Including that of progress? the American reader will exclaim, with some misgiving. But are we not living in the age of progress? Can that idea of progress which every morning rises with the sun and sheds new splendour on the two worlds on either side of the Atlantic, and with the sun arouses them to their accustomed tasks—can it be that this idea is but an illusion? No. The author of these two books has not so much confidence in his own wisdom as to try to discover whether man is really progressing or not; whether he is moving down the valley of the centuries towards a fixed goal, or towards an illusion which retreats with each step he takes in its direction. There is one point only which the author proposes to make clear. There are at the present day, on the one hand, those who despise the present and worship the past, extol Europe and depreciate America; on the other hand, those who declare that they would not give one hour of the marvellous present in which they live for all the centuries of the past, and who rate America far more highly than they do Europe. The author sets out to show that the reason why the eternal disputes between the partisans of these divergent views are so inconclusive, is that in this discussion, as in so many others, each side postulates two different definitions of progress, and in their discussions of the past and of the present, of Europe and of America, they start from this dual definition as if it were single and agreed. The result is that they cannot understand and never will understand, if they discuss for a thousand years, each other’s point of view.