Since the sixteenth century we have tended to accept as inevitable an historical development that takes the form of a changing relationship between ourselves and nature, in which we pass increasingly into the role of master of nature. When I say that this seems inevitable to us, I mean that it seems something so close to what our more religious forebears considered the working of providence that we regard as impiety any disposition to challenge or even suspect it. By a transposition of terms, “progress” becomes the salvation man is placed on earth to work out; and just as there can be no achievement more important than salvation, so there can be no activity more justified in enlisting our sympathy and support than “progress.” As our historical sketch would imply, the term began to be used in the sixteenth century in the sense of continuous development or improvement; it reached an apogee in the nineteenth century, amid noisy demonstrations of man’s mastery of nature, and now in the twentieth century it keeps its place as one of the least assailable of the “uncontested terms,” despite critical doubts in certain philosophic quarters. It is probably the only term which gives to the average American or West European of today a concept of something bigger than himself, which he is socially impelled to accept and even to sacrifice for. This capacity to demand sacrifice is probably the surest indicator of the “god term,” for when a term is so sacrosanct that the material goods of this life must be mysteriously rendered up for it, then we feel justified in saying that it is in some sense ultimate. Today no one is startled to hear of a man’s sacrificing health or wealth for the “progress” of the community, whereas such sacrifices for other ends may be regarded as self-indulgent or even treasonable. And this is just because “progress” is the coordinator of all socially respectable effort. Perhaps these observations will help the speaker who would speak against the stream of “progress,” or who, on the other hand, would parry some blow aimed at him through the potency of the word, to realize what a momentum he is opposing.