In the first place, the current conception of Progress is shifting and indefinite. Sometimes it comprehends little more than simple growth—as of a nation in the number of its members and the extent of territory over which it has spread. At other times it has reference to quantity of material products—as when the advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Now the superior quality of these products is contemplated; and then the new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to the state of the individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Knowledge, of Science, of Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of human thought and action. In the second place, besides being more or less vague, the ordinary idea of Progress is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the reality as its accompaniments—not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws understood; whereas the actual progress consists in those internal modifications of which this increased knowledge is the expression. Social progress is supposed to consist in the produce of a greater quantity and variety of the articles required for satisfying men’s wants—in the increasing security of person and property—in widening freedom of action; whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these consequences. The interpretation is a teleological one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those changes are held to constitute progress, which directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness. And they are thought to constitute progress simply _because_ they tend to heighten human happiness. In the third place, in consequence of its teleological implications, the term Progress is rendered scarcely applicable to a wide range of phenomena which are intrinsically of the same nature as those included under it. The metamorphoses of an insect are only by analogy admitted within the scope of the word, as popularly accepted; though, considered in themselves, they have as much right there as the changes which constitute civilization. Having no apparent bearing on human interests, an increasing complication in the arrangement of ocean-currents, would not ordinarily be regarded as progress; though really of the same character as phenomena which are so regarded.