Never in the history of social change has there been an intelligent direction of social processes. Many men in many ages have had ideals and aspirations, coupled, in some cases, with a limited knowledge of social practice, but social changes have come upon mankind for the most part, as a meteor comes upon the earth's atmosphere--unexpected and unheralded, startling those who have seen it by the suddenness of its appearance. Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the ruling powers to instill a different point of view with regard to these matters. On the contrary, there has been a determined effort to convince men that social changes were beyond their ken. The air of mystery has been blown away from natural phenomena, but it is encouraged and permitted to surround social changes. While it endures, an intelligent direction of social life is, of course, quite out of the question. This attitude is being broken down, however. The past hundred years of experiment and experience with a competitive order have convinced multitudes that such an order is unworkable. During the same period, the development of economic organization on ever broader lines has emphasized the need of common purposes and common activities. Recent social experience teaches plainly that an injury to one is an injury to all; that a benefit to one is a benefit to all; that men rise in the scale of well-being with their fellows and not from them, and that a co-operative social life is the only one that will prove livable and workable. These four propositions include the best thinking of the modern world on the fundamentals of a social structure that will prove livable and workable. The acceptance of any such standards of social life involves a right-about-face in the basic social philosophy of the world. 1. _The doctrine of laissez-faire must be accepted for what it is--an exploded theory that has promoted, not social well-being, but the interests of favored classes._ 2. _Catastrophe must be recognized as the most costly avenue to progress._ 3. _Social science must be made at least as effective, in guiding the life of the world as is physical science._ Social science alone will not protect men from the dangers that surround them. Every social group is dependent for its effectiveness upon the kind of individuals of which it is composed, and their ideas and ideals limit the ideas and ideals of the group. At the same time, a carefully thought out course of social action, like a carefully thought out course of individual action presents a standard toward which society may work. A plan for social organization is like the blue-print with which the mechanic works. Science comprises his rules and methods of procedure, but the driving power comes, not from the blue-print and not from the formulas, but from the man himself. This holds equally true of society. 7. _Conscious Social Improvement_