Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/146



, as every competent thinker must allow, a full measure of validity to the contention that social developments are matters of slow growth and gradual attainment rather than of sudden and catastrophic change; admitting that even in the sphere of scientific discovery and mechanical invention changes occur much more gradually than a cursory glance at individual achievements would suggest; recognising that many of the most remarkable changes whose arrival in the past is the only possible valid guide to anticipation of similar or kindred changes in the future; it is still a condition of such anticipation that we should take account of causes likely to be operative in altering the rate at which the world will move. To allow that social improvements generally have the air of occurring almost automatically is not to conceive that they are without cause. Neither can it be believed by anyone who has studied the history of such movements in the past, or