MUST SCIENCE RUIN ECONOMIC PROGRESS ? 583 
are now largely self-producers. As regards the rapid introduction of new 
things—these mostly now demand increased leisure for their proper ab- 
sorption and use, so that the two are co-related and mutually dependent. 
It can be conceived that a socialistic organisation of society could obviate 
such of the maladjustments as depend upon gains and risks of absorption 
not being in the same hands, and a theoretic technique can be worked out 
for the most profitable rate of absorption of scientific invention having regard 
to invested capital, and skill and local interests. It is sufficient to say that 
it needs a tour de force of assumptions to make it function without hopelessly 
impairing that central feature of economic progress, viz. individual choice 
of the consumer in the direction of his demands, and an equally exalted 
view of the perfectibility of social organisation and political wisdom. But 
in the field of international relations and foreign trade, which alone can give 
full effect to scientific discovery, it demands qualities far beyond anything 
yet attainable. 
Economic life must pay a heavy price, in this generation, for the ultimate 
gains of science, unless all classes become economically and socially minded, 
and there are large infusions of social direction and internationalism, care- 
fully introduced. ‘This does not mean government by scientific technique, 
technocracy, or any other transferred technique, appropriate as these may be 
to the physical task of production. For human wills in the aggregate are 
behind distribution and consumption, and they can never be regulated by 
the principles which are so potent in mathematics, chemistry, physics, or 
even biology. 
