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. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... SOCIAL EVOLUTION ANtf: POLITICAL THEORY," CHAPTER I The Meaning Of Progress Like every age and every state of human society the period in which we live has its merits and defects, its elements of success and failure. Contemporary critics assuming the part of candid friends are perhaps more concerned with the failures, and the note of pessimism sounds clearly enough in much of the literature of the day. But depreciation of the present, gloomy views of the future, and idealization of the past are common characteristics of literary criticism, rff literature is evidence, we could construct a chain of testimony proving the continuous deterioration of humanity from the time of Hesiod to the present day. The past, when it is seen at all, appears always in a halo of romance, j Just as in our own personal memory many things which we should be exceedingly loath to experience anew become positively enjoyable in the mellowness of retrospect, as the contrast of some great hardship forms a pleasing background for present comfort, so in the memory of the race much that we should be sorry to live through again in real earnest acquires the tinge of romance when 1 viewed/'&t'a safe distance. Whereas the discomforts, the ugliness, and the squalor of the present afflict us with aU tKe; insistence of grim reality, the corresponding eleme'4s in the past are either forgotten, or are softened and transfigured by the haze of time. /Hence it is that our.view of historical change tends to be distorted in the.direction of pessimism, and in any attempt at a scientific measure of social progress we must be on our guard against this bias of social memory. Those who are most zealous for social improvement will indeed be the last to minimize the evils that exist. 3ut...
