SCIENCE AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 285 



mocracy among the western nations have had a pitiful out- 

 come to date. It appears that we have but replaced an 

 aristocracy of birth, originating in military prowess, by one 

 of wealth, originating in commercial greed. The new masters 

 have no tradition of a God-given obligation, and they possess 

 no creed but that of power. The outcome can only be an 

 entrenched aristocracy, worse if anything than the older 

 forms, unless we can check the concentration of wealth and 

 its transfer, through inheritance, to those who have not done 

 the concentrating, to say nothing of the producing. 



This new aristocracy casts its shadow directly athwart 

 the progress of society as a whole, since material and social 

 conditions must be in a measure equalized, before there 

 can be an approach to the equality of opportunity which 

 alone can satisfy the demands of an advancing civilization. 

 Science made modern industrialism a possibility. Indus- 

 trialism has been the most important factor in completing 

 the overthrow of feudal aristocracy. And now industrialism 

 creates new aristocratic traditions. The solution of the situa- 

 tion again lies with science, this time with science applied 

 directly to the problems of society. It has been said that the 

 cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. This does 

 not appear to be true, if by more democracy we mean more 

 voting on more detailed issues, as in the practice of the 

 initiative and referendum. But if we mean by more de- 

 mocracy a nearer approach to the ideal which proclaims 

 equal opportunity to all and special privilege to none, the 

 cure is to be recommended. Equality of opportunity has 

 become imaginable, because science presents the means to 

 this end, however difficult the road. Society seems to have 

 reached an impasse, unless a greater measure of this equality 

 can be realized through more effective social organization. 

 Science points the way to such organization. 



A better balance of power between the different groups 

 in society would seem one of the means of securing greater 

 equality of opportunity. An equality of mights tends to- 



