“What I have said to you about Socialism is not an _ex-parte_ statement by a man opposed to Socialism. I am opposed to nothing but error, and when I see Laws as fixed and as immutable as Bode’s Law or the law of gravity disregarded by men who are proposing to reform the world, and when I point out these fatal flaws in their reasoning, that does not mean that I am opposed to all plans for reforming the world, but it does mean that I would test by everyday logic any plan for everyday use. “Will it work? Will it perform the work for which it was invented as a kinetic engine? “Those are the two questions on which the capitalist satisfies himself first before he invests his money in any invention in mechanics. “Then he asks, will it wear without undue destruction of parts? “Then he satisfies himself as to its economics. Any plan of world reform which leaves out the Human Equation is equivalent to an engineering plan which leaves out of consideration details like the Law of the Dead Centre or the Law of Expansion and contraction of metals. “If you will examine any great engineering plan, whether it be the plan for a bridge or a marine engine, you will find that it is a simple bouquet of natural laws, all brought together by the engineer for a definite purpose, and every law is stamped with the + or - stamp of nature. They are the laws of weakness and the laws of strength, and these wonderful laws that preside over matter so interpenetrate one another that you cannot divorce them one from the other. They may be said to form alloys. Thus the law that rules over the breaking strain is at once the law of strength and weakness. The giant that lives in water springs into steam under the conditions of the + law that gives him strength, but never for a moment does he escape from the - law of condensation which is ever ready to reduce him to water again in a twinkling. And so on. “Now, the task of the engineer is _not_ to eliminate the - laws from nature, but to account for them, and, if possible, to make them, by a trick of genius, work for him. The engineer does not attempt to destroy Inertia, the weakness that lives in the dead centre of things; he counteracts the idleness of inertia by means of the fly-wheel. “The weakness of Steam under the law of condensation becomes in the hands of the engineer the strength of the steam-engine. The bursting power of steam, which is ever at war with the weakness of the boiler metal, he counteracts by the safety-valve. He must allow for everything, or his machine either will not work or bursts into a thousand fragments.