Because the scientific discipline is, in fact, the creative element in that which is distinctively modern, circumstances conspire to enhance its prestige and to extend its acceptance. It is the ultimate source of profit and of power, and therefore it is assured of protection and encouragement by those who rule the modern state. They cannot afford not to cultivate the scientific spirit: the nation which does not cultivate it cannot hold its place among the nations, the corporation which ignores it will be destroyed by its competitors. The training of an ever increasing number of pure scientists, of inventors, and of men who can operate and repair machinery is, therefore, a sheer practical necessity. The scientific discipline has become, as Mr. Graham Wallas would say, an essential part of our social heritage. For the machine technology requires a population which in some measure partakes of the spirit which created it. Naturally enough, however, the influence of the scientific spirit becomes more and more diluted the further one goes from the work of the men who actually conceive, discover, invent, and perfect the modern machines. From Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz who did the chief work which made possible the wireless it is a long way to the broker who sells radio stock or the householder with his six-tube set. I have not been supposing that these latter partake in any way of the original spirit which made the radio possible. But it is a fact of enormous consequences, [p241] cumulative in its effect upon the education of succeeding generations, that the radio, and all the other contrivances around which modern civilization is constructed, should be possible only by the increasing use of a scientific discipline. 3. _Naive Capitalism_ The application of science to the daily affairs of men was acclaimed at first with more enthusiasm than understanding. “That early people,” said Buffon, speaking of the Babylonians, “was very happy, because it was very scientific.” Entranced with the success of the Newtonian physics and by the dazzling effect of inventions, the intellectuals of the Eighteenth Century persuaded themselves that science was a messianic force which would liberate mankind from pain, drudgery, and error. It was believed that science would somewhat mysteriously endow mankind with invincible power over the forces of nature, and that men, if they were released from the bondage of religious custom and belief, could employ the power of science to their own consummate happiness. The mechanical revolution, in short, was inaugurated on the theory that the natural man must be liberated from moral conventions and that nature must be subjugated by mechanical instruments.