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Title: Sibylla
or, The revival of prophecy
Author: C. A. Mace
Release date: August 25, 2025 [eBook #76731]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1927
Credits: Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIBYLLA ***
SIBYLLA
OR
THE REVIVAL OF PROPHECY
_Most Popular Titles in the_
TODAY AND TOMORROW SERIES
To those who are just beginning the TODAY and TOMORROW SERIES, the
Publishers recommend the following volumes:
DAEDALUS, _J. B. S. Haldane_
CALLINICUS, _J. B. S. Haldane_
ICARUS, _Bertrand Russell_
WHAT I BELIEVE, _Bertrand Russell_
BIRTH CONTROL AND THE STATE, _C. P. Blacker_
LYSISTRATA, _Anthony Ludovici_
HYPATIA, _Mrs. Bertrand Russell_
PROMETHEUS, _Dr. H. S. Jennings_
THRASYMACHUS, _C. E. M. Joad_
MIDAS, _H. C. Bretherton_
PLATO’S AMERICAN REPUBLIC, _J. D. Woodruff_
OUROBOROS, _Garet Garrett_
_For complete list of titles send for circular._
SIBYLLA
_or_
THE REVIVAL OF PROPHECY
BY
C. A. MACE, M.A.
_Lecturer in Logic and Psychology at the
University of St. Andrews_
[Illustration]
New York
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Published, 1927
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOREWORD
Can Prophecy be a science? Science at any rate, appears to aim at
prophecy. We are often told that the test of an hypothesis lies in
the events that it predicts; but it is a test that is much too rarely
applied. We are surprised when Biologists apply it in a systematic way
to the theory of evolution. Historians also tell us that the study of
the past will help us to foresee the future, but in their practice they
hardly succeed in catching up to the present.
The organum of human knowledge, in fact, presents a curious spectacle――a
vast system of foundations but no sign of the edifice these foundations
are to bear. At least such was the case until recently. In the little
prophetic volumes recently published we can see, perhaps, the
preliminary sketch of its imposing elevation.
And so another question occurs. What is the future of prophecy?
Psychical research may even yet surprise us. Latent powers of divination
may lurk in the human mind, but it is premature no doubt to look for
enlightenment here. Less sensational but more significant is the
emergence of the prophetic function in the work of science itself, and
in the pedestrian progress of our general intellectual life in the
twentieth century.
It was this prophetic function of scientific thought which the author
set out in this little book to investigate, but like other writers
in the series he was tempted to “try out” some tentative principles
which seemed to promise well. Perhaps the future will reveal some
inaccuracies in his forecast, but the digression has been worth while.
One thing, at least, is certain. Large scale organization extends to
the work of science. In our past experiments we have been too much
concerned with events of short duration, with the kind of results we
could obtain for rapid publication, and with cycles that fall within
the span of an individual life. Even now we have insufficient data to
decide whether cold winters come in periods of seventy or eighty years,
a ridiculously easy problem which a little organization would have
solved. But every year will add to the fund of carefully recorded data.
Men are learning to co-operate through time. Experiments initiated by
the father are continued by the son, and succeeding generations will
record the results.
Organization provides a workable alternative to the invention
of Methuselahs; though it would simplify things considerably if
Nature could see her way to adopt the suggestion of Mr Shaw. More
than anywhere else perhaps this kind of organization is needed for
sociological and biological experiment. By that way we shall obtain
the knowledge upon which scientific prophecy may be based. In the
meantime, let us speculate. Speculation is not a deadly sin, but an
aid to true perspective, and it is suggestive of good hypotheses.
Nor need our speculations, even now, be wholly in the air. We have
the broad tendencies of the past on which to base our forecast. The
danger lies in a premature attempt to elucidate the details. The older
prophets tried to foresee particular events, the newer are content with
the general tendencies. Knowledge grows not like a crystal by minute
accretions, but like a work of art, from outline down to detail guided
by inspiration――which, in science, is speculation.
C. A. M.
SIBYLLA
OR
THE REVIVAL OF PROPHECY
I
Experience enables us to defend in age the prejudices of our youth, and
belatedly to realize ambitions forsaken in earlier years. This would
seem to be true not only of individuals but of institutions also.
Modern science, adolescent in the nineteenth century, shows signs
of middle age; and with it that mellowed and urbane tolerance which
fosters idealism and optimistic projects, projects which the realism
and studied pessimism of youth declare to be beyond all powers of
attainment.
The researches of Rutherford and his fellow-workers have disposed
the serious physicist to dally once more with the Philosopher’s
Stone. Again we hope to transmute the baser metals into gold. Indeed,
the Philosopher’s Stone is found. Japanese physicists claim that
a magnification 2,500 times of the produce of their experiments
enables us actually to photograph the world’s augmented gold-supply.
Furthermore, the progress of knowledge concerning atomic structure
and radiant energy promises to endow man with the powers and range of
influence for which the magicians of old had such a notable though
undeserved reputation.
Since Freud, the interpretation of dreams has become a serious
pre-occupation of the grave and a further relaxation for the gay. I
need not, however, multiply examples. Let us turn forthwith to the
latest phase in this development――the revival of prophecy.
Prophecy, of course, has never wholly died. Though the soothsayer fell
into disrepute and was banished from the temple precincts to earn
a precarious livelihood on Margate Sands, his mantle has fallen on
Mr Wells. Mr Wells, however, is merely a prophet of the transition,
the journalese precursor of a new and hardier race whose influence
in the world I suspect will prove much greater. Like the modern
prophets generally, he has substituted for revelation and intuition a
thorough-going reliance upon the mundane intellect, fed upon scientific
generalizations and historical particularities. Mr Bernard Shaw is
another of the transition prophets, having marked affinities to the
new Biological School; but, like the rest, is transitional in lacking
the regalia of office and authority with which the newer prophets are
endowed.
The first of the prophets of the twentieth-century school was Mr J. B.
S. Haldane. In _Daedalus_ we find a frank abandonment of the pose of
scientific reserve about the future. Scientists generally for long had
said that they were concerned only with verifiable facts. Newton, in
particular, had said quite publicly that he had no use for hypotheses;
and his successors for the sake of their reputations had to keep up
the Newtonian manner. To distinguish themselves from journalists and
philosophers they avoided speculation like a plague. Now Haldane
found himself, I imagine, somewhat unduly constrained by this taboo.
Pursuing the most rigid methods of inquiry, he had come to conclusions
about some probable developments in the future, conclusions much less
speculative than many of the things it was his duty as a biologist to
teach about the past. So he prophesied.
The relief in the scientific world was heartfelt and instantaneous.
Scientists and others, of various degrees of eminence, literally
scrambled into Mr Haldane’s bus. In the year or so that followed some
twenty prophetic volumes had been produced, and the publishers tell us
of many others in the press.
However, in many of these documents we fail to detect the authentic
guiding hand, and these uncanonical works we must leave to the Higher
Critics of the future. The genuine prophet is to be known by his
strictly impersonal manner. He tells you neither what he wants nor
what he fears. So far as we can judge, he has no wants or fears. He
merely tells you what is going to be. Judged by this test we must, I
think, reject _Thrasymachus_, as purely propagandist. Mr Joad wants to
popularize immorality. He tries to persuade us to join the ranks of
the libertines lest we be swamped in the coming Neopuritan revival. By
the same token we must, reluctantly, reject Mrs Bertrand Russell. In
_Hypatia_ the quasi-prophetic rôle is assumed, we fear, merely as a
vantage point from which to wage sex-war.
Coming to the genuine prophets, I would divide them into two kinds; the
mechanists and the vitalists, not however, using these terms in their
traditional philosophical senses. The mechanists are those who view the
future in terms of the development of machinery. Man, having a nature
very much what it is to-day, is seen in an environment of mechanical
perfection, a world of wireless telegraphy, television, fuelless
traffic, moving pavements, rubber roads, windows of flexible glass,
rustless metals, dustless and smokeless cities, and private houses fit
for a plumber’s paradise.
The vitalists, of whom I take Mr Haldane to be the leading spokesman,
have a message in the face of which the wonders of wireless are
relatively tame. The time has come, they say, when our science and
our inventive genius are to be applied to life itself. In a sense, of
course, the journalists and men of letters got in first. Kapek with his
Robots made the idea dramatic; but the mechanical tradition was too
strong. The Robot was little more than clockwork. Wells’s “Men like
Gods” are perhaps a slight advance, but the gods are all too human,
and a bit too much like Mr Wells. Shaw, I think, got nearest. In _Back
to Methuselah_ the problem of biological invention was approached in a
more biological manner. But all these are prophets of the transition.
They are at heart Utopians, and neglect the evidences of the present
upon which the forecast must be based.
II
It would tempt us too far afield to inquire into the logical foundations
of the new science of “Prophetics”, as no doubt this branch of learning
will be called. A young science must not at first aim at too much
systematic order, nor be too introspective. Let us, rather, glance into
the future and try to fill in the larger of the empty spaces in the
vision so far presented to our eyes.
We can readily grant at the outset all that the mechanists claim. In
fact, there is nothing, I think, unlikely in the suggestion that, so
far as mechanical invention is concerned, we are approaching the time
when all that is physically possible will be realized. The future
customer at Selfridges’ who inquires for a teleofactor in order to
smell the perfumes of Arabia will be told that the impossibility of
this has now been finally proved. For the rest of his desires, however,
he will be quite amply supplied. He will have perfect wireless concerts
and televisual cinemas; he will be conveyed by the morning aerial
Pullman from his villa-palace in Devonshire to his office in what was
once the Strand. To his Club or restaurant he will proceed by a moving
pavement, or in a bath-chair propelled by radiant power. His week-ends
may be spent in Samarkand or in tobogganing on Mount Everest. His wife,
too, will benefit by this universal progress. Her day’s work will be
done by 9 a.m. The turning of a tap or two will nourish the ectogenetic
child foretold by Mr Haldane, and the pressing of a button will put in
action the automatic cook. By wireless communication with Paris she
will choose a garment, to be delivered by an aerial messenger boy upon
his cycloplane. After luncheon she will, again by wireless, put herself
in visual and auditory contact with other members of the society to
which she belongs. It will probably be a society for the revival of
twentieth-century customs.
But, granting all this, the obvious question occurs. What will be
its effect upon human nature? Is it conceivable that the perfecting
of machinery could leave it unaffected, and will not inevitably
this inventive genius be turned upon man himself? Our future man of
business who, by improved modes of locomotion, spends his week-ends
in Tennessee, Kikuyu, or Zanzibar (according to his religious
predilections), will he enjoy only the advantages of mechanical
invention? Surely a perfected Pelmanism will enable him to learn three
native languages on the Friday’s journey out, and an improved process
of repression assist him to forget them on the Sunday evening’s
journey home.
This is not entirely idle speculation. Applications of science to the
control of the human mind have already begun. They started, perhaps, in
the crude and blundering experiments in Scientific Management. They are
groping towards more solid foundations in Industrial Psychology――the
philosophical significance of which has, up to the present, escaped the
attention it deserves.
Consider briefly the course of this movement up to the present date.
Sometime in the eighties Taylor introduced his principles of Scientific
Management. Some ingenious spirit, indirectly inspired no doubt by
him, produced the following invention for organizing the activities
of man. A certain American establishment paid its employees on the
basis of ‘task work’, i.e. upon piece rates with a time-limit for
the performance of the unit-task. The worker was paid a 25% bonus on
the ordinary wage for the performance of his task, but the task and
time-setter was paid a bonus based upon the number of men who failed
to earn their bonuses. The apparent disadvantage to the worker,
however, was counterbalanced by providing him with a foreman who also
was paid upon the basis of the number of men under him who ‘made
their tasks’. As Muscio[1] comments, “The situation then was this:
The workman was given a bonus as an incentive to expend intense
efforts to accomplishing a task in a set time; the foreman was given
‘blood money’ to drive the man if he became slack, and the task and
time-setter was also paid ‘blood money’ to set the times so short that
‘the making of the tasks’ involved an expenditure of more than the
greatest reasonable amount of energy.” The Trade Unions got to know of
this, with the result that Scientific Management of that sort is now
as dead as mutton. Public interest subsides. But in principle it was
right――right in the sense that its inventor had a glimpse of something
which is ultimately going to prove effective. He made the mistake which
probably every inventor makes. He constructed a machine with the power
to blow itself up; but this only shows that power is there, and power
to be controlled. The mistake, of course, was a natural one to make
for people preoccupied with the parallelogram of forces. Another case
supplies the necessary comment and indicates a more hopeful line of
experiment.
[1] Muscio, _Lectures on Industrial Psychology_, p. 39 (Routledge).
“There was in operation for some years at the leper colony off the
Philippine Islands a system of weekly gratuities to each man, woman,
and child confined to the island colony. From the women and children
no accounting for the subsidy was required. But from the men a certain
amount of manual labour about the island was exacted upon penalty of
having the pocket-money withheld. From the administrative point of
view this had seemed an easy solution for the difficult problem of
getting adequate labour in an isolated place inhabited largely by
the victims of a dread disease. But the men patients took vigorous
exception to this form of compulsory labour, and finally made complaint
about it to the Philippine Government. An investigation into the unrest
at the leper colony was instituted, and the Secretary of the Interior
visited the island and heard all the complaints in person. As a result
of his study the system of gratuities for the men was wiped out. And
the necessary work on the island was paid for at an agreed rate which,
it appeared later, was less than the previous gratuity. Nevertheless,
the men found the new system preferable; there was no more complaint,
the necessary work was done; the men who were inclined to work received
their stipends and the others not. But from that day to the present
trouble on this score has been unheard of.”[2]
[2] Ordway Tead, _Instincts in Industry_, p. 1.
More systematic were the investigations in this country made under the
Ministry of Munitions. In the Interim report of 1917 of the Health
of Munition Workers Committee we find the following reference to
incentives in industry:
“It is essential that the wage system should be equitable and easily
understood by the workers. The evidence collected leaves no doubt that
a wage system the operation of which cannot easily be understood by
the wage earners ... fails to serve as an incentive.”
In fact, the evidence in detail rather suggests that it is more
important for the system to be intelligible than it is for it to be
just. As in the case of the Philippine lepers a reduction of wages may
in certain cases be the shortest remedy for industrial discontent, just
as the reduction of working hours has often been found to involve an
increase in production.
More important, however, than juggling with the systems of remuneration
is concentrated upon the subtler psychological factors in the
situation. Politicians, artists, bishops, and many members of the
working-classes are played upon by forces which act more powerfully
on their energies than any system of wages that could be applied to
them; the ambitions and interests of their wives, the health of their
children, the criticism or adulation of their associates and a host of
other factors of curious psychological interest. Is it beyond the wit
of man to apply these forces in a scientific way?
One very instructive attempt was that of another American establishment,
which instituted the office of ‘plant mother’. “It is her duty” (as Tead
puts it), “using this motherly disposition and attitude as an entering
wedge, to go among the men and help to straighten out their troubles
with the management. And one of the most successful weapons of appeal
with her is said to be that she puts employées’ problems in family
terms. For example, a man will want to quit because of a slight ruction
with a fellow-worker or a superior, whereupon she will remind him that
his little Johnny should not be forced by father’s unemployment to leave
school to go to work, or that another baby is coming in a couple of
months and that he mustn’t cause anxiety to ‘the wife’.... This
particular ‘plant mother’, I am told, has been instrumental in reducing
the labour turnover to an astonishing extent.”[3]
[3] Tead, _op. cit._, p. 28.
My readers will be able to think of many other possible applications
of this principle. Cannot our domestic parrot be turned to economic
advantage? Its present function would seem to be only that of
preserving the unity of private family life by giving its jaded members
something to laugh and talk about when the bonds of common interest
and filial piety are beginning to wear thin. That which preserves the
family from disruption and armies from revolt will surely soon be
dedicated to the cause of peace in industry.
To these things we are gradually and insensibly being led, so gradually
and insidiously as to evade the inhibitory sense of the ludicrous.
Already it is known that light, ventilation, and the general comfort
of the worker are relevant to production. By slight and inexpensive
changes in these respects output may be augmented say 3.5 or even 10
per cent, and the worker suffers less from nervous irritability and is
less punctual in paying his subscription to his union. At any moment it
may be found that hanging pictures on the workshop walls has a similar
effect. Possibly Landseer’s would raise efficiency and contentment only
1 per cent, whilst Sargent’s would really justify their auction prices.
We should then discover a more satisfactory policy with regard to our
National Galleries. We should go to Port Sunlight to see good pictures
and the Royal Academy would become the testing hall for experiments in
industrial art.
All this is coming about no longer by mere chance or blind experiment,
but by the operation of a principle which I take as a foundation
stone for prophecy. Man has slowly and painfully acquired facility in
adopting the scientific attitude of mind. Gradually he has been able to
achieve this point of view in relation to the material universe. But
he finds a peculiar difficulty in being scientific in the face of the
animate; and the difficulty would appear to be almost insuperable in
the face of mind. It is because we are living at a time when the feat
is being accomplished that I feel impelled to prophesy an important
revolution, a revolution beside which the Bolshevic incident, for
instance, is dwarfed to almost comical insignificance.
The revolutionists are level-headed but far-seeing men of business,
acting in alliance with the scientists. Here is their programme as
voiced by Professor Catell in 1903.
“It is our business to make both a science and an art of human nature.
As in the physical world we select first the material suited to our
purpose, and turn the iron into steel, and temper the steel for a
knife, so in the world of human action we must learn to select the
right man, to educate him and fit him for his exact task. This indeed
we try to do in all our institutions, religions, commerce, system
of education, and government. But we work by rule of thumb――blind,
deaf, and wasteful. The nineteenth century witnessed an extraordinary
increase in our knowledge of the material world, and in our power to
make it subservient to our ends; the twentieth century will probably
witness a corresponding increase in our knowledge of human nature and
in our power to use it for our welfare.”[4]
[4] Homo Scientificus Americanus: _Science_, April 10, 1903.
Let us note the implications of this programme. At present we have made
but a few experiments and a few discoveries in industrial psychology.
The future, however, is to see the principle applied to education,
criminology, government, war, perhaps religion and the intimate
personal life of man.
Can we foresee the consequences? To some extent, I think, we can. As Dr
Fournier d’Albe puts it in the first of his prophetic volumes,[5] we
have but to extrapolate the curves of present developments into the
future. We must, however, also take into account so far as possible
some of the other factors at work. The general course of evolution
is in outline known to be one of differentiation, specialization,
integration, growing consciousness of ends, and substitution of
systematic experiment in place of blind trial and error. We shall
find other clues which, carefully studied, enable us to speak
about the future with at least as much assurance as biologists and
anthropologists enjoy in speaking about the remoter past. We shall,
moreover, have the added benefit of finding confirmation in the years
to come.
[5] _Quo Vadimus._
III
Facts brought to light in the sphere of industry have an application in
politics, so to politics and the arts of government let us turn. Let
politicians consider, for example, the discovery that the incidence
of shell-shock in war, and of nervous disorders in peace, is highest
in the dangerous occupations which are also the occupations most
liable to industrial unrest. Such facts prevent us from viewing the
discontented worker either as a martyred idealist, or as a mere
criminal. The case is paralleled by the suggestion that desertion and
malingering in exhausted armies are symptoms or ‘defence reactions’ in
incipient shell-shock. They force upon us a more dispassionate and
a more therapeutic point of view. The criminal in general is coming
to be regarded in this light. Turn now to the anarchist, and the
psycho-analyst explains to you that his activities are minor symptoms
of his ‘father complex’, which imprisonment, for example, will merely
intensify.
From knowledge of the conditions of these things proceeds control.
Possibly punitive measures may be genuinely counteracting causes.
Perhaps, however, empirical science may declare that the best treatment
for an anarchist is to make him a Lord Mayor, and the best remedy for
a militant labour party is a term of office judiciously supervised by
our permanent officials. The future student of social affairs will be
preoccupied with the scientific investigation of the sources of power
and its social reservoirs. The ‘party in power’, as it is charitably
called, has not much of it. Public opinion seems to have much more. In
fact, the chief function of a government, now-a-days, seems to be that
of carrying out the programme of the opposition.[6] The opposition is
relatively free from criticism; the Government moves in dread of it,
being threatened by attrition in its bye-elections and by a general
landslide at any appeal to the country.
[6] We have recently witnessed a paralysed Labour Government
incapable of carrying out its projected remedies for industrial
ills, and a Conservative Government maintaining a system of
Free Trade.
Under such conditions the essential tasks of government are very much
the same of whatever political colour the party in power may be. First
and foremost it has to deal with emergencies, whether spontaneously
arising or organized by the opposition, in such a way as to preserve
its popularity with the public. It has also to carry out more or less
efficiently the routine work of government, and it has to prepare for
the next election by enshrining its most permanent tactical advantages
within the framework of the Constitution. Any time and energy that may
be left can be devoted to carrying out its ‘programme’ and in dealing
with what it conceives to be the fundamental disorders of society.
A ‘party programme’, like a dream, has a manifest and a latent
content. The manifest content is drawn from the incidents of the
day and popular demands. The latent is constituted by those deeper
policies for the furtherance of which this clap-trap may be closed. The
distinction between the manifest and the latent content is not due,
as is frequently asserted, to mere political dishonesty but to the
necessities of the case; the primitive group mind’s need of a ‘Cause’
and of an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual economic
doctrine. With the increased complexity and scientific character
which the latent content is, in future, likely to assume political
sacramentalism will become more and more important.
How will this affect the issue of our present discontents? Viewing the
situation frankly, we find in society two powerful and opposed forces.
Let us adopt the convenient labels and call them Capital and Labour.
It would take us too far afield to discuss in detail the prospects of
success in each of the various remedies suggested for their enmity.
In general, it seems to me that all the proposals depend for their
success upon large-scale persuasion, and ignore the fundamental causes
of unrest and conflict. Even labour, it seems to me, is mistaken about
the causes of its troubles, and labour might be expected to know them
best. But even to ask this would be as unreasonable as to ask a patient
to diagnose and prescribe for his own disease. The solution, I venture
to think, will come along the lines upon which the only solution of
any problem has ever before been found――along the lines of exact and
scientific thought and piecemeal investigation. The recognition of
this combined with attention to the apparent power of public opinion
in modern politics has led many to suppose that the ultimate remedy
lies in the dissemination of education, of exact and scientific
thought throughout our great democracies. But, personally, I doubt
the possibility of disseminating anything, least of all scientific
habits or attitudes of mind. It would seem to violate the rule of
differentiation. Nor can I bring myself to believe that there ever
was or is ever likely to be a democracy in any important sense. It is
sufficient if this scientific spirit be exploited by those who hold
the reins of power, and it is because it seems that they are beginning
to see the possibilities of this that I think the really significant
revolution is to come. What is called ‘Public Opinion’ is now-a-days a
carefully manufactured article produced by firms entirely outside the
scope of the Factory Acts. Of course, even a despotism is a ‘democracy’
in the unimportant sense that the despot’s rule depends upon a certain
kind of consent. What has happened lately is that a new kind of leader
has been evolved. The old leader ruled by certain kind of obvious
strength. The new ruler practices an art. He is moreover, a student of
the science of persuasion. He appeals through various media directly
to the masses, and does not so much inspire confidence as suggest that
he is only a more articulate spokesman of their will. The contrast
is rather like that between coercion and hypnotism, two obvious ways
of making people do as you wish; and the transition from one to the
other does not seem to me to be adequately described as a passage to
democracy.
The future, it seems, will see these powers scientifically employed.
Much has been learnt by crude empirical methods. The newspapers, the
advertising agencies, and the publicity departments have a store of
knowledge upon which politicians are wisely beginning to draw. Soon
they may attend to Mr Bertrand Russell, who in his prophetic volume,
foresees the development of glandular psychology. We know that by
suitable injections a person’s emotional mood can be changed, and
Russell suggests that a simple operation like compulsory vaccination
will convert the reddest Bolshevic to the temperament of the mildest
curate. The glands of docility will be under government control.
The suggestion appears to me to be over-simple, and to belong to
the mechanistic type of prophecy. Its supreme simplicity is in this
connection its supreme defect. The only defence against democracy is a
complicated mode of government. If methods of government are foolproof
then any one can practice it; and a sudden _coup d’état_, or an
invasion of half-a-dozen uninoculated savages, would be an irrevocable
disaster.
It is, I think, mainly through the development of scientifically
conducted propaganda that the world may one day see the abandonment of
force. No wholesale change of heart will be involved. It will simply be
that a more efficient weapon will have been discovered, a weapon that
is preventive as well as corrective in its use.
The military mind is, it is generally agreed, conservative to the verge
of sheer stupidity, but even the military mind is becoming infected
with the new ideas. Under the influence of Captain Liddel Hart, the
military representative of the prophetic school with which we are
concerned, it will surely come to recognize “the moral objective of
war.”[7] Even this author is conservative, in regarding tanks and
aeroplanes as being the principal weapons of the future. With regard
to the immediate future he may be right. But the implication of his
general thesis is that all these weapons will ultimately give place to
subtler ones of psychological design. Hardly less effective than the
‘death ray’ in bending the enemy’s will is the rumour that one has been
invented. And rumours can be invented daily in His Majesty’s Office
of Propaganda. And why stop at the control of fear? Why not apply
psychology throughout the whole of the enemy’s mental life? Perhaps,
in the last of all wars to end war, victory will fall to the side
which first makes its enemy laugh. The power of a sense of humour, at
any rate, is a terrible weapon in the negotiation of peace. Our late
enemies would scarcely have fared so badly had they been less sparingly
endowed with it in war.
[7] See _Paris, or the Future of War_.
Humour has its applications in peace as in war. Under universal
Scientific Management, the Government will vie with the underground
railways for the control of public laughter. The Catholic Church, in
enlisting the aid of Chesterton and Ronald Knox against its irrefutable
but dreary adversaries, has for once in modern history placed itself in
the vanguard of a winning cause.
The weapon has curious possibilities, but is one difficult to employ.
Quick wits sensitive to the trend of fashion are the essential
qualifications for a Minister of Public Humour. For the joke is the
most ephemeral of all works of art. It takes years of patient research,
now, to see the jokes of classical antiquity, and pages of solemn
argument to defend the taste of Shakespeare in his humour. Differences
of humour separate age from age and class from class. It is the weakest
link which binds the intellectuals to the cause of labour. One might
expect this weapon to favour established institutions, for only the
fat and prosperous can laugh with merriment, but by the same token the
jokes of Marie Antoinette were unintelligible to the hungry. Therefore
the lean and plodding journalists will come into their own and take
their place among the expert advisors to the future Ministry of Talents.
IV
Education will perhaps be one of the most interesting fields of
future scientific management. At present we know a few bits of a few
sciences, and a handful of historical facts. We fill the picture out
with theories and blunderingly try to make other people memorize these
things. We call the process Education. We have invented a few devices
for discovering what they forget, and call them Examinations. Recently
we have invented a few tricks of exposing what they cannot do, and
we call them Mental Tests. We wrap it all up in a tangle of loose
philosophy, and we call it The Science of Education. We profess, it is
true, some loftier pursuits. We are trying, we say, to teach our pupils
to think. We try to mould their characters, and we try to produce good
citizens.
But what does it all amount to in the end? The most successful way
yet discovered of teaching people to think is for the teacher himself
to think aloud, and hope that his pupils will catch the knack. How
do we set about moulding the character of a child? By moral precept,
good example, healthy sport, uplifting atmosphere, and an unprincipled
application of punishment and reward. Our children are bored by
precepts. They yawn in our presence and make fun of our precepts in
our absence; they break out at the first opportunity and “sow their
wild oats”, and then rediscover our old morality for themselves. The
more adventurous invent a new one of their own, probably a finer thing
than that we tried to teach. Our good examples produce two alternative
effects. If the child happens to like us, he will imitate our actions,
and morality becomes an empty mimicry. Perhaps, on the other hand,
we have an unfortunate mannerism or some innocent resemblance to a
forgotten terror, and the child dislikes us. The good example is taken
as a pattern of the thing to be avoided. By counter-suggestion he takes
the opposite course so far as in him lies. The sons of clergymen might
provide us with material for a theory of moral education.
Our healthy sports――but why go on? It is not my intention to ridicule
the best things that the wisdom of the ages has produced. My only
contention is that our methods of education are hopelessly tentative,
uncertain in their effects, justifiable only on the ground that we
cannot yet see clearly anything else to do. But things will change.
Already there _is_ a science of education, because people with
scientific minds are thinking about the problems it presents. They
are experimenting, and they are at least disclosing our ignorance.
Experiments similar to those of Scientific Management are producing
similar results. We are beginning to know important things about
the mind, its natural development, and the method by which it works.
Already we know a good deal about the conditions of remembering, enough
at least to condemn, if we dared to think out the implications of our
knowledge, many venerable educational practices. Some of the most
important of our discoveries fall readily into line with the results of
Industrial Psychology. There seems, for example, to be a natural rate
of working appropriate in learning, appropriate rhythms of impression,
rest and recall, by the operation of which knowledge becomes firmly
embedded in the mind. When these rhythms are ignored, the evil effects
of cramming are produced. Our educational methods in the school and in
the university break and crush all these rhythms, and students pass
out into the world with mutilated minds.
The rhythms of life, however, present in every field possibilities of
extensive modification. That many needs demand a rhythmic satisfaction
is well known, but there is scope for detailed investigation and
experiment here. None of these natural periods seem to be absolutely
fixed beyond all power of alteration. The rhythms of digestion probably
vary with the fashions of the age and class, according as high teas
or late dinners are in fashion. They might under certain conditions
have depended upon the tides; and changes in our habits of taking
nourishment would probably produce most interesting variations.
Why should we sleep throughout the night, and work throughout the day?
Our habits in this respect were formed in the days before fire was
stolen from the gods――and they are wasteful habits, too. Artificial
light one day may easily come to be as cheap as water, and man will
change his ways of taking rest. Some experimenters urge that the most
valuable part of sleep is in the first few minutes. The remainder of
the night we spend in dreams and in gradually waking up. Let us apply
the principle of rest-pauses in a thorough-going way. Distributed
periods of sleep might prove a great economy. People will be taught to
recline say once in every two hours, and sleep for twenty minutes. Thus
will be inaugurated the twenty-four hour day, and a race of energetic
Napoleons will emerge.
But to return to general education. Why should the period of learning
be concentrated wholly in the early years of life? Distributed periods
of study will undoubtedly prove more effective, say two hours every
day, or two days every week, or, if you like, two continuous months in
the year throughout the whole of life. Thus might come the solution to
a variety of problems. We have, first of all, the problems of education
itself. At present we arrange the life of a child so that a period of
intensive cramming is followed by the abrupt cessation of intellectual
life at the time when the intellect is just beginning to mature. There
is the problem of industrial fatigue, due more often to monotony than
to arduous labour. Recent researches afford scientific support to
the adage that a change of work is as good as a holiday. Educational
pursuits will provide the necessary change. Already many working men
spend their evenings at classes and their only holiday at a summer
school.
Lastly there is the ever-growing problem of the prolongation of
infancy. Under simpler conditions a child was adequately equipped
for practical purposes by the age of ten or even younger. Now-a-days
fourteen years is considered necessary, whilst the professional man is
almost thirty before he is fit to earn a living――and still there is
more to learn.
Given successful scientific research in this direction, back we go
to the methods of the early days of the Industrial Revolution with
children employed in every factory. Under rational supervision it may
prove a great advance. The moral education which practical life alone
can give will commence at the proper time. Children will be protected
from the dangers of neglectful or over-solicitous parents. They will
acquire at an early age the much-required sense of responsibility and
independence, and their parallel work at school will acquire some
semblance of significance and interest.
In addition to new rhythms and periods of study, new methods will be
employed. Probably the curriculum itself will be the first thing to
be revised. In spite of a good deal of relevant knowledge, no one has
yet consistently thought out an answer to the question: What should a
child be taught? Freed from the assumptions of faculty-psychology and
from its present entanglements with external systems of examination,
the course of studies prescribed for the ordinary child would omit much
that is now included and include much that is now ignored. Moreover,
the order of presentation both of subjects and of the material in each
subject will undergo extensive alteration. Changes in this respect
have already well begun, and changes blindly initiated move towards
enlightenment.
Things are moving towards a triple control of the individual life,
one that roughly corresponds to the old control of the Church and
State, with the added partnership of organized industry. To the modern
representative of the Church――whatever ultimate form this institution
may take――belongs the function of guiding the individual for his own
personal good. It is a service which the Church might easily have
continued to perform, but for its insistence upon doctrinal terms.
What was in effect a kind of strike of the religious ministry, met by
boycott on the side of the general public, has led to the development
of black leg service on the part of psychoanalysis and disinterested
teachers. At present the organization manifests all the muddle of an
emergency supply. Children in over-crowded schools cannot obtain
adequate individual guidance, and the work of the psychoanalyst
is curative only in exceptional cases, and not, as it should be,
universally preventive. Nevertheless, feeling moves in the direction of
agreement that something more must be done, though as yet nothing like
a constructive policy of personal guidance has emerged.
The activities of the State in this connection are likely to increase.
In earlier days a man could be born, could live and die in comparative
privacy. Now, official notice is taken at least of his birth, his
marriage, his income, most of his crimes, some at least of his
diseases; and his death, too, is registered. The registration of
particulars about the individual will extend to educational records,
abilities and disabilities, and of all that is relevant to his social
life. Much of this will be done by institutions of the kind which our
present “vocational bureaus” dimly and crudely foreshadow. Ultimately
a public service more or less State-controlled will be developed to
mediate between Education and Industry. When life becomes more fully
organized into a system of interlacing rhythms, the unit of the
secondary Educational System will be an institution embracing factory,
school, and clinic under a single board of control with its industrial,
educational and medical representatives; and the threefold plan will
no doubt be adopted in both the higher and lower grades.
Early in life some of the main tendencies and abilities of the child
will be diagnosed and he will be sent to the appropriate school and
industry. Doubtful and obscure cases will, with the “allround” types,
be sent for a “general education”, in the course of which, however,
they will come under more careful examination. By the age of ten
or twelve the child’s future course should in outline and general
character be fairly clearly known, and by sixteen he will have become
more or less specialized to a certain type of course. Not, however,
completely specialized. To meet the problem of trade-fluctuations and
consequent unemployment, and as a preventive of industrial monotony,
each person will probably be taught a variety of pursuits, achieving
a balance appropriate to each case of mental and manual work. The
system of multiple vocations would probably be operated in conjunction
with some form of industrial conscription; for increased wisdom in
government should by this time have undermined popular prejudice on
this score.
At the prospect of such extensive changes in our educational
institutions one wonders what is going to happen to our ancient and
venerable universities. They might, consistently with all that has
been said, preserve their functions as specialized seats of learning;
but it is more likely that long before a rational system of education
has been evolved they will have changed their character beyond all
recognition. In optimistic, but perhaps short-sighted, moments, it is
commonly supposed that with the increasing demand for education their
future is assured, and that they will assume ever-increasing importance
and enjoy ever-growing popularity and respect.
Let us, however, for a moment consider the instructive parallel of the
Holy Catholic Church, the unfortunate history of which is a byword at
the present day. The causes of its decline do not, I think, include
one that is frequently suggested. Men are not to-day less religious
or less in need of its holy offices. The change has come about not
by decreased demands but by competition and an augmented supply. Men
still need the things of which the Church once held an almost complete
monopoly. They need some sort of philosophy, some personal guidance in
the difficult art of the moral life, and many other things which once
the Church alone could give.
The invention of the Press made possible the novelist. The novelist
found himself adopted as guide, philosopher, and friend. The younger
generation now-a-days acquires its general outlook from the novelists
and playwrights, who exercise an almost sacerdotal influence. Personal
guidance is offered by the psychoanalyst. He exercises the priestly
functions of the confessional and of exorcizing demons; whilst Coué
and his disciples offer a new technique of prayer. The validity of
these practices is not here my subject, but the fact that people
are getting what they want. Such new ways of meeting old demands
are continually being found, and may not the Universities soon find
themselves in the position of the Church? Several things would make the
suggestion plausible.
In the first place, education is already being purveyed as a commercial
product. Quite apart from the self-educators produced fortnightly
by the Press, there are Mind-training Institutes and Correspondence
Colleges. Universities at the present time can afford to ignore this
competition. They have, they think, the pull in traditional prestige,
the advantages of the tutorial system, the general atmosphere of
culture, and they have, we trust, at present the most distinguished
scholars. But traditional prestige is a slippery foundation for any
institution now-a-days. The test that is being applied is that of
practical efficiency. Already happy-go-lucky methods in University
finance are being examined by Royal Commissions and by financial
experts. The next thing will be that they will start to scrutinize
the educational methods being employed. Already, moreover, the newer
institutions are being forced to mould themselves upon the model of
an up-to-date business office. Soon they will adopt those well-proven
adjuncts of commercial progress――modern methods of advertisement, for
instance.
When the printing press arose, priests, no doubt, preserved their
self-assurance by reliance upon the peculiar efficiency of the
spoken word. They clung to the sermon and scorned the weapon of the
pamphleteers. When comparing themselves with the Correspondence
Colleges, the Universities resort to a similar argument. One day,
however, the Correspondence Colleges will realize the possibilities in
wireless as an adjunct to their methods.
When with the assistance of its influential board of directors some
national broadcasting company finally secures its charter, the
following situation will arise. Phenomenal salaries will attract
the most distinguished exponents of the various arts and sciences
to the central broadcasting stations. District Colleges staffed by
automatic invigilators will call the roll of students at the various
lectures. These will be delivered by a loud speaker synchronized with
a televisual cinema projecting the lecturer’s blackboard and other
illustrative material.
The economy effected by conducting classes of say half a million or
equally easily ten million students will enable anyone to follow
courses by all the most distinguished exponents of his subject.
European students in psychology, for example, will attend say at 9 a.m.
for Professor Stout, followed at 10 by Dr Sigmund Freud, and at 11 by
Professor G. E. Moore. Nor need these distinguished men repeat their
lectures until they have something new to say, for dictaphones will be
included among the listeners-in, and another relay of undergraduates
will acquire their wisdom from the broadcast-phonograph.
Such a soulless business organization, it will be objected, could
never replace our present establishments of culture. But here, again,
I feel the objection is of purely transitory force. Progressive
differentiation which I have mentioned as an important aspect of
evolution has produced the antithesis of commerce and cultured life.
Differentiation, however, is to a great extent counterbalanced by
processes of integration; and such integration we can see in progress
in the business world.
The commercial applications of art besides influencing the dividends of
our railway companies must be exercising a cultural effect upon their
boards of directors; and culture filters through in many ways. The
justly renowned polish of the Oxford graduate is finding a lucrative
field of expression in modern salesmanship. An up-to-date salesman
now-a-days speaks considerably better English than his customer, and
the average waiter is better mannered than the proprietor of the
hôtel. It is inconceivable that the employer will continue to be quite
uninfluenced by his cultured and refined subordinates. Perhaps this
is the secret of the growth of those Learned Societies the purport of
which we understand is to supply that liberal education demanded now
by busy business men. When the captains of industry have mastered this
business of being cultured and have seen its possibilities in practical
affairs their own peculiar talents will be applied in ever wider
spheres; of which education will probably be the first.
V
Dr Schiller is of the opinion[8] that the evolutionary impetus is
spent, and biologically at least we have seen the end of change. I
wonder. And supposing he were right? The process might begin again;
this time with the men of science at the helm.
[8] _Tantalus._
The vast and powerful machinery developed to meet the needs of
Scientific Management in industry, government, and education may
make it possible to initiate and control the operation of the
natural laws of change. Side by side with the direct control of
character, belief, and action, large-scale experiments in eugenics
may proceed. Such experiments would not demand the clumsy expedient
of the Act of Parliament. The triple control will provide adequate
means for eliminating the intractable factors in the situation.
Perhaps the constitution of the United States of America provides the
most promising machinery at present for large-scale sociological
experiment. These States, moreover, are fortunate in the character of
their population. But whether by education or by eugenic control man
himself will change. Physically, by a process of atrophy (at which Dr
Schiller will not, I trust, demur), he may consist chiefly in a head
from which will depend a mass of atrophied limbs. He will presumably be
more or less permanently mounted upon a compact automobile, travelling
by road or by air. No doubt a submarine attachment will be available to
facilitate his morning bath.[9] But it is not with his appearance that
we are here concerned. What is the future of his mind?
[9] But on all questions relating to our mechanical future I must
refer the reader to Professor A. M. Low, to whose works _The
Future_ and _Wireless Possibilities_ I myself am chiefly
indebted in this respect.
There are interesting possibilities in the sphere of sense alone.
Some of our present senses, such as taste or smell, may disappear
altogether. More and more we seem to depend upon purely visual cues. On
the other hand, vision and hearing may be considerably augmented. Even
though they be supplemented by microphones and microscopes, we always
strive to see and hear a little more than the best of instruments
allows. If, after all, the biological vitalists are right, so long
as we are interested in the constitution of matter there is a motive
for further variation. But, as Professor Low points out, our æsthetic
susceptibilities will have to be modified on the way. When we first
begin to perceive the fauna in the cheese and the microbes on our
walls, and when, like the birds, we go into the country to listen to
the worms, we shall have to revise our values. Our poets, too, will
find new themes to sing.
Memory, even more than sense, suggests many possibilities of
development. By hypnotism, or by the natural working of the unconscious
mind, it is said that we can recall even the earliest events of life.
Soon, perhaps, this power will be under conscious control, and the
autobiographers will have their millennium too. But, quite apart from
this, new methods of education and a little Scientific Management would
enable us, even now, to do much more with our memories through the
powers we already possess.
The developments of intellectual life are the most difficult to
foresee. But there are a few clues which enable us to guess at their
possible nature. What purely intellectual achievements have been
made in the past seem to depend upon the development of language and
the elaboration of symbolism convenient to thought. Philosophers and
scientists have continually expressed dissatisfaction at the modes
of expression at their disposal in a language primarily devised to
express our emotional and practical demands. Scientists have invented
a technical terminology in their nouns. Mathematicians go somewhat
further, and have invented more thorough-going systems of symbolism.
Philosophers have always found it necessary to invent peculiar
manners of speech, and now are seriously beginning to follow the
mathematicians. It is possible that quite a new language will arise,
probably a variety of purely technical languages――useful for different
purposes of thought. The process of differentiation manifests itself
here as in other ways. Already people following different pursuits find
it almost impossible to converse, at least with anything approaching
mutual understanding. And this process of specialization which
education and increasing knowledge forces upon us points to another
obstacle in the way of the Esperantists and other propagandists for
a universal language. By the time this language is adopted, we shall
have lost all common interests for the discussion of which it might
have been employed. Perhaps our newer universities will inaugurate
professorships in small-talk to keep alive an obsolescent art and to
correct this serious menace of specialism.
More rapid than changes in the intellectual life will be those of
character and of temperament. There are two significant facts in the
trend of man’s emotional development, one of special and the other of
general interest.
Firstly, there is the curious decay of cruelty and the increased desire
to avoid inflicting pain. No one, surely, would deny an enormous
change in this respect even in recent centuries. And we are beginning
to discover the lengths to which development may go. Even now it often
causes a moral man to attribute base motives to himself in doing a
kindly act to spare his friend the subtle pain or sense of obligation
which occurs in the feeling of gratitude. Modest forms of generosity
often have this motive in their modesty.
There is not much further to go before we reach the social life of
Henry James’s novels――where the principal characters have exquisite
consciences, where good souls are tortured by the regret that they had
not expressed their reproaches a shade or so less directly so as more
to convey the impression that they had really said nothing at all.
Now-a-days you are afraid to forgive your enemies, lest the pain of
remorse you thrust upon them should exceed the discomfort inflicted by
a direct retaliation. The finer spirits of the age cannot live up to
their own ideals because of the sense of inferiority it would impose
upon their less advanced companions. Society in the thirtieth century
will assuredly be even more refined.
The second significant fact of the moral history of our age to some
extent ameliorates the prospect. We are gradually growing out of our
emotions. We are acquiring self-consciousness and becoming habitually
introspective, and, as the psychologists tell us, you cannot observe
an emotion without decreasing its intensity.
This partly explains what is curious in what is called “modern love”,
as practised and expounded by our younger novelists. It is essentially
introspective. Every schoolboy knows what is going to happen when he
falls in love. He knows about the illusions arising from emotion. The
undergraduate cannot make love extravagantly like the Elizabethan
poets, or sentimentally like the Victorians. When he feels the passion
rising, he informs the provoking cause of it, that he knows quite well
that, in spite of it, she is a perfectly ordinary little person with
nothing very much to recommend her. They both agree that they are
victims of an obsolescent mechanism designed for biological purposes, a
mechanism primarily intended for the brutes, but annoyingly persistent
in its control over civilized man. They agree, however, to act the
performance through, because a rational way of making love is difficult
to devise. They agree to make senseless and meaningless remarks. He is
prepared to rave about her perfectly beautiful eyes whilst rationally
convinced that they show a distinct suspicion of squint. She in her
turn will admire his manly form whilst fully conscious that he is
rather undersized and remembering that he signally failed to get his
Blue. The kind of objective attitude that we are being taught to adopt
towards criminals, which the psycho-analysts tell us to adopt towards
the libertine, sooner or later we shall have to adopt towards ourselves.
In any attempt to picture to ourselves the life of future man one of
the chief of the things which we have to take into account is the
entirely remodelled constitution of society. There will be a small
upper class――very small because, as all the prophets agree, the
decrease of the birthrate in the upper strata will assume for sometime
quite alarming proportions. It will be regenerated for a while by
the bolder, more adventurous, and more capable of the working-class,
who use their wits to escape from the situation into which they were
born. Later, of course, this escape will be facilitated by reliable
mental, moral, and vocational tests. The working-classes proper will
then consist only of those less capable of administrative, organizing,
and managemental functions. There will be relatively little unrest
because the ruling classes will have learnt the wisdom of making the
workers comfortable and happy; and potential agitators by the system
of vocational selection will find themselves more lucratively employed
in voicing the opinions of the ruling classes at the broadcasting
stations. Plato will have come into his own. His criticism of
democracy will have become accepted and the philosopher kings――with a
difference――will have become established in the seats of power.
Whilst the masses enjoy their innocent pleasures, the ruling caste will
live a life of its own. Judged by the present, one might expect it to
be a life of sport, gambling, and house-parties, and there may be a
transition-period of this kind. In this no doubt some curious forms
of sport will be devised. If the theory is well founded which asserts
that our present modes of sport are debased survivals of ancient
occupations, the craze of the fortieth century may be the fascinating
game of mining. It will be played in specially constructed coal-mines,
filled with ingenious traps, blind alleys, and water-hazards. Messrs
Pope and Bradley in those days will circularize their clients by
provocative letters pointing out that last year’s mining suit is
hopelessly out of date, or that the time has now come for replenishing
the aerial wardrobe for the forthcoming polar sports. Chemical
warfare, conducted with novel forms of laughing-gas, will be a popular
institution at Christmas parties.
Various considerations combine, however, to suggest that sport is but a
transitory phenomenon in human life.
Firstly, the applications of scientific method to its pursuit is
tending to remove its distinctive character. And this tendency for
economic reasons is likely to prove irresistible. The old-fashioned
sportsman will protest against the newer methods. He may refuse to
bring to the golf course wind gauge and slide rule; he may refuse
to attend to the lessons of motion study, but in consequence of his
stubbornness he will find himself too ridiculously outclassed to appear
on the course at all. His will be the fate of the older militarists who
protest on similar grounds against chemical warfare.
To those who play the newer game, sport will become a rigorous
discipline and a scientific pursuit.
The general public, moreover, will increasingly enjoy its sport by
proxy. The televisual cinema, which will then be stereoscopic, will
provide a substitute for the football match; and the sporting spectacle
will naturally form only an incident in the variety show. Again, the
sporting interest will be merged, this time in the interests of
general entertainment.
Another important change already far advanced which will radically
alter the character of sporting life is man’s recent discovery of his
mind. The punch ball and gloves now hang limply on the wall whilst
the one time early riser lies comfortably in bed cherishing the
formula by which he grows sturdier and more Spartan in every way.
Instead of Sandow we have Pelman, and this will spread to the schools.
Enterprising teachers graphically plot the progress of their pupils
upon the wall. Small boys will exhibit their I.Q.s and scorn a display
of biceps. If Alec Waugh continues to write about it, the change may
reach the Public Schools. Again, it is the work of the printing press
which is at last beginning to tell. Anagrams and intellectual puzzles
of all kinds have existed for the few from ages immemorial, but in the
cross-word puzzle the principle is finding a wider appeal.
Lastly, the final blow to sport and to our British system of thought
built up upon it will come from the industrial field. Industrial
psychology will undermine it by eliminating its fundamental function.
The forms of sport with which we are most familiar arise chiefly
as a reaction against sedentary and ill-planned occupations.
Scientifically organized labour of the future will exhibit more
variety and give fuller expression to the many-sidedness of man.
Excessive specialization of the individual in his work has produced an
artificial differentiation in the arrangement of his life, of which the
distinction of work and play is the most glaring example.
With the outgrowing of sport, or, more strictly, with the blending
of work and play man will apply himself to tasks commensurate with
his powers. Dimly we begin to see what these tasks will be. The task
of government, complex as it may be, will be less difficult in many
respects than it is to-day. The danger of revolution should be only
a remote contingency. The stability of a society ultimately depends
inversely upon the prevalence of nepotism. A government of the
efficient and the talented equipped with scientific knowledge would be
impregnable. It matters not that men are mostly irrational so long
as the rational have the power to rule. The irrationality of the rest
is subject to uniform law, which, understood, can be brought within
control. But the temptation to the ruler to hand on the reins of power
to the inefficient with whom he has emotional ties of paternity or
friendship is almost irresistible. The difficulty, however, is not
insuperable. Some form of “Socialism”, which started all at equality
and promoted to power according to ability, gauged quasi-mechanically
by mental and vocational tests, would be a partial safeguard. Moreover,
in a compact ruling class a kind of family moral tradition might
emerge. This would be reinforced by the common-sense recognition of
the dangers of promoting the inefficient on a large scale over the
heads of the competent. The obvious effect of such promotion is, in the
long run, revolution; and revolutions will probably be recurrent until
the lesson has been learnt.
VI
And will these god-like beings with their infinite wealth and power,
in their perfect rationality, be any happier or even morally better
creatures than ourselves?
The formula for happiness is a fairly simple one. Its relative
components form a vulgar fraction. The denominator is constituted
by that towards which we aspire; the numerator is the number of our
achievements. There is a law by which these two vary almost in unison.
Any augmentation of achievement sends up proportionally the number
of our desires, whilst great losses are followed by resignation. It
is just for those fleeting moments in which the balance is disturbed
that we experience bliss or misery. But the moments are very fleeting,
and the normal ratio is restored. Happiness is the carrot before the
donkey’s nose. Therein lies the moral of Tantalus, so grievously
misinterpreted by Dr Schiller. Tantalus is the symbol of human
progress. The only danger is that under Scientific Management man may
see through the trick.
And will he be better then than he is to-day? That, however, is a
question for the moralists of the future to decide.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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