Editorial note — CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 16: What an interesting reflection on the notion of supposed progress is the fact pointed out by Ambassador Bryce in his address on Progress (Atlantic July, 1907), that while out of 40,000,000 of people there were so many genius men and women accomplishing work that the world will never willingly let die, we with a population ten times as great cannot show anything like as many. Most of the great names that are most familiar to the modern mind come in a single century,--the sixteenth. At the present time the western civilization then represented by 40,000,000 has near to 500,000,000 of people. We make no pretension at all, however, to the claim that we have more great men than they had. We should have ten times as many, but on the contrary we are quite willing to concede that we have very few compared to their number and almost none, if indeed there are any, who measure up to the high standards of achievement of that time more than four centuries ago. It is thoughts of this kind that show one how much we must correct the ordinarily accepted notions with regard to progress and inevitable development, and each generation improving on its predecessors and the like, that are so commonly diffused but that represent no reality in history at all.]