SEX AND SOCIETY 239 



as that from paleolithic to neolithic, old stone 

 age to new; for our contemporary transition 

 is far too scantily described by the body of 

 contemporary economists as a mere strife 

 between labour and capital within the all- 

 dominant " Industrial Age " ; and still more 

 unsatisfactorily expressed, as too much by 

 liberal politicians, in terms of its earlier 

 struggle with the renaissance or medieval 

 elements of society, incomplete though this 

 birth-struggle may still be. The essential 

 transition is that in progress within the 

 Industrial Age itself, that between its initial 

 lower phase to the incipient higher one in 

 a word, from the past century of paleotechnic 

 industry, mechanical, militant, monetary, to 

 the opening one, that of a neotechnic civilisa- 

 tion, founded upon more skilled and scientific 

 industries and arts, and aiming towards truer 

 peace than any which can be guaranteed by 

 armour; and towards these ends sustained 

 alike by synthetic intelligence and by creative 

 idealism. 



On one side is the present dominant civi- 

 lisation of coal and steam, of machinery 

 and cheap products, of expanding markets 

 and widening empires themselves groaning 

 under ever-increasing armaments, torn by 

 fiscal disputes, and ruled by the financiers' 

 assumed omnipotence. From this standpoint, 

 this order of things avowedly mechanical, 

 militarist, and monetarist at best, and thus 

 too readily becoming debased, violent and 

 venal seems to many of us, perhaps as 

 yet to most, the only possible form of 



