Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/168

 appeared to be making progress not only on the material plane but in the arts of personal conduct and of government? Events which seem to carry a shattering of this faith may be arousing a sudden panic in our aged breasts. But if our lifelong sense of progress has found support in so many centuries of intellectual and moral advancement, it seems inherently unlikely that a few years’ debauch of folly and of hate can permanently reverse the course of human history and plunge us back to barbarism.