now
less regard for the higher, the qualitative values of life, than at
other periods. My opinion is that ever since the time of Rousseau and
his contemporaries, we have been led astray by a will-of-the-wisp akin
to the apocalyptic dreams of the Jews in the last two centuries before
Christ, dreams which also filled the minds of the first generation of
Christians. The Greeks never made the mistake of throwing their ideals
into the future, a practice which, as Dr. Bosanquet has said, 'is the
death of all sane idealism.' The belief in 'a good time coming' is a
Jewish delusion. It nourished the Jews in their amazing obstinacy, and
led to the annihilation of their State which, to the very end, they saw
in their dreams bruising all other nations with a rod of iron, and
breaking them in pieces like a potter's vessel. But, as any idealism is
better than none, the Hebrew race has won remarkable triumphs, though of
a kind which it never desired.

The myth of progress is our form of apocalyptism. In France it began
with sentimentalism, developing normally into homicidal mania. In
England it took the form of a kind of Deuteronomic religion. As a reward
for our national virtues, our population expanded, our exports and
imports went up by leaps and bounds, and our empire received additions
every decade. It was plain that when Christ said 'Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth,' He was thinking of the British
Empire. The whole structure of our social order encouraged the
measurement of everything by quantitative standards. Everyone could
understand that a generation which travels sixty miles an hour must be
five times as civilised as one which only travelled twelve. Thus the
beneficent 'law of progress' was exemplified in that nation which had
best deserved to be its exponent. The myth in question is that there is
a natural law of improvement, manifested by greater complexity of
structure, by increase of wants and the means to satisfy them. A nation
advances in civilisation by increasing in wealth and population, and by
multiplying the accessories and paraphernalia of life.

Belief in this alleged law has vitiated our natural science, our
political science, our history, our philosophy, and even our religion.
Science declared that 'the survival of the fittest' was a law of nature,
though nature has condemned to extinction the majestic animals of the
saurian era, and has carefully preserved the bug, the louse, and the