ABSTRACT
The scientific society with which the following chapters are to be concerned is, in the main, a thing of the future, although various of its characteristics are adumbrated in various States at the present day. The scientific society, as I conceive it, is one which employs the best scientific technique in production, in education, and in propaganda. But in addition to this, it has a characteristic which distinguishes it from the societies of the past, which have grown up by natural causes, without much conscious planning as regards their collective purpose and structure. No society can be regarded as fully scientific unless it has been created deliberately with a certain structure in order to fulfil certain purposes. This is, of course, a matter of degree. Empires, in so far as they depend upon conquest and are not mere national States, have been created, it may be said, in order to confer glory upon their emperors. But this has been in the past merely a question of the political government, and has made very little difference to the daily life of the people. There
are, it is true, semi-mythical lawgivers of the remote past, such as Zoroaster, Lycurgus, and Moses, who are supposed to have impressed their character upon the societies that accepted their authority. In all such cases, however, the laws attributed to them must have been, in the main, pre-existing customs. To take an instance concerning which more is known: the Arabs who accepted the authority of Mahomet made hardly more change in their habits than did Americans when they accepted the Volstead Act. When Mahomet’s sceptical relatives decided to throw in their lot with him, they did so because of the smallness of the change that he demanded.
