i64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In order to insure it, the aggregated toil of the earth's inhab- 

 itants would be left to produce from the soil all the needs of 

 human life. Unhampered by artificial restrictions, and untaxed 

 by waste or destruction, the wealth so produced would more 

 than suffice for this end. Its distribution, left to the natural 

 laws of competition and of supply and demand, would be such 

 that the greatest energy and skill expended would bring the 

 greatest returns ; and men would obtain of the world's goods 

 according to their deserts. The prosperity of "industrialism" 

 in its perfection would be but another name for the millennium, 

 when all men would toil in common brotherhood, and each take 

 from the store of wealth produced the equivalent of the work he 

 contributed. 



A wide and all - pervading difference thus exists between 

 these types of structure into which the social organism tends to 

 grow, showing itself especially in the utterly unlike conditions 

 each requires to realize prosperity. That they are at variance, 

 and must strive to displace each other wherever they coexist, is 

 too obvious a corollary to need verification. How this fact 

 points to a true conception of the philosophy of commercial de- 

 pression, let us now see. 



A universal law of social progress, with which we are all 

 familiar, is that established systems in thought, morals, man- 

 ners, government, or any department of human activity, strug- 

 gle to perpetuate themselves by a fight against all innovations. 

 Whatever is new and progressive, or represents the require- 

 ments of an enlarging field of life, has got to gain its foothold in 

 the face of the powerful opposition of the old and pre-estab- 

 lished. Those more perfected and exact conceptions of Nature, 

 which we call scientific ideas, have prevailed only after cent- 

 uries of mortal strife with the inherited superstitions and imper- 

 fect generalizations of our semi-civilized forefathers. The pro- 

 gressive and liberal governments of our most advanced nations 

 to-day have been established in spite of the bitter opposition of 

 their predecessors, and are themselves fighting tooth and nail 

 the higher forms that will succeed them. In literature and art 

 old schools strive to deny existence to the new ; and, even in the 

 little affairs of our daily lives, we are all permitting the things 

 that are, and " have sufficed to our fathers before us," to keep 

 out the better things that might be. 



The result of this universal war between the old forms and 

 the new is, to the former, ultimate change or destruction ; while 

 to the latter — and here is the vital point of what we are trying 

 to demonstrate — it is constant retardation. 



Every triumph of superstitious ignorance retards the har- 

 monious spread of science ; every point gained by the political 



