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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

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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

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SIBYLLA
or

THE REVIVAL OF PROPHECY

BY

C. A. MACE, M.A.
Lecturer in Logic and Psychology at the
University of St. Andrews

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

LIST OF SECTIONS
Foreword
I
II
III
IV
V
VI

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:
A List of Sections has been provided for the convenience of the reader, and
is granted to the public domain.
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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