rary gain may be ultimate loss. What is one man's evil may
be, and often seems to be, another man's good. In the final analysis
what seems evil may turn out to be good and what seems good may be an
eventual evil. But this is a problem in philosophy which sociology is
not bound to solve before it undertakes to describe society. It does not
even need to discuss it. Sociology, just as any other natural science,
accepts the current values of the community. The physician, like the
social worker, assumes that health is a social value. With this as a
datum his studies are directed to the discovery of the nature and causes
of diseases, and to the invention of devices for curing them. There is
just as much, and no more, reason for a sociologist to formulate a
doctrine of social progress as there is for the physician to do so. Both
are concerned with specific problems for which they are seeking specific
remedies.

If there are social processes and predictable forms of change in
society, then there are methods of human intervention in the processes
of society, methods of controlling these processes in the interest of
the ends of human life, methods of progress in other words. If there are
no intelligible or describable social processes, then there may be
progress, but there will be no sociology and no _methods of progress_.
We can only hope and pray.

It is not impossible to formulate a definition of progress which does
not assume the perfectibility of mankind, which does not regard progress
as a necessity, and which does not assume to say with finality what has
happened or is likely to happen to humanity as a whole.[346]

Progress may be considered as the addition to the sum of accumulated
experience, tradition, and technical devices organized for social
efficiency. This is at once a definition of progress and of
civilization, in which civilization is the sum of social efficiencies
and progress consists of the units (additions) of which it is composed.
Defined in these terms, progress turns out to be a relative, local,
temporal, and secular phenomenon. It is possible, theoretically at
least, to compare one community with another with respect to their
relative efficiency and their relative progress in efficiency, just as
we can compare one institution with another in respect to its efficiency
and progress. It is even possible to measure the progress of humanity in
so far as humanity can be said to be organized for social action.