might with accuracy he styled the truth of their predecessors, and
those be accounted in comparison trivial and meaningless until thus
changed. This sort of change carries its past along with it. In the
destructive changes which we were lamenting a moment ago, the past was
lost and the new began as an independent affair. Even in chemic change
this was true to a certain extent. Yet there, though the past was
lost, a future was prophesied. In the case of development the future,
so far from annihilating the past, is its exhibition on a larger
scale. The full significance of any single stage is not manifest until
the final one is reached.

I suppose when we arrive at this thought of change as expressing
development, our lamentation may well turn to rejoicing. Possibly this
may be the reason why the gloom which is a noticeable feature of the
thought of many preceding centuries has in our time somewhat
disappeared. While our ambitions are generally wider, and we might
seem, therefore, more exposed to disappointment, I think the last half
of the century which has closed has been a time of large hopefulness.
Perhaps it has not yet gone so far as rejoicing, for failure and
sorrow are still by no means extirpated. But at least the thoughts of
our day have become turned rather to the future than the past, a
result which has attended the wider comprehension of development. To
call development the discovery of our century would, however, be
absurd. Aristotle bases his whole philosophy upon it, and it was
already venerable in his time. Yet the many writers who have expounded
the doctrine during the last fifty years have brought the thought of
it home to the common man. It has entered into daily life as never
before, and has done much to protect us against the sadness of
destructive change. Perceiving that changes, apparently destructive,
repeatedly bring to light meaning previously undisclosed, we more