ate over the conduct
and activities of the individual; the management of his
children, the details of his diet and the conduct of his
ordinary affairs; tend more and more to limit his personal
freedom. But the restriction of his liberty amounts to a
reduction of his available life just as complete loss of
liberty differs little from complete loss of life.[327]

It is this condition which, in spite of progress in details, has raised
in men's minds a question whether there is progress in general, and if
there is, whether the mass of mankind is better or worse because of it.

3. History of the Concept of Progress

The great task of mankind has been to create an organization which would
enable men to realize their wishes. This organization we call
civilization. In achieving this result man has very slowly at first, but
more rapidly in recent times, established his control over external
nature and over himself. He has done this in order that he might remake
the world as he found it more after his own heart.

But the world which man has thus remade has in turn reacted back upon
man and in doing so has made him human. Men build houses to protect them
from the weather and as places of refuge. In the end these houses have
become homes, and man has become a domesticated animal, endowed with the
sentiments, virtues, and lasting affections that the home inevitably
cultivates and maintains.

Men made for themselves clothing for ornament and for comfort, and
men's, and especially women's, clothes have become so much a part of
their personalities that without them they cease to be persons and have
no status in human society. Except under very exceptional circumstances
a man who appeared without clothing would be treated as a madman, and
hunted like a wild animal.

Men have built cities for security and for trade, and cities have made
necessary and possible a division of labor and an economic organization.
This economic organization, on the other hand, has been the basis of a
society and a social order which imposes standards of conduct and
enforces minute regulations of the individual life. Out of the
conditions of this common life there has grown a body of general and
ruling ideas: liberty, equality, democracy, fate, providence, personal
immortality, and progress.

J. B. Bury, who has written a history of the idea of progress, says that
progress is "the animating and controlling idea of western