Icarus quotes

Much as I should like to agree with his forecast, a long experience of statesmen and governments has made me somewhat sceptical.

I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups, rather than to make men happy.

Icarus, having been taught to fly by his father Daedalus, was destroyed by his rashness. I fear that the same fate may overtake the populations whom modern men of science have taught to fly.

Much as I should like to agree with his forecast, a long experience of statesmen and governments has made me somewhat sceptical. I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups, rather than to make men happy.

Icarus, having been taught to fly by his father Daedalus, was destroyed by his rashness.

I fear that the same fate may overtake the populations whom modern men of science have taught to fly. Some of the dangers inherent in the progress of science while we retain our present political and economic institutions are set forth in the following pages.

The sudden change produced by science has upset the balance between our instincts and our circumstances, but in directions not sufficiently noticed.

Over-eating is not a serious danger, but over-fighting is.

The human instincts of power and rivalry, like the dog’s wolfish appetite will need to be artificially curbed, if industrialism is to succeed.

The sudden change produced by science has upset the balance between our instincts and our circumstances, but in directions not sufficiently noticed. Over-eating is not a serious danger, but over-fighting is.

The human instincts of power and rivalry, like the dog’s wolfish appetite will need to be artificially curbed, if industrialism is to succeed.

Industrial organizations have seldom succeeded in becoming world-wide, and have consequently become national. Competition, formerly between individual firms, is now mainly between nations, and is therefore conducted by methods quite different from those contemplated by the classical economists.

Modern industrialism is a struggle between nations for two things, markets and raw materials, as well as for the sheer pleasure of dominion.

The labour which is set free from providing the necessaries of life tends to be more and more absorbed by national rivalry. There are first the armed forces of the State;

Coal and iron and oil, especially, are the bases of power, and thence of wealth. The nation which possesses them, and has the industrial skill required to utilize them in war, can acquire markets by armed force, and levy tribute upon less fortunate nations.

Economists have underestimated the part played by military prowess in the acquisition of wealth.

The landed aristocracies of Europe were, in origin, warlike invaders. Their defeat by the bourgeoisie in the French Revolution, and the fear which this generated in the Duke of Wellington, facilitated the rise of the middle class.

The wars of the eighteenth century decided that England was to be richer than France. The traditional economist’s rules for the distribution of wealth hold only when men’s actions are governed by law, i.e. when most people think the issue unimportant.

The issues that people have considered vital have been decided by civil wars or wars between nations.

And for the present, owing to science, the art of war consists in possessing coal, iron, oil, and the industrial skill to work them. For the sake of simplicity, I omit other raw materials, since they do not affect the essence of our problem.

Increased productivity has played its part, by making it possible to set apart more labour for propaganda, under which head are to be included advertisement, the cinema, the Press, education, politics, and religion.

Broadcasting is a new method likely to acquire great potency as soon as people are satisfied that it is not a method of propaganda.

Political controversies, as Mr. Graham Wallas has pointed out, ought to be conducted in quantitative terms. If sociology were one of the sciences that had affected social institutions (which it is not), this would be the case.

Any man who had the courage to say that our rooms ought to be neither very hot nor very cold would be abused by both parties, and probably shot in No Man’s Land.

Possibly some day politics may become more rational, but so far there is not the faintest indication of a change in this direction.

To a rational mind, the question is not: Do we want organization or do we not? The question is: How much organization do we want, and where and when and of what kind?

Those who maintained any intermediate position would be abused as timorous time-servers, concealed agents of the other side, men who ruined the enthusiasm of a sacred cause by tepid appeals to mere reason.

Any man who had the courage to say that our rooms ought to be neither very hot nor very cold would be abused by both parties, and probably shot in No Man’s Land.

Possibly some day politics may become more rational, but so far there is not the faintest indication of a change in this direction.

In spite of a temperamental leaning to anarchism, I am persuaded that an industrial world cannot maintain itself against internal disruptive forces without a great deal more organization than we have at present.

It is not the amount of organization, but its kind and its purposes, that cause our troubles.

But before tackling this question, let us pause for a moment to ask ourselves what is the measure of the intensity of organization in a given community.

The directors of a railway company, for instance, are to all intents and purposes uncontrolled by the shareholders, who have no adequate means of organizing an opposition if they should wish to do so.

In America, a railroad president is almost a monarch.

In party politics, the power of leaders, although it depends upon persuasion, continually increases as printed propaganda becomes more important.

But combination would take the zest out of life. The object of a football team, one might say, is to kick goals. If two rival teams combined, and kicked the ball alternately over the two goals, many more goals would be scored.

Nevertheless no one suggests that this should be done, the object of a football team being not to kick goals but to win.

So the object of a big business is not to make money, but to win in the contest with some other business. If there were no other business to be defeated, the whole thing would become uninteresting.

If two rival teams combined, and kicked the ball alternately over the two goals, many more goals would be scored. Nevertheless no one suggests that this should be done, the object of a football team being not to kick goals but to win.

So the object of a big business is not to make money, but to win in the contest with some other business.

If there were no other business to be defeated, the whole thing would become uninteresting. This rivalry has attached itself to nationalism, and enlisted the support of the ordinary citizens of the countries concerned;

the same causes which have led to national trusts would have led to international trusts. This has happened in a few instances, but not on a sufficiently wide scale to affect politics or economics very vitally.

Rivalry is, with most well-to-do energetic people, a stronger motive than love of money.

Successful rivalry requires organization of rival forces; the tendency is for a business such as oil, for example, to organize itself into two rival groups, between them covering the world.

They might, of course, combine, and they would no doubt increase their wealth if they did so. But combination would take the zest out of life.

The object of a football team, one might say, is to kick goals.

If two rival teams combined, and kicked the ball alternately over the two goals, many more goals would be scored. Nevertheless no one suggests that this should be done, the object of a football team being not to kick goals but to win.

I should wish, for my part, to preserve free competition between ideas, though not between individuals and groups, but this is only possible by means of what an old-fashioned liberal would regard as interferences with personal liberty.

So long as the sources of economic power remain in private hands, there will be no liberty except for the few who control those sources.

Such liberal ideals as free trade, free press, unbiased education, either already belong to the past or soon will do so. One of the triumphs of early liberalism in England was the establishment of parliamentary control over the army;

There is, however, a hopeful element in the problem. The planet is of finite size, but the most efficient size for an organization is continually increased by new scientific inventions.

The world becomes more and more of an economic unity.

Before very long the technical conditions will exist for organizing the whole world as one producing and consuming unit.

Individually, they desire that their own families should be small, in order to increase the inheritance of their children and to diminish the expense of education. The individual desire has triumphed over the collective desire, and even, in many cases, over religious scruples.

In this case, as in most others, the individual desire is less harmful to the world than the collective desire: the man who acts from pure selfishness does less damage than the man who is actuated by “public spirit.”

For, since medicine and sanitation have diminished the infant death-rate, the only checks to over-population that remain (apart from birth-control) are war and famine.

The result will be to increase the average intelligence; in the long run, it may be greatly increased. But probably the effect upon really exceptional intelligence will be bad. Mr. Micawber, who was Dickens’s father, would hardly have been regarded as a desirable parent.

How many imbeciles ought to outweigh one Dickens I do not profess to know.

Eugenics has, of course, more ambitious possibilities in a more distant future. It may aim not only at eliminating undesired types, but at increasing desired types.

The same thing would have happened to some first-rate mathematicians.

Specialized ability not infrequently goes with general disability, but this would not be shown by the kind of tests which psychologists recommended to the American government.

More sensational than tests of intelligence is the possibility of controlling the emotional life through the secretions of the ductless glands. It will be possible to make people choleric or timid, strongly or weakly sexed, and so on, as may be desired.

Assuming an oligarchic organization of society, the State could give to the children of holders of power the disposition required for command, and to the children of the proletariat the disposition required for obedience.

Against the injections of the State physicians the most eloquent Socialist oratory would be powerless.

The only difficulty would be to combine this submissiveness with the necessary ferocity against external enemies; but I do not doubt that official science would be equal to the task.

The men who will administer this system will have a power beyond the dreams of the Jesuits, but there is no reason to suppose that they will have more sense than the men who control education to-day.

Technical scientific knowledge does not make men sensible in their aims, and administrators in the future, will be presumably no less stupid and no less prejudiced than they are at present.

Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth-century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.

Science enables the holders of power to realize their purposes more fully than they could otherwise do.

If their purposes are good, this is a gain; if they are evil, it is a loss.

Therefore, at present, science does harm by increasing the power of rulers.

Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

If men were rational in their conduct, that is to say, if they acted in the way most likely to bring about the ends that they deliberately desire, intelligence would be enough to make the world almost a paradise.

(I forget where I read this, but if my memory serves me it was in some reliable source). The same policy might have been adopted from shrewdness, but in fact no one was sufficiently shrewd.

Our unconscious is more malevolent than it pays us to be; therefore the people who do most completely what is in fact to their interest are those who, on moral grounds, do what they believe to be against their interest.

For this reason, it is of the greatest importance to inquire whether any method of strengthening kindly impulses exists. I have no doubt that their strength or weakness depends upon discoverable physiological causes; let us assume that it depends upon the glands.