Progress(es)

Progress,
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy points out (Christian Future), was originally a plural

term. “Les progres” was
Condorcet’s phrase. What he had in mind were improvements, new gadgets and
machines and gizmos.

The
singular form of the term came from early Christianity and referred to the spiritual
improvement of man. Clearly, the plural and singular don’t necessary move in
unison: “Bombs get better all the time,” Rosenstock points out, but we are
making progress in the original sense only in “NOT-using” them (77).

The
two dimensions of the term came together in the nineteenth century “The
distinction between the progress of the soul as instituted by the Christian
era, and les progres, multiplied by
applying the idea to the new fields of arts and sciences, was obliterated by an
ambiguity in English which is not rare. The English translators of Condorcet,
and the Great World Exhibition in the Crystal Palace of London, and the Chicago
Century of Progress, all used the singular, and thereby mixed the religious original
and the technical applications into one unholy welter” (77).