of
affairs should continue for about seventy-five years, we feel at the
Institute. In that time, reason can--we hope--be so firmly implanted
in the basic structure of society that when the next great wave of
passion comes it won't turn men against each other.

"The present is, well, analytic. While we catch our breath we can
begin to understand ourselves. When the next synthetic--or creative or
crusading period, if you wish--comes, it will be saner than all which
have gone before. And man can't afford to go insane again. Not in the
same world with the lithium bomb."

Bancroft nodded. "And you in the Institute are trying to control this
process," he said. "You're trying to stretch out the period of--damn
it, of decadence! Oh, I've studied the modern school system too,
Dalgetty. I know how subtly the rising generation is being
indoctrinated--through policies formulated by _your_ men in the
government."

"Indoctrinated? Trained, I would say. Trained in self-restraint and
critical thinking." Dalgetty grinned with one side of his mouth.
"Well, we aren't here to argue generalities. Specifically Meade feels
he has a mission. He is the natural leader of America--ultimately,
through the U.N., in which we are still powerful, the world. He wants
to restore what he calls 'ancestral virtues'--you see, I've listened
to his speeches and yours, Bancroft.

"These virtues consist of obedience, physical _and_ mental, to
'constituted authority'--of 'dynamism,' which operationally speaking
means people ought to jump when he gives an order--of .... Oh, why go
on? It's the old story. Power hunger, the recreation of the Absolute
State, this time on a planetary scale.

"With psychological appeals to some and with promises of reward to
others he's built up quite a following. But he's shrewd enough to know
that he can't just stage a revolution. He has to make people want him.
He has to reverse the social current until it swings back to
authoritarianism--with him riding the crest.

"And that of course is where the Institute comes in. Yes, we have
developed theories which make at least a beginning at explaining the
facts of history. It was a matter not so much of gathering data as of
inventing a rigorous self-correcting symbology and our paramathematics
seems to be just that. We haven't published all of our findings
because of the uses to which they could be put. If you know exactly
how to go about it you can shape world society into almos