C.S. LEWIS: THE PILGRIM'S REGRESS?

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re·gress

verb

verb: regress; 3rd person present: regresses; past tense: regressed; past participle:regressed; gerund or present participle: regressing

rəˈɡres/

1. 1.

   return to a former or less developed state.

   "art has been regressing toward adolescence for more than a generation now"

   synonyms:

   revert, retrogress, relapse, lapse, backslide, slip back; More

   antonyms:

   progress

   • return mentally to a former stage of life or a supposed previous life, especially through hypnosis or mental illness.

     "she claims to be able to regress to the Roman era"
2. 2.

   STATISTICS

   calculate the coefficient or coefficients of regression of (a variable) against or on another variable.
3. 3.

   ASTRONOMY

   move in a retrograde direction.

noun

noun: regress; plural noun: regresses

ˈrēˌɡres/

1. 1.

   the action of returning to a former or less developed state.
2. 2.

   PHILOSOPHY

   a series of statements in which a logical procedure is continually reapplied to its own result without approaching a useful conclusion (e.g., defining something in terms of itself).

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Ecclesiastes 1

New International Version 

(NIV)

Everything Is Meaningless

1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

² “Meaningless! Meaningless!”

says the Teacher.

“Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.”

³ What do people gain from all their labors

at which they toil under the sun?

⁴ Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever.

⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,

and hurries back to where it rises.

⁶ The wind blows to the south

and turns to the north;

round and round it goes,

ever returning on its course.

⁷ All streams flow into the sea,

yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from,

there they return again.

⁸ All things are wearisome,

more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing,

nor the ear its fill of hearing.

⁹ What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

¹⁰ Is there anything of which one can say,

“Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago;

it was here before our time.

¹¹ No one remembers the former generations,

and even those yet to come

will not be remembered

by those who follow them.