and a certain surplus of attention and energy is released, there is something cumulative in the process, akin to the acceleration noted in the physical 'law of falling bodies.' 1 But the movement is never completed; it is a series of approximations. Finally, it is not inevitable nor in the nature of things; it is contingent upon human energy, human intelligence, human discipline, foresight, and will.

1 Suggestions of this occur in John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, ii, 292-3; see also Morgan, Ancient Society, Part IV. This principle of acceleration holds good at least for progress in the arts of life: Morgan phrases it as slow in time but geometric in ratio. On his scale of ethnic periods, Savagery and Lower Barbarism cover four fifths of man's entire life on this planet. Domestication of animals and the discovery of new sources of power gave a tremendous push forward. The galloping industrial development of the nineteenth century even more strikingly illustrates this cumulative process.

CHAPTER VII

THE CRITERIA OF PROGRESS

I

A GENERATION or two ago if you had asked Western historians or philosophers, What is the test of progress? they would probably have replied, 'increasing civilization,' and smiled complacently. But they would have left the question still unanswered. For what is civilization? Guizot, the historian of civilization, said: "Wherever the exterior of man becomes enlarged, quickened or improved, wherever the intellectual nature of man distinguishes itself by its energy, brilliancy, and its grandeur; wherever these two signs concur, and they often do so, notwithstanding the gravest imperfections in the social system, there man proclaims and applauds civilization." A more modern Latin expresses the idea more precisely and less rhetorically: "Civilization is human progress integrated and intensified. Its most essential and characteristic manifestations are diffusion of culture, a high moral and intellectual level, and respect for law. Hence civilization is above all the result of the domination of man by himself, it is a work of interior culture in which three civilizing forces par excellence coöperate; religion, art, science." Lester F. Ward defined it as "the artificial adjustment of natural objects in such a manner that the natural forces will thereby pro1 Dellepiane, Rev. International de Sociologie, Jan. 1912, p. 19.

duce results advantageous to man." Carver introduces the idea of productivity: "Now civilization is essentially a storing of surplus energy, and is due to the fact that men have had more energy to expend than was necessary to procure subsistence." William T. Harris pronounced a people civilized when it has formed for itself institutions which give men command of the earth and likewise command over the experiences of the entire race.

The Great War has renewed on all sides the old discussion of what civilization really means. Apparently civilization is culture plus something else if we may judge from the following definitions. Ellwood finds civilization to be at bottom "the creation and transmission of ideal values. by which men regulate their conduct . . . the discovery, diffusion, and transmission from age to age of the knowledge, beliefs, ideas, and ideals by which men have found it possible to conquer nature and live together in well-ordered groups." Tylor in his classic work held that "Culture or Civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." 1

It is evident that 'civilization' is a complex term involving many factors, and that it is also purely relative, since savages have a measure of culture. Hence the term must be broken up in order to arrive at the quantity, quality, and direction of culture necessary to enter the class of 'progressive civilizations.' I shall begin by a rapid summary of test-formulæ proposed by divers writers widely separated in time, country, and pursuits.

1 Ward, Dynamic Sociology, ii, 205; Carver, Sociology and Social Progress, 12; Harris, "A Definition of Civilization," an address before the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, printed in the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1904; Ellwood, Am. Jour. Sociol., 20:495; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, p. 1.

Progress in civilization, according to Condorcet, is moral and intellectual; accomplishes three objectives, namely, destruction of inequality between nations, progress of equality between citizens of the same nation, and the real perfection of man; by means of new discoveries in the sciences and arts, and their application to individual and communal well-being, or by improvement in the principles. of conduct and practical morality, or by perfecting man's intellectual, moral, and physical faculties. Comte's criteria of progress include: the development of order (his commonest test, particularly in the Polity), increasing social differentiation and integration, a growing preponderance of reason over animality, an enlargement of man's power over the forces of nature, increasing satisfaction of wants in the face of increasing populations, increasing aptitude for mental combinations and abstract thinking, development of the social faculties and their expression in industrial coöperation and efforts toward social amelioration. Von Lilienfeld, like Tylor and De Greef, conceives progress as spiral instead of rectilinear; and applies in the economic field the test of increase in property with growing economic freedom; in the political, greater individuality of action and enlarged freedom; in the legal, more exact definition and greater assurance of the rights of individual and community. Progressive civilization, according to Bryce, includes physical improvement, material comforts, intelligence, improved social relations (freedom, security, order), and moral improvement. Professor Patten uses both objective and subjective measures: a higher social structure is marked by increased activity, surplus, invention, wealth, and will power; and his five tests for progress cover: a desire for intenser forms of happiness, removal of fear, stability of social institutions, growth of voluntary associations, and spread of the spirit of toleration and decision by

compromise instead of by combat. To Marvin knowledge, applied power, and social unity and organization are the striking differences which the historian finds between civilized and uncivilized men. Crozier applies the single test of "elevation and expansion of the individual mind," or "greater and greater respect for individual expansion and enlargement," working in two directions, "the diffusion and extension of equal justice, equal rights, equal privileges, equal opportunities," and "the ascension of men's ideals from brute force upwards to the coronation of intellect and virtue"; and posits as the fundamental presupposition, the real test, the practical equalization of material and social conditions. Closely allied with this view is Henry George's categorical statement that "association in equality is the law of progress. Modern civilization owes its

superiority to the growth of equality with the growth of association." So also a group of Russian thinkers. To Kropotkin progress consists in social solidarity with complete freedom of individual initiative. In Lavrov's hands the formula becomes a harmonizing and synthetizing of the social forces of solidarity and individuality. Kareyev expands the formula to include "the gradual elevation of the standard of human development accompanied by conditions which make it possible for a larger and larger number to attain this standard," a just division of labor, free interchange of thoughts, feelings and tradition, coöperation, opportunity for realizing spiritual interests and an improved view of life, freedom, equality, solidarity, and improvement in social institutions and the arts of life.1

1 Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, ed. 1797, pp. 250-1; Comte, Positive Philosophy, Martineau 2 vol. ed., i, 120, 361; ii, 140, 150 ff., 83–90, 128 ff., 257, 288, 554, etc.; von Lilienfeld, La pathologie sociale, introduction; Bryce, Atl. Mo., 100: 145-56; Patten, "The reconstruction of economic theory," chap. xv, in Ann. Amer. Acad., 44 (supplement): 83-8; Marvin, The Living Past, 4-5; Crozier, Civilization