CHAPTER VI.
THE TIME ELEMENT IN INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER AND SOCIAL GROWTH.
For all lovers of their kind, nothing is so hard to bear as the slowness of the upward progress of society.

It is not simply that the rise of the common people is accompanied with heavy wastes and losses, it is that the upward movement is along lines so vast as to make society's growth seem tardy, delayed, or even reversed.

Doubtless the drift of the ages is upward, but this progress becomes apparent only when age is compared with age and century with century.

It is not easy for some Bruno or Wickliffe, sowing the good seed of liberty and toleration in one century, to know that not until another century hath passed will the precious harvest be reaped.

Man is accustomed to brief intervals.