THE CONCEPT AND LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

The article focuses on the concept and law of human progress. The concept of human progress is like the idea of an increasing distance between man and the conditions of deficient culture, conditions imagined to be deficient, conditions in which the animal nature of man alone was active. This increasing distance is regularly presented as movement toward improvement and perfection, in any case, however, as an increasing humanization, even when it might appear as a less fortunate fate of mankind. This thought is by no means natural and original to humanity. This view retained its force until deep into the 17th century and beyond. Even such an ingenious philosopher as Giovanni Battista Vico reproduces the germ of this thought, when he attempts to unite with the theory of the Egyptians that an age of gods was followed by an age of heroes and this by the age of man. Cultured man proceeded from crude conditions and crude man from animal conditions, already in the 18th century was a widespread conception, which however, had not yet been victorious over the theological ideas.