nd no necessary friction
between the two schemes of knowledge or the two habits of mind that
characterise the two contrasted cultural eras. It is only that a given
individual--call him the common man--will not be occupied with both of
these incommensurable systems of logic and appreciation at the same time
or bearing on the same point; and further that in proportion as his
waking hours and his mental energy are fully occupied within the lines
of one of these systems of knowledge, design and employment, in much the
same measure he will necessarily neglect the other, and in time he will
lose proficiency and interest in its pursuits and its conclusions. The
man who is so held by his daily employment and his life-long attention
within the range of habits of thought that are valid in the mechanistic
technology, will, on an average and in the long run, lose his grip on
the spiritual virtues of national prestige and dynastic primacy; "for
they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned."

Not that the adepts in this modern mechanistic system of knowledge and
design may not also be very good patriots and devoted servants of the
dynasty. The artless and, on the whole, spontaneous riot of dynastic
avidity displayed to the astonished eyes of their fellow craftsmen in
the neutral countries by the most eminent scientists of the Fatherland
during the early months of the war should be sufficient warning that the
archaic preconceptions do not hurriedly fly out of the window when the
habits of thought of the mechanistic order come in at the door. But with
the passage of time, pervasively, by imperceptible displacement, by the
decay of habitual disuse, as well as by habitual occupation with these
other and unrelated ways and means of knowledge and belief, dynastic
loyalty and the like conceptions in the realm of religion and magic pass
out of the field of attention and fall insensibly into the category of
the lost arts. Particularly will this be true of the common man, who
lives, somewhat characteristically, in the mass and in the present, and
whose waking hours are somewhat fully occupied with what he has to do.

With the commercial interests the Imperial establishment can probably
make such terms as to induce their support of the dynastic enterprise,
since they can apparently always be made to believe that an extension of
the Imperial dominion will bring correspondingly increased opportun