In a previous chapter I have said that the World War marks the end of one
vast period in the life of humankind and marks the beginning of another.
It marks the end of Humanity’s Childhood and the beginning of Humanity’s
Manhood.
Our human Past is a mighty fact of our world. Many facts are unstable,
impermanent, and evanescent—they are here to-day, and to-morrow they are
gone. Not so with the great fact of our human Past. Our past abides.
“It is permanent. It can be counted on. It is nearly eternal as
the race of man. Out of that past we have come. Into it we are
constantly returning. Meanwhile, it is of the utmost importance to
our lives. It contains the _roots_ of all we are, and of all we
have of wisdom, of science, of philosophy, of art, of
jurisprudence, of customs and institutions. It contains the record
or ruins of all the experiments that man has made during a quarter
or a half million years in the art of living in this world.”
(Keyser, _Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking_.)
In our relation to the past there are three wide-open ways in which one
may be a fool. One of the ways is the way of ignoring the past—the way of
remaining blankly ignorant of the human past as the animals are blankly
ignorant of _their_ past and so of drifting through life as animals do,
without reference to the experience of bygone generations. Fools of this
type may be called drifting fools or Drifters. Another way to be a fool—a
very alluring way—is that of falsifying the past by _idealizing_ it—by
stupidly disregarding its vices, misery, ignorance, slothfulness, and
folly, and stupidly magnifying its virtues, happiness, knowledge,
achievements and wisdom; it is the way of the self-complacent—the way of
those who, being comfortably situated and prosperous, are opposed to
change; the past, they say, was wise for it produced the present and the
present is good—let us alone. Fools of this type may be called idolatrous
fools, worshiping the Past; or static fools, contented with the Present;
or cowardly fools, opposed to change, fearful of the Future. A third way
to be a fool—which is also alluring—is the opposite of the foregoing; it
is the way of those who falsify the past by stupidly and contemptuously
disregarding its virtues, its happiness, its knowledge, its great
achievements, and its wisdom, and by stupidly or dishonestly magnifying
its vices, its misery, its ignorance, its great slothfulness, and its
folly; it is apt to be the way of the woeful, the unprosperous, the
desperate—especially the way of such as find escape from the bore of
routine life in the excitements of unrest, turbulence, and change; the
past, they say, was all wrong, for it produced the present and the present
is thoroughly bad—let us destroy it, root and branch. Fools of this type
may be called scorning fools, Scorners of the Past; or destroying fools,
Destroyers of the Present; or dynamic fools, Revelers in the excitements
of Change.
Such are the children of folly: (1) Drifting fools—ignorers of the
past—disregarders of race experience—thoughtless floaters on the shifting
currents of human affairs; (2) Static fools—idealizers of the
past—complacent lovers of the present—enemies of change—fearful of the
future; (3) Dynamic fools—scorners of the past—haters of the
present—destroyers of the works of the dead—most _modest_ of fools, each
of them saying: “What ought to be begins with _Me_; I will make the world
a paradise; but my genius must be free; _now_ it is hampered by the
existing ‘order’—the bungling work of the past; I will destroy it; I will
start with chaos; we need light—the Sun casts shadows—I will begin by
blotting out the Sun; then the world will be full of glory—the light of my
genius.”
In striking contrast with that three-fold division of Folly, the counsel
of Wisdom is one, and it is one with the sober counsel of Common Sense.
What is that counsel? What is the united counsel of wisdom and common
sense respecting the past? The answer is easy and easy to understand. The
counsel is this: Do not ignore the past but study it—study it diligently
as being the mightiest factor among the great factors of our human world;
endeavor to view the past justly, to contemplate it as it was and is, to
see it _whole_—to see it in true perspective—magnifying neither its good
nor its evil, neither its knowledge nor its ignorance, neither its
enterprise nor its slothfulness, neither its achievements nor its
failures; as the salient facts are ascertained, endeavor to account for
them, to find their causes, their favoring conditions, to explain the
facts to understand them, applying always the question _Why?_ Centuries of
centuries of cruel superstition—Why? Centuries of centuries of almost
complete ignorance of natural law—Why? Centuries of centuries of monstrous
misconceptions of human nature—Why? Measureless creations, wastings and
destructions of wealth—Why? Endless rolling cycles of enterprise,
stagnation, and decay—Why? Interminable alterations of peace and war,
enslavements and emancipations—Why? Age after age of world-wide worship of
man-made gods, silly, savage, enthroned by myth and magic, celebrated and
supported by poetry and the wayward speculations of ignorant "sages"—Why?
Age upon age of world-wide slow developments of useful inventions,
craftsmanship, commerce, and art—Why? Ages of dark impulsive groping
before the slow discovery of reason, followed by centuries of belief in
the sufficiency of ratiocination unaided by systematic observation and
experiment—Why? At length the dawn of scientific method and science, the
growth of natural knowledge, immeasurable expansion of the universe _in
Time_ and _in Space_, belief in the lawfulness of Nature, rapidly
increasing subjugation of natural forces to human control, growing faith
in the limitless progressibility of human knowledge and in the limitless
perfectibility of human welfare—Why? The widely diverse peoples of the
world constrained by scientific progress to live together as in one
community upon a greatly shrunken and rapidly shrinking planet, the
unpreparedness of existing ethics, law, philosophy, economics, politics
and government to meet the exigencies thus arising—Why?
Such I take to be the counsel of wisdom—the simple wisdom of sober common
sense. To ascertain the salient facts of our immense human past and then
to explain them in terms of their causes and conditions is not an easy
task. It is an exceedingly difficult one, requiring the labor of many men,
of many generations; but it must be performed; for it is only in
proportion as we learn to know the great facts of our human past and their
causes that we are enabled to understand our human present, for the
present is the child of the past; and it is only in proportion as we thus
learn to understand the present that we can face the future with
confidence and competence. Past, Present, Future—these can not be
understood singly and separately—they are welded together indissolubly as
_one_.
The period of humanity’s childhood has been long—300,000 to 500,000 years,
according to the witness of human relics, ruins and records of the caves
and the rocks—a stretch of time too vast for our imaginations to grasp. Of
that immense succession of ages, except a minute fraction of it including
our own time, we have, properly speaking, no history; we have only a rude,
dim, broken outline. Herodotus, whom we call “the father of history”
proper, lived less than 2500 years ago. What is 2500 years compared with
the whole backward stretch of human time? We have to say that the father
of human history lived but yesterday—a virtual contemporary of those now
living. Our humankind groped upon this globe for probably 400,000 years
before the writing of what we call history had even begun. If we regard
history as a kind of _racial memory_, what must we say of our race’s
memory? It is like that of a man of 20 years whose recollection extends
back less than 3 months or like that of a man of 60 years whose
recollection fails to reach any event of the first 59 years of his life.
Owing to the work of geologists, paleontologists, ethnologists and their
co-workers, the history of prehistoric man will grow, just as we know
to-day more about the life of mankind in the time of Herodotus than
Herodotus himself knew. Meanwhile we must try to make the best use of such
historical knowledge of man as we now possess.
Even if the story of humanity’s childhood were fully recorded in the
libraries of the world, it would not be possible in this brief writing to
recount the story in even the most summary fashion. Except the tale of
recent years, the story is known as I have said, only in outline, rude,
dim and broken, but for the present purpose this will suffice. Countless
multitudes of details are lost—most of them doubtless forever. But we need
not despair. The really great facts of our racial childhood—the massive,
dominant, outstanding facts—are sufficiently clear for our guidance in the
present enterprise. And what do we know?
We know that the period of our human childhood has been inconceivably
long; we know that in the far distant time, the first specimens of
humankind—the initial members of the time-binding race of man—were
absolutely without human knowledge of the hostile world in which they
found themselves; we know that they had no conception of what they
themselves were; we know that they had neither speech nor art nor
philosophy nor religion nor science nor tools nor human history nor human
tradition; we know, though we to-day can hardly imagine it, that their
_sole_ equipment for _initiating_ the career of the human race was that
peculiar faculty which made them human—the capacity of man for binding
time; we know that they actually did that work of initiation, without any
guidance or example, maxim or precedent; and we know that they were able
to do it just because the power of initiation—the power to originate—is a
time-binding power.
What else do we know of the earliest part of humanity’s childhood? We know
that in that far-distant age, our ancestors—being, not animals, but human
creatures—not only _began_ to live in the human dimension of life—forever
above the level of animals—but _continued_ therein, taking not only the
first step, but the second, the third, and so on indefinitely; we know, in
other words, that they were progressive creatures, that they made
advancement; we know that their progress was _natural_ to them—as natural
as swimming is to fishes or as flying is to birds—for both the impulse and
the ability to progress—to make improvement—to do greater things by help
of things already done—are of the very nature of the time-binding capacity
which makes humans human.
We know that time-binding capacity—the capacity for accumulating racial
experience, enlarging it, and transmitting it for future expansion—is the
peculiar power, the characteristic energy, the definitive nature, the
defining mark, of man; we know that the mental power, the time-binding
capacity, of our pre-historic ancestors, was the same in _kind_ as our
own, if not in degree; we know that it is natural for this capacity, the
highest known agency of Nature, to produce ideas, inventions, insights,
doctrines, knowledge and other forms of wealth; we know that progress in
what we call civilization, which is nothing but progress in the production
and right use of material and spiritual wealth, has been possible and
actual simply and solely because the products of time-binding work not
only _survive_, but naturally tend to propagate their kind—ideas begetting
ideas, inventions leading to other inventions, knowledge breeding
knowledge; we therefore, know that the amount of progress which a single
generation can make, if it have an adequate supply of raw material and be
unhampered by hostile circumstances, depends, not only upon its native
capacity for binding time, but also—and this is of the utmost
importance—upon the total progress made by preceding generations—upon the
inherited fruit, that is, of the time-binding toil of the dead;
accordingly we know that the amount of progress a single generation can
thus make is what mathematicians call an increasing function of time, and
not only an increasing function but an increasing _exponential_ function
of time—a function like _PR__T_, as already explained; we know, too, that
the _total_ progress which _T_ successive generations can thus make is:
_R/R-1_(_PR__T-P_)
which is also an increasing exponential function of time; we know from the
differential calculus that these functions—which represent natural laws,
laws of human _nature_, laws of the time-binding energies of man—are very
remarkable functions—not only do they increase with time but their _rates_
of increase are also exponential functions of time and so the rates of
increase themselves increase at rates which are, again, exponential
functions, and so on and on without limit; that, I say, is a marvelous
fact, and it is for us a fact of immeasurable significance; for it means
that the time-binding power of man is such that, if it be allowed to
operate naturally, civilization—the production and right use of material
and spiritual wealth—will not only grow towards infinity (as
mathematicians say), but will thus grow with a _swiftness_ which is not
constant but which itself grows towards infinity with a swiftness which,
again, is not constant but increases according to the same law, and so on
indefinitely. We thus see, if we will only retire to our cloisters and
contemplate it, that the proper life of man _as man_ is not life-in-space
like that of animals, but is life-in-time; we thus see that in
distinctively human life, in the life of man as man, the past is present
and the dead survive destined to greet and to bless the unborn
generations: time, bound-up time, is literally of the core and substance
of civilization. So it has been since the beginning of man.
We know that the total progress made in the long course of humanity’s
childhood, though it is absolutely great, is relatively small; we know
that, compared with no-civilization, our present civilization is vast and
rich in many ways; we know, however, that, if the time-binding energies of
humanity had been always permitted to operate unhampered by hostile
circumstances, they would long ere now have produced a state of
civilization compared with which our present estate would seem mean,
meagre, savage. For we know that those peculiar energies—the
civilization-producing energies of man—far from being always permitted to
operate according to the laws of their nature, have _never_ been permitted
so to operate, but have always been hampered and are hampered to-day by
hostile circumstances. And, if we reflect, we may know well enough what
the enemies—the hostile circumstances—have been and are. We know that in
the beginning of humanity’s childhood—in its babyhood, so to speak—there
was, as already said, no _capital_ whatever to start with—no material
wealth—no spiritual wealth in the form of knowledge of the world or the
nature of man—no existing fruit of dead men’s toil—no bound-up
time—nothing but wild and raw material, whose very location, properties
and potencies had all to be discovered; even now, because we have
inherited so much bound-up time and because our imaginations have been so
little disciplined to understand realities, we can scarcely picture to
ourselves the actual conditions of that far-off time of humanity’s
babyhood; still less do we realize that present civilization has hardly
begun to be that of enlightened men. We know, moreover, that the
time-binding energies of our remote ancestors were hampered and baulked,
in a measure too vast for our imaginations, by immense geologic and
climatic changes, both sudden and secular, unforeseen and irresistible—by
earthquake and storm, by age-long seasons of flood and frost and heat and
drought, not only destroying both natural resources and the slowly
accumulated products of by-gone generations but often extinguishing the
people themselves with the centers and abodes of struggling civilization.
Of all the hostile circumstances, of all the causes which throughout the
long period of humanity’s childhood have operated to keep civilization and
human welfare from progressing in full accord with the natural laws of the
time-binding energies of man, the most potent cause and most disastrous, a
cause still everywhere in operation, remains to be mentioned. I mean human
ignorance. I do not mean ignorance of physical facts and the laws of
physical nature for this latter ignorance is in large measure the effect
of the cause I have in mind. The ignorance I mean is far more fundamental
and far more potent. I mean human ignorance of _Human Nature_—I mean man’s
ignorance of what Man is—I mean false conceptions of the rightful place of
man in the scheme of life and the order of the world. What the false
conceptions are I have already pointed out. They are two. One of them is
the conception according to which human beings are animals. The other one
is the conception according to which human beings have no place in Nature
but are hybrids of natural and _super_natural, animals combined with
something “divine.” Both of them are characteristic of humanity’s
childhood; both of them are erroneous, and both of them have done infinite
harm in a thousand ways. Whose is the fault? In a deep sense, it is the
fault of none. Man started with no capital—on knowledge—with nothing but
his physical strength and the natural stirring within of the capacity for
binding time; and so he had to grope. It is not strange that he was
puzzled by himself. It is not strange that he thought himself an animal;
for he has animal propensities as a cube has surfaces, and his animal
propensities were so obtrusive, so very evident to physical sense—he was
born, grew, had legs and hair, ate, ran, slept, died—all just like
animals—while his distinctive mark, his time-binding capacity, was subtle;
it was spiritual; it was not a _visible organ_ but an _invisible
function_; it was the energy called intellect or mind, which the physical
senses do not perceive; and so I say it is not strange—it is indeed very
sad and very pathetic—but it is not to be wondered at that human beings
have falsely believed themselves to be animals. So, too, of the rival
belief—the belief that humans are neither natural nor supernatural but are
both at once, at once brutal and divine, hybrid offspring of beast and
god. The belief is monstrous, it is very pathetic and very sad, but its
origin is easy to understand; once invented, it became a powerful
instrument for evil men, for impostors, but it was not invented by them;
it was only an erroneous result of an honest effort to understand and to
explain. For the obvious facts created a real puzzle to be explained: On
the one hand, men, women and children—animal-hunting and animal-hunted
human beings—certainly resembled animals physically in a hundred
unmistakable ways; on the other hand, it became more and more evident that
the same animal-resembling human beings could do many things which animals
never did and could not do. Here was a puzzle, a mystery. Time-binding
curiosity demanded an explanation. What was it to be? Natural science had
not yet arisen; critical conception—conception that avoids the mixing of
dimensions—was in the state of feeble infancy. It is easy to understand
what the answer had to be—childish and mythical; and so it was—humans are
neither animals nor gods, neither natural nor _super_natural, they are
both at once, a mixture, a mysterious union of animal with something
“divine.”
Such, then, are the two rival answers which, in the long dark, groping
course of humanity’s childhood, human beings have given to the most
important of all questions—the question: What is Man? I have said that the
answers, no matter how sincere, no matter how honestly arrived at, are
erroneous, false to fact, and monstrous. I have said, and I repeat, that
the misconceptions involved in them have done more throughout the by-gone
centuries, and are doing more to-day, than all other hindering causes, to
hamper and thwart the _natural_ activity of the time-binding energies of
man and thus to retard the _natural_ progress of civilization. It is not
merely our privilege, it is our high and solemn duty, to examine them. To
perform the great duty is not an easy task. The misconceptions in question
have come down to us from remote antiquity; they have not come down
singly, separately, clean-cut, clear and well-defined; they have come
_entangled_ in the complicated mesh of traditional opinions and creeds
that constitute the vulgar “philosophy”—the mental fog—of our time. If we
are to perform the duty of examining them we have first of all to draw
them forth, to disengage them from our inherited tangle of beliefs and
frame them in suitable words; we have next to bring ourselves to realize
vividly and keenly that the conceptions, thus disentangled and framed, are
in fact, whether they be true or false, at the very heart of the social
philosophy of the world; we have in the third place to detect the
fundamental character of the blunder involved in them—to see clearly and
coldly wherein they are wrong and why they are ruinous; we have, finally,
to trace, if we can, their deadly effects both in the course of human
history and in the present status of our human world.
The task of disengaging the two monstrous misconceptions from the tangled
skein of inherited beliefs and framing them in words, I have already
repeatedly performed. Let us keep the results in mind. Here they are in
their nakedness: (1) Human beings—men, women, and children—are animals
(and so they are natural): (2) human beings are neither natural nor
_super_natural, neither wholly animal nor wholly “divine,” but are _both_
natural and _super_natural _at once_—a sort of mysterious hybrid compound
of brute and gods.
The second part of our task—which is the reader’s task as much as mine—is
not so easy; and the reason is evident. It is this: The false creeds in
question—the fatal misconceptions they involve—are so _familiar_ to
us—they have been so long and so deeply imbedded in our thought and speech
and ways of life—we have been so thoroughly _bred_ in them by home and
school and church and state—that we _habitually_ and _unconsciously_ take
them for granted and have to be virtually _stung_ into an awareness of the
fact that we do actually hold them and that they do actually reign to-day
throughout the world and have so reigned from time immemorial. We have,
therefore, to shake ourselves awake, to _prick_ ourselves into a
realization of the truth.
I assume that the reader is at once hard-headed, rational, I mean, and
interested in the welfare of mankind. If he is not, he will not be a
“reader” of this book. He, therefore, knows that the third task—the task
of detecting and exposing the fundamental error of the misconceptions in
question—is a task of the utmost importance. What is that error? It is, I
have said, an error in logic. But logical errors are not all alike—they
are of many kinds. What is the “kind” of _this_ one? It is the kind that
consists in what mathematicians call “confusion of types,” or “mixing of
dimensions.” The answer can not be made too clear nor too emphatic, for
its importance in the criticism of _all_ our thinking is great beyond
measure. There are millions of examples that help to make the matter
clear. I will again employ the simplest of them—one so simple that a child
can understand it. It is a mathematical example, as it ought to be, for
the whole question of logical types, or dimensions, is a mathematical one.
I beg the reader not to shy at, or run away from, the mere word
mathematical, for, although most of us have but little mathematical
_knowledge_, we all of us have the mathematical _spirit_, for else we
should not be human—we are all of us mathematicians _at heart_. Let us,
then, proceed confidently and at once to our simple example. Here is a
_surface_, say a _plane_ surface. It has length and breadth—and so it has,
we say, _two_ dimensions; next consider a _solid_, say a _cube_. It has
length, breadth and thickness—and so _it_ has, we say, _three_ dimensions.
Now we notice that the cube _has_ surfaces and so _has certain surface
properties_. Do we, therefore, say that a solid _is_ a surface? That the
cube is a member of the class of surfaces? If we did, we should be
fools—type-confusing fools—dimension-mixing fools. That is evident. Or
suppose we notice that solids have certain _surface_ properties and
certain properties that surfaces do _not_ have; and suppose we say the
_surface_ properties of solids are _natural_ but the other properties are
so mysterious that they must be “_super_natural” or somehow “divine”; and
suppose we then say that solids are unions, mixtures, compounds or hybrids
of surfaces and something divine or _super_natural; is it not evident
that, if we did that, we should be again blundering like fools?
Type-confusing fools? Dimension-mixing fools? That such would be the case
any one can see. Let us now consider animals and human beings, and let us
look squarely and candidly at the facts. To get a start, think for a
moment of plants. Plants are living things; they take, transform and
appropriate the energies of sun, soil, and air, but they have _not_ the
_autonomous_ power to move about in space; we may say that plants
constitute the lowest order or class or type or dimension of life—the
dimension _one_; plants, we see are binders of the _basic_ energies of the
world. What of animals? Like the plants, animals, too, take in, transform
and appropriate the energies of sun, soil and air, though in large part
they take them in forms already prepared by the plants themselves; but,
_unlike_ the plants, animals possess the _autonomous_ power to move about
in space—to creep or crawl or run or swim or fly—it is thus evident that,
compared with plants, animals belong to a higher order, or higher class,
or higher type, or higher dimension of life; we may therefore say that the
type of animal life is a type of _two_ dimensions—a two-dimensional type;
I have called them space-binders because they are distinguished, or
marked, by their autonomous power to move about in space, to abandon one
place and occupy another and so to appropriate the natural fruits of many
localities; the life of animals is thus a life-in-space in a sense
evidently not applicable to plants. And now what shall we say of _Man_?
Like the animals, human beings have indeed the power of mobility—the
autonomous power to move—the capacity for binding space, and it is obvious
that, if they possessed no capacity of higher order, men, women and
children would indeed be animals. But what are the facts? The facts, if we
will but note them and reflect upon them, are such as to show us that the
chasm separating human nature from animal nature is even wider and deeper
than the chasm between animal life and the life of plants. For man
improves, animals do not; man progresses, animals do not; man invents more
and more complicated tools, animals do not; man is a creator of material
and spiritual wealth, animals are not; man is a builder of civilization,
animals are not; man makes the _past live in the present and the present
in the future_, animals do not; man is thus a _binder of time_, animals
are not. In the light of such considerations, if only we will attend to
their mighty significance, it is as clear as anything can be or can
become, that the life of man—the time-binder—is as radically distinct from
that of animals—mere space-binders—as animal life is distinct from that of
plants or as the nature of a solid is distinct from that of a surface, or
that of a surface from that of a line. It is, therefore, perfectly
manifest that, when we regard human beings as animals or as mixtures of
animal nature with something mysteriously _super_natural, we are guilty of
the same _kind_ of blunder as if we regarded animals as plants or as
plants touched by “divinity”—the same _kind_ of blunder as that of
regarding a solid as a surface or as a surface miraculously transfigured
by some mysterious influence from outside the universe of space. It is
thus evident that our guilt in the matter is the guilt of a blunder that
is _fundamental_—a confusing of types, a mixing of dimensions.
Nothing can be more disastrous. For what are the consequences of that kind
of error? Let the reader reflect. He knows that, if our ancestors had
committed that kind of error regarding lines and surfaces and solids,
there would to-day be no science of geometry; and he knows that, if there
were no geometry, there would be no architecture in the world, no
surveying, no railroads, no astronomy, no charting of the seas, no
steamships, no engineering, nothing whatever of the now familiar
world-wide affairs made possible by the scientific conquest of space. I
say again, let the reader reflect; for if he does not, he will here miss
the gravity of a most momentous truth. He readily sees, in the case
supposed, how very appalling the consequences would have been if,
throughout the period of humanity’s childhood, there had occurred a
certain confusion of types, a certain mixing of dimensions, and he is
_enabled_ to see it just because, happily, the blunder was _not_ made or,
if made, was not persisted in, for, if it had been made and persisted in,
then the great and now familiar things of which it would have deprived the
world would not be here; we should not now be able even to imagine them,
and so we could not now compute even roughly the tremendous magnitude of
the blunder’s disastrous consequences. Let the reader not deviate nor
falter nor stagger here; let him shoulder the burden of the mighty
argument and bear it to the goal. He easily perceives the truly appalling
consequences that _would_ have inevitably followed from the error of
confusing types—the error of mixing dimensions—in the matter of lines and
surfaces and solids, _if_ that error had been committed and persisted in
throughout the centuries; he _can_ perceive those consequences just
because the error was _not_ made and hence the great things of which (had
the blunder been made) it would have deprived the world are here, so that
he can say: “Behold those splendid things—the science of geometry and its
manifold applications everywhere shining in human affairs—imagine all of
them gone, imagine the world if they had never been, and you will have a
measure of the consequences that would have followed violation of the law
of types, the law of dimensions, in the matter of lines, surfaces and
solids.” But, now, in regard to the exactly similar error respecting the
nature of man, the situation is reversed; for this blunder, unlike the
other one, is not merely hypothetical; we have seen that it was actually
committed and has been actually persisted in from time immemorial; not
merely for years or for decades or for centuries but for _centuries_ of
_centuries_ including our own day, it has lain athwart the course of human
progress; age after age it has hampered and baulked the natural activity
of the time-binding energies—the civilization-producing energies—of
humanity. How are we to estimate its consequences? Let the reader keep in
mind that the error is fundamental—a type-confusing blunder (like that
supposed regarding geometric entities); let him reflect, moreover, that it
affects, not merely one of our human concerns, but _all_ of them, since it
is an error regarding the _center_ of them all—regarding the very _nature_
of man himself; and he will know, as well as anything can be known, that
the consequences of the ages-old blunder have been and are very momentous
and very terrible. Their measure is indeed beyond our power; we cannot
describe them adequately, we cannot delineate their proportions, for we
cannot truly imagine them; and the reason is plain: it is that those
advancements of civilization, those augmentations of material and
spiritual wealth, all of the glorious achievements of which the tragic
blunder has deprived the world, are none of them here; they have not been
produced; and so we cannot say, as in the other case: “Look upon these
splendid treasures of bound-up time, imagine them taken away, and your
sense of the appalling loss will give you the measure required.” It is
evident that the glories of which the misconceptions of human nature have
deprived manhood must long remain, perhaps forever, in the sad realm of
dreams regarding great and noble things that might have been.
I have said that the duty of examining the misconceptions imposes upon us
four obligations. Three of these we have performed: we have disengaged the
beliefs in question from the complicated tangle of opinions in which they
have come down to us from remote antiquity; we have recognized the
necessity and the duty of virtually stinging ourselves into an awareness
of the fact that we have actually held them for true and that from time
immemorial they have poured their virus into the heart of ethics,
economics, politics and government throughout the world; we have seen not
only that the beliefs are false but that their falseness is due to a
blunder of the most fundamental kind—the blunder of mixing dimensions or
confusing types. As already said, the fourth one of the mentioned tasks is
that of tracing, if we can, the blunder’s deadly effects both in human
history and in the present status of the world. We have just reached the
conclusion that this task cannot be _fully_ performed; for there can be no
doubt, as we have seen, that, if the blunder had not been committed and
persisted in, the world would now possess a civilization so far advanced,
so rich in the spiritual fruits of time and toil, as to be utterly beyond
our present power to conceive or imagine it.
But, though we cannot perform the task fully, our plight is far from
hopeless. The World War has goaded us into thinking as we never thought
before. It has constrained us to think of realities and especially to
think of the supreme reality—the reality of Man. That is why the great
Catastrophe marks the close of humanity’s childhood. The period has been
long and the manner of its end is memorable forever—a sudden, flaming,
world-wide cataclysmic demonstration of fundamental ignorance—human
ignorance of human nature. It is just that tragic _demonstration_, brutal
as an earthquake, pitiless as fate or famine, that gives us ground for
future hope. It has forced us to think of realities and it is thought of
reality that will heal the world. And so I say that these days, despite
their fear and gloom, are the beginning of a new order in human
affairs—the order of permanent peace and swift advancement of human weal.
For we know at length what human beings are, and the knowledge can be
taught to men and women and children by home and school and church and
press throughout the world; we know at length, and we can teach the world,
that man is neither an animal nor a miraculous mixture of angel and beast;
we know at length, and we can teach, that, throughout the centuries, these
monstrous misconceptions have made countless millions mourn and that they
are doing so to-day, for, though we cannot compute the _good_ of which
they have _deprived_ mankind, we can trace the dark ramifications of their
positive _evil_ in a thousand ways; we know at length, and we can teach,
that man, though he is not an animal, is a natural being, having a
definite place, a rank of his own, in the hierarchy of natural life; we
know at length, and we can teach the world, that what is _characteristic_
of the human class of life—that which makes us _human_—is the power to
create material and spiritual wealth—to beget the light of reasoned
understanding—to produce civilization—it is the unique capacity of man for
binding time, uniting past, present and future in a _single growing
reality_ charged at once with the surviving creations of the dead, with
the productive labor of the living, with the rights and hopes of the yet
unborn; we know at length, and we can teach, that the _natural_ rate of
human progress is the rate of a swiftly increasing exponential function of
time; we know, and we can teach, that what is good in _present_
civilization—all that is precious in it, sacred and holy—is the fruit of
the time-binding toil struggling blindly through the ages against the
perpetual barrier of human ignorance of human nature; we know at length,
we can teach, and the world will understand, that in proportion as we rid
our ethics and social philosophy of monstrous misrepresentations of human
nature, the time-binding energies of humanity will advance civilization in
accordance with their natural law _PR__T_, the forward-leaping function of
time.
Such knowledge and such teaching will inaugurate the period of humanity’s
manhood. It can be made an endless period of rapid developments in True
civilization. All the developments must grow out of the true conception of
human beings as constituting the time-binding class of life, and so the
work must begin with a campaign of education wide enough to embrace the
world. The cooperation of all educational agencies—the home, the school,
the church, the press—must be enlisted to make known the fundamental truth
concerning the nature of man so that it shall become the guiding _light_
and _habit_ of men, women, and children everywhere. Gradual indeed but
profound will be the transformations wrought in all the affairs of
mankind, but especially and first of all in the so-called arts and
sciences of ethics, economics, politics and government.
The ethics of humanity’s manhood will be neither “animal” ethics nor
“_super_natural” ethics. It will be a natural ethics based upon a
knowledge of the laws of human nature. It will not be a branch of zoology,
the ethics of tooth and claw, the ethics of profiteering, the ethics of
space-binding beasts fighting for “a place in the sun.” It will be a
branch of humanology, a branch of Human Engineering; it will be a
time-binding ethics, the ethics of the entirely natural
civilization-producing energies of humanity. Whatever accords with the
natural activity of those energies will be _right_ and _good_; whatever
does not, will be _wrong_ and _bad_. “Survival of the fittest” in the
sense of the _strongest_ is a space-binding standard, the ethical standard
of beasts; in the ethics of humanity’s manhood survival of the fittest
will mean survival of the _best_ in competitions for excellence, and
excellence will mean time-binding excellence—excellence in the production
and right use of material and spiritual wealth—excellence in science, in
art, in wisdom, in justice, in promoting the weal and protecting the
rights both of the living and of the unborn. The ethics that arose in the
dark period of humanity’s childhood from the conception of human beings as
mysterious unions of animality and divinity gave birth to two repulsive
species of traffic—traffic in men regarded as animals, fit to be slaves,
and traffic in the “supernatural,” in the sale of indulgences in one form
or another and the “divine wisdom” of ignorant priests. It is needless to
say that in the natural ethics of humanity’s manhood those species of
commerce will not be found.
And what shall we say in particular of economics, of “industry,” “business
as usual,” and the “finance” of “normalcy”? There lies before me an
established handbook of _Corporation Finance_, by Mr. E. S. Mead, Ph.D.
(Appleton, N. Y.), whose purpose is not that of adverse criticism but is
that of showing the generally accepted “sound” bases for prosperous
business. I can hardly do better than to ask the reader to ponder a few
extracts from that work, showing the established, and amazing theories,
for then I have only to say that in the period of humanity’s manhood the
moral blindness of such “principles,” their space-binding spirit of
calculating selfishness and greed, will be regarded with utter loathing as
slavery is regarded to-day. Behold the picture:
“Since the bondholder is solely interested in the security of his
principal, and regular payment of his interest, and since both
security and interest depend upon the permanence of income, other
things being equal the companies with the most stable earnings or
a market ... furnish the best security for bonds. Stability of
earnings depends upon (1) the possession of a monopoly....
_Monopoly is exclusive or dominant control over a market. The more
complete this control, the more valuable is the monopoly._ The
advantage of monopoly lies in the fact that the prices of services
or commodities are controlled by the producers (_meaning
owners—Author_), rather than by the consumer.... Monopolies are of
various origins. The most familiar are (1) franchises, the right
to use _public property_ for _private purposes_, for example, the
furnishing of light, water and transportation, (2) _control of
sources of raw material_ ... , (3) patents, ... (4) high cost of
duplicating plant.... In manufacturing industries, for example,
those enterprises which _produce raw materials_ and the
_necessities of life_ have a more stable demand.... Railroads
furnish perhaps the best basis of bond issue because of the
stability of the demand for the transportation service ... the
high cost of duplicating the railroad plant, ... enables them to
fix their rates on freight and passenger traffic.... The security
of the creditors is here the profitableness of the business _which
is carried on in the factory_. Furthermore, a business is not an
aggregate of physical property but consists of physical
property—buildings, boilers, machine tools—plus an industrial
opportunity, plus the organization and ability to operate
business.” (Italics indicated by the author.)
There we see the animal standards in their studied perfection. Comment
would be superfluous.
In the period of humanity’s manhood, the so-called “science” of economics,
the “dismal science” of political economy, will become a genuine science
based upon the laws of the time-binding energies of humanity; it will
become the light of Human Engineering—promoter, guardian, and guide of
human weal. For it will discover, and will teach that a _human_ life, a
time-binding life, is not merely a _civilized_ life but a _civilizing_
life; it will know and will teach that a civilizing life is a life devoted
to the production of potential and kinetic use-values—to the creation,
that is, of material and spiritual wealth; it will know and will teach
that wealth—both material and spiritual wealth—is a natural
phenomenon—offspring of the marriage of Time and human Toil; it will know
and will teach that the wealth in the world at any given moment is almost
wholly the _inherited_ fruit of time and the labor of the dead; and so it
will ask: To whom does the inheritance rightly belong? Does it of right
belong to Smith and Brown? If so, _why_? Or does it of right belong to
man—to humanity? If so, _why_? And what does “humanity” include? Only the
living, who are relatively few? Or both the living and unborn? The
Economics of humanity’s manhood will not only ask these questions but it
will answer them and answer them aright. In seeking the answers, it will
discover some obvious truths and many old words will acquire new meanings
consistent with the time-binding nature of man. It will discover and will
teach that the time-binders of a given generation are _posterity_ and
_ancestry_ at once—posterity of the dead, ancestry of all the generations
to come; it will discover and will teach that in this time-binding double
relationship uniting past and future in a single living growing Reality,
are to be found the obligations of time-binding ethics and the seat of its
authority; economics will know and will teach that _human_
posterity—time-binding posterity—can not inherit the fruits of time and
dead men’s toil _as animals inherit the wild fruits of the earth, to fight
about them and to devour them_, but only as _trustees_ for the generations
to come; it will know and will teach that "capitalistic" lust to _keep_
for SELF and “proletarian” lust to _get_ for SELF are both of them
_space-binding_ lust—animal lust—beneath the level of time-binding life.
The economics of humanity’s manhood will know and will teach that the
characteristic energies of man as man are by _nature_ civilizing energies,
wealth-producing energies, time-binding energies, the peaceful energies of
inventive mind, of growing knowledge and understanding and skill and
light; it will know and will teach that these energies of existing men
united with one billion six hundred million available “sun-man” powers
united with the ten billion living “man-powers of the dead,” if they be
not wasted by ignorance and selfishness, by conflict and competition
characteristic of beasts, are more than sufficient to produce a high order
of increasing prosperity everywhere throughout the world; in the period of
its manhood economics will discover and will teach that to produce world
prosperity, cooperation—not the fighting of man against man—but the
peaceful cooperation of all is both _necessary_ and sufficient; it will
know and will teach that such cooperation demands _scientific_ leadership
and a common _aim_; it will know, however, and will teach, for the lesson
of Germany is plain, that scientific knowledge and a common aim are not
alone sufficient; it will know and teach and all will understand that the
common aim, the unifying principle, the basis of cooperation, cannot be
the welfare of a family nor that of a province or a state or a race, but
must be the welfare of _all_ mankind, the prosperity of humanity, the weal
of the world—the peaceful production of Wealth without the destruction of
War.
In humanity’s manhood, patriotism—the love of country—will not perish—far
from it—it will grow to embrace the world, for your country and mine will
be the world. Your “state” and mine will be the Human State—a Cooperative
Commonwealth of Man—a democracy in fact and not merely in name. It will be
a natural organic embodiment of the civilizing energies—the
wealth-producing energies—characteristic of the human class of life. Its
larger affairs will be guided by the science and art of Human
Engineering—not by ignorant and grafting “politicians”—but by scientific
men, by honest men who _know_.
Is it a dream? It _is_ a dream, but the dream will come true. It is a
scientific dream and science will make it a living reality.
How is the thing to be done? No one can foresee all the details, but in
general outline the process is clear. Violence is to be avoided. There
must be a period of transition—a period of adjustment. A natural first
step would probably be the establishment of a new institution which might
be called a Dynamic Department—Department of Coordination or a Department
of Cooperation—the name is of little importance, but it would be the
_nucleus_ of the new civilization. Its functions would be those of
encouraging, helping and protecting the people in such cooperative
enterprises as agriculture, manufactures, finance, and distribution.
The Department of Cooperation should include various sections, which might
be as follows:
(1) _The Section of Mathematical Sociology_ or _Humanology_: composed of
at least one sociologist, one biologist, one mechanical engineer, and one
mathematician. Their work would be the development of human engineering
and mathematical sociology or humanology; promoting the progress of
science; providing and supervising instruction in the theory of values and
the rudiments of humanology for elementary schools and the public at
large. _The members of the section would be selected by the appropriate
scientific societies for a term fixed by the selectors._
(2) _The Section of Mathematical Legislation_: composed of (say) one
lawyer, one mathematician, one mechanical engineer, selected as above.
Their task would be to recommend legislation, to provide means for
eliminating “Legalism” from the theory and practice of law, and to bring
jurisprudence into accord with the laws of time-binding human nature and
the changing needs of human society. Their legislative proposals, if
ratified in a joint session of sections (1) and (2), would then be
recommended to the appropriate legislative bodies.
(3) _The Educational Section_: composed of two or three teachers, one
sociologist, one mechanical engineer, one mathematician, selected as
above. They would elaborate educational projects and revise school methods
and books; their decisions being subject to the approval of the joint
session of sections (1), (2), and (3).
(4) _The Cooperative Section_: composed of mechanical engineers, chemical
engineers, production engineers, expert bookkeepers, accountants, business
managers, lawyers and other specialists in their respective lines. This
section would be an “Industrial Red Cross” (Charles Ferguson) giving
expert advice when asked for by any cooperative society.
(5) _The Cooperative Banking Section_: composed of financial experts,
sociologists, and mathematicians; its task being to help with expert
advice new cooperative people’s banks.
(6) _The Promoters’ Section_: composed of engineers whose duty would be to
study all of the latest scientific facts, collect data, and elaborate
plans. Those plans would be published, and no private person, but only
cooperative societies, would be permitted by law to use them. The
department would also study and give advice respecting the general
conditions of the market and the needs in the various lines of production.
This section would regulate the duplication of production.
(7) _The Farming Section_: composed of specialists in scientific and
cooperative agriculture.
(8) _The Foreign Section_: for inter-cooperative foreign relations.
(9) _The Commercial Section_.
(10) _The News Section_: to edit a large daily paper giving _true_,
_uncolored_ news with a special supplement relating to progress in the
work of Human Engineering. This paper would give daily news about the
whole cooperative movement, markets, etc., etc.
All men selected to the places for this work should be the very best men
in the nation. They should be well paid to enable them to give their full
energy and time to their duties. All the selections for this work should
be made in the same manner as mentioned above—through proven merits not
clever oratory. Such appointments should be considered the highest honor
that a country can offer to its citizens. Every selection should be a
demonstration that the person selected was a person of the highest
attainments in the field of his work.
The outline of this plan is vague; it aims merely at being suggestive. Its
principal purpose is to accentuate the imperative necessity of
establishing a national time-binding agency—a Dynamic Department for
stimulating, guiding and guarding the civilizing energies, the wealth
producing energies, the time-binding energies, in virtue of which human
beings are human. For then and only then human welfare, unretarded by
monstrous misconceptions of human nature, by vicious ethics, vicious
economics and vicious politics, will advance peacefully, continuously, and
rapidly, under the leadership of human engineering, happily and without
fear, in accord with the exponential law—the _natural_ law—of the
time-binding energies of Man.