Progress

Transcript

[Page 1] Progress According to James H. Robinson, it was only yesterday in world history that man "came to wish to progress, and still more recently that he came to see that he can voluntarily progress and that he has progressed. This appears to me to be the most impressive message that history has to give us and the most vital in the light that it costs on the conduct of life." Robinson, The New History p[age] 251 (over) [Page 2] Perfect knowledge of the past, so Robinson affirms, reveals the basic fact that there is an eternal law of progress, and that the present system of things, including traditional ethics and dogmatic religion, is merely temporary and provisional, a preparation for something better to come, just as the past was the preparation for the better order of things that obtain today.