Is Progress Real

By Will and Ariel Durant

Against the panorama of nations, morals, and religions rising and falling, the idea of progress
finds itself in dubious shape. Is it only the vain 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 materialistic benefits,
overcoming of competition or the fighting of wars.

One of the discouraging discoveries of our disillusioned 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 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 fibre. We
have immensely developed our means of locomotion, but some of us use them to facilitate crime
and 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.

We applaud the cures of modern medicine if they bring no side effects worse than the malady;
we appreciate our Physicians in their mad race with the resilience of microbes and the
inventiveness of the 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 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 bettered the conditions of life for skilled working men and the middle class, but we
have allowed our cities to fester with dark slums.

We take pride in religious progress, but have we developed a natural ethic- a moral
code independent of religion—- strong enough to keep our instincts degrading our civilisation
into greed, crime and promiscuity. Have we really outgrown intolerance, or merely transferred it
from religious to national, ideological, or racial hostilities? Are our manners better than before,
or worse? “ Manners” , said a nineteenth century traveller, “ get regularly worse as you go from
the East to the West; it is bad in Asia, not so good in Europe, and altogether bad in America. And
now the East imitates the West. Have we given ourselves more freedom than our intelligence can
digest?

Has there been any progress at all since Confucius. Or in Literature since Aeschylus? Are we
sure that our music, with its complex forms and powerful orchestras, is more profound or more
musical and inspiring that the medieval Arabs sang to the strumming of their simple
instruments? How does our contemporary architecture—bold, original, and impressive as it is—
compare with the temples of ancient Egypt or Greece? If “ the replacement of chaos with order is
the essence of art and civilisation “, is contemporary painting in America and Western Europe
the replacement of order with chaos, and a vivid symbol of civilisation’s relapse into confused
and structureless decay?

We must not demand of progress that it should be continuous or universal. Obviously there are
retrogressions, just as there’s are periods of failure, fatigue and rest in a developing individual ; if
the present stage is an advance in control of the environment, progress is real. We may presume
that at almost any time in history some nations were progressing and some were declining. The
same nation may be progressing in one field of human activity and retrogressive in another, as
America is now progressing in technology and receding in graphic arts. We should not compare
the work of one land with the best of all the collected past. Our problem is whether the
average man has increased ability to control the conditions of his life.

In the debate between the ancients and the moderns, it is not at all clear that the ancients carry off
the prize. Shall we count it a trivial achievement that famine has been eliminated in modern
states, and that one country can now grow enough food to overfeed itself and yet send hundreds
of millions of tons of grains to nations in need? Are we ready to scuttle the science that has so
diminished superstition, or technology that has spread food, home ownership, comfort education
and leisure beyond any precedent? Perhaps it is desirable that life should take fresh forms that
new civilisation and centres should have their turn. Meanwhile the effort to meet the challenge of
the rising East may reinvigorate the West.

We have said that a great civilisation does not merely die. Some precious achievements have
survived all the vicissitudes of rising and falling states; the making of fire and light, of the wheel
and the basic tools; language, writing, art, and song; agriculture, the family, and parental care;
social organisation; and the use of teaching to transmit the lore of the family and the race. These
are the elements of civilisation to the next. They are the connective tissue of human history .

If education is the transmission of civilisation, we are unquestionably progressing. Civilisation is

Progress is real if all have access to education. Consider education not as the accumulation of
facts and dates and reigns, not necessary preparation for employment, but as the transmission of
our mental, moral, technical and aesthetic heritage as fully as possible to as many as possible, for
the enlargement of man’s understanding, control, embellishment and enjoyment of life.

———————End————————