"Then—you remember the talk there was about Mental Healing—'Power in Repose'—'The Human Machine'—or was that a bit later? Anyway, people had begun to waken up to the fact that they could do things with their brains. At first they used them only to cure diseases, to maintain an artificial 'peace of mind,' and tricks like that. Then it suddenly burst upon us—two or three important books came along nearly at once, and hosts of articles—that we could use this wonderful mental power every day, to live with! That all these scientific facts and laws had an application to life—human life."
I nodded appreciatively. I was getting quite fond of my brother-in-law. We were in a small, comfortable motor boat, gliding swiftly and noiselessly up the beautiful Hudson. Its blue cleanness was a joy. I could see fish—real fish—in the clear water when we were still.
The banks were one long succession of gardens, palaces, cottages and rich woodlands, charming to view.
"It's the time that puzzles me more than anything," I said, "even more than the money. How on earth so much could be done in so little time!"
"That's because you conceive of it as being done in one place after another, instead of in every place at once," Owen replied. "If one city, in one year, could end the smoke at once," Owen replied. "If one city, in one year, could end the smoke nuisance, so could all the cities on earth, if they chose to. We chose to, all over the country, practically at once."
"But you speak of evolution. Evolution is the slowest of slow processes. It took us thousands of dragging years to evolve the civilization of 1910, and you show me a 1940 that seems thousands of years beyond that."
"Yes; but what you call 'evolution' was that of unaided nature. Social evolution is a distinct process. Below us, you see, all improvements had to be built into the stock—transmitted by heredity. The social organism is open to lateral transmission—what we used to call education. We never understood it. We thought it was to supply certain piles of information, mostly useless; or to develop certain qualities."
"And what do you think it is now?" I asked.
"We know now that the social process is to constantly improve and develop society. This has a necessary corollary of improvement in individuals; but the thing that matters most is growth in the social spirit—and body."
"You're beyond me now, Owen."