"We men of earth have here the stuff
Of Paradise—we have enough!
We need no other stones to build
The stairs into the Unfulfilled—
No other ivory for the doors—
No other marble for the floors
No other cedar for the beam
And dome of man's immortal dream.
Here on the paths of every-day—
Here on the common human way—
Is all the busy gods would take
To build a Heaven, to mold and make
New Edens. Ours the task sublime
To build eternity in time!"
—E. Markham
The history of human progress is a story of emancipation, and its course has by no means been run. The future of the race is in all liklihood to be a scientific future, since science gives the truth needed in actual life and furnishes the means for advance, every achievement enlarging the field of subsequent possibilities. Nothing can stop this growth except suppressions of freedom. Man's future progress must depend upon the very degree of intellectual honesty he brings to bear upon the problems that confront him; for these problems whether social, economic, emotional, or ethical can be effectually met and solved by no other means than by honesty of rational thought. That is the one and only guarantee of future progress.
Wordsworth long ago queried:
"Man now presides
In power where once he trembled in his weakness;
Science advances with gigantic strides,
But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?"
In regard to the problem raised here, it may be repeated that the advance of social justice has been brought about and conditioned by exactly the same methods of intelligence as those which led to the creation of the radio and to the elimination of yellow fever. Everything we call precious has been wrested by the power of human intelligence from the dark chaos of mystery and brutality. The things man prizes as most worth while are the fruits of his own toilsome effort. The connection of the moral progress of the modern age with its scientific and material achievement is not accidental. Both the material changes and the moral changes proceed from identical causes. The eradication of the horrors and ferocities of Mediaeval feudalism and despotisms resulted from the same intellectual criticism that led to the collapse of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.
