It is the only way to see through things. The only way to dare to see through ones' self; the only way to see through other people and to see past them, and to see with them and for them--is to hope. So I am putting the challenge to the reader, in this book, as I have put it to myself. There are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face: 1. Does human nature change? 2. Does it change toward a larger and longer vision? 3. Will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds and new sizes of men? 4. Will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practical and make a new world? Everything depends for every man upon this planet, at this moment, on how he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind of life, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a mean world, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live down to it. This is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creative type in literature, in business, and in politics--are doing. They do not believe human nature is changing. They are living down to a world that is going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than they are themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer the question "Does human nature change?" by "No!" Wilbur Wright, when he flew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, a black speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered "Yes!" But the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with a little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the ground. The big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying was that he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about one thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand years they knew they could not do. And now they knew they could. It naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man who lives--that there must be other particular things. And as nine men out of ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to be done in business. The Wilbur Wright spirit is catching. It is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world. One sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new things of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of the air, and of one another they had not dared expect before. The other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been the president of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had invented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to consumers has come from the company.