the limit which we shall approach indefinitely. Developments in this direction are tending to bring mankind more and more together, to render life more and more complex, artificial, and rich in possibilities--to increase indefinitely man’s powers for good and evil. But there are two prerequisites for all progress of this kind, namely continuous supplies of human and mechanical power. As industries become more and more closely interwoven, so that a dislocation of any one will paralyse a dozen others (and that is the position towards which we are rapidly moving), the ideal of the leaders of industry, under no matter what economic system, will be directed less and less to the indefinite increase of production in the intervals between such dislocations, and more and more to stable and regular production, even at the cost of reduction of profits and output while the industry is proceeding normally. It is quite possible that capitalism itself may demand that the control of certain key industries be handed over completely to the workers in those industries, simply in order to reduce the number of sporadic strikes in them. And as industrial progress continues an ever larger number--perhaps the majority--of industries will become key industries. The solution may be entirely different--we may well see a return to feudalism. But the probability is that the problem will be solved. This view may seem optimistic, but it is more likely than the alternative thesis which may be briefly stated as follows: “_No human society will ever succeed in producing a stable organization in which the majority of the population is employed otherwise than in agriculture, animal-rearing, hunting or fishing._” It took some thousands of years to produce the stable agricultural society which forms the basis of European life and whose morals we are too apt to regard as eternal truths. It should take a shorter time to evolve a stable industrial society. The people that do so will inherit the earth. In sum, I believe that the progress of science will ultimately make industrial injustice as self-destructive as it is now making international injustice. As for the supplies of mechanical power, it is axiomatic that the exhaustion of our coal and oil-fields is a matter of centuries only. As it has often been assumed that their exhaustion would lead to the collapse of industrial civilization, I may perhaps be pardoned if I give some of the reasons which lead me to doubt this proposition.