10

 Whether or not the idea of progress may someday

be dethroned, and perhaps with it our worship of technology,

cannot be predicted; progress is not necessarily an

established fact of nature, a trend to be carried into

the indefinite future. Progress resulting from specific

circumstances of the past does not imply progress in the

future. Views of the past may rest upon fact; views of

the future must rest upon speculation. The idea of

progress might die from one or more of several causes.

It might die from neglect brought on by the embrace of

some alternative idea based upon another view of what is

good and what is not; by a deep prevading pessimism or

by the imposition of physical, social, intellectual, or

spiritual constraints. Technology, upon which belief in

indefinite progress has been based, might be capable of

indefinite expansion, but progress itself may not.

 The only thing known to history is change, not

necessarily of a progressive nature, and change in itself

cannot be separated, as the French historian Taine so

long ago said, from place, time, and people. There can

be little doubt that technology and science have changed

some lives substantially from what they might have been;

their use, economically speaking, has proved immensely

profitable to some and might prove so to others. But

this still does not permit the experience of the United

States, or of a few other nations, to be used as an

example of what might be wrought elsewhere. Those who