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The belief in Progress, not as an ideal but as an indisputable fact, not as a task for humanity but as a law of Nature, has been the working faith of the West for about a hundred and fifty years. Some would have us believe that it is a long neglected part of the Christian revelation, others that it is a modern discovery. The ancient Pagans, we are told, put their golden age in the past; we put ours in the future. The Greeks prided themselves on being the degenerate descendants of gods, we on being the very creditable descendants of monkeys. The Romans endeavoured to preserve the wisdom and virtue of the past, we to anticipate the wisdom and virtue of the future. This, however, is an exaggeration. The theory of progress and the theory of decadence are equally natural, and have in fact been held concurrently wherever men have speculated about their origin, their present condition, and their future prospects. Among the Jews the theory of decadence derived an inspired authority from Genesis, but the story of the Fall had very little influence upon the thought of that tenaciously optimistic race. Among the Greeks, who had the melancholy as well as the buoyancy of youth, it was authorized by Hesiod, whose scheme of retrogression, from the age of gold to the age of iron, was never forgotten in antiquity. Sophocles, in a well-known chorus imitated by Bacon, holds that the best fate for men is 'not to be born, or being born to die'.
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Excerpt from The Idea of Progress
Hesiod. In the golden age Dike or Astraea wandered about the earth freely; in the silver age her visits became fewer, and in the brazen age she set out for heaven and became the constellation Virgo. Perhaps Horace had read the lament of the goddess: 'what a race the golden Sires have left - worse than their fathers and your offspring will be baser still.' In the third century after Christ, when civilization was really crumbling, Pagans and Christians join in a chorus of woe. On the other side, the triumphs of man over nature are celebrated by the great tragedians, and the Introduction to the First Book of Thucydides sketches the past history of Greece in the spirit of the nineteenth century. Lucretius has delighted our anthropologists by his brilliant and by no means idealized description of savage life, and it is to him that we owe the blessed word Progress in its modern sense.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Reseña del editor
Excerpt from The Idea of Progress
The belief in Progress, not as an ideal but as an indisputable fact, not as a task for humanity but as a law of Nature, has been the working faith of the West for about a hundred and fifty years. Some would have us believe that it is a long neglected part of the Christian revelation, others that it is a modern discovery. The ancient Pagans, we are told, put their golden age in the past; we put ours in the future. The Greeks prided themselves on being the degenerate descendants of gods, we on being the very creditable descendants of monkeys. The Romans endeavoured to preserve the wisdom and virtue of the past, we to anticipate the wisdom and virtue of the future. This, however, is an exaggeration. The theory of progress and the theory of decadence are equally natural, and have in fact been held concurrently wherever men have speculated about their origin, their present condition, and their future prospects. Among the Jews the theory of decadence derived an inspired authority from Genesis, but the story of the Fall had very little influence upon the thought of that tenaciously optimistic race. Among the Greeks, who had the melancholy as well as the buoyancy of youth, it was authorized by Hesiod, whose scheme of retrogression, from the age of gold to the age of iron, was never forgotten in antiquity. Sophocles, in a well-known chorus imitated by Bacon, holds that the best fate for men is 'not to be born, or being born to die'.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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The Idea of Progress Classic Reprint
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Verkäuferbewertung 5 von 5 Sternen
PAP. Zustand: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Artikel-Nr. LW-9781330916711
Anzahl: 15 verfügbar