y
come to be what they are? For all sorts and conditions of men, the ways
and means of living have, during the past century or two--even during
the past decade or two--undergone revolutionary changes. It is true that
many of these changes have been relatively superficial, touching only
certain externalities and entering in no important way into life's
underlying and dominant motives. Others, no doubt, may fairly be held to
confuse and disperse the energies of men, instead of making for
wholeness, sanity and development of human interest and power. And
critics of industrial and social progress who have felt the need for
reservations of this sort fall easily into a certain mood of historic
homesickness for the supposed "simplicity" of an earlier age. But our
interest, in this discussion, is in the genesis, the actual process of
becoming, of our present "standards of living," not their value as rated
by any critical (or uncritical) standard. And accordingly we shall take
it for a fact that on the whole the average person of today is
reasonably, perhaps unreasonably, well satisfied with his telephone, his
typewriter, and his motor-car; with his swift and easy journeyings over
land and sea; with his increasingly scientific medical attendance and
public sanitation; with his virtually free supplies of literature and
information, new and old, and with his electric light or his midnight
oil (triple distilled) to aid in the perusal. More than this, he is so
well satisfied with all these modern inventions that, historical or
aesthetical or other "holidays" apart, he would never for a moment
dispense with any one of them as a matter of free choice. Grossly
material and humbly instrumental though they are, these things and their
like constitute the framework sustaining the whole system of spiritual
functions that make up the life we live today, as a society and as
individuals. And our present problem simply is the way in which they
were first received by those who were to use them, and passed into their
present common acceptance. To put the matter in general terms, how is it
that novel means of action or enjoyment, despite their novelty, are able
to command fair scrutiny and hearing and can contrive to make their way,
often very speedily, into a position of importance for industry and
life?

There is an easy and not unnatural way of thinking of this process as we
see it going on about us that may keep us long unmindful of even the