26 W. G. Langworthy Taylor 



the new inventions that "annihilate space and time"? This is a 

 purely casuistic inquiry, but one that the popular attitude 

 demands. The word "cause"' is employed in many senses. If 

 we mean those perpetual potentialities without which life and 

 progress could not exist, then the mere existence of Argentina, 

 France. India, Russia, the United States, with their natural cli- 

 matic, hydrographic, and meteorologic conditions, is the "cause" 

 of progress. If by "cause" we mean, not unvarying potentialities, 

 but active measures of intelligence adopted (generally through 

 fear of retrogression, e. g., a strike, or pressure of competition, 

 in the first instance) in order to attain to the wider environment 

 potential upon the earth, then we are taking a very distinct and 

 different point of view. The former sense is natural in treating 

 of the materialistic conjuncture, but only in a qualified sense of 

 the psychic conjuncture. It is the environmental or conjunctural 

 meaning of "cause." The latter is appropriate when we are 

 treating of the laws of progress — the mechanism of advance into 

 the more psychic conjuncture. In each crisis those items are 

 selected for further addition to the materialistic conjuncture 

 which the existing environment finds truly cooperative. In this 

 selection the existing environment plays a wholly passive role : 

 its position is secure ; the question alone admissible is whether the 

 new items so conduct themselves as to utilize all preexisting ele- 

 ments. It is probable, indeed, that some preexisting elements 

 may diminish in importance, temporarily at least ; it is even pos- 

 sible that they may be disused ; but observation shows that the 

 economy of nature does not favor waste in the evolution of the 

 industrial organism. Thus, the ancient use of water power to 

 drive machinery was partially abandoned for a long series of 

 y^ears after the adoption of steam power; many mills on (e. g.) 

 the Connecticut and other rivers substituted steam for water 

 power. But now that the progress of electrical science allows 

 of the distant transmission of power, the great cataracts of the 

 world, which never run dry, are furnishing a source of indus- 

 trial power infinitely greater and of greater constancy than 

 steam. The same technique that belonged to a primitive, narrow 

 environment may reemerge into a higher, broader one. We may 



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