CHAPTER VI.
LINES OF ADVANCE.
Before we can imagine what may be lines of possible advance, for the individual or the community, we should base our ideas on observing what have been the means of advance in the past. Many of the Utopian visions which have been sketched by different writers are in flagrant contradiction of all history and human nature. It is at least far more likely that gain in the future will be on similar lines to those which have been successful in the past, rather than on lines opposed to all previous growth.
The personal, rather than the communal, advance is the main consideration, inasmuch as it is personal initiative of the most able which helps the rest of the community forward. The greatest improvements are the result of a single mind, animating perhaps a small group of similar minds. We all know how such great benefits as prison reform, the abolition of slavery, the restriction of child labour, and similar movements of which the public are now proud, were each originated by one mind, and worked by a small group in the teeth of the bitterest opposition to start with. It goes without saying that the same is the case in all inventions; it takes not only an inventor, but also a commercial organiser (seldom one and the same man), to help the public to any improvement. If ten thousand men could be picked out of any one country, so as to remove the most fruitful minds, that country would come to an entire standstill, and would continue in mechanical repetition until a fresh generation gave a chance of the rise of original minds. Probably not more than one in a thousand minds causes useful advance among the others. And the majority of men lead automatic lives, of which the reflexes have been trained by teaching and experience to do what is required, and the daily actions are performed without a single real thought, but only in response to external stimuli of sights and orders. It is therefore in the development of the able individuals, and in giving every chance to such whenever they arise, that the hopes of the great mass must lie.
It is perhaps not too much to say that all general popular advance of the community at large is based on the prevention of waste. Wherever waste exists improvement is possible; and we need not trouble ourselves much about the construction of the social organism, so long as we can lay our finger on the waste and check it. As with a machine we know the amount of force that is put into it, and can see what percentage is yielded up usefully in its output, so it is with a community. The design of the nature and quality of work done by the community or the machine is another matter; though that again comes under the head of waste if the quality is bad. We will now look more precisely at the gains by prevention of waste in health, life, energy, and renewal.
The saving of health is one of the greatest steps that has been made, as it has been suddenly performed within a generation. Man had unconsciously conquered bacteria to a great extent by the invention of cooking, and by the experimental learning of cleanliness; but the scientific attack on bacteria and protozoa has given the prospect of preventing all epidemic disease, and largely increasing the efficiency of man in the most fertile countries. This advance means the economic exploitation of the whole tropical regions, which—with cheap transport—will provide an immense fresh basis for the advantage of other lands. The gain in antiseptic surgery, giving safety for operation on all internal organs, as it only affects the small proportion of sick and injured, is not of so much general importance as the conquest of the microorganisms, which have hitherto ruled the best part of the world. It is in the complete domination over all forms of life, however minute, that we shall find one of the greatest lines for future advance. Only a small band of workers, about one in a hundred million of the world's population, has made this advance possible.
The saving of life is another great step which will give man far higher power; not only in the mere hindrance of death, but far more in the increased power of work per day. The power of continuity of work is a growth of civilisation; and it is obvious that a man who can do twelve hours' work per day, instead of six hours, not only lives virtually twice as long, but costs the community only half as much for what he does. This continuity of work, or industry, is seen in both high and low classes of work. Some races can do more than twice as much agricultural work in the day as others. The same is true of scientific or commercial work. And there have been some of the highest minds which could only work for two hours a day, while others could work up to fourteen or sixteen hours daily. This power of continuity of work is obviously then a matter improvable by cultivation, both in the individual and in the race; and as it may easily double a man's effective life it is certainly a line of great promise for the future.
Another direction for saving a portion of life is in the rapidity of thought and action. It is easy to find a difference of two or three times the amount of work per hour between different men. All that we have just said about the continuity of work applies to its rapidity; and a large gain may be looked for in cultivating pace and vigour. We need hardly note that trades-union ideals would destroy instead of promoting these most promising and fruitful lines of advance.
In transport from place to place the movement at fifty miles an hour instead of five means a gain of several years of life to most men. But here we have probably reached the useful limits, as any possible further saving would not yield much more time.