Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/247

 HE progress in material comfort which has been made during the last hundred years has not produced content. Quite the contrary: the men of to-day are not nearly so contented with life on earth as their ancestors were. This observation is easily explainable by familiar facts in human nature. If satisfaction does not reach to the pitch of satiety, it does not produce content, but discontent; it is therefore a stimulus to more effort, and is essential to growth. If, however, we confine our study of the observation which we have made to its sociological aspects, we perceive that all which we call "progress" is limited by the counter-movements which it creates, and we also see the true meaning of the phenomena which have led some to the crude and silly absurdity that progress makes us worse off. Progress certainly does not make people happier, unless their mental and moral growth corresponds to the greater command of material comfort which they win. All that we call progress is a simple enlargement of chances, and the question of personal happiness is a question of how the chances will be used. It follows that if men do not grow in their knowledge of life and in their intelligent judgment of the rules of right living as rapidly as they gain control over physical resources, they will not win happiness at all. They will simply accumulate chances which they do not know how to use.

The observation which has just been made about individual happiness has also a public or social aspect which is important. It is essential that the political institutions,