Ideas to better understand progress. ( 1 )

Let us first define progress as "increasing control of the environment by life," and let us mean by environment "all the circumstances that condition the coordination and realization of desire." progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose,of matter by form and will.

Certain great moments stand out as the peaks and essence of human history,certain advances which, once made, were never lost. Step by step man has climbed from the savage to the thinker and scientist, I will in the coming few days briefly outline these stages of man's growth, we start today with:

SPEECH ; think of it not as a sudden achievement, nor as a gift from the gods, but as the slow development of articulate expression, through centuries of effort, from the mating calls of animals to the lyric flights of poetry. Without words, or common nouns, that might give to particular images the ability to represent a class, generalisation would have stopped in its beginnings, and reason would have stayed where we find it in the brute. Without words, philosophy and poetry, history and prose, would have been impossible, and thought could never have reached the subtlety of Einstein or Anatole France. Without words man could not have become man--nor woman woman.

Words by W.Durant.
Compiled by me.