the worth of the idea 
 because it was late in coming into vogue. Experience may 
 prove that the longer the mind of man dwells upon it the 
 more intrinsically probable it will become. But it is to be 
 remarked that however valid the conception of the per- 
 fectibility of the human race on this earth may be, its 
 essence cannot be interpreted, as Turgot and Condorcet 
 thought, to reside merely in the advance of intelligence. 
 No further proof of this is necessary than the present war 
 /among the most intelligent peoples of the world. We 
 hardly needed this reminder, for it has been a commonplace 
 that great intellectual attainment may lower instead of 
 heightening sympathy and may blind its possessor to simple 
 but universal feelings and emotions which unite society and 
 create character. 
 
 "Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers." 
 
 The optimism The nineteenth century was one of the greatest in 
 of the history. It was full of optimism, and well it might be, for 
 
 Nineteenth 1 ., , , . r . ...... , , , . 
 
 century insignificant though each individual is, man has asserted his 
 mastery over nature as never before, has learned to dread 
 her less in her most awful moods, has essayed and accom- 
 plished tasks which a few generations ago would have seemed 
 to be miraculous. Indeed the Greeks would have feared 
 that this mastery bordered on the impious, and that piercing 
 through mountains and plunging into the depths, man would 
 bring upon himself such ruin as fell upon Xerxes for his in- 
 solence in encroaching upon the domain of the gods by 
 bridging the Hellespont. ( What cannot man attain unto? 
 He has made the earth to shrink, has lessened time, has 
 |/ unearthed the past, has dissipated mysteries and is endeavor- 
 ing to take from death itself the terror that has always 
 invested it. This optimism reinforcing belief in "verifiable" 
 progress, to use Bagehot's expression,* has been heightened 
 by the promulgation of the biological law of evolution, a 
 
 *See Physics and Politics. 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 11 
 
 scientific hypothesis of almost universal acceptance which 
 in its realm seems to run parallel with the idea of progress Evolution 
 in the moral and historical domain of human life. Under 
 the impulse of the doctrine of evolution men looked into the 
 future with great expectation. Metchnikoff went so far 
 as to say that "old age is a form of disease or is due to disease 
 and theoretically at least is capable of being eliminated." 
 Though not accepting this view Sir Edward Schaefer fore- 
 casts the possibility of the dawn of a day when man will 
 have learned to regard the coming of death as "a simple 
 physiological process as natural as the oncoming of sleep 
 . . . and the sunshine which science irradiates may eventu- 
 ally put to flight the melancholy which hovers, bat-like, 
 over the termination of our lives/'* 
 
 2. Is THE IDEA OF PROGRESS VALID ? 
 
 Ours has been an optimistic era, a confident age, a hopeful y" 
 period on which the idea of Progress shone like a fixed 
 luminary. But may it be that the clouds now gathered will 
 cast such gloom upon the world that the new age will become 
 one of profound pessimism ? We have gone on lengthening 
 life on the assumption that it is intrinsically valuable. 
 Possibly the woes of the present war will blight the flower 
 of our idealism like a late frost and ruin the hopes of fruit. 
 Why believe with the physiologist that we may lengthen life 
 and regard its close with reasoned equanimity when science 
 shall have dissolved its mystery, if the quality of that life is 
 poorer? Mere lengthening of years is not of the essence of 
 progress. \Recently a writer in the Revue des deux Mondes 
 stated thatin France men are now looking upon death reason- 1 
 
 ably because the sorrow of life has been so immeasurably in- * ' 
 
 creased by this war that death affords a welcome escape from 
 itsjanxieties, sufferings, and tears. (Lucretius expresses the 
 mood especially well. In the last generation, this writer 
 avers, when life was comfortable the average person feared 
 death) He put it from him as an ugly dream. From the 
 
 ^Presidential Address before the British Association^ 1912. 
 
12 THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 Evolution 
 and Progress 
 Different 
 Conceptions 
 
 Provisional 
 Definition 
 of Progress 
 
 ice-bound barrier of death a chilling wind blew and men 
 sought to escape it by living on the sunny side of the hill, 
 believing that when evening fell they would go out into a 
 raw night without stars. JBut the war has changed all that. 
 Death now offers an escape from a vale of woe.? 
 
 I have dwelt upon these contrasted views because I" 
 desire to emphasize the fact thal^volution and progress are 
 not the same. The latter concerns the intrinsic value of 
 the life we possess. Progress is not to be narrowly defined 
 in terms of material well-being or of the growth of scientific' 
 knowledge and its applications to the external equipment ojf 
 
 tthe human race. It is determined by the essential quality^ 
 and worth of the ideals that man sets before himself, by the 
 measure in which he realizes them and by the harmony that 
 this accomplishment induces both in himself and in the 
 society of which he is a member.,. Huxley defined the law of 
 external nature, which he read in terms of the doctrine of" 
 evolution, as "the cosmic process"; translated into the 
 moral domain it was "the self-assertion, the unscrupulous 
 seizing upon all that can be grasped, the tenacious holding 
 of all that can be kept, which constitute the struggle for 
 existence."* But he also recognized in human life the 
 "ethical process which checks the cosmic process at every 
 step." By the potency of this "ethical process" Huxley 
 would estimate the real progress of humanity. "Social 
 progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every 
 step and the substitution for it of another, which may be 
 called the ethical process; the end of which is not the sur- 
 vival of those who may happen to be the fittest in respect 
 of the whole of the conditions which obtain* but of those who 
 are ethically the best."** 
 
 Adopting these terms that Huxley has coined we may 
 make a working definition for ourselves Progress is to be 
 measured by the relative proportion of "the ethical process" 
 to "the cosmic process" at any definite stage of the world's 
 
 1 
 
 * Evolution and Ethics, 1903 p. 51 
 **0p. cit., p. 8 1. 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 13 / 
 
 history. It is to be estimated by the rationality of life 
 rather than by the length of days. 
 
 But is it not the Ironic Spirit that prompts us if we 
 speak at such a time as this of Progress in other terms 
 than those of "reeking tube and iron shard ?" Have our 
 fine dreams that we spun before 1914 all been shot away? 
 When we come to grips not with nightmares which vanish 
 but with horrible realities that clutch us in open daylight, 
 are we likely to sink into pessimism and think that the 
 late-comer "Progress" is a delusion? That were, I believe, 
 too doleful a view. We have been chastened, however, checks to 
 and have grown less confident as to the triumphant advance P timism 
 of the human race over all obstacles to the goal of its per- 
 fection. The future of mankind is shrouded in mystery. 
 Foul weather has succeeded fair days with disconcerting 
 suddenness, and we have no grounds for assuming that this 
 is the last storm that will snap off fruit and branches from 
 our civilization. Even in this Western world we are not 
 in the mood to-day to indulge as optimistically as before the 
 anticipations of the French theorists as to the indefinite 
 perfectibility of the human species on this earth. 
 
 Nor does Christianity itself compel us to adopt such 
 a theory. In the parable of the Sower, Jesus sets forth the 
 different kinds of soil on which the seed of His Gospel will 
 fall. There is the hard beaten track through the corn-field 
 from which the birds pick off the grains, the thin soil on an 
 underlying rocky bed, ground that is not clean, and good 
 ground that yields in abundance. By the use of this parable 
 Jesus warns His disciples against undue enthusiasm. He 
 interprets thereby the quality of their environment, and 
 there is no reason to doubt that He would take a similar view 
 of the modern world, for that relation of soils and seed illus- 
 trates the response to moral issues ordinarily given by the 
 average society of to-day. Only a portion of the world lives 
 and probably always will live by the ideal. It is true that 
 the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Seed growing 
 through all its stages blade, ear, full corn in the ear- 
 indicate His expectation that His Kingdom would grow to 
 
Evil Results 
 of the 
 Present 
 Distress 
 
 14 THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 such proportions as to draw the children of men from 
 everywhere to its protecting shade, but He fixed His 
 view also upon another world as the final realm of His 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Though our safest method is to take short views, there 
 are still good reasons for tracing an upward path even 
 in and through the present agony. Progress in the past has 
 not had free course. There have been many set-backs, 
 and if at present we are perplexed we need not swing from 
 buoyancy into hopelessness. It is an ancient experience of 
 our race that the finest virtues are often tempered in the 
 furnace of suffering. It behooves us, however, to consider 
 both the evils and the possible good that face us in the pres- 
 ent distress. 
 
 One of the most obvious of these evils is the rift in Western 
 civilization, the snapping of sympathy which like a wire 
 should carry intelligent messages from nation to nation; 
 and alas! it will long be dissevered. An irreparable loss this, 
 because civilization is enriched by the unique ideas that 
 come and go between each nation and race, and if these 
 do not interchange in free intercourse the isolation of the 
 people affects injuriously what should be a common posses- 
 sion of mankind. Nor is it a certainty that the unselfish 
 emotions which have been called forth in the belligerent 
 nations will be maintained, for the loss of hundreds of 
 thousands of the idealistic youth of the world is in itself a 
 serious drain on its moral resources. 
 
 There is also a profound feeling of insecurity abroad. 
 We have discovered with a great shock that the world is not 
 nearly so honest as we had supposed it to be; nations have 
 suddenly come to trust one another less than they did; 
 and your President has found it necessary to ask you to 
 protect yourselves against the possibility of aggressiveness. 
 In the society of mankind weapons must be carried for 
 defence as men carried them in pioneer days on this conti- 
 nent or in mediaeval Europe. For a time at least the year 
 1916 has plunged us into a less hopeful condition than 
 existed in the first decade of the twentieth century. 
 
THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 15 
 
 It may be also that when the war is over such an impetus 
 will have been given to technical efficiency that the world 
 will be turned into a huge workshop. Should the immedi- \ 
 ate future be absorbed in the replenishing of diminished I 
 stocks, the capture of new markets, and the acquisition ;jj L^ 
 of commerce, we may readily fall into the disastrous but easy r 
 habit of measuring Progress once again in terms of mere' 
 industrial success. 
 
 To redress the balance these considerations are to be set Reasons for 
 in the opposite scale. Awful though the agony of Europe 
 is, there are certain advantages that will result from its 
 being so long protracted. Great moral and social changes, 
 if they come without revolution and are to be permanent, 
 require time for their comprehension, and the months or 
 years of enforced cooperation between various grades of 
 society in the prosecution of a common patriotism will 
 create a new mutual understanding in each belligerent 
 nation, especially those that are victors. Burning questions 
 will have cooled off. A universal sacrifice will have pro- 
 duced a common sympathy, and this sacrifice may win what 
 legislation never would have secured. In the future there 
 will be fewer joltings of the social machine because it will 
 have been placed on new bearings. The world will have 
 won a new admiration for the heroic, for public service, for 
 sacrifice; a new spirit of generosity will have been evoked, 
 and enforced economy, at least in some countries, may 
 usher in days of simplicity in which for a time homely 
 virtues will thrive. 
 
 Assuredly the youth of the .countries that I know best A Sch o1 
 
 . . J ! : . , of Discipline 
 
 are receiving their education in an unprecedented school 
 of discipline. The curious searcher into theories is bustled 
 aside by the eager man who is intent upon discovering his 
 immediate duty in a world of hard realities. Old prejudices 
 are giving way in the strain that has been put upon them and 
 the younger generation are throwing from. them many broken 
 dogmas. They are making for themselves their own theories 
 and discovering their own principles at a time when they 
 cannot be satisfied with conventional doctrines. On the 
 
1 6 THE DREXEL INSTITUTE MONOGRAPHS 
 
 youth of the present the end of one age has come crashing 
 down, and, as it happened after the French Revolution so 
 it may happen soon again, they will not debate curiously 
 how true the old dogmas have been but whether they are 
 strong enough to build a new society with. This genera- 
 tion at least will be sincere. They are realizing an ethical 
 purpose by incessant effort, and in this lies the most 
 certain hope of Progress, for it is not transmitted by mere 
 sequence of events from fathers to languid sons with a rich 
 inheritance, but it is a possession of those who for them- 
 selves lay the foundations anew by hard work on a solid rock. 
 Democracy has not yet fully justified itself. Many who 
 have rested their hopes upon it have become disillusioned. 
 They see less freedom of thought than they had hoped for: 
 majorities disregard minorities; corporations have no 
 souls; labor unions cow the individual; beauty is too often 
 scorned; the gentler virtues wither amidst materialistic 
 selfishness. But there is reason to hope that in the furnace 
 of this world-disaster many inveterate evils will perish and 
 that virtues will be tempered as fine instruments for prun- 
 
 rank or spurious growths. 
 
 hough I have never been able to persuade myself that 
 Progress is so assured that we may with certainty look 
 forward to the age when evil will have righted itself and the 
 world will be converted into a Paradise by the mere march 
 of events, or that the ultimate goal of our species is a per- 
 fected race on this earth as the French philosophers 
 dreamed, yet even through our great agony we get glimpses 
 of sunshine which promise a brighter day for those who will 
 succeed us. 
 
 "We men, who in our morn of youth defied v 
 The elements, must vanish be it so! 
 Enough, if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and serve the future hour; 
 And if, as towards the silent tomb we go, 
 Through love, through hope and faith's trans- 
 cendent dower, 
 We feel that we are greater than we know." 
 
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