hods of
production and distribution which then prevail? But the future of
socialism is a minor issue, and the ultimate goal of humanity is quite
uncertain. "Ce qu'il y a de consolant, c'est qu'on arrive necessairement
quelque part." We may console ourselves with the certainty that we must
get somewhere.

6.

Proudhon described the idea of Progress as the railway of liberty. It
certainly supplied motive power to social ideals which were repugnant
and alarming to the authorities of the Catholic Church. At the Vatican
it was clearly seen that the idea was a powerful engine driven by an
enemy; and in the famous SYLLABUS of errors which Pope Pius IX. flung in
the face of the modern world at the end of 1864, Progress had the honour
of being censured. The eightieth error, which closes the list, runs
thus:

Romanus Pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo et cum
recenti civilitate sese reconciliare et componere.

"The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, be reconciled and come to terms
with progress, with liberalism, and with modern civilisation."

No wonder, seeing that Progress was invoked to justify every movement
that offended the nostrils of the Vatican--liberalism, toleration,
democracy, and socialism. And the Roman Church well understood the
intimate connection of the idea with the advance of rationalism.

CHAPTER XVIII. MATERIAL PROGRESS: THE EXHIBITION OF 1851

1.

It is not easy for a new idea of the speculative order to penetrate and
inform the general consciousness of a community until it has assumed
some external and concrete embodiment or is recommended by some striking
material evidence. In the case of Progress both these conditions were
fulfilled in the period 1820 to 1850. In the Saint-Simonian Church, and
in the attempts of Owen and Cabet to found ideal societies, people saw
practical enterprises inspired by the idea. They might have no sympathy
with these enterprises, but their attention was attracted. And at the
same time they were witnessing a rapid transformation of the external
conditions of life, a movement to the continuation of which there seemed
no reason for setting any limit in the future. The spectacular results
of the advance of science and mechanical technique brought home to the
mind of the average man the conception of an indefinite increase of
man's power over nature as his brain penetrated her secrets. This
evident material progress which has continued incessantly eve