The more perfectly we understand the implications of the machine technology upon which our civilization is based, the easier it will be for us to live with it. We shall discern the ideals of our industry in the necessities of industry itself. They are the direction in which it must evolve if it is to fulfill itself. That is what ideals are. They are not hallucinations. They are not a collection [p259] of pretty and casual preferences. Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible. As we discern the ideals of the machine technology we can consciously pursue them, knowing that we are not vainly trying to impose our casual prejudices, but that we are in harmony with the age we live in. CHAPTER XIII [p260] GOVERNMENT IN THE GREAT SOCIETY 1. _Loyalty_ The difficulty of discovering an industrial philosophy which fits machine industry on a large scale has proved less trying than the discovery of a political philosophy which fits the modern state. I do not know why this should be so unless it be that, as compared with politicians, business men have had a closer opportunity to observe and more pressing reasons for trying to understand the transformation wrought by machinery and scientific invention. Certainly even the best political thinking is notably inferior in realism and in pertinence to the economic thinking which now plays so important a part in the direction of industry. To a very considerable degree the writer on politics to-day is about where the economist was when all economic theory began and for all practical purposes seemed to end with Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. Nobody takes political science very seriously, for nobody is convinced that it is a science or that it has any important bearing on politics. In very considerable measure political theory in the modern world is sterilized by its own ideas. There have been passed down from generation to generation a collection of concepts which are so hallowed and so dense that their only use is to excite emotions and to obscure insight. [p261] How many of us really know what we are talking about when we use words like the state, sovereignty, independence, democracy, representative government, national honor, liberty, and loyalty? Very few of us, I think, could define any of these terms under cross-examination, though we are prepared to shed blood, or at least ink, in their behalf. These terms have ceased to be intellectual instruments for apprehending the facts we have to deal with and have become push buttons which touch off emotional reflexes.