Social evolution and political theory / by Leonard T. Hobhouse.

  • Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social evolution and political theory / by Leonard T. Hobhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/240 (page 1)
    SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL THEORY CHAPTER I The Meaning of Progress Like every age and every state of human society the period in which we live has its merits and defects, its elements of success and failure. Contemporary critics assuming the part of candid friends are perhaps more concerned with the failures, and the note of pessimism sounds clearly enough in much of the literature of the day. But depreciation of the present, gloomy views of the future, and idealization of the past are common characteristics of literary criticism. If literature is evi¬ dence, we could construct a chain of testimony proving the continuous deterioration of humanity from the time of Hesiod to the present day. The past, when it is seen at all, appears always in a halo of romance. Just as in our own personal memory many things which we should be exceedingly loath to experience anew become positively enjoyable in the mellowness of retrospect, as the contrast of some great hardship forms a pleasing background for present comfort, so in the memory of the race much that we should be sorry to live through again in real earnest acquires the tinge of romance when