Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/590

 582 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October In the future ? The historical part of this opinion is no doubt hard to prove. Mr. Bury gives us many interesting illustrations of the questions which it involves : the comparative merits of the ancients and of modern generations, the explanations which can be given of the periods during which there seems to be regress, the doubt whether we can have evidence adequate to support such judgements at all. The hope as to the future, if it is to be regarded as inconsistent with any belief in design, looks like a dogma accepted on somewhat slender grounds. Do we believe, further, that the world will become better whatever we do, and apart from effort ? Such a belief may amount only to a confidence in human nature, to an assured conviction that the necessary efforts will be made. But those who are conscious how much effort is required to prevent the world from getting worse will hesitate before they publish a statement to the effect that no effort is required to make it better. Such a view would deserve the friendly doubts expressed by Mr. Bury or the more systematic attacks of Dr. Inge ; but it is hard to believe that it is held generally. Has the idea of progress assumed possession of us all in any other sense than as an ideal ? Probably all men are conscious that the world is imperfect : most men would agree further that part of the defect can be remedied. There are some who believe that, imperfect as the present may be, it is not after all the worst possible, and our well-meant but clumsy efforts may well succeed in making it worse : these are the tem- peramental conservatives who draw the inference that we had better abstain from change. But the majority even of those who rank them- selves as conservatives are not averse to certain changes, though they may feel that their function is rather that of being a drag on the wheel, and they may repeat Aristotle's warning as to the danger of advancing on to the slippery slope of alteration. A belief in the desirability of change is not in itself equivalent to a belief in progress. There were plenty of men in the cities of ancient Greece who were anxious for change : it looks as though every democracy contained an oligarchical minority, and most oligarchies a democratic minority, whose advocacy of a changed constitution did not necessarily mean a vulgar desire for power, any more than it was necessarily confined to constitutional matters as we now imderstand them. A change in the constitution meant a change in the whole manner of the citizens' life, and presumably the advocates of each form had a genuine belief in the superiority of what they proposed. Yet Mr. Bury is undoubtedly right in excluding the ancient Greeks from those who believe in progress. Is not the reason that this belief presupposes an ideal element which the ancient Greeks did not accept and to which, if the conception had been presented to them, they might even have found themselves definitely opposed ? So long as the object aimed at is definite, and not too far removed from what is practicable, a believer in that object may be said to be aiming at reform, whether gradual or immediate, but he hardly has the condition for a belief in progress. Such a belief requires, if it is to be inaintained continuously, that its object is either incapable of being practically realized as a whole, or at any rate so far from realization within any limited time as to prevent the