RATIONALISM AND SCIENCE 87 



and horse traction by motor traction, so we may 

 be able some day to discover an organization of 

 society which will be more economic of force and 

 productive of better results than the organizations 

 of the past. But the only safe road to the goal 

 is the same road which has been followed in our 

 improvements in communication. First we had 

 the man of science in his laboratory making ex- 

 periments, weighing results, eliminating friction, 

 examining materials. Then we had modest ex- 

 periments on a small scale, at first experiments 

 with mere playthings; and these experiments 

 gradually grew in scale because they succeeded, 

 until, in branch after branch of transport, the new 

 methods competed with the old, and fairly beat 

 them out of the field. When motors were first 

 heard of we did not proceed to slaughter all our 

 horses, and when aviation is beginning to succeed 

 we do not break up our railways. Yet that is the 

 way in which some of the speculative schools of 

 socialism would go to work on the organization 

 of society. Newton, the greatest of our men of 

 science, claimed to excel his contemporaries only 

 in patience or persistency. And it is this active 

 patience, patience in research, patience in con- 

 forming to the conditions of the world, patience 

 in enduring what cannot be altered, and in 

 gradually changing what can be altered, which 

 must be the essential feature of all reform, unless 

 we would fling away all the rich results of the 



