The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

VIII

IDEA OF PROGRESS

257

It may, then, be objected that the indefinite
progress of the race is only an assumption, which
time may disprove. It may be asked too, what
guarantee have we that our Western civilisation,
granting that it is on an upward gradient, and that
no bounds or bars to its ascent are yet in sight, may
not some day reach a definite limit, through the
operation of some cause which is now obscure to
our vision? Fully admitting that such theoretical
scepticism is justifiable, and that persistent progress
is an assumption, I submit that it does not affect
my point. The idea of progress is, in the present
age, an actual, living force; and what I have said
as to its bearing on the study of history remains
valid. May we not even say that the uncertainty
which hangs about the question, with the possibility of man's progress on the one hand, and of
his decadence on the other, communicates an
appealing interest to the study of the past, as a
field in which we may discover, if we can penetrate
deep enough, some clue to the destinies of civilisation?
The absence of the idea of an indefinite progress
in Greek and Roman speculation is one of the
gulfs which separate us from the ancients. Its
emergence has had the consequence of making
history far more alive. With the Greeks, who
applied the inadequate conception of Tyche or
Fortune, the reconstruction of the past was an
instinct which they justified by reasons which were
superficial. For us, because we have a deeper
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