"A sane world," he replied.
"I've wondered," she said. "Maybe Bancroft is more nearly right than you. Maybe I should be on his side after all."
"I take it you favor libertarian government," he said. "In the past it's always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren't enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable encroachments of power on liberty.
"The Institute is trying to do two things—create such a citizenry and simultaneously to build up a society which itself produces men of that kind and reinforces those traits in them. It can be done, given time. Under ideal conditions we estimate it would take about three hundred years for the whole world. Actually it'll take longer."
"But just what kind of person is needed?" Elena asked coldly. "Who decides it? You do. You're just the same as all other reformers, including Meade—hell bent to change the whole human race over to your particular ideal, whether they like it or not."
"Oh, they'll like it," he smiled. "That's part of the process."
"It's a worse tyranny than whips and barbed wire," she snapped.
"You've never experienced those then."
"You have got that knowledge," she accused. "You have the data and the equations to be—sociological engineers."
"In theory," he said. "In practice it isn't that easy. The social forces are so great that—well, we could be overwhelmed before accomplishing anything. And there are plenty of things we still don't know. It will take decades, perhaps centuries, to work out a complete dynamics of man. We're one step beyond the politician's rule of thumb but not up to the point where we can use slide rules. We have to feel our way."