The space-binding animal standard of miscivilization has brought us to an impasse—a blind alley—for the simple physical reason that there is no more space to “bind.” Practically all the habitable lands, and practically all the natural resources, are already divided among private legalistic owners. What hope is there for the ever increasing population?
But we have these 1,600,000,000 living men; 10,000,000,000 living man-powers of the dead; and 1,600,000,000 sun man-powers: that is indeed a tremendous power to produce wealth for all, if wisely directed, but to-day it is ignorantly and [pg 136] shamefully misdirected, because human beings are not treated in accordance with their nature as the time-binding class of life.
Much more is to be gained in exploiting nature aimfully, all the time, with a full mobilization of our living, dead, and sun-powers, than by exploiting man all the time and nature occasionally. Selfishness and ignorance—is it these that prevent full mobilization of the producing powers of the world?
Such as contribute most to human progress and human enlightenment—men like Gutenberg, Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, Watts, Franklin, Mendeleieff, Pasteur, Sklodowska-Curie, Edison, Steinmetz, Loeb, Dewey, Keyser, Whitehead, Russell, Poincaré, William Benjamin Smith, Gibbs, Einstein, and many others—consume no more bread than the simplest of their fellow mortals. Indeed such men are often in want. How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and “survival of the fittest” means, not survival of the “fittest in time-binding capacity,” but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile—in space-binding competition!
Wealth is produced by those who work with hand or brain and by no others. The great mass of the wealth of the world has been thus produced by generations that have gone. We know that the greatest [pg 137] wealth producers—immeasurably the greatest—have been and are scientific men, discoverers and inventors. If an invention, in the course of a few years after it is made, must become public property, then the wealth produced by the use of the invention should also become public property in the course of a like period of years after it is thus produced. Against this proposition no sophistry can avail.
One of the greatest powers of modern times is the Press; it commands the resources of space and time; it affects in a thousand subtle ways the form of our thoughts. It controls the exchange of news throughout the world. Unfortunately the press is often controlled by exploiters of the “living powers of the dead,” and so what is presented as news is frequently so limited, colored and distorted by selfish interests as to be falsehood in the guise of truth. Honest, independent papers are frequently starved by selfish conspirators and forced to close down. Thus the press, which is itself the product in the main of dead men's toil, is made a means for the deception and exploitation of the living. Indeed the bitter words of Voltaire seem to be too true: “Since God created man in his own image, how often has man endeavored to render similar service to God.” Those who want to use such “God-like” powers to rule the world are modern Neros, who in their wickedness and folly fancy themselves divine. To [pg 138] deceive, and through deception, to exploit, rob and subjugate living men and women, and to do it by prostituting the living powers created by the dead, is the work, I will not say of men, but of mad men, greedy, ignorant and blind. What is the remedy? Revolution? Revolution is also mad. The only remedy is enlightenment—knowledge, knowledge of nature, knowledge of human nature, scientific education, science applied to all the affairs of man—the science and art of Human Engineering.
Chapter VII. Survival of the Fittest
Humanity is a dynamic affair, nay, the most dynamic known, because it is able to transform and direct basic powers. Where power is produced there must be an issue for it. Power must perforce express itself in some form. Electricity produced in the skies comes down in an often disastrous manner. Electricity, produced aimfully, runs our railroads; just so the enormous power produced by humanity must be used aimfully, in a constructive way or it will burst into insurrections, revolutions and wars.