to
recollect the story of the simple but very greedy farmer who was very
happy to make a contract with a laborer for a month's work, paying him
only one cent the first day, twice as much the second, twice for the
third, and so on to the end. Behold! The bill for the month ran into
millions of dollars and the farmer was ruined. Such is the deadly secret
of the geometrical progression. Violent readjustments await any society
whose ethics, jurisprudence and the like do not keep pace with the
developments of engineering.

Engineers are the wizards who, using the results of scientific research,
can subjugate or release the concealed powers of nature. The supreme
factor is the use of the mind--the exponential function of time--the
time-binding energy of man. From that we have to take our start because
that is the source of human power.

The German philosophy, as a whole, has its definite place in the history
of philosophy; and the first thing to consider are those philosophic
writers who directly and indirectly have contributed to the building up of
German power. Hegel greatly affected the building up of the German
mind--strange as it may seem; but Hegel was greatly under the influence of
the work of Fichte, and Fichte in turn under that of Spinoza. All of them
were, in a way, mathematicians in their methods and philosophy, as much as
they could be in their time. I said "strange," because it is significant
that the mathematical part of their philosophy was just the part which
built up the German power. But if we look into it, it is not strange.

It had to be so, because mathematical and mechanical methods are the only
ones by which power can be understood and built. Hegel in 1805 lectured on
history of philosophy, pure mathematics and natural law. It would be hard
to find a better combination for a philosophy of power. That is precisely
what this philosophy was. It influenced not only German philosophy but
even German theology, and through these channels it sank deep into the
national consciousness. It affected every phase of life. An immense cult
of disciples arose. Each one added something to that philosophy of power.
One of the most brilliant representatives of this movement is Professor
Oswald, who in his _Monist Sermons_ gave the famous advice: "Do not waste
energy but give it value." The German understanding of the great value of
technology directly applied that principle to their philosophy, law,
ethics, politics, an