Wealth
I BEG the reader
to allow me to begin this chapter with a word of warning. The
reader is aware that Criticism-by which I mean Thought-may be
any one of three kinds: it may be purely destructive; it may
be purely constructive; or it may be both destructive and constructive
at the same time. Purely destructive criticism is sometimes
highly useful. If an old idea or a system of old ideas be false
and therefore harmful, it is a genuine service to attack it
and destroy it even if nothing be offered to take its place,
just as it is good to destroy a rattlesnake lurking by a human
pathway, even if one does not offer a substitute for the snake.
But, however useful destructive criticism may be, it is not
an easy service to render; for old ideas, however false and
harmful, are protected alike by habit and by the inborn conservatism
of many minds. Now, habit indeed is exceedingly useful-even
indispensable to the effective conduct of life-for it enables
us to do many useful things automatically and therefore easily,
without conscious thinking, and thus to save our mental energy
for other work; but for the same reason, habit is often very
harmful; it makes us protect false ideas automatically, and
so when the destructive critic endeavors to destroy such ideas
by reasoning with us, he finds that he is trying to reason with
automats-with machines. Such is the chief difficulty encountered
by destructive criticism. On the other hand, purely constructive
criticism-purely constructive thought-consists in introducing
new ideas of a kind that do not clash, or do not seem to clash,
with old ones. Is such criticism or thought easy? Far from it.
It has difficulties of its own. These are of two varieties:
the difficulty of showing people who are content with their
present stock of old ideas that the new ones are interesting
or important; and the great difficulty of making new ideas
clear and intelligible, for the art of being clear and perfectly
intelligible is very, very hard to acquire and to practice.
The third kind of criticism-the third kind of thought-the kind
that is at once both destructive and constructive-has a double
aim-that of destroying old ideas that are false and that of
replacing them with new ideas that are true; and so the third
kind of criticism or thought is the most difficult of all, for
it has to overcome both the difficulty of destructive criticism
and that of constructive thought.
The reader, therefore,
if he will be good enough to reflect a little upon the matter,
can not fail to appreciate the tremendous difficulties which
beset the writing of this little book, for he must perceive,
not only that the work belongs to the third kind of critical
thought, but-what is much more-the errors it aims to destroy
are fundamental, world-wide and old, while the true ideas it
seeks to substitute for them are fundamental and new. This great
difficulty, felt at every stage of this writing, is,
for a reason to be presently explained, greatly enhanced and
felt with especial keenness in the present chapter. I therefore
beg the reader to give me here very special cooperation-the
cooperation of open-mindedness, candor and critical attention.
It is essential to keep in mind the nature of our enterprise
as a whole, which is that of pointing the way to the science
and art of Human Engineering and laying the foundations thereof;
we have seen Human Engineering, when developed, is to be the
science and art of so directing human energies and capacities
as to make them contribute most effectively to the advancement
of human welfare; we have seen that this science and art must
have its basis in a true conception of human nature-a just conception
of what Man really is and of his natural place in the complex
of the world; we have seen that the ages-old and still current
conceptions of man-zoological and mythological conceptions,
according to which human beings are either animals or else hybrids
of animals and gods-are mainly responsible for the dismal things
in human history; we have seen that man, far from being an animal
or a compound of natural and supernatural, is a perfectly natural
being characterized by a certain capacity or power-the capacity
or power to bind time; we have seen that humanity is, therefore,
to be rightly conceived and scientifically defined as the time-binding
class of life; we have seen that, therefore, the laws of time-binding
energies and time-binding phenomena are the laws of human nature;
we have seen that this conception of man-which must be the basic
concept, the fundamental principle and the perpetual guide and
regulator of Human Engineering-is bound to work a profound transformation
in all our views on human affairs and, in particular, must radically
alter the so-called social "sciences"-the life-regulating "sciences"
of ethics, sociology, economics, politics and government-advancing
them from their present estate of pseudo sciences to the level
of genuine sciences and technologizing them for the effective
service of mankind. I call them "life-regulating", not because
they play a more important part in human affairs than do the
genuine sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy
and biology, for they are not more important than these, but
because they are, so to say, closer, more immediate and more
obvious in their influence and effects. These life-regulating
sciences are, of course, not independent; they depend ultimately
upon the genuine sciences for much of their power and ought
to go to them for light and guidance; but what I mean here by
saying they are not independent is that they are dependent upon
each other, interpenetrating and interlocking in innumerable
ways. To show in detail how the so-called sciences will
have to be transformed to make them accord with the right conception
of man and qualify them for their proper business will eventually
require a large volume or indeed volumes.
In this introductory
work I cannot deal fully with one of those "sciences" nor in
suitable outline with each of them separately. I must be content
here to deal, very briefly, with one of them by way of illustration
and suggestion. Which one shall it be?
Now among these
life-regulating "sciences" there is one specially marked by
the importance of its subject, by its central relation to the
others and by its prominence in the public mind. I mean Economics-
the "dismal science" of Political Economy. For that reason I
have chosen to deal with economics. In the present chapter I
shall discuss three of its principal terms-Wealth, Capital and
Money-with a view to showing that the current meanings and interpretations
of these familiar terms must be very greatly deepened, enlarged
and elevated if they are to accord with facts and laws of human
nature and if the so-called "science" which employs them is
to become a genuine science properly qualified to be a branch
of Human Engineering. It is to be shown that the meanings currently
attached by political economists and others to the terms in
question belong to what I have called the period of humanity's
childhood; and it is to be shown that the new meanings which
the terms must receive belong to the period of humanity's manhood.
It will be seen that the new meanings differ so radically from
the old ones as to make it desirable for the sake of clarity
to give the new meanings new names. But this, however scientifically
desirable, is impracticable because the old terms-wealth, capital,
money-are so deeply imbedded in the speech of the world. And
here comes into view the very special difficulty alluded to
above and which led me to request the reader's special cooperation
in this chapter. The difficulty is not merely that of destroying
old ideas that are false; it is not merely that of replacing
them with true ideas that are new; it is that of causing people
habitually to associate meanings that are new and true with
terms associated so long, so universally, so uniformly with
meanings that are false.
The secret of
philosophy, said Leibnitz, is to treat familiar things as unfamiliar.
By the secret of "philosophy" Leibnitz meant the secret of what
we call science. Let us apply this wholesome maxim in our present
study; let us, in so far as we can, regard the familiar terms-wealth,
capital and money-as unfamiliar; let us deal with them afresh;
let us examine open-mindedly the facts-the phenomena- to which
the terms relate and ascertain scientifically the significance
the terms must have in a genuine science of human economy. Examine
"the facts" I say-examine "the phenomena"-for bending facts
to theories is a vital danger, while bending theories to facts
is essential to science and the peaceful progress of society.
Human beings have
always had some sense of values-some perception or cognition
of values. In order to express or measure values, it was necessary
to introduce units of measure, or units of exchange. People
began to measure values by means of agricultural and other products,
such as cattle, for example. The Latin word for cattle was pecus,
and the word pecunia, which came to signify money, accounts
for the meaning of our familiar word pecuniary. The earliest
units for measuring became unsuited to the increasing needs
of growing trade, "business," or traffic. Finally a unit called
money was adopted in which the base was the value of some weight
of gold. Thus we see that money came to mean simply the accepted
unit for measuring, representing and expressing values of and
in wealth.
But what is wealth?
I have said that the old conceptions of wealth, capital and
money-the conceptions that are still current throughout the
world -belong to the period of humanity's childhood-they are
childish conceptions. I have said that they must be replaced
by scientific conceptions-by conceptions fit for humanity's
manhood. The change that must be made in our conceptions of
the great terms is tremendous. It is necessary to analyse the
current conceptions of wealth, capital, and money- the childish
conceptions of them-in order to reveal their falseness, stupidity
and folly. To do this we must enter the field of Political Economy-a
field beset with peculiar difficulties and dangers. All the
Furies of private interests are involved. One gains the impression
that there is little or no real desire to gain a true conception-a
scientific conception- of wealth. Everybody seems to prefer
an emotional definition-a definition that suits his personal
love of wealth or his hatred of it. Many definitions of wealth,
capital and money are to be found in modern books of political
economy-definitions and books belonging to humanity's childhood.
For the purpose of this writing they all of them look alike-they
sufficiently agree-they are all of them childish. Mill, for
example, tells us that wealth consists of "useful or agreeable
things which possess exchangeable value." Of capital one of
the simplest definitions is this:
"Capital is that
part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth."
(Alfred Marshall, Economics of Industry.)
Walker (in his
Money, Trade and Industry) defines money as follows:
"Money is that
which passes freely from hand to hand throughout the community
in final discharge of debts and full payment for commodities,
being accepted equally without reference to the character or
credit of the person who offers it, and without the intention
of the person who receives it to consume it, or to enjoy it,
or apply it to any other use than, in turn, to tender it to
others in discharge of debts or full payment for commodities."
Political economy
has many different schools of thought and methods of classification.
Its reasonings are mainly speculative, metaphysical, and legalistic;
its ethics is zoological ethics, based on the zoological conception
of man as an animal. The elements of natural logic and natural
ethics are absent. The sophisticated ideas about the subject
of political economy, bluntly do not correspond to facts. Our
primitive forefather in the jungle would have died from hunger,
cold, heat, blood poisoning or the attacks of wild animals,
if he had not used his brain and muscles to take some stone
or a piece of wood to knock down fruit from trees, to kill an
animal, so as to use his hide for clothes and his meat for food,
or to break wood and trees for a shelter and to make some weapons
for defense and hunting.
"In the first
stone which he (the savage) flings at the wild animal he pursues,
in the first stick that he seizes to strike down the fruit which
hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article
for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another and
thus we discover the origin of capital." (R. Torrens, An
Essay on the Production of Wealth.)
Our primitive
forefather's first acquaintance with fire was probably through
lightning; he discovered, probably by chance, the possibility
of making fire by rubbing together two pieces of wood and by
striking together two pieces of stone; he established one of
the first facts in technology; he felt the warm effect of fire
and also the good effect of broiling his food by finding some
roasted animals in a fire. Thus nature revealed to him one of
its great gifts, the stored-up energy of the sun in vegetation
and its primitive beneficial use. He was already a time-binding
being; evolution had brought him to that level. Being a product
of nature, he was reflecting those natural laws that belong
to his class of life; he had ceased to be static-he had become
dynamic -progressiveness had got into his blood-he was above
the estate of animals.
We also observe
that primitive man produced commodities, acquired experiences,
made observations, and that some of the produced commodities
had a use-value for other people and remained good for use,
even after his death.
The produced commodities
were composed of raw material, freely supplied by nature, combined
with some mental work which gave him the conception of how to
make and to use the object, and some work on his part which
finally shaped the thing; all of this mental and manual work
consumed an amount of time. It is obvious that all of these
elements are indispensable to produce anything of any value,
or of any use-value. His child not only directly received some
of the use-values produced by him, but was initiated into all
of his experiences and observations. (As we know, power, as
defined in mechanics, means the ratio of work done to the time
used in doing it.)
All those things
are time-binding phenomena produced by the time-binding capacity
of man; but man has not known that this capacity was
his defining mark. We must notice the strange fact that,
from the engineering point of view, humanity, though very developed
in some ways, is childishly undeveloped in others. Humanity
has some conceptions about dimensions and talks of the world
in which we live as having three dimensions; yet even in its
wildest imagination it can not picture tangibly a fourth
dimension; nay, humanity has not learned to grasp the real
meanings of things that are basic or fundamental. All of our
conceptions are relative and comparative; all of them are based
upon matters which we do not yet understand; for example, we
talk of time, space, electricity, gravity, and so on, but no
one has been able to define them in terms of the data of sensation;
nevertheless-and it is a fact of the greatest importance-we
learn how to use many things which we do not fully understand
and are not yet able to define.
In political economy
the meagreness of our understanding is especially remarkable;
we have not yet grasped the obvious fact-a fact of immeasurable
import for all of the social sciences-that with little exception
the wealth and capital possessed by a given generation are not
produced by its own toil but are the inherited fruit of dead
men's toil-a free gift of the past. We have yet to learn and
apply the lesson that not only our material wealth and capital
but our science and art and learning and wisdom- all that goes
to constitute our civilization-were produced, not by our own
labor, but by the time-binding energies of past generations.
Primitive man
used natural laws without knowing them or understanding them,
but he was able to cause nature to express itself, by finding
a way to release nature's stored up energy. Through the work
of his brain and its direction in the use of his muscles, he
found that some of his appliances were not good; he made better
ones, and thus slowly at first, the progress of humanity went
on. I will not enlarge upon the history of the evolution of
civilization because it is told in many books.
In the earliest
times the religious, philosophical, legal and ethical systems
had not been invented. The morale at that time was a natural
morale. Humans knew that they did not create nature. They did
not feel it "proper" to "expropriate the creator" and legalistically
appropriate the earth and its treasure for themselves. They
felt, in their unsophisticated morale, that being called into
existence they had a natural right to exist and to use freely
the gifts of nature in the preservation of their life; and that
is what they did.
After the death
of a man, some of the objects produced by him still survived,
such as weapons, fishing or hunting instruments, or the caves
adapted for living; a baby had to be nourished for some years
by its parents or it would have died. Those facts had important
consequences; objects made by someone for some particular use
could be used by someone else, even after the death of one or
more successive users; again the experiences acquired by one
member of a family or a group of people were taught by example
or precept to others of the same generation and to the next
generation. Such simple facts are the corner stones of our whole
civilization and they are the direct result of the HUMAN CAPACITY
OF TIME-BINDING.
The world to-day
is full of controversy about wealth, capital, and money, and
because humanity, through its peculiar time-binding power, binds
this element "time" in an ever larger and larger degree, the
controversy becomes more and more acute. Civilization as a process
is the process of binding time; progress is made by the fact
that each generation adds to the material and spiritual wealth
which it inherits. Past achievements-the fruit of bygone time-thus
live in the present, are augmented in the present, and transmitted
to the future; the process goes on; time, the essential element,
is so involved that, though it increases arithmetically, its
fruit, civilization, advances geometrically.
But there is another
peculiarity in wealth and money: If a wooden or iron "inch"
be allowed to rot or rust quietly on some shelf, this "inch"
does not represent anything besides this piece of wood or iron.
But if we take the MENTAL value of an inch, this unit of one
of the measures of space, and use it, with other quantities,
in the contemplation of the skies for the solving of an astronomical
problem, it gives a prophetic answer that, in a certain place
there is a star, this star may be for years looked for in vain.
Was it that the calculation was wrong ? No, for after further
search with telescopes of greater power, the star is found and
the calculation thus verified.
It is obvious
that the "unit"-inch-has no value by itself, but is very precious
as a unit for measuring the phenomenon of length, which it perfectly
represents, and that is why it was introduced.
It is exactly
the same with money if the term be rightly understood. Understood
aright, money, being the measure and representative of wealth,
is in the main, the measure and the representative of dead men's
toil; for, rightly understood, wealth is almost entirely the
product of the labor of by-gone generations. This product, we
have seen, involves the element of time as the chief factor.
And so we discover how money, properly understood, is connected
with time-the main function of money is to measure and represent
the accumulated products of the labor of past generations. Hoarded
money is like an iron "inch" upon a shelf-a useless lump; but
when used as a measure and representative of wealth rightly
understood, money renders invaluable service, for it then serves
to measure and represent the living fruit of dead men's toil.
For this reason,
it is useless to argue who is the more important, the capitalist
who has legal possession of most of the material fruit of dead
men's toil, or the laborer who has legal possession of but little
of it. In the laborer, we do not now really look for his physical
muscular labor ALONE; for this is replaced by mechanical or
animal power as soon as it can be. What we do need from labor,
and what we will always need, is his BRAIN-HIS TIME-BINDING
POWER.
The population
of the world may be divided into different classes; if the classes
are not here enumerated in the customary way, it is because
it is necessary to classify human beings, as nearly as possible,
according to their "power-value." There is no assertion that
this is an ideal classification, but if someone is moved to
exclaim-"what a foolish, unscientific division!"-I will answer
by saying: "I grant that the division is foolish and unscientific;
but IT IS THE ONLY DIVISION WHICH CORRESPONDS TO FACTS IN LIFE,
and it is not the writer's fault. By this 'foolishness' some
good may be accomplished."
From an engineer's
point of view humanity is apparently to be divided into three
classes; (1) the intellectuals; (2) the rich; and (3) the poor.
This division would seem to be contrary to all the rules of
logic, but it corresponds to facts. Of course some individuals
belong to two of the classes or even to all three of them, an
after-war product, but essentially, they belong to the one class
IN PROPORTION to the characteristic which is the most marked
in their life; that is, in the sense of social classes- BASED
ON MAGNITUDE OF VALUES.
(1) The intellectuals
are the men and women who possess the knowledge produced by
the labor of by-gone generations but do not possess the material
wealth thus produced. In mastering and using this inheritance
of knowledge, they are exercising their time-binding energies
and making the labor of the dead live in the present and for
the future.
(2) The rich are
those who have possession and control of most of the material
wealth produced by the toil of bygone generations-wealth
that is dead unless animated and transformed by the time-binding
labor of the living.
(3) The poor are
those who have neither the knowledge possessed by the intellectuals
nor the material wealth possessed by the rich and who, moreover,
because nearly all their efforts, under present conditions,
are limited to the struggle for mere existence, have little
or no opportunity to exercise their time-binding capacity.
Let us now try
to ascertain the role of the time-binding class of life as a
whole. We have by necessity, to go back to the beginning-back
to the savage. We have seen what were the conditions of his
work and progress; we saw that for each successful achievement
he often had to wrestle with a very large number of unsuccessful
achievements, and his lifetime being so limited, the total of
his successful achievements was very limited, so that he was
able to give to his child only a few useful objects and the
sum of his experience. Generally speaking, each successor did
not start his life at the point where his father started; he
started somewhere near where his father left off. His father
gave, say, fifty years to discover two truths in nature and
succeeded in making two or three simple objects; but the son
does not need to give fifty years to discover and create the
same achievements, and so he has time to achieve something new.
He thus adds his own achievements to those of his father in
tools and experience; this is the mathematical equivalent of
adding his parent's years of life to his own. His mother's work
and experience are of course included-the name father and son
being only used representatively.
This stupendous
fact is the definitive mark of humanity-the power to roll up
continuously the ever-increasing achievements of generation
after generation endlessly. We have seen that this time-binding
power is an exponential power or function of time. Time flows
on, increasing in arithmetical progression, adding generation
unto generation; but the results of human energies working in
time do not go on arithmetically; they pile up or roll up more
and more rapidly, augmenting in accordance with the law of a
more and more rapidly increasing geometric progression. The
typical term of the progression is PRT where
PR denotes the ending progress made in the generation
with which we agree to start our reckoning, R denotes
the ratio increase, and T denotes the number of generations
after the chosen "start." The quantity, PRT
of progress made in the Tth generation contains T
as an exponent, and so the quantity, varying as time T
passes, is called an exponential function of the time.
Nature is the
source of all energy. Plants, the lowest form of life, have
a definite role to perform in the economy of nature. Their function
is the forming of albuminoids and other substances for higher
purposes. All of their nitrates are high-explosives, or low
explosives, but explosives anyway. They are powerful sources
of some new energy. Animal life uses these "explosives" as food
and is correspondingly more dynamic, but in animal life time
does not play the role it plays in human life. Animals are limited
by death permanently. If animals make any progress from generation
to generation, it is so small as to be negligible. A beaver,
for example, is a remarkable builder of dams, but he does not
progress in the way of inventions or further development. A
beaver dam is always a beaver dam.
Finally humanity,
the highest known class of life, has time-binding capacity as
its characteristic, its discriminant, its peculiar and definitive
mark. It is an unrealized fact that in this higher class of
life, the law of organic growth develops into the law of
energy-growth-the mind-the time-binding energy- an increasing
exponential function of time. That fact is of basic importance
for the science and art of Human Engineering. In mechanics we
have the well-known formula
(1) 
= Power
We
have seen that, in accordance with the law of geometric
progression, PRT represents the progress
made-the work done in the Tth generation (T being
counted from some generation taken as starting point of
reckoning); this progress, achievement, or work,
being done in one generation, we have by (1)
Work
= PRT
(2) 
= Power,
that
is, PRT=Power; this means that the number
PRT, which measures the work done in a
given generation, is also the measure of the power that
does the work. Now, the total work, W, done in the
T generations is
(3) W
= PR1 + PR2 +PR3
+ . + PRT;
that
is,
(4) W
= 
(PRT-P)
It
should be noticed that by (2) this expression for W
may also be regarded as the sum of T different powers
PR, PR2, etc., each working during
one and only one generation; if we divided this sum by T,
the quotient would be a power that would have to act through
T generations to produce W. The reader should
not fail to notice very carefully that the expression (4)
for W is an expression for the total progress made
the total work done-the total wealth produced-in the course
of T generations and he should especially note how
the expression involves the exponential function of time
(T), namely PRT.
The formula makes
mathematically evident the time-binding capacity characteristic
of the human class of life. Properly understood, wealth consists
of the fruits or products of this time-binding capacity of man.
Animals do not produce wealth; it is produced by Man and only
Man. The foregoing basic formulation should lead to further
similar developments throwing much light upon the process of
civilization and serving to eliminate "private opinion" from
the conduct of human affairs. (In this writing it is not important
to look deeper into these proposed series. The fact remains
that P, as well as R, are peculiarly increasing
series of a geometrical character-the precise form will be developed
in another writing.)
Human achievements
and progress, because cumulative, are knocking out the barriers
of time. This fact is the vital and dynamic difference between
animal life and human life. As plants gather in and store up
solar energy into sheaves for the use and growth of animal and
man-so humans are gathering and binding the knowledge of past
centuries into sheaves for the use and development of generations
yet unborn.
We have seen that
the term wealth, rightly understood, means the fruit of the
time-binding work of humanity. Wealth is of two kinds: one is
material; the other is knowledge. Both kinds have use-value.
The first kind perishes-the commodities composing it deteriorate
and become useless. The other is permanent in character; it
is imperishable; it may be lost or forgotten but it does not
wear out.
The one is limited
in time; the other, unlimited in time; the former I call POTENTIAL
USE-VALUE; the latter, KINETIC USE-VALUE. Analysis will justify
the names. The energy of a body which is due to its position,
is called potential energy. The energy of a body which is due
to its motion, is called kinetic energy. Here the material use-value
has value through its position, shape and so forth; it is immobile
if not used, and has not the capacity to progress. Mental use-values
are not static but permanently dynamic; one thought, one discovery,
is the impulse to others; they follow the law of an increasing
potential function of time. (See app. II.) This is why
these names correspond to the two names of the two mentioned
classes of energy.
Here I must return
to the current conceptions of wealth and capital, before cited.
"Wealth," we are told, "is any useful or agreeable thing which
possesses exchangeable value." And we are told
that "Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining
further wealth." I have said that such conceptions-such definitions-of
wealth and capital are childish-they belong to the period of
humanity's childhood. That they are indeed childish conceptions
the reader can not fail to see if he will reflect upon them
and especially if he will compare them with the scientific conception
according to which wealth consists of those things whether they
be material commodities or forms of knowledge and understanding-that
have been produced by the time-binding energies of humanity,
and according to which nearly all the wealth of the world
at any given time is the accumulated fruit of the toil
of past generations-the living work of the dead. It seems
unnecessary to warn the reader against confusing the "making"
of money by hook or crook, by trick or trade, with the creating
of wealth, by the product of labor. In calling the old conceptions
childish, I do not mean that they contain no element of truth
whatever; I mean that they are shallow, scientifically or spiritually
meagre, narrow in their vision, wrong in their accent; I especially
mean that they are dumb, because they are blind, regarding the
central matter that wealth is the natural offspring of Time
and Human Toil. The old conceptions do indeed imply that wealth
and capital involve both potential and kinetic use-values, and
in so far they are right. But how do such use-values arise?
The potential
use-values in wealth are created by human work operating in
time upon raw material given by nature. The use-values are produced
by time-taking transformations of the raw materials; these transformations
are wrought by human brain labor and human muscular labor directed
by the human brain acting in time. The kinetic use-values of
wealth are also created by human toil-mainly by the intellectual
labor of observation, experimentation, imagination, deduction
and invention, all consuming the precious time of short human
lives. It is obvious that in the creation of use-values whether
potential or kinetic, the element of time enters as an
absolutely essential factor. The fundamental importance of time
as a factor in the production of wealth-the fact that wealth
and the use-values of wealth are literally the natural offspring
of the spiritual union of time with toil-has been completely
overlooked, not only by the economics, but by the ethics, the
jurisprudence and the other branches of speculative reasoning,
throughout the long period of humanity's childhood. In the course
of the ages there has indeed been much "talk" about time, but
there has been no recognition of the basic significance of time
as essential in the conception and in the very constitution
of human values.
It is often said
that "Time is Money"; the statement is often false; but the
proposition that Money is Time is always true. It is always
true in the profound sense that Money is the measure and symbol
of Wealth-the product of Time and Toil-the crystallization of
the time-binding human capacity. IT IS THUS TRUE THAT MONEY
IS A VERY PRECIOUS THING, THE MEASURE AND SYMBOL OF WORK-IN
PART THE WORK OF THE LIVING BUT, IN THE MAIN, THE LIVING WORK
OF THE DEAD.
Nature's laws
are supreme; we cannot change them; we can deviate from them
for a while, but the end is evil. That is the lesson we must
learn from the history of Humanity's childhood. False conceptions
of Man-ignorance of the laws of human nature-have given us unscientific
economies, unscientific ethics, unscientific law, unscientific
politics, unscientific government. These have made human history
the history of social cataclysms-insurrections, wars, revolutions-sad
tokens not so much of human lust as of human ignorance of the
laws of human nature. There is but one remedy, one hope-a science
and art of Human Engineering based upon the just conception
of humanity as the time-binding class of life and conforming
to the laws of nature including the laws of human nature.
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