neering. Whatever squares with that law of
time-binding human energy, is right and makes for human weal; whatever
contravenes it, is wrong and makes for human woe.

And so I repeat that the world will have uninterrupted, peaceful progress
when and only when the so-called social "sciences"--the life-regulating
"sciences" of ethics, law, philosophy, economics, religion, politics, and
government--are technologized; when and only when they are made genuinely
scientific in spirit and method; for then and only then will they advance,
like the natural, mathematical and technological sciences, in conformity
to the fundamental exponential law of the time-binding nature of man; then
and then only, by the equal pace of progress in all cardinal matters, the
equilibrium of social institutions will remain stable and social
cataclysms cease.

Chapter V. Wealth

I beg the reader to allow me to begin this chapter with a word of warning.
The reader is aware that Criticism--by which I mean Thought--may be any one
of three kinds: it may be purely destructive; it may be purely
constructive; or it may be both destructive and constructive at the same
time. Purely destructive criticism is sometimes highly useful. If an old
idea or a system of old ideas be false and therefore harmful, it is a
genuine service to attack it and destroy it even if nothing be offered to
take its place, just as it is good to destroy a rattlesnake lurking by a
human pathway, even if one does not offer a substitute for the snake. But,
however useful destructive criticism may be, it is not an easy service to
render; for old ideas, however false and harmful, are protected alike by
habit and by the inborn conservatism of many minds. Now, habit indeed is
exceedingly useful--even indispensable to the effective conduct of life--for
it enables us to do many useful things automatically and therefore easily,
without conscious thinking, and thus to save our mental energy for other
work; but for the same reason, habit is often very harmful; it makes us
protect false ideas automatically, and so when the destructive critic
endeavors to destroy such ideas by reasoning with us, he finds that he is
trying to reason with automats--with machines. Such is the chief difficulty
encountered by destructive criticism. On the other hand, purely
constructive criticism--purely constructive thought--consists in introducing
new ideas of a kind that do not clash, or do not seem to clash, w