Science and Industry 



number of persons is engaged in operating factory 

 machinery in Great Britain than was the case 

 thirty years ago, and even if we take into full 

 account the operators of machinery in the carrying 

 trades, it seems tolerably certain that the propor- 

 tion of employment afforded by the entire body of 

 what may be styled machine-industry is diminishing. 

 This of course does not imply that machinery pro- 

 duces unemployment ; it means that an increasing 

 proportion of the employed are occupied in work 

 which is not directly mechanical. It may, indeed, 

 be inferred from the very nature of the machine- 

 economy in relation to the evolution of human 

 wants that the reign of machinery over the arts of 

 production of wealth must always remain limited. 

 As our civilisation advances an ever-increasing 

 number of industries are scientifically ordered ; 

 but since the very raison d'etre of this economy is 

 to produce more wealth with a diminished quantity 

 of human labour, it follows that more and more 

 human energy seeks avenues of production outside 

 the mechanical regime, and finds them in those 

 occupations which supply the less materialistic and 

 the less regular elements in the rising standards 

 of comfort of progressive communities. 



In a most suggestive chapter of his important 

 book, Psychologic Economique, the late Professor 

 Tarde emphasises in the world of industry that 

 fundamental distinction between imitative and 

 creative activity, which is for him the most radical 

 distinction in the whole economy of nature. Every- 

 where in the inorganic, the organic, the psychical, 



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