s are reverberated echoes of the wailing cry
mingled with the chattering voices of excited public men who know not what
to do. Why? What is the explanation? The question is double: Why the
disease? And why no remedy at hand? The answer is the same for both. And
the answer is that the so-called sciences of ethics and jurisprudence and
economics and politics and government have not kept pace with the rapid
progress made in the other great affairs of man; they have lagged behind;
it is because of their lagging that the world has come to be in so great
distress; and it is because of their lagging that they have not now the
needed wisdom to effect a cure.

Do you ask why it is that the "social" sciences--the so-called sciences of
ethics, etc.--have lagged behind? The answer is not far to seek nor
difficult to understand. They have lagged behind, partly because they have
been hampered by the traditions and the habits of a bygone world--they have
looked backward instead of forward; they have lagged behind, partly
because they have depended upon the barren methods of verbalistic
philosophy--they have been metaphysical instead of scientific; they have
lagged behind, partly because they have been often dominated by the lusts
of cunning "politicians" instead of being led by the wisdom of enlightened
statesmen; they have lagged behind, partly because they have been
predominantly concerned to protect "vested interests," upon which they
have in the main depended for support; the _fundamental_ cause, however,
of their lagging behind is found in the astonishing fact that, despite
their being by their very nature most _immediately_ concerned with the
affairs of mankind, they have not discovered what Man really is but have
from time immemorial falsely regarded human beings either as animals or
else as combinations of animals and something supernatural. With these two
monstrous conceptions of the essential nature of man I shall deal at a
later stage of this writing.

At present I am chiefly concerned to drive home the fact that it is the
great _disparity_ between the rapid progress of the natural and
technological sciences on the one hand and the slow progress of the
metaphysical, so-called social "sciences" on the other hand, that sooner
or later so disturbs the equilibrium of human affairs as to result
periodically in those social cataclysms which we call insurrections,
revolutions and wars. The reader should note carefully that such
c