ABSTRACT
Very great evils are self-destructive: at last they destroy the beings that suffer them, and restore a relative peace. But why should something better always follow upon a moderately satisfactory state of affairs? In fact, something better does not always follow, but often something worse; and yet, in spite of history and experience, many believe in a Law of Progress. The future, they say, must always be better than the past because it has outgrown the past; and it will leap forward to a still better future. I think the secret of this strange belief is well expressed by Hegel in his doctrine that reduces the universe to Spirit in quest of freedom. In this view nothing is admitted to exist except this Absolute Spirit, which is human at one stage of its self-expression, but is essentially divine and unconditioned. Circumstances are here supposed to be simply the husks which Spirit has sloughed off in its progress. They litter the ground, but are of no importance, except as occasions for further advance; and every later stage of the world is necessarily better than the previous one, since the Spirit will find in it a more adequate embodiment and a wider freedom. It therefore matters very little how bad any state of the world may seem, or how good it may seem; for the only real value of it, in any case, will be to lead to a better state: better not because happier or less horrible—for tragedy is a noble thing—but simply because it is a stepping stone to something “higher.” The eternal feminine is always beckoning us, and I suppose beckoning itself, towards a greater freedom.
