Those who believe that the race learns only through hardships and suffering should bear in mind: first, that most of the knowledge communicated to the individuals of each generation is communicated indirectly through some process of education; second, that society is composed of those individuals; third, that modern communities have built a vast machine whose sole purpose it is to influence opinion by teaching (indirectly) in the school, in the church, through the printed page and the film. In Japan this machine is employed to teach the people the sanctity of the emperor; in Britain it is used to convince the masses of the sanctity of business-as-usual; in France it is used to proclaim the sanctity of property; in Russia it is used to inculcate the sanctity of the revolution. If people learned only through first hand experience, these propaganda machines would be failures. In practice, they are highly successful. Social disaster is not the only path to social knowledge. It is not necessary for a generation to suffer from typhus or to be ruined by war in order to be convinced that these dread diseases are menaces. The desire to prevent famine is felt by millions who have never come any nearer to it than the stories in the papers. Society learns, indirectly, through education--slowly of course, but none the less surely. The average man is convinced of the desirability of trying to avoid disease, hunger and the other ills that effect him personally and immediately. He is not yet convinced of the efficacy of a similar attitude toward war, revolution and other disasters which inevitably destroy some portion of society, and which, in the end will prove as preventable as disease and famine. Social disaster seems more inevitable because it strikes more people at one time, while individual disaster has been more carefully studied, is better understood and is more localized. Grave dangers menace present-day society. Economic breakdown, war and social dissolution with their terrible scourges--pestilence and famine--have already overtaken millions. It is plain that some new course of social action must be planned; that some social experiment must be inaugurated that will ward off the impending disasters. Social experiments should be made, as chemical and electrical experiments are made, after all of the available facts have been carefully considered and digested. The results of such wisely planned experiments in the social field may be just as dramatic as the results of similarly planned experiments in the field of natural science.