men and beaten
races. On the whole the plainer sort of civilisation, the simpler moral
training, and the more elementary education are plain benefits. And
though there may be doubt as to the edges of the conception yet there
certainly is a broad road of 'verifiable progress' which not only
discoverers and admirers will like, but which all those who come upon
it will use and value.

Unless some kind of abstraction like this is made in the subject the
great problem 'What causes progress?' will, I am confident, long remain
unsolved. Unless we are content to solve simple problems first, the
whole history of philosophy teaches that we shall never solve hard
problems. This is the maxim of scientific humility so often insisted on
by the highest enquirers that, in investigations, as in life, those
'who exalt themselves shall be abased, and those who humble themselves
shall be exalted;' and though we may seem mean only to look for the
laws of plain comfort and simple present happiness, yet we must work
out that simple case first, before we encounter the incredibly harder
additional difficulties of the higher art, morals and religion.

The difficulty of solving the problem even thus limited is exceedingly
great. The most palpable facts, are exactly the contrary to what we
should expect. Lord Macaulay tells us that 'In every experimental
science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being
there is a tendency to ameliorate his condition;' and these two
principles operating everywhere and always, might well have been
expected to 'carry mankind rapidly forward.' Indeed, taking verifiable
progress in the sense which has just been given to it, we may say that
nature gives a prize to every single step in it. Everyone that makes an
invention that benefits himself or those around him, is likely to be
more comfortable himself and to be more respected by those around him.
To produce new things 'serviceable to man's life and conducive to man's
estate,' is, we should say, likely to bring increased happiness to the
producer. It often brings immense reward certainly now; a new form of
good steel pen, a way of making some kind of clothes a little better or
a little cheaper, have brought men great fortunes. And there is the
same kind of prize for industrial improvement in the earliest times as
in the latest; though the benefits so obtainable in early society are
poor indeed in comparison with those of advanced society. Nature i