CHAPTER XXIII
PROGRESS, FALSE AND TRUE
"The Wind bloweth as it listeth; and thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth."
It may seem to some readers anomalous to write the words False Progress. It seems to be often ignored that any such thing can exist. Many suppose that so long as we are moving, we are necessarily moving onwards. Others again suppose that movement is of no use unless it be in the ultimately true direction; they forget that turmoil, which is useless for progress, may be useful in preventing stagnation.
Nothing is more certain than that some Power beyond our ken forces us to go through a great deal of false Progress, i.e. of motion, the tendency of which is not in the direction towards which Humanity is really tending. We are constantly deceived in this matter. We think we are making a progressive movement, and all the while we may have been retrograding towards barbarism, or making a rapid rush off on a path which we shall have to retrace before we can rejoin the onward March of Humanity. We have to discount our jubilation about progress; we certainly progress on the whole; but we are, at any given moment, liable to mistake for progress something which is in reality the reverse.
When the Prophets saw, as we see every summer day, how the wind catches up the particles of dust and carries them along, whirling them round and round as it goes, they felt that progress carries mankind on so; not in one straight line, but round and round, yet steadily
