With the outgrowing of sport, or, more strictly, with the blending of work and play man will apply himself to tasks commensurate with his powers. Dimly we begin to see what these tasks will be. The task of government, complex as it may be, will be less difficult in many respects than it is to-day. The danger of revolution should be only a remote contingency. The stability of a society ultimately depends inversely upon the prevalence of nepotism. A government of the efficient and the talented equipped with scientific knowledge would be impregnable. It matters not that men are mostly irrational so long as the rational have the power to rule. The irrationality of the rest is subject to uniform law, which, understood, can be brought within control. But the temptation to the ruler to hand on the reins of power to the inefficient with whom he has emotional ties of paternity or friendship is almost irresistible. The difficulty, however, is not insuperable. Some form of “Socialism”, which started all at equality and promoted to power according to ability, gauged quasi-mechanically by mental and vocational tests, would be a partial safeguard. Moreover, in a compact ruling class a kind of family moral tradition might emerge. This would be reinforced by the common-sense recognition of the dangers of promoting the inefficient on a large scale over the heads of the competent. The obvious effect of such promotion is, in the long run, revolution; and revolutions will probably be recurrent until the lesson has been learnt. VI And will these god-like beings with their infinite wealth and power, in their perfect rationality, be any happier or even morally better creatures than ourselves? The formula for happiness is a fairly simple one. Its relative components form a vulgar fraction. The denominator is constituted by that towards which we aspire; the numerator is the number of our achievements. There is a law by which these two vary almost in unison. Any augmentation of achievement sends up proportionally the number of our desires, whilst great losses are followed by resignation. It is just for those fleeting moments in which the balance is disturbed that we experience bliss or misery. But the moments are very fleeting, and the normal ratio is restored. Happiness is the carrot before the donkey’s nose. Therein lies the moral of Tantalus, so grievously misinterpreted by Dr Schiller. Tantalus is the symbol of human progress. The only danger is that under Scientific Management man may see through the trick. And will he be better then than he is to-day? That, however, is a question for the moralists of the future to decide. * * * * * Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.