[82] produce a better work by better technical means. The car cannot resist; its resistance can be overcome, as technique HAS overcome most resistance of the material world, in the limits of the natural laws. But in man it is not a psycho-technical procedure which makes man into something better. And this lies ultimately behind this wrong idea of progress^a: "by good psycho-techniques you can do of [i.e. with--ed.] man what you can do with iron or other metals used for a machine." This analogy shows why the idea of progress as the universal law, according to which man becomes more and more moral, better and better, wiser and wiser, more creative any time--now that's all nonsense! Let us apply this to another realm where also creative freedom is involved, namely a realm where the technical element is very small: the realm of art and philosophy. About science, I will speak later; there are two elements involved. But take art^b and philosophy^c: it would be almost ridiculous--and I think it would have been, even in the period of the glorious victory of the idea of progress--if somebody would have said that we are better artists than the Egyptians, or Greeks, or other people-- Hittites, and others, whom we dig out now; or the old Chinese, a few thousand years before Christ. It would be ridiculous if you compare their creations and quality work with OUR wuality [sic.] work. There is no other reaction possible than to LAUGH, if somebody says we are better than they. There is no progress in this realm whatsoever. BUT THERE ARE DIFFERENCES; THERE ARE NEW POSSIBILITIES. There is no doubt about this. And there will be, I hope, new possibilities. And some of you know that I am a great defender of modern visual art--that is something DIFFERENT from the Greek and Renaissance [art]. But if someone tells me--although I attack Renaissance art all the time, if it is copied by bad religious magazines!--"then I say there is progress from the Renaissance to our present-day artistic expression"--that is ridiculous. The great works of the Renaissance should not be imitated. We must have our OWN [expression]. But they are great, and their greatness is in no way denied if we do our own work as well as they did their own work, under the ideal of this classic moment in which the Christian substance and the rational principles were united in people like Botticello and Leonardo, and then (in the transition, already), Michelangelo.