xvi Introdi.ction 



because it is an organism, cannot stop breathing 

 while experiments are made with its internal 

 mechanism. The mere possession of power does 

 not give control either over a complex machine or 

 a complex organism. If the mechanism of your 

 motor car works imperfectly, it serves no purpose 

 that you have a crow-bar which will smash the 

 whole thing in pieces. You must "know how" or 

 you are helpless, since the power of destruction 

 serves no purpose at all. 



And the revolutionaries who have from time to 

 time "arrived" have not "known how." For the 

 social organism is even more complex than a 

 motor car, and its general control is in the hands 

 not of experts but of all of us. 



Can we ever hope that "the general mind" will 

 rise to effective knowledge fitting men for the 

 control of their own social destiny? In these 

 complex matters where the experts differ, is there 

 any hope that the mass will ever achieve sufficient 

 capacity to enable social progress to equal the 

 advances made in those material sciences which 

 are in the hands of experts? 



Many would answer that question in the nega- 

 tive, although a negative answer involves a 

 paralysing pessimism which one is glad to think 

 is no part of the American genius. 



But I do not think that a negative answer need 

 be given. I will appeal to an analogy that I have 

 used elsewhere. 



In the sixteenth century Montaigne, who did 



