more, he sees to it that it shall be in a slightly different way. He has learned in twenty ways how the thing cannot be done. This information is very useful to him, and he does not begrudge the labor by which it has been obtained. All this is an excellent preparation for the twenty-first attempt, which may possibly reveal the way it can be done. When thousands of good heads are working upon a problem in this fashion, something happens.

For several generations the physical sciences have offered the most inviting field for inventive genius. Here have been seen the triumphs of the experimental method. There are, however, evidences that many of the best intellects are turning to the fascinating field of morals. Indeed, the very success of physical research makes this inevitable.

When in 1783 the brothers Montgolfier ascended a mile above the earth in a balloon there was a thrill of excitement, as the spectators felt that the story of Dædalus had been taken from the world of romance into the world of fact. But, after all, the invention went only a little way in the direction of the navigation of the air. It is one thing to float, and another thing to steer a craft toward a desired haven. The balloon having been invented, the next and more difficult task was to make it dirigible. It was the same problem that had puzzled the inventors of primitive times who had discovered that, by making use of a proper log, they could be carried from place to place on the water. What the landing place should be was, however, a matter beyond their control. They had to trust to the current, which was occasionally favorable to them. In the first exhilaration over their discovery they were doubtless thankful enough to go down stream, even when their business called them up stream. At least they had the pleasant sensation of getting on. They were obeying the law of progress. The uneasy radical who wanted to progress in a predetermined direction must have seemed like a visionary. But the desire to go up stream and across stream and beyond sea persisted, and the log became a boat, and paddles and oars and rudder and sail and screw propeller were invented in answer to the ever increasing demand.

But the problem of the dirigibility of a boat, or of a balloon, is simplicity itself compared with the amazing complexity of the problems involved in producing a dirigible civilization. It falls under Bacon's category of "things which never yet have been performed." Heretofore civilizations have floated on the cosmic atmosphere. They have been carried about by mysterious currents till they could float no longer. Then their wreckage has furnished materials for history.

But all the time human ingenuity has been at work attacking the great problem. Thousands of little inventions have been made, by which we gain temporary control of some of the processes. We are coming to have a consciousness of human society as a whole, and of the possibility of directing its progress. It is not enough to satisfy the modern intellect to devise plans by which we may become more rich or more powerful. We must also tax our ingenuity to find ways for the equitable division of the wealth and the just use of power. We are no longer satisfied with increase in the vast unwieldy bulk of our possessions, we eagerly seek to direct them to definite ends. Even here in America we are beginning to feel that "progress" is not an end in itself. Whether it is desirable or not, depends on the direction of it. Our glee over the census reports is chastened. We are not so certain that it is a clear gain to have a million people live where a few thousand lived before. We insist on asking, How do they live? Are they happier, healthier, wiser? As a city becomes bigger, does it become a better place in which to rear children? If it does not, must not civic ambition seek to remedy the defect?

The author of Ecclesiastes made the gloomy comment upon the civilization of his own day: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill." In so far as that is true to-day, things are working badly. It must be within our power to remedy such an absurd situation. We have to devise more efficient means for securing fair play, and for enforcing the rules of the game. We want to develop a better breed of men. In order to do so, we must make this the first consideration. In proportion as the end is clearly conceived and ardently desired, will the effective means be discovered and employed.

Why has the reign of peace and good-will upon the earth been so long delayed? We grow impatient to hear the bells

The answer must be that "the valiant man and free" must, like every one else, learn his business before he can expect to have any measure of success. The kindlier hand must be skilled by long practice before it can direct the vast social mechanism.

The Fury in Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" described the predicament in which the world has long found itself:—

This is discouraging to the unimaginative mind, but the very confusion is a challenge to human intelligence. Here are all the materials for a more beautiful world. All that is needed is to find the proper combination. Goodness alone will not do the work. Goodness grown strong and wise by much experience is, as the man on the street would say, "quite a different proposition." Why not try it?

We may not live to see any dramatic entrance of the world upon "the thousand years of peace," but we are living in a time when men are rapidly learning the art of doing peacefully many things which once were done with infinite strife and confusion. We live in a time when intelligence is applied to the work of love. The children of light are less content than they once were to be outranked in sagacity by the children of this world. The result is that many things which once were the dreams of saints and sages have come within the field of practical business and practical politics. They are a part of the day's work. A person of active temperament may prefer to live in this stirring period, rather than to have his birth postponed to the millennium.

It is only the incorrigible doctrinaire who refuses to sympathize with the illogical processes by which the world is gradually being made better. With him it is the millennium or nothing. He will tolerate no indirect approach. He will give no credit for partial approximations. He insists on holding every one strictly to his first fault. There shall be no wriggling out of a false position, no gradual change in function, no adaptations of old tools to new uses.

In the next essay I shall have something to say about this way of