Part 4 (1/2)
We have just pa.s.sed through a tremendous world-wide _military_ war and we developed special ways of producing power to overcome the enemy. We were thus driven to discover some of the hidden sources of power and all of our old habits and ideas were bent toward military methods and military technology. The war of every-day life against hostile elements is war for the subjugation of physical nature and not for the conquest of people. It is a war carried on by the time-binding power of men pitted against natural obstacles, and its progressive triumph means progressive advancement in human weal.
The lesson of the World War should not be missed through failure to a.n.a.lyse it. When nations war with nations, the normal daily war of millions and millions of individuals to subjugate natural resources to human uses is interrupted, and the slow-gathered fruits of measureless toil are destroyed.
But peaceful war, war for the conquest of nature, involves the use of methods of technology and, what is even more important, technological philosophy, law and ethics.
What I want to emphasize in this little book, is the need of a thoroughgoing revision of our ideas; and the revision must be made by engineering minds in order that our ideas may be made to match facts. If we are ill, we consult a physician or a surgeon, not a charlatan. We must learn that, when there is trouble with the producing power of the world, we have to consult an engineer, an expert on power. Politicians, diplomats, and lawyers do not understand the problem. What I am advocating is that we must learn to ask those who know how to produce things, instead of asking those whose profession is to fight for the division of things produced by nature or by other human beings.
As a matter of fact our civilization has been for a long time disorganized to the point of disease. Lately through the whirl of changing conditions, due to the great release of power in the new-born giant technology, the disorganization has become acute. The sick seldom know the cure for themselves. If the cure is to be enduring, we have to go to the source, and this can be done only by men familiar, not only with effects but also with the causes.
Money is not the wealth of a nation, but production is wealth; so _ordered production_ is the main object for humanity. But to have the maximum of production, it is necessary to have production put on a sound basis. No mere preaching of brotherly love, or cla.s.s hatred, will produce one single brick for the building of the future temple of human victory-the temple of _human_ civilization. Ordered production demands a.n.a.lysis of basic facts.
This era is essentially an industrial era. To produce we have to have: (1) raw material or soil; (2) instruments for production-tools and machines; and (3) the application of power.
The three requirements may be briefly characterized and appraised as follows:
(1) Raw material and soil are products of nature; humanity simply took them and had the use of them for nothing, because it is impossible to call a prayer of thanksgiving (if any) addressed to a ”creator” as payment to G.o.ds or men. But raw material and soil, in the conditions in which nature produces them, are of very little immediate benefit to humanity, because unfilled soil produces very little food for humans, and raw material such as wood, coal, oil, iron, copper, etc., are completely useless to humanity until after human work is applied to them. It is necessary to cut a tree for the making of timber; it is necessary to excavate the minerals, and even then, only by applying further human work is it possible to make them available for any human use. So, it is obvious that even raw materials in the form in which nature has produced them, are mostly of no value and unavailable for use, unless reproduced through the process of ”human creative production.” Therefore, we may well conclude that ”raw material”
must be divided into two very distinct cla.s.ses: (_a_) raw material as produced by nature-nature's free gift-which in its original form and place has practically no use-value; and (_b_) raw material reproduced by man's mental and muscular activities, by his ”time-binding” capacities. Raw materials of the second cla.s.s have an enormous use-value; indeed they make the existence of humanity possible.
As to the second requirement for production, namely:
(2) Tools and machines, it is obvious that ”tools and machines” are made of raw material by human work, mental and muscular.
And, finally:
(3) The application of power. Different sources of natural energy and power are known. The most important available source of energy for this globe is the sun-the heat of the sun. This solar heat is the origin of water power, of wind power, and of the power bound up in coal, of the chemistry, growth and transforming agency of plants.(10)
All foods which the animals as well as the humans use are, already, the result of the solar energy transformed into what may be called chemical energy. Transformation of energies is building up of life.
It is to be clearly seen that the only source of energy which can be directly appropriated and used by man or animal is vegetable food found in the wilderness; no other sources of power are available for _direct_ use; they have first to be mastered and directed by human brain. The same is true in regard to the getting of animal food, the creation of a water- or windmill, or a steam engine, or the art of using a team of horses, or a bushel of wheat; these are not available except by the use of the human ”time-binding” power.
This short survey of facts, known to everybody, brings us to the conclusion that all problems of production come ultimately to the a.n.a.lysis of
(1) Natural resources of raw material and natural energy, freely supplied by nature, which, as we have seen, in the form as produced by nature alone, have very little or no value for humanity;
(2) The activity of the human brain (because human muscles are always directed by the brain) which gives value to the otherwise useless raw materials and energies.
Hence, to understand the processes of production, it is essential to realize that humanity is able to survive only by virtue of the capacity of humans to exploit natural resources-to convert the products of nature into forms available for human needs. If humanity had only the capacity of apes, depending exclusively on wild fruits and the like, they would be confined to those comparatively small regions of the globe where the climate and the fertility of the soil are specially favorable. But in the case supposed, humans would not be humans, they would not be time-binders-they would be animals-mere s.p.a.ce-binders.
There are other facts which must be kept constantly in mind. One of them is that, in the world in which we live, there are natural laws of inorganic as well as organic phenomena. Another of the facts is, as before said, that the human cla.s.s of life has the peculiar capacity of establis.h.i.+ng the social laws and customs which regulate and influence its destinies, which help or hinder the processes of production upon which the lives and happiness of mankind essentially and fundamentally depend.
It must not be lost sight of in this connection that the human cla.s.s of life is a part and a product of nature, and that, therefore, there must be _fundamental laws which are natural for this cla.s.s of life_. A stone obeys the natural laws of stones; a liquid conforms to the natural law of liquids; a plant, to the natural laws of plants; an animal, to the natural laws of animals; it follows inevitably that there _must_ be natural laws for humans.
But here the problem becomes more complicated; for the stone, the plant and the animal do not possess the intellectual power to create and initiate and so must blindly obey the laws that are natural for them; they are not free to determine their own destinies. Not so with man; man has the capacity and he can, through ignorance or neglect or mal-intent, deviate from, or misinterpret, the natural laws for the human cla.s.s of life. Just therein lies the secret and the source of human chaos and woe-a fact of such tremendous importance that it cannot be over-emphasized and it seems impossible to evade it longer. To discover the nature of Man and the laws of that _nature_, marks the summit of human enterprises. For to solve this _problem is to open the way to everything which can be of importance to humanity_-to human welfare and happiness.
The great problem has been felt as a powerful impulse throughout the ages of human striving, for in all times it has been evident to thinkers that upon the right solution of the problem must forever depend the welfare of mankind. Many ”solutions” have been offered; and, though they have differed widely, they agree in one respect-they have had a common fate-the fate of being false. What has been the trouble? The trouble has been, in every instance, a radical misconception of what a human being really is.
The problem is to discover the natural laws of the human cla.s.s of life.
All the ”solutions” offered in the course of history and those which are current to-day are of two and only two kinds-_zoological_ and _mythological_. The zoological solutions are those which grow out of the false conception according to which human beings are animals; if humans are animals, the laws of human nature are the laws of animal nature; and so the social ”sciences” of ethics, law, politics, economics, government become nothing but branches of zoology; as sciences, they are the studies of animal life; as arts, they are the arts of managing and controlling animals; according to this zoological philosophy, human wisdom about human beings is animal wisdom about animals.
The mythological ”solutions” are those which start with the monstrous conception according to which human beings have no proper place in nature but are mixtures of natural and _super_natural-unions or combinations of animality and divinity. Such ”solutions” contain no conception of _natural_ law; scientifically judged, they are mythological absurdities-muddle-headed chattering of crude and irresponsible metaphysics-well-meaning no doubt, but silly, and deadly in their effects upon the interests of mankind, vitiating ethics, law, economics, politics and government.