Page:A Modern Symposium - Dickinson - 1913.djvu/125

 and my attitude towards it. You have assumed throughout, as, of course, you were bound to do, that things are worth while. But if they aren't, what becomes of all your aims, all your views, all your problems and disputes? The basis on which you are all agreed, however much you may differ in detail, is that things can be made better, and that it's worth while to make them so. But if one denies both propositions, what happens to the superstructure? And I do deny them; and not only that, but I can't conceive how anyone ever came to accept them. Surely, if one didn't approach the question with an irrational bias towards optimism, one would never imagine that there is such a thing as progress in anything that really matters. Or are even we here impressed by such silly and irrelevant facts as telephones and motor-cars? Ellis, I should think, has said enough to dispel that kind of illusion; and I don't want to labour a tedious point. If we are to look for progress at all we must look for it, I suppose, in men. And I have never seen any evidence that men are generally better than they used to be; on the contrary, I think there is evidence that they are