ressed from point to point."

It is the first definition and use of the word in literature.

2. Progress and Organization[334]

The current conception of progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes
it comprehends little more than simple growth--as of a nation in the
number of its members and the extent of territory over which it spreads.
Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products--as when the
advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the
superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the
new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we
speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to states of the
individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of science
or art is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of
human thought and action.

Not only, however, is the current conception of progress more or less
vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the
reality of progress as its accompaniments--not so much the substance as
the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the
child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly
regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws
understood; whereas the actual progress consists in those internal
modifications of which this larger knowledge is the expression. Social
progress is supposed to consist in the making of a greater quantity and
variety of the articles required for satisfying men's wants; in the
increasing security of person and property; in widening freedom of
action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those
changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these
consequences. The current conception is a ideological one. The phenomena
are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those
changes are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly
tend to heighten human happiness; and they are thought to constitute
progress simply because they tend to heighten human happiness. But
rightly to understand progress, we must learn the nature of these
changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing, for example, to
regard the successive geological modifications that have taken place in
the earth as modifications that have gradually fitted it for the
habitation of man, and as therefore constituting geological progress,