We may also learn from this history that progress, about which there has been so much debate—some glorying in it, some denying it,—is an actual positive historic fact. What we have been reviewing enables us, furthermore, to see precisely in what it consists. It does not consist in the abundance of the things we possess, nor in mastery over nature. We may continuously be overcoming more and more of the hindrances nature has placed in our path; we may be compelling her to do more and more of our bidding; we may be extorting from her more and more of her varied and wondrous treasures; but all this, in itself, possesses no intrinsic value. It is valuable only as a means to something else. The old Egypt of the Pharaohs might, conceivably, have possessed railways, power-looms, electric telegraphs, and yet the old Egyptian might have been, and might have continued to be for four thousand years longer, very much what he was in the days of Sethos and Rameses. The modern Egyptian possesses all these things, and the printing-press besides, and yet is inferior, under the same sky, and on the same ground, to his predecessors of those old times. The end and purpose of material aids, and of material well-being, are to strengthen, and to develop, that which is highest, and best, and supreme in man—that which makes him man. Otherwise it is only pampering, and rendering life easy to, so many more animals. The difference would be little whether this were done for so many such men, or for so many crocodiles and bulls. That which is supreme in man—which makes a man a man—is his intellectual and moral being. If this has been strengthened, enlarged, enriched, progress has been made; he has been raised to a higher level; his horizon has been extended; he has been endued with new power. History and observation show that without some amount of material advancement, intellectual and moral advancement is not possible, and that all material gains may be turned to account in this way. This is their proper place—that of means, and not of ends. They are ever placing larger and larger proportions of mankind in the position in which intellectual and moral advancement becomes possible to them. That, then, to which they contribute, and which they make possible, is their true use and purpose. Whoever makes them for himself the end, dethrones that within himself, the supremacy of which alone can make him a true man. Every one who has done anything towards enriching, and purifying, and strengthening the intellect, or the heart of man, or towards extending to an increased proportion of the community the cultivation and development of moral and intellectual power, has contributed towards human progress.