The reader, therefore, if he will be good enough to reflect a little upon the matter, can not fail to appreciate the tremendous difficulties which beset the writing of this little book, for he must perceive, not only that the work belongs to the third kind of critical thought, but—what is much more—the errors it aims to destroy are fundamental, world-wide and old, while the true ideas it seeks to substitute for them are fundamental and new. This great difficulty, felt at _every_ stage of this writing, is, for a reason to be presently explained, greatly enhanced and felt with especial keenness in the present chapter. I therefore beg the reader to give me here very special cooperation—the cooperation of open-mindedness, candor and critical attention. It is essential to keep in mind the nature of our enterprise as a whole, which is that of pointing the way to the science and art of Human Engineering and laying the foundations thereof; we have seen Human Engineering, when developed, is to be the science and art of so directing human energies and capacities as to make them contribute most effectively to the advancement of human welfare; we have seen that this science and art must have its basis in a true conception of human nature—a just conception of what Man really is and of his natural place in the complex of the world; we have seen that the ages-old and still current conceptions of man—zoological and mythological conceptions, according to which human beings are either animals or else hybrids of animals and gods—are mainly responsible for the dismal things in human history; we have seen that man, far from being an animal or a compound of natural and supernatural, is a perfectly natural being characterized by a certain capacity or power—the capacity or power to bind time; we have seen that humanity is, therefore, to be rightly conceived and scientifically defined as the time-binding class of life; we have seen that, therefore, the laws of time-binding energies and time-binding phenomena are the laws of human nature; we have seen that this conception of man—which must be the basic concept, the fundamental principle and the perpetual guide and regulator of Human Engineering—is bound to work a profound transformation in all our views on human affairs and, in particular, must radically alter the so-called social “sciences”—the life-regulating “sciences” of ethics, sociology, economics, politics and government—advancing them from their present estate of pseudo sciences to the level of genuine sciences and technologizing them for the effective service of mankind. I call them “life-regulating,” not because they play a more important part in human affairs than do the genuine sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology, for they are not more important than these, but because they are, so to say, closer, more immediate and more obvious in their influence and effects. These life-regulating sciences are, of