INTRODUCTION

When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism.  Some of these have been partly realised, and there is no reason why any of them should not be fully realised, in a society or in the world, if it were the united purpose of a society or of the world to realise it.  They are approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not because they are true or false.  But there is another order of ideas that play a great part in determining and directing the course of man’s conduct but do not depend on his will—­ideas which bear upon the mystery of life, such as Fate, Providence, or personal immortality.  Such ideas may operate in important ways on the forms of social action, but they involve a question of fact and they are accepted or rejected not because they are believed to be useful or injurious, but because they are believed to be true or false.

The idea of the progress of humanity is an idea of this kind, and it is important to be quite clear on the point.  We now take it so much for granted, we are so conscious of constantly progressing in knowledge, arts, organising capacity, utilities of all sorts, that it is easy to look upon Progress as an aim, like liberty or a world-federation, which it only depends on our own efforts and good-will to achieve.  But though all increases of power and knowledge depend on human effort, the idea of the Progress of humanity, from which all these particular progresses derive their value, raises a definite question of fact, which man’s wishes or labours cannot affect any more than his wishes or labours can prolong life beyond the grave.

This idea means that civilisation has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction.  But in order to judge that we are moving in a desirable direction we should have to know precisely what the destination is.  To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence.  But it is impossible to be sure that civilisation is moving in the right direction to realise this aim.  Certain features of our “progress” may be urged as presumptions in its favour, but there are always offsets, and it has always been easy to make out a case that, from the point of view of increasing happiness, the tendencies of our progressive civilisation are far from desirable.  In short, it cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable.  The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore not Progress.  This is a question of fact, and one which is at present as insoluble as the question of personal immortality.  It is a problem which bears on the mystery of life.