CHAPTER II - CONDITIONS OF HUMAN PROGRESS

Summary

Let us, as far as possible, unbiassed by pre-conceived ideas, endeavour, before we proceed further, to obtain some clear conception of what human society really is, and of the nature of the conditions which have been attendant on the progress we have made so far.

There is no phenomenon so stupendous, so bewildering, and withal so interesting to man as that of his own evolution in society. The period it has occupied in his history is short compared with the whole span of that history; yet the results obtained are striking beyond comparison. Looking back through the glasses of modern science we behold him at first outwardly a brute, feebly holding his own against many fierce competitors. He has no wants above those of the beast; he lives in holes and dens in the rocks; he is a brute, even more feeble in body than many of the animals with which he struggles for a brute's portion. Tens of thousands of years pass over him, and his progress is slow and painful to a degree. The dim light which inwardly illumines him has grown brighter; the rude weapons which aid his natural helplessness are better shaped; the cunning with which he circumvents his prey, and which helps him against his enemies, is of a higher order. But he continues to leave little impress on nature or his surroundings; he is still in wants and instincts merely as his fellow denizens of the wilderness.