But to what end
our efficient human machinery shall be used depends on the
ideals and customs and purposes that happen to be current in
the social order at any given time.

In the words of Professor Thorndike, "we can invest in
profitable enterprises the capital nature provides." But
what profiteth a man or a society, is a matter for reflective
determination; it is not settled for us, as are our limitations,
at birth.

The net result of scientific observation in this field is the
discovery, in increasingly precise and specific form, that men
are most diverse and unequal in interest and capacity. The
ideal of equality comes to mean, under scientific analysis,
equality of opportunity, leveling all social inequalities; the
fact of natural inequalities and divergences remains incontestable.

There may even be, as recent psychological tests seem to
indicate, a certain proportion of individuals who are not
competent to take an intelligent part in democratic government,
who, having too little intellectual ability to follow the
simplest problem needing cooeperative and collective decision,
must eternally be governed by others. If these facts come to
be authenticated by further data, it merely emphasizes the
fact that in a country professedly democratic it is essential
to devise an education that will, in the case of each individual,
educate up to the highest point of native ability.

Where a country is ostensibly democratic, a few informed
citizens will govern the many uninformed, unless the latter
are educated to an intelligent knowledge and appreciation of
their political duties and obligations. Furthermore, the citizens
of a community who are prevented from using their native
gifts will be both useless and unhappy. Certainly this is
an undesirable condition in a society where all individuals are
expected, so far as possible, to be ends in themselves and not
merely means for the ends of others.

CHAPTER X

LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION[1]

[Footnote 1: Much of the technical material for this chapter is
drawn from Leonard Bloomfield's _The Study of Language_, and
W. D. Whitney's _The Life and Growth of Language_.]

It was earlier pointed out that human beings alone possess
language. They alone can make written symbols and heard
sounds stand for other things, for objects, actions, qualities,
and ideas. In this chapter the consideration of language may
best be approached from the spoken tongue, under the influe