I had thought to begin a sound philosophical account of the nature of progress with a picture, not, if I could help it, unsympathetic, of man’s condition before he had felt its benefits. The plan would recommend itself to any philosopher as suitable and convenient to its purpose, yet here am I well beyond the beginning of my discourse, still lingering with the cannibals, and, what is worse, sensible that I have not been diligent to uncover the many causes there must be for rejoicing that we are not as they were. Not that there is any difficulty in pointing to the host of things we can do which they could not. We have only to mount in one of our winged ships and look down on the simple Typee rubbing two sticks together for their spark, to see in all the distance that lies between us the like of what Prometheus scaled Heaven for. But what in all this is there to rejoice over? It is singular how many have asked this question and found no answer, or have answered--Nothing. I do not cite the licentious poets Montaigne refers to as having invented a Golden Age and feigned a happy condition of man before progress had spoiled the world for him; although these are many, and if their wisdom is not of the philosopher’s kind, yet is it all the closer to that “ancient wisdom of childhood” a wise man does well to keep near him. But even learned academies have thought the question not beyond their interest and study. In 1749, the Academy of Dijon set for the prize competition of the following year the question, “Whether the progress of the arts and sciences had contributed to the purification of life?” The prize was won by J.-J. Rousseau. His little essay, generally known as the “Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts,” worked on the thought of its time as seldom so casual a thing. “One cannot,” Jean-Jacques wrote then, “one cannot reflect on the ways of life without finding pleasure in recalling the image of its first simplicity. That was a fair shore, bedecked by only Nature’s hand, toward which our eyes are ever turning back regretfully as we watch it fade in the distance.”