they thought confidently that this was a secure and permanent
progressive system, and on the strength of some three hundred years
of change and irregular improvement answered the doubter with, "Things
always have gone well. We'll worry through!"

But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth
century with the condition of any previous period in his history, then
perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence.
It was not so much a reasoned confidence as the inevitable consequence
of sustained good fortune. By such standards as they possessed, things
HAD gone amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that for the first time in history whole populations found themselves
regularly supplied with more than enough to eat, and the vital
statistics of the time witness to an amelioration of hygienic conditions
rapid beyond all precedent, and to a vast development of intelligence
and ability in all the arts that make life wholesome. The level and
quality of the average education had risen tremendously; and at the dawn
of the twentieth century comparatively few people in Western Europe or
America were unable to read or write. Never before had there been such
reading masses. There was wide social security. A common man might
travel safely over three-quarters of the habitable globe, could go
round the earth at a cost of less than the annual earnings of a skilled
artisan. Compared with the liberality and comfort of the ordinary life
of the time, the order of the Roman Empire under the Antonines was local
and limited. And every year, every month, came some new increment to
human achievement, a new country opened up, new mines, new scientific
discoveries, a new machine!

For those three hundred years, indeed, the movement of the world seemed
wholly beneficial to mankind. Men said, indeed, that moral organisation
was not keeping pace with physical progress, but few attached any
meaning to these phrases, the understanding of which lies at the basis
of our present safety. Sustaining and constructive forces did indeed
for a time more than balance the malign drift of chance and the natural
ignorance, prejudice, blind passion, and wasteful self-seeking of
mankind.

The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and
infinitely more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the people
of that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an
e