Progress implies motion from one point to another. This simple concept is supplemented by others, some clear and some dim, which group themselves round it: the conception that the point towards which motion is directed signifies something better and more desirable than the one from which the motion takes place, and the assumption that the motion is due to an impulse, either inherent in the moving object or complex of objects and an essential part of it, or else impressed upon it by outside forces; further, that the impulse connotes a conscious image of the goal arrived at, recognition of its higher worth and the desire for greater perfection. All these ideas, which are concomitants of the concept of progress, are childish anthropomorphism when applied to the universe. To define progress as motion from a worse point to a better one implies the existence of a scale whereby value may be measured. Now values are clearly determined and graded as far as human beings or any similar creatures are concerned. Worse or better means to man less or more pleasant, useful, pleasing; progress, therefore, is a development to a condition which man considers more suitable and useful for him and feels to be more harmonious and pleasanter. The universe, from this standpoint, would make progress to prepare itself for the appearance of man, to become more intelligible, habitable and comfortable for man, to please and delight him. Whether it obeys its own natural disposition or a higher intelligence, a god, in carrying out this work, in either case it would realize progress to serve mankind. But if this ceases to exist, there is no point in characterizing a development as progress in the sense of amelioration, beautification and perfection. One would then have no right to describe, for instance, the solar system with its planets as indicating progress from the original condition of nebula, because the latter in itself, apart from man and the conditions of his existence, is not better or worse, not more beautiful or uglier, not more perfect or more defective than the former; the original nebula and the solar system are equally the result of the play of the same cosmic forces, and the dynamic formula of the one is the same as that of the other. But Reason rejects as nonsensical any view which declares man to be the aim of the universe, which puts all the work of the universe at his service, and conceives it as a huge machine functioning for his advantage. For reasons of formal logic, too, the idea of progress in the universe is unthinkable. The understanding cannot conceive of the universe as other than eternal. Now in eternity all progress, that is, all motion from a point of departure, must have reached its goal eternities ago, however slow the motion, however distant the goal. Eternity and progress are two concepts which logically exclude one another.