The past thirty years brought great lateral progress in gaining humane respect and treatment of animals. This has readied the world for leaps of perpendicular progress. May the time be soon.
Jane Addams explains the two kinds of progress in another context:
The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln’s “best possible,” and often has the sickening sense of compromising with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then “provide for channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow.” What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral.
He has taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher.
(Quoted from page 44 of The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams, by Maurice Hamington. University of Illinois Press, 2009.)
For a brief biography of Jane Addams, click here. For images of and relating to Jane Addams, click here. For a brief biography of Maurice Hamington, click here.
Jane Addams explains the two kinds of progress in another context:
The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln’s “best possible,” and often has the sickening sense of compromising with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then “provide for channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow.” What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral.
He has taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher.
(Quoted from page 44 of The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams, by Maurice Hamington. University of Illinois Press, 2009.)
For a brief biography of Jane Addams, click here. For images of and relating to Jane Addams, click here. For a brief biography of Maurice Hamington, click here.
Comments