Looking Back on Progress

"The great danger at the moment is a huge muddling and confusing of the spiritual traditions that still survive. As you so well point out, this would be crowning the devil's work. . . . I am very grateful for your important and thoughtful work, and I am sure you can see that I am in the deepest possible sympathy with your views." —Letter to the author from Fr Thomas Merton

"Notions of progress abound more than ever in the echo chambers of the present-day, yet this remarkable little book challenges all profane ideologies by reminding readers of humanity's timeless wisdom. While technological utopianism hastily embraces the rise of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism, to usher in what has been called the "immanentization of the eschaton," this phenomenon is fundamentally dystopic because it only serves to fuel the ongoing dissolution. We are truly living in a post-human world, and this profound work provides glimpses into an abiding realm of transcendence that helps make sense of the manifold abnormalities we are currently witnessing." —Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, author of The Quest For Who We Are: Modern Psychology and the Sacred

Walter Ernest Christopher James, 4th Baron Northbourne (1866-1982), was an agriculturist, educator, and writer on both agriculture and comparative religion. Educated at Oxford, he was for many years Provost of Wye College in England. His first published writings were on organic farming, in which he applied the theories of Rudolf Steiner to the family estate at Kent (where the first biodynamic farming conference in Britain was held). In 1940 he published Look to the Land (Angelico Press edition, 2005), which raised many of the issues still current in the field of organic agriculture. After reading this book, Marco Pallis (mountaineer and author on comparative religion) contacted Northbourne and introduced him to the writings of the Traditionalist school, which he integrated into his own writings and life. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Studies in Comparative Religion. In addition to authoring books of his own, Northbourne translated the works of several fellow Traditionalists, including René Guénon's major work, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, Light on Ancient Worlds by Frithjof Schuon, and Sacred Art in East and West by Titus Burckhardt. Correspondence with Thomas Merton is included in the Angelico Press edition of his work Religion in the Modern World (2025).