The Dominion. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1913. IS THERE PROGRESS?

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1681, 22 February 1913, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1913. IS THERE PROGRESS?

Even h€ this end of the world we heard at tlie New Year that Mii. Carnegie, moved no doubt by soine private conviction' that the millions he has given away have given him a sort of. special interest in the world and its inhabitants* 'flung out a cheery assurance that tho world was all right and that lie had great hopes , of it; On the , other hand - Dr. Alfred RuSsfer, Wallace, tho veteran, scientist, has the poorest kind of opinion of tho world, ' but,. ho has hopes for the future 'if .the future will. only 1 be full, of "turmoil" leading to Socialism. Men ■ arc ~ to-day, he says, no further, advanced in the essentials of life than they were seven thousand years,ago. Between. these- extremes ' of . pessimism and Optimism there may be a middle view, which : is .nearer to the- truth, but there does not appear to be any means wherebv tho truth ■ as to the progress of the world, can.be discovered. • ■ In the first place people cannot be got to agree as to what progress really is, and that is why ;for evpry man who is convinced that the. world is going td the dogs .you will find another, man who;will deny that life wfe worth living until the beginning- of the present century. In every mind there are standards and sets of values peculiar;to that mind. To those- who hold that mechanical triumphs have best served mankind, it appears certain that in the ages before the- motor-car, the linotypo and tlie. telephone lifo. was, imperfect, and little more than a rough, animal struggle with Nature. To such men the Greece of Pisßicr.ES,. the. Rome of- Augustus were as truly barbarous and uncivilised as . Tibet is today. , To those who measure : progress by the v percentage of those who can read or write, every year appears to be a hew rung surmounted in the ladder to perfection. But ;we need not multiply these' instances. -. Tho one thing irpon which all men ohght to agree : is" this: that if, on the whole, men lived truly happier lives in, say, the 10th century than in tho 20th, it is at the least "doubtful whether it is correct to'say that progress has ,bcen made in the last thousand years. But there are unfortunately ho means of; knowing whether the world's happiness was evor greater or lesß than it is now. For one thing, data are wanting, and even if there were no dearth of data, there would be disputes as to thb matters in respect of which the comparisons should bo made. How can we of to-day, deeido whether life has rcallv moved upward since the days of Perici.es when' we cannot agree upon a problem for which we have all the data and all the factors, namely, the. problem whether this age of our own is good' and progressive or the. reverse ? Men will not even agree on such,a point as ' whether, the . rich are , growing richer and the poor poorer. Some Socialists answer yes 'to this question, and others answer no. A large section of them: admit that the poor aro improving in respect of their material conditions, but they insist that at the same time the "injustice"- -of the "wage system" is growing greater as industry becomes more scientific. • | . An American writer has been led by these considerations to say that we need a standard of social measurement which shall give a common rating to starvation and to injustice before we can use these factors in measuring civilisation.' "What Society needs is a Bradstreet's index ritifnber of civilisation." Ho takes the case of the French .people, who are so often accused of being decadent,_ and points out that a French virtue can bo set over against every French vice: " The country's population is at a standstill; but Paris still puts forth tho ideas that may be the making of new civilisations. French literature of to-day is overcharged with animalism and immoralism; but Franco has produced Pasteur arid the Curies. Frdnco. as a Power of, tho first rank ia declining before , tho German advanco; but the diffusion of prosperity in Franco is more equablo than in any other country. Tho absinthe habit is growing in :Paris, but the Dreyfus affair a splendid act of national sacrifice to the ideal of justice. Thus the debate will go on without end, precisely as if Bradstreet were to go on pitting the pricc of beef ngainst the price of pig-iron and of cotton goo<ls against steel beams, instead of assigning an arithmetical value to each commodity and striking a general average; Imagine, in tho case of Franco, an index number based on only half-a-dozen commodities, such hs: . Liberty Wages Population growth Position of wonlon Military and naval rank Susceptibility to new ideas. Even on this rough basis, assigning a maximiim of 100 points to each item, we should approximate a fair evoluntion of the progress of tho French people. In developing this interesting idea further, the writer suggests a few other itoins for the new Bradstreet's calculations: Automobile output, children in the canncries, book production, literary standards, poverty, justice, attendance at baseball games, status of Richard Wagner, wages of shop-girls, infant mortality, 5 itch an iiidojt. lie admits, will bo infinitely hard to con-

| struct) hut it would be worth the trouble. But would it bo worth the trouble ? We are sure it would not. For who can feel satisfied that the book production, or tho number of children in the canneries, are really indexes of progress or retrogression ? We have heard of a lnaii who believed that the "curscs of New Zealand" were "woman's .suffrage and trotters" (meaning trotting horses). And everybody who has strong ideas, even if tliPy 'tire also wrong ideas, has his own. special "curses'' and "blessings," and, therefore, his own rough idea of what lie means by progress. It is not in wage-sheets, in gunnery tests, in statistics of. publishing, iii the mortality bills, or in the records of great industrial fortunes that one can look for light upon true progress. "Progress Is a meaningless term Unless it means the increase of the proportion of happy people ill the world j ilnd happiness is o'nly partly the jli'odiict of material clrCumstdhccfe. Are people growing kinder i Are they growing stronger In a patient , desire for truth? Ai'e they Improving In their capacity to enjoy such life as iics about them? Do tiiey possess their souls more, surely? These are' the vital questions, and it is not .'within any man's capacity to answer them, although everybody will be prompt with his own replies,. Most people, however, will answer "no" to each <of them; and will argue , perhaps from that fact that although the great world is spinning down the ringing grooves of change, it is not progressing towards perfection, but rather the reverse. Either Mr. Carnegie or Dr. ( Alfred Russet., Wallace may be right; thev may both be wrong. Neither of them, one can Safely sav, has a clear idea of what he would regard as a perfect, world, nor has anyone else. All .that one can feel sure of is that the human heart is unchanged _by the centurics arid that, the striving for' better things will go oil,