If it is an old question, it is not a settled one; the practical disbelief in any such progress is widely entertained.  Not long ago Mr. James Anthony Froude published an essay on Progress, in which he examined some of the evidences upon which we rely to prove that we live in an “era of progress.”  It is a melancholy essay, for its tone is that of profound skepticism as to certain influences and means of progress upon which we in this country most rely.  With the illustrative arguments of Mr. Froude’s essay I do not purpose specially to meddle; I recall it to the attention of the reader as a representative type of skepticism regarding progress which is somewhat common among intellectual men, and is not confined to England.  It is not exactly an acceptance of Rousseau’s notion that civilization is a mistake, and that it would be better for us all to return to a state of nature—­though in John Ruskin’s case it nearly amounts to this; but it is a hostility in its last analysis to what we understand by the education of the people, and to the government of the people by themselves.  If Mr. Froude’s essay is anything but an exhibition of the scholarly weapons of criticism, it is the expression of a profound disbelief in the intellectual education of the masses of the people.  Mr. Ruskin goes further.  He makes his open proclamation against any emancipation from hand-toil.  Steam is the devil himself let loose from the pit, and all labor-saving machinery is his own invention.  Mr. Ruskin is the bull that stands upon the track and threatens with annihilation the on-coming locomotive; and I think that any spectator who sees his menacing attitude and hears his roaring cannot but have fears for the locomotive.

There are two sorts of infidelity concerning humanity, and I do not know which is the more withering in its effects.  One is that which regards this world as only a waste and a desert, across the sands of which we are merely fugitives, fleeing from the wrath to come.  The other is that doubt of any divine intention in development, in history, which we call progress from age to age.

In the eyes of this latter infidelity history is not a procession or a progression, but only a series of disconnected pictures, each little era rounded with its own growth, fruitage, and decay, a series of incidents or experiments, without even the string of a far-reaching purpose to connect them.  There is no intention of progress in it all.  The race is barbarous, and then it changes to civilized; in the one case the strong rob the weak by brute force; in the other the crafty rob the unwary by finesse.  The latter is a more agreeable state of things; but it comes to about the same.  The robber used to knock us down and take away our sheepskins; he now administers chloroform and relieves us of our watches.  It is a gentlemanly proceeding, and scientific, and we call it civilization.  Meantime human nature remains the same, and the whole thing is a weary round that has no advance in it.