254 THE CONTEOL OF LIFE 



depend on its congruence with man's organisation of 

 ideals — of those ideals which have seemed best to men 

 at their best. 



There is obviously nothing evil in machinery or 

 mining as such ; there can be nothing evil in applying 

 science to industry ; but the danger of our weak hu- 

 manity is in allowing practical organisation to be domin- 

 ated by some one-sided ideal such as greed. And, as 

 has been shrewdly said, the reason for the ugliness of 

 the nineteenth-century factory and railway station and 

 " tenement " was the idea-system of those who built 

 them. They expressed indifference to beauty and com- 

 mon weal. " Their hideousness was but the outward and 

 visible sign of the motive of their builders. They carried 

 the signature of private greed, not of public spirit." 



In the same way, as we pass from the age of steam 

 to the age of electricity, it is not enough to have the 

 utiHsation of electrical power organised ; what is wanted 

 is organisation related to great ends. These ends are 

 not confined to the most economical supply of power to 

 an industrial area ; they must be national rather than 

 local, and social as well as economic. Thus, country 

 districts require to be electrified as well as towns. 



But is not this getting into spheres where the Bible, 

 not Biology, should give man counsel ? Of a truth 

 man needs all the counsel he can get, but our present 

 point is that more attention to the biological control 

 of life might make it possible for man to go further 

 with that higher control which will lead him past the 

 desires of the flesh to the desires after the true, the 



