44 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 NEVER MORE SO than now, the myth of progress remains the story by which we live our lives. Every disruption and new product rollout reinforces it. But where are we progressing to? In 1948, just as the postwar technological boom began, the English farmer-poet Philip Britts penned this essay on what he called “spiritual evolution.” Philip Britts (1917–1949) was a horticulturalist and poet (see biographical note on page 46). Ar e w e s t a n d i n g at the begin- ning of a new age of scientific development, of supersonic speeds, of atomic energy, of more and more wonderful machines? Or are we standing, unaware, at the end of the machine age, at the end of the progress of scientific power? Are we about to enter an era of greater wealth, greater luxury, greater leisure, the modern home, people emancipated from drudgery? Or has this age of power reached its climax, and will this civilization destroy itself with those forces that it has created? To reject this question, to sail onward in the arrogant confidence that man can and will manipulate these tremendous forces for the good of all, is to put more pressure on the drift to catastrophe. Is not this the poison of the age, the belief of man in man? “Man is certainly stark mad,” said Montaigne, “He cannot make a The Gods of Progress P H I L I P B R I T T S E s s ay