The idea of progress, according to a widely accepted interpretation, represents a secularized version of the Christian belief in providence. The ancient world, we are told, entertained a cyclical view of history, whereas Christianity gave it a clearly defined direction, from the fall of man to his ultimate redemption. "It is no accident," Carl Becker wrote in 1921, "that the belief in Progress and a concern for 'posterity' waxed in proportion as the belief in Providence and a concern for a future life waned. The former belief—illusion if you prefer—is man's compensation for the loss of the latter."

Thanks to its Christian background, the Western world found it easy to imagine history as a "process generally moving upwards by a series of majestic stages," as Ernest Lee Tuveson explained. For twentieth-century historians, skeptical about the value of religion in any form, an un

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