I beg the reader to allow me to begin this chapter with a word of warning.
The reader is aware that Criticism—by which I mean Thought—may be any one
of three kinds: it may be purely destructive; it may be purely
constructive; or it may be both destructive and constructive at the same
time. Purely destructive criticism is sometimes highly useful. If an old
idea or a system of old ideas be false and therefore harmful, it is a
genuine service to attack it and destroy it even if nothing be offered to
take its place, just as it is good to destroy a rattlesnake lurking by a
human pathway, even if one does not offer a substitute for the snake. But,
however useful destructive criticism may be, it is not an easy service to
render; for old ideas, however false and harmful, are protected alike by
habit and by the inborn conservatism of many minds. Now, habit indeed is
exceedingly useful—even indispensable to the effective conduct of life—for
it enables us to do many useful things automatically and therefore easily,
without conscious thinking, and thus to save our mental energy for other
work; but for the same reason, habit is often very harmful; it makes us
protect false ideas automatically, and so when the destructive critic
endeavors to destroy such ideas by reasoning with us, he finds that he is
trying to reason with automats—with machines. Such is the chief difficulty
encountered by destructive criticism. On the other hand, purely
constructive criticism—purely constructive thought—consists in introducing
new ideas of a kind that do not clash, or do not seem to clash, with old
ones. Is such criticism or thought easy? Far from it. It has difficulties
of its own. These are of two varieties: the difficulty of showing people
who are content with their present stock of old ideas that the new ones
are interesting or important; and the great difficulty of making _new_
ideas clear and intelligible, for the art of being clear and perfectly
intelligible is very, very hard to acquire and to practise. The third kind
of criticism—the third kind of thought—the kind that is at once both
destructive and constructive—has a double aim—that of destroying old ideas
that are false and that of replacing them with new ideas that are true;
and so the third kind of criticism or thought is the most difficult of
all, for it has to overcome both the difficulty of destructive criticism
and that of constructive thought.
The reader, therefore, if he will be good enough to reflect a little upon
the matter, can not fail to appreciate the tremendous difficulties which
beset the writing of this little book, for he must perceive, not only that
the work belongs to the third kind of critical thought, but—what is much
more—the errors it aims to destroy are fundamental, world-wide and old,
while the true ideas it seeks to substitute for them are fundamental and
new. This great difficulty, felt at _every_ stage of this writing, is, for
a reason to be presently explained, greatly enhanced and felt with
especial keenness in the present chapter. I therefore beg the reader to
give me here very special cooperation—the cooperation of open-mindedness,
candor and critical attention. It is essential to keep in mind the nature
of our enterprise as a whole, which is that of pointing the way to the
science and art of Human Engineering and laying the foundations thereof;
we have seen Human Engineering, when developed, is to be the science and
art of so directing human energies and capacities as to make them
contribute most effectively to the advancement of human welfare; we have
seen that this science and art must have its basis in a true conception of
human nature—a just conception of what Man really is and of his natural
place in the complex of the world; we have seen that the ages-old and
still current conceptions of man—zoological and mythological conceptions,
according to which human beings are either animals or else hybrids of
animals and gods—are mainly responsible for the dismal things in human
history; we have seen that man, far from being an animal or a compound of
natural and supernatural, is a perfectly natural being characterized by a
certain capacity or power—the capacity or power to bind time; we have seen
that humanity is, therefore, to be rightly conceived and scientifically
defined as the time-binding class of life; we have seen that, therefore,
the laws of time-binding energies and time-binding phenomena are the laws
of human nature; we have seen that this conception of man—which must be
the basic concept, the fundamental principle and the perpetual guide and
regulator of Human Engineering—is bound to work a profound transformation
in all our views on human affairs and, in particular, must radically alter
the so-called social “sciences”—the life-regulating “sciences” of ethics,
sociology, economics, politics and government—advancing them from their
present estate of pseudo sciences to the level of genuine sciences and
technologizing them for the effective service of mankind. I call them
“life-regulating,” not because they play a more important part in human
affairs than do the genuine sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry,
astronomy and biology, for they are not more important than these, but
because they are, so to say, closer, more immediate and more obvious in
their influence and effects. These life-regulating sciences are, of
course, not independent; they depend ultimately upon the genuine sciences
for much of their power and ought to go to them for light and guidance;
but what I mean here by saying they are not independent is that they are
dependent upon each other, interpenetrating and interlocking in
innumerable ways. To show _in detail_ how the so-called sciences will have
to be transformed to make them accord with the right conception of man and
qualify them for their proper business will eventually require a large
volume or indeed volumes.
In this introductory work I cannot deal fully with one of those “sciences”
nor in suitable outline with each of them separately. I must be content
here to deal, very briefly, with one of them by way of illustration and
suggestion. Which one shall it be?
Now among these life-regulating “sciences” there is one specially marked
by the importance of its subject, by its central relation to the others
and by its prominence in the public mind. I mean Economics—the “dismal
science” of Political Economy. For that reason I have chosen to deal with
economics. In the present chapter I shall discuss three of its principal
terms—Wealth, Capital and Money—with a view to showing that the current
meanings and interpretations of these familiar terms must be very greatly
deepened, enlarged and elevated if they are to accord with facts and laws
of human nature and if the so-called “science” which employs them is to
become a genuine science properly qualified to be a branch of Human
Engineering. It is to be shown that the meanings currently attached by
political economists and others to the terms in question belong to what I
have called the period of humanity’s childhood; and it is to be shown that
the new meanings which the terms must receive belong to the period of
humanity’s manhood. It will be seen that the new meanings differ so
radically from the old ones as to make it desirable for the sake of
clarity to give the new meanings new names. But this, however
scientifically desirable, is impracticable because the old terms—wealth,
capital, money—are so deeply imbedded in the speech of the world. And here
comes into view the very special difficulty alluded to above and which led
me to request the reader’s special cooperation in this chapter. The
difficulty is not merely that of destroying old ideas that are false; it
is not merely that of replacing them with true ideas that are new; it is
that of causing people habitually to associate meanings that are new and
true with terms associated so long, so universally, so uniformly with
meanings that are false.
The secret of philosophy, said Leibnitz, is to treat familiar things as
unfamiliar. By the secret of “philosophy” Leibnitz meant the secret of
what we call science. Let us apply this wholesome maxim in our present
study; let us, in so far as we can, regard the familiar terms—wealth,
capital and money—as unfamiliar; let us deal with them afresh; let us
examine openmindedly the facts—the phenomena—to which the terms relate and
ascertain scientifically the significance the terms must have in a genuine
science of human economy. Examine “the facts” I say—examine “the
phenomena”—for bending facts to theories is a vital danger, while bending
theories to facts is essential to science and the peaceful progress of
society.
Human beings have always had some sense of values—some perception or
cognition of values. In order to express or measure values, it was
necessary to introduce units of measure, or units of exchange. People
began to measure values by means of agricultural and other products, such
as cattle, for example. The Latin word for cattle was _pecus_, and the
word _pecunia_, which came to signify money, accounts for the meaning of
our familiar word pecuniary. The earliest units for measuring became
unsuited to the increasing needs of growing trade, “business,” or traffic.
Finally a unit called money was adopted in which the base was the value of
some weight of gold. Thus we see that money came to mean simply the
accepted unit for measuring, representing and expressing values of and in
wealth.
But what is wealth? I have said that the old conceptions of wealth,
capital and money—the conceptions that are still current throughout the
world—belong to the period of humanity’s childhood—they are childish
conceptions. I have said that they must be replaced by scientific
conceptions—by conceptions fit for humanity’s manhood. The change that
must be made in our conceptions of the great terms is tremendous. It is
necessary to analyse the current conceptions of wealth, capital, and
money—the childish conceptions of them—in order to reveal their falseness,
stupidity and folly. To do this we must enter the field of Political
Economy—a field beset with peculiar difficulties and dangers. All the
Furies of private interests are involved. One gains the impression that
there is little or no real desire to gain a true conception—a scientific
conception—of wealth. Everybody seems to prefer an emotional definition—a
definition that suits his personal love of wealth or his hatred of it.
Many definitions of wealth, capital and money are to be found in modern
books of political economy—definitions and books belonging to humanity’s
childhood. For the purpose of this writing they all of them look
alike—they sufficiently agree—they are all of them childish. Mill, for
example, tells us that wealth consists of “useful or agreeable things
which possess exchangeable value.” Of capital one of the simplest
definitions is this:
“Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining
further wealth.” (Alfred Marshall, _Economics of Industry_.)
Walker (in his _Money, Trade and Industry_) defines money as follows:
“Money is that which passes freely from hand to hand throughout
the community in final discharge of debts and full payment for
commodities, being accepted equally without reference to the
character or credit of the person who offers it, and without the
intention of the person who receives it to consume it, or to enjoy
it, or apply it to any other use than, in turn, to tender it to
others in discharge of debts or full payment for commodities.”
Political economy has many different schools of thought and methods of
classification. Its reasonings are mainly speculative, metaphysical, and
legalistic; its ethics is zoological ethics, based on the zoological
conception of man as an animal. The elements of natural logic and natural
ethics are absent. The sophisticated ideas about the subject of political
economy, bluntly do not correspond to facts. Our primitive forefather in
the jungle would have died from hunger, cold, heat, blood poisoning or the
attacks of wild animals, if he had not used his brain and muscles to take
some stone or a piece of wood to knock down fruit from trees, to kill an
animal, so as to use his hide for clothes and his meat for food, or to
break wood and trees for a shelter and to make some weapons for defense
and hunting.
“In the first stone which he (the savage) flings at the wild
animal he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes to strike
down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the
appropriation of one article for the purpose of aiding in the
acquisition of another and thus we discover the origin of
capital.” (R. Torrens, _An Essay on the Production of Wealth_.)
Our primitive forefather’s first acquaintance with fire was probably
through lightning; he discovered, probably by chance, the possibility of
making fire by rubbing together two pieces of wood and by striking
together two pieces of stone; he established one of the first facts in
technology; he felt the warm effect of fire and also the good effect of
broiling his food by finding some roasted animals in a fire. Thus nature
revealed to him one of its great gifts, the stored-up energy of the sun in
vegetation and its primitive beneficial use. He was already a time-binding
being; evolution had brought him to that level. Being a product of nature,
he was reflecting those natural laws that belong to his class of life; he
had ceased to be static—he had become dynamic—progressiveness had got into
his blood—he was above the estate of animals.
We also observe that primitive man produced commodities, acquired
experiences, made observations, and that some of the produced commodities
had a use-value for other people and remained good for use, even after his
death.
The produced commodities were composed of raw material, freely supplied by
nature, combined with some mental work which gave him the conception of
how to make and to use the object, and some work on his part which finally
shaped the thing; all of this mental and manual work consumed an amount of
time. It is obvious that all of these elements are indispensable to
produce anything of any value, or of any use-value. His child not only
directly received some of the use-values produced by him, but was
initiated into all of his experiences and observations. (As we know,
power, as defined in mechanics, means the ratio of work done to the time
used in doing it.)
All those things are time-binding phenomena produced by the time-binding
capacity of man; but man has _not_ known that _this capacity_ was his
_defining mark_. We must notice the strange fact that, from the
engineering point of view, humanity, though very developed in some ways,
is childishly undeveloped in others. Humanity has some conceptions about
dimensions and talks of the world in which we live as having three
dimensions; yet even in its wildest imagination it can not picture
tangibly a _fourth_ dimension; nay, humanity has not learned to grasp the
real meanings of things that are basic or fundamental. All of our
conceptions are relative and comparative; all of them are based upon
matters which we do not yet understand; for example, we talk of time,
space, electricity, gravity, and so on, but no one has been able to define
them in terms of the data of sensation; nevertheless—and it is a fact of
the greatest importance—we learn how to use many things which we do not
fully understand and are not yet able to define.
In political economy the meagreness of our understanding is especially
remarkable; we have not yet grasped the obvious fact—a fact of
immeasurable import for all of the social sciences—that with little
exception the wealth and capital possessed by a given generation are not
produced by its own toil but are the inherited fruit of dead men’s toil—a
free gift of the past. We have yet to learn and apply the lesson that not
only our material wealth and capital but our science and art and learning
and wisdom—all that goes to constitute our civilization—were produced, not
by our own labor, but by the time-binding energies of past generations.
Primitive man used natural laws without knowing them or understanding
them, but he was able to cause nature to express itself, by finding a way
to release nature’s stored up energy. Through the work of his brain and
its direction in the use of his muscles, he found that some of his
appliances were not good; he made better ones, and thus slowly at first,
the progress of humanity went on. I will not enlarge upon the history of
the evolution of civilization because it is told in many books.
In the earliest times the religious, philosophical, legal and ethical
systems had not been invented. The morale at that time was a natural
morale. Humans knew that they did not create nature. They did not feel it
“proper” to “expropriate the creator” and legalistically appropriate the
earth and its treasure for themselves. They felt, in their unsophisticated
morale, that being called into existence they had a natural right to exist
and to use freely the gifts of nature in the preservation of their life;
and that is what they did.
After the death of a man, some of the objects produced by him still
survived, such as weapons, fishing or hunting instruments, or the caves
adapted for living; a baby had to be nourished for some years by its
parents or it would have died. Those facts had important consequences;
objects made by someone for some particular use could be used by someone
else, even after the death of one or more successive users; again the
experiences acquired by one member of a family or a group of people were
taught by example or precept to others of the same generation and to the
next generation. Such simple facts are the corner stones of our whole
civilization and they are the direct result of the HUMAN CAPACITY OF
TIME-BINDING.
The world to-day is full of controversy about wealth, capital, and money,
and because humanity, through its peculiar time-binding power, binds this
element “time” in an ever larger and larger degree, the controversy
becomes more and more acute. Civilization as a process is the process of
binding time; progress is made by the fact that each generation adds to
the material and spiritual wealth which it inherits. Past achievements—the
fruit of bygone time—thus live in the present, are augmented in the
present, and transmitted to the future; the process goes on; time, the
essential element, is so involved that, though it increases
arithmetically, its fruit, civilization, advances geometrically.
But there is another peculiarity in wealth and money: If a wooden or iron
“inch” be allowed to rot or rust quietly on some shelf, this “inch” does
not represent anything besides this piece of wood or iron. But if we take
the MENTAL value of an inch, this unit of one of the measures of space,
and use it, with other quantities, in the contemplation of the skies for
the solving of an astronomical problem, it gives a prophetic answer that,
in a certain place there is a star; this star, may be for years looked for
in vain. Was it that the calculation was wrong? No, for after further
search with telescopes of greater power, the star is found and the
calculation thus verified.
It is obvious that the “unit”—inch—has no value by itself, but is very
precious as a unit for measuring the phenomenon of length, which it
perfectly represents, and that is why it was introduced.
It is exactly the same with money if the term be rightly understood.
Understood aright, money, being the measure and representative of wealth,
is in the main, the measure and the representative of dead men’s toil;
for, rightly understood, wealth is almost entirely the product of the
labor of by-gone generations. This product, we have seen, involves the
element of time as the chief factor. And so we discover how money,
properly understood, is connected with time—the main function of money is
to measure and represent the accumulated products of the labor of past
generations. Hoarded money is like an iron “inch” upon a shelf—a useless
lump; but when used as a measure and representative of wealth rightly
understood, money renders invaluable service, for it then serves to
measure and represent the living fruit of dead men’s toil.
For this reason, it is useless to argue who is the more important, the
capitalist who has legal possession of most of the material fruit of dead
men’s toil, or the laborer who has legal possession of but little of it.
In the laborer, we do not now really look for his physical muscular labor
ALONE; for this is replaced by mechanical or animal power as soon as it
can be. What we do need from labor, and what we will always need, is his
BRAIN—HIS TIME-BINDING POWER.
The population of the world may be divided into different classes; if the
classes are not here enumerated in the customary way, it is because it is
necessary to classify human beings, as nearly as possible according to
their “power-value.” There is no assertion that this is an ideal
classification, but if someone is moved to exclaim—“what a foolish,
unscientific division!”—I will answer by saying: “I grant that the
division is foolish and unscientific; but IT IS THE ONLY DIVISION WHICH
CORRESPONDS TO FACTS IN LIFE, and it is not the writer’s fault. By this
‘foolishness’ some good may be accomplished.”
From an engineer’s point of view humanity is apparently to be divided into
three classes; (1) the intellectuals; (2) the rich; and (3) the poor. This
division would seem to be contrary to all the rules of logic, but it
corresponds to facts. Of course some individuals belong to two of the
classes or even to all three of them, an after-war product, but
essentially, they belong to the one class in proportion to the
characteristic which is the most marked in their life; that is, in the
sense of social classes—BASED ON MAGNITUDE OF VALUES.
(1) The intellectuals are the men and women who possess the knowledge
produced by the labor of by-gone generations but do not possess the
material wealth thus produced. In mastering and using this inheritance of
knowledge, they are exercising their time-binding energies and making the
labor of the dead live in the present and for the future.
(2) The rich are those who have possession and control of most of the
_material_ wealth produced by the toil of bygone generations—wealth that
is dead unless animated and transformed by the time-binding labor of the
living.
(3) The poor are those who have neither the knowledge possessed by the
intellectuals nor the material wealth possessed by the rich and who,
moreover, because nearly all their efforts, under present conditions, are
limited to the struggle for mere existence, have little or no opportunity
to exercise their time-binding capacity.
Let us now try to ascertain the rôle of the time-binding class of life as
a whole. We have by necessity, to go back to the beginning—back to the
savage. We have seen what were the conditions of his work and progress; we
saw that for each successful achievement he often had to wrestle with a
very large number of unsuccessful achievements, and his lifetime being so
limited, the total of his successful achievements was very limited, so
that he was able to give to his child only a few useful objects and the
sum of his experience. Generally speaking, each successor did not start
his life at the point where his father started; he started somewhere near
where his father left off. His father gave, say, fifty years to discover
two truths in nature and succeeded in making two or three simple objects;
but the son does not need to give fifty years to discover and create the
same achievements, and so he has time to achieve something _new_. He thus
adds his own achievements to those of his father in tools and experience;
this is the mathematical equivalent of adding his parent’s years of life
to his own. His mother’s work and experience are of course included—the
name father and son being only used representatively.
This stupendous fact is the definitive mark of humanity—the power to roll
up continuously the ever-increasing achievements of generation after
generation endlessly. We have seen that this time-binding power is an
exponential power or function of time. Time flows on, increasing in
arithmetical progression, adding generation unto generation; but the
results of human energies working in time do not go on arithmetically;
they pile up or roll up more and more rapidly, augmenting in accordance
with the law of a more and more rapidly increasing geometric progression.
The typical term of the progression is _PR__T_ where _PR_ denotes the
ending progress made in the generation with which we agree to start our
reckoning, _R_ denotes the ratio increase, and _T_ denotes the number of
generations after the chosen “start.” The quantity, _PR__T_ of progress
made in the _Tth_ generation contains _T_ as an exponent, and so the
quantity, varying as time _T_ passes, is called an exponential function of
the time.
Nature is the source of all energy. Plants, the lowest form of life, have
a definite rôle to perform in the economy of nature. Their function is the
forming of albuminoids and other substances for higher purposes. All of
their nitrates are high-explosives, or low explosives, but explosives
anyway. They are powerful sources of some new energy. Animal life uses
these “explosives” as food and is correspondingly more dynamic, but in
animal life time does not play the rôle it plays in human life. Animals
are limited by death permanently. If animals make any progress from
generation to generation, it is so small as to be negligible. A beaver,
for example, is a remarkable builder of dams, but he does not progress in
the way of inventions or further development. A beaver dam is always a
beaver dam.
Finally humanity, the highest known class of life, has time-binding
capacity as its characteristic, its discriminant, its peculiar and
definitive mark. It is an unrealized fact that in this higher class of
life, _the law of organic growth develops into the law of
energy-growth—the mind—the time-binding energy—an increasing exponential
function of time._ That fact is of basic importance for the science and
art of Human Engineering. In mechanics we have the well-known formula
(1) Work ÷ Time = Power.
We have seen that, in accordance with the law of geometric progression,
_PR__T_ represents the progress made—the work done—in the _Tth_ generation
(_T_ being counted from some generation taken as starting point of
reckoning); this progress, achievement, or _work_, being done in _one_
generation, we have by (1)
(2) ( Work = PRT ) / ( Time = 1) = Power,
that is, _PR__T_ = Power; this means that the number _PR__T_, which
measures the work done in a given generation, is also the measure of the
power that does the work. Now, the total work, _W_, done in the _T_
generations is
(3) _W = PR__1__ + PR__2__ + PR__3__ + ... + PR__T_;
that is,
(4) _W_ = _R_ ÷ (_R_-1) × (_PR_T - _P_)
It should be noticed that by (2) this expression for _W_ may also be
regarded as the sum of _T_ different powers _PR_, _PR__2_, etc., each
working during one and only one generation; if we divided this sum by _T_,
the quotient would be a power that would have to act through _T_
generations to produce _W_. The reader should not fail to notice very
carefully that the expression (4) for _W_ is an expression for the total
progress made—the total work done—the total wealth produced—in the course
of _T_ generations and he should especially note how the expression
involves the exponential function of time (_T_), namely _PR__T_.
The formula makes mathematically evident the time-binding capacity
characteristic of the human class of life. Properly understood, _wealth_
consists of the fruits or products of this time-binding capacity of man.
Animals do not produce wealth; it is produced by Man and only Man. The
foregoing basic formulation should lead to further similar developments
throwing much light upon the process of civilization and serving to
eliminate "private opinion" from the conduct of human affairs. (In this
writing it is not important to look deeper into these proposed series. The
fact remains that _P_, as well as _R_, are peculiarly increasing series of
a geometrical character—the precise form will be developed in another
writing.)
Human achievements and progress, because cumulative, are knocking out the
barriers of time. This fact is the vital and dynamic difference between
animal life and human life. As plants gather in and store up solar energy
into sheaves for the use and growth of animal and man—so humans are
gathering and binding the knowledge of past centuries into sheaves for the
use and development of generations yet unborn.
We have seen that the term wealth, rightly understood, means the fruit of
the time-binding work of humanity. Wealth is of two kinds: one is
material; the other is knowledge. Both kinds have use-value. The first
kind perishes—the commodities composing it deteriorate and become useless.
The other is permanent in character; it is imperishable; it may be lost or
forgotten but it does not wear out.
The one is limited in time; the other, unlimited in time; the former I
call POTENTIAL USE-VALUE; the latter, KINETIC USE-VALUE. Analysis will
justify the names. The energy of a body which is due to its position, is
called potential energy. The energy of a body which is due to its motion,
is called kinetic energy. Here the material use-value has value through
its position, shape and so forth; it is immobile if not used, and has not
the capacity to progress. Mental use-values are not static but permanently
dynamic; one thought, one discovery, is the impulse to others; they follow
the law of an increasing _potential_ function of time. (See app. II.) This
is why these names correspond to the two names of the two mentioned
classes of energy.
Here I must return to the current conceptions of wealth and capital,
before cited. “Wealth,” we are told, “is any useful or agreeable thing
which possesses _ex_change_able value_.” And we are told that “Capital is
that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.” I have
said that such conceptions—such definitions—of wealth and capital are
childish—they belong to the period of humanity’s childhood. That they are
indeed childish conceptions the reader can not fail to see if he will
reflect upon them and especially if he will compare them with the
scientific conception according to which wealth consists of those
things—whether they be material commodities or forms of knowledge and
understanding—that have been produced by the time-binding energies of
humanity, and according to which _nearly all the wealth of the world at
any given time_ is the _accumulated fruit of the toil of past
generations_—the living work of the dead. It seems unnecessary to warn the
reader against confusing the “_making_” of money by hook or crook, by
trick or trade, with the _creating_ of wealth, by the product of labor. In
calling the old conceptions childish, I do not mean that they contain no
element of truth whatever; I mean that they are shallow, scientifically or
spiritually meagre, narrow in their vision, wrong in their accent; I
especially mean that they are dumb, because they are blind, regarding the
central matter that wealth is the natural offspring of Time and Human
Toil. The old conceptions do indeed imply that wealth and capital involve
both potential and kinetic use-values, and in so far they are right. But
how do such use-values arise?
The potential use-values in wealth are created by human work operating in
time upon raw material given by nature. The use-values are produced by
time-taking transformations of the raw materials; these transformations
are wrought by human brain labor and human muscular labor directed by the
human brain acting in time. The kinetic use-values of wealth are also
created by human toil—mainly by the intellectual labor of observation,
experimentation, imagination, deduction and invention, all consuming the
precious time of short human lives. It is obvious that in the creation of
use-values whether potential or kinetic, the element of _time_ enters as
an absolutely essential factor. The fundamental importance of time as a
factor in the production of wealth—the fact that wealth and the use-values
of wealth are literally the natural offspring of the spiritual union of
time with toil—has been completely overlooked, not only by the economics,
but by the ethics, the jurisprudence and the other branches of speculative
reasoning, throughout the long period of humanity’s childhood. In the
course of the ages there has indeed been much “talk” about time, but there
has been no recognition of the basic significance of time as essential in
the conception and in the very constitution of human values.
It is often said that “Time is Money”; the statement is often false; but
the proposition that Money is Time is always true. It is always true in
the profound sense that Money is the measure and symbol of Wealth—the
product of Time and Toil—the crystallization of the time-binding human
capacity. IT IS THUS TRUE THAT MONEY IS A VERY PRECIOUS THING, THE MEASURE
AND SYMBOL OF WORK—IN PART THE WORK OF THE LIVING BUT, IN THE MAIN, THE
LIVING WORK OF THE DEAD.
Nature’s laws are supreme; we cannot change them; we can deviate from them
for a while, but the end is evil. That is the lesson we must learn from
the history of Humanity’s childhood. False conceptions of Man—ignorance of
the laws of human nature—have given us unscientific economies,
unscientific ethics, unscientific law, unscientific politics, unscientific
government. These have made human history the history of social
cataclysms—insurrections, wars, revolutions—sad tokens not so much of
human lust as of human ignorance of the laws of human nature. There is but
one remedy, one hope—a science and art of Human Engineering based upon the
just conception of humanity as the time-binding class of life and
conforming to the laws of nature including the laws of human nature.