Topic

Progress

Progress in this collection is empirical rather than inevitable. Emerson's all-life-as-experiment is the methodological statement: progress requires attempting things and learning from the outcomes. James enlarges it: the greatest discovery of the generation is that a human being can alter their life by altering their attitudes. Abigail Adams inserts the social claim: there will be no philosophers and statesmen without learned women — progress requires expanding who gets to participate. Henry Adams offers the darkest entry: science may one day hand humanity the means of its own extinction, which converts the idea of progress into a question about direction rather than velocity. Addison appears twice, both times noting social resistance to change: circumstances make people conservative, and seriousness tips easily into dullness. What the collection refuses is the Whig reading of history — the idea that progress is directional, that each generation necessarily improves on the last. Progress is real; it is also reversible; and the conditions that make it possible include not only knowledge and technology but the courage to change what is comfortable.