24 SCIENCE AND LIFE 



and knowledge are all unproductive, the statement is 

 only too true. But if it means the individual system of 

 ownership of wealth, and that under another system 

 brains, labour and knowledge would be powerless to 

 advance humanity, the statement is not true. From 

 the point of view of the community, capital is not 

 wealth but debt, the not owning by the community 

 of the resources of the planet whereon it resides ; and 

 no more effective and disastrous check to its pro- 

 ductive power could well be invented. 



More and more is society becoming indebted for 

 the necessities of its continuance to a peculiar class 

 brought into existence by the operation of a corrupt 

 code of laws and government derived from a darker 

 intellectual age. Highly skilled as are the advocates 

 of this code in making black look white, they are 

 scarcely equal to the task of masquerading the debts 

 of the community as its wealth. 



The multiplication rather than the competitive 

 acquisition of the means of livelihood would be the 

 paramount concern of any community worthy of the 

 name, and, as the obvious preliminary thereto, the 

 study and interpretation of the laws of nature, under 

 which men thrive or starve, would be fostered and 

 honoured above the amassing and expenditure of 

 wealth, above even the profession of arms. The 

 creative element, whether the discoverer and orig- 

 inator at the one end or the artificer and labourer 

 at the other, may well ask how is the world the gainer 

 for all their splendid thought and magnificent achieve- 

 ments. This element has never yet ruled the com- 

 munity, and according to the elements who have made 

 such disastrous attempts to do so, it never will. But 

 the same was said, by the same type of mind, about 

 flying before men flew, and probably of every new 

 and difficult step so far accomplished in the ascent 

 of man. 



