Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... Man's golden age is in the future.--Poetry and mythology are wont to represent the earliest age of man's abode upon the earth as one of purity and innocence, of prosperity and peace, a time when he lived in perfect happiness on the fruits of the unfilled earth, suffered no bodily infirmity, passed away in a gentle sleep, and became after his demise a guardian daemon of this world. All this is nothing more than gloss, 1' an air-hung mirage over sterile desert sands.' The ideal of our humanity is painted not on the crumbling walls of the past but on the fresh clean canvas of the future. We must look not backward but forward for man's best and happiest lot. Just as the astronomer can predict the future state of the heavens, so the sociologist can foresee that division of labor, mutual dependence, coincidence of human interests throughout vast areas, growth of international friendship, antagonism against warfare as against an intolerable disturbance, and the spirit of Christianity, making ever wider and deeper conquests must as cooperating forces go on until in the remote future an approximately perfect state of society will be reached all over the world. Human progress is the law of history.--*' By far the most obvious and constant characteristic common to a vast number of social changes is that they are changes from a worse to a better state of things, that they constitute phases of progress.' *' It is not asserted that human history has in all times and places been the history of progress.' We do not entertain the fallacy of supposing civilization to have without any exception proceeded serially or uniformly. The career of 1 Gerald Massey, 2 Prof. Fiske. progress 1' has been frequently interrupted by periods of stagnation and declension.'...
