Feasibility

“ Every possible avenue must be explored, every resource of human ingenuity taxed to the utmost, brushing aside all obstructive traditions and conventions, and thoroughly testing every plan with one glimmer of hope in it, to get and keep a large and permanent, because successful and contented, body of people doing this vital work. ”

“ I only want you to note that the faculties, capacities and powers given to us are like so many seeds and, as each seed has in it the pregnancy, the innate potentiality, to grow and develope from year to year and from decade to decade, so we have in these faculties, capacities and powers the potentialities of inexhaustible promise, of illimitable resource; and these cannot be fully unfolded, they cannot be completely realised, unless we have as the ideal of our life some lofty, noble, inspiring, up-lifting aim and purpose. That is what we should all fall in ardent love with. ”

“ Some see tension between policies that focus resources on certain groups and the pursuit for excellence, but the simple truth is that the general achievement of excellence is strongly linked to the prevalence of opportunity. ”

“ But many who admit the advantages and practicability of the plan we have proposed, will be tempted to despair of success, by the apparent difficulty of inducing an effort for its accomplishment. Similar difficulties, however, have been experienced and overcome. ”

“ Governed by any other than such a broad standard, changes and modifications in present systems and forms are made simply to meet the exigencies of the times, and with no view to place government upon a basis which should never need modification, and which should meet all exigencies of all times. ”

“ This policy of a bare uncompromising rigor, exerted to keep the people just where they are, in preference to adjustments formed on a calculation of a material change, and adapted to prepare them for it—how long could it be successful—not to ask what would be the value or the glory of that success? ”

“ And it is, as far as I have been able to learn, the practice of all countries.' The same will, the same positive action, the same purpose, and, it may be added, the same predicament or position of the actors, must exist in each class of cases. There must be intent and act, prompted by, and tending to, a practicable, or at least a probable result, and not mere endurance or submission to uncontrollable necessity in either case. ”

“ In other respects, the progress of improvement appears slow, and fettered by obstacles almost insurmountable, whose baneful influence will continue, until a more enlightened system of policy shall be adopted. ”

“ There are abundant instances in which a whole people have been eager for untried things. The amount of capacity which a people possess for doing new things, and adapting themselves to new circumstances; is itself one of the elements of the question. It is a quality in which different nations, and different stages of civilization, differ much from one another. The capability of any given people for fulfilling the conditions of a given form of government can not be pronounced on by any sweeping rule. ”

“ What force, what council, how many imaginative and inventive men has the country got at the present time employed not casually but professionally in anticipating the new strategy, the new tactics, the new material, the new training that invention is so rapidly rendering necessary? ”

“ It appeared proper to investigate principles, to consider objections, and to endeavor to establish the utility of the thing proposed to be encouraged previous to a specification of the objects which might occur as meriting or requiring encouragement, and of the measures which might be proper in respect to each. The first purpose having been fulfilled, it remains to pursue the second. ”

“ We must have system, constructive method, springing from a widely inventive imagination, a method checked up at each turn by results achieved. We have said long enough that America means opportunity; we must now begin to ask: Opportunity for what, and how shall the opportunity be achieved? ”

“ Just as in one of its modern looms there are 2000 pieces, and will be more, so in all the branches of its human membership an incessant specialisation of ability, and an inconceivably minute adjustment to new problems is ever in process. ”

“ Affairs are coming to a jam as it is, and if those who possess technical facility do not engage to remedy the case, those who lack that facility may attempt it. Nothing is more foolish than for any class to assume that progress is an attack upon it. Progress is only a call made upon it to lend its experience for the general advancement. ”

“ We may also expect them to remain at least equally applicable in future, unless some improvement shall take place in the structure of society, which shall furnish hopes of an advancement in station, leaving less to chance, and, at the same time, producing a degree of isolation, by which the consequences, whether good or evil, flowing from the actions of individuals, may be more fully appropriated to the authors of them. ”

“ Improvement must here be understood in a wide sense, including not only new industrial inventions, or an extended use of those already known, but improvements in institutions, education, opinions, and human affairs generally, provided they tend, as almost all improvements do, to give new motives or new facilities to production. ”

“ If this process could be understood, it should be the ordinary rule in every department of the universe. All the power there is, should be concentrated into action through the most advanced, and consequently the most perfect forms—perfect forms always being those which are adapted to the highest uses. ”

“ After all, 'Specialization is the goal of civilization,' you know." ”

“ We see, then, that in the total absence of any fixed principles on which men can unite, the policy required is one which shall be purely provisional, and limited almost entirely to the maintenance of material order. ”

“ As to the improvements which are to be introduced into a political system, their quantity and their period must be determined by the degree of knowledge existing in any country, and the state of preparation of the public mind for the changes that are to be desired. ”

“ No one undertaking the study of this problem is likely to underrate the difficulty of the task. To find a solution is obviously a matter of great importance; but it is also a matter in which small success may reasonably be expected. ”

“ The simple reason is, however, that we who promulgate this judgment of value are ourselves committed to a policy of progress; such progress being definable in technical language as an elaboration of society involving at once an ever fuller differentiation of the component units and an ever closer integration of the group as a whole. ”

“ Some people think that we should be in a position to compare the different possible changes of our life in such a future society, based on planning, with, as it were, a comprehensive standard, composed of the standards which may be elaborated by the experts in the single fields. ”

“ Any plan of world reform which leaves out the Human Equation is equivalent to an engineering plan which leaves out of consideration details like the Law of the Dead Centre or the Law of Expansion and contraction of metals. ”

“ In order to assure your success, you must learn to like to do what is most needed to be done, and learn to like to serve whoever lacks what you can supply. Therefore prospect your fields of opportunity to learn what capabilities are principally needed. If you would make your success as easy as possible, look about you first to determine the demand for such services as you are able to render. ”

“ The matter that concerns us is, that we have left our old moorings, and that, to secure new ones, new limits are to be set to the activities of men along lines which concern us, and that, therefore, it is necessary that those who by education and training are best fitted to consider facts and not desires, should guide society as much as possible along its new lines. ”

“ It is not enough, however, to determine the abstract principles upon which a policy may be founded—that which is just may not always be most expedient, and if both the one and the other, it may not be practicable. ”

“ They exhibit a worthy conception of what is involved in qualification for judgment either about the quality of present industrial relations or about the directions in which or the means by which we should seek for change. ”

“ It is to be hoped that they will now be inclined to inform themselves about the complete scheme that is offered them, and be just as willing to do now on a large scale and thoroughly what they have hitherto done on a small scale and imperfectly. ”

“ All the checks which human ingenuity has been able to devise, or at least all which, with reference to our habits, our institutions, and our diversities of local interests, to give perfect operation to the machinery, to adjust its movements, to prevent its eccentricities, and to balance its forces: all these have been introduced, with singular skill, ingenuity and wisdom, into the arrangements. ”

“ Therefore, all future advancement to perfection must be in the perfecting process in man, and therefore it is logical to conclude that the same law that governed the beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of each of the kingdoms that produced man, will also govern the beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of the different stages in the perfecting process in him ”

“ It is in this manner that the results of progress, except as to the celerity of their production, can be, to a certain extent, reduced to regularity and law. And the belief that they can be so, is equally consistent with assigning very great, or very little efficacy, to the influence of exceptional men, or of the acts of governments. ”

“ In every case he would be asking, ‘If we were to begin the world afresh, how should we proceed?’ He would always consider what is the best thing to be done, and next how can it be done irrespectively of everything conventional. ”

“ The pragmatic context of high efficiency is also one of generalized democracy, extended from production to consumption. The ubiquitous engine driving the process is the possibility, indeed necessity, of human emancipation from all possible constraints. ”

“ I owe them no ill will, but I am well satisfied that it will demand the highest skill and the largest experience combined to make the new system work successfully, when hitherto all others, including our own two years' experience, have signally failed. ”

“ But that it would take us too far out of our track, we should prelude this inquiry by illustrating at some length a certain general law of progress;—the law that alike in occupations, sciences, arts, the divisions that had a common root, but by continual divergence have become distinct, and are now being separately developed, are not truly independent, but severally act and react on each other to their mutual advancement. ”

“ Constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. ”

“ These considerations must act as the most powerful checks to any initiative measures of a large and comprehensive character for the improvement of our position and the more rapid development of our commerce. ”

“ It is, therefore, necessary, before we proceed any further, to survey our real situation, take accurate account of our ways and means and decide on a well thought-out scheme of advance with full knowledge of our existing resources and needs. ”

“ But the chances of obtaining means to make such improvement or enlargement depends upon the capabilities the individual has developed, in the management of that already committed to his care; hence his advancement, his growth and standing in the community, together with the comfort, convenience and beauty of his surroundings depend primarily upon his individual exertion. ”

“ Still farther away from the mere task is the effort that devises the plan; adjusts part to part, decides upon materials suitable for each part, establishes the ideal of excellence for every part and for the whole, and foresees its actual uses. ”

“ These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first principle in the whole business—the maintenance, by force, of the possession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by any human mind. ”

“ No other race of men with the means at their command would undertake so great a journey, none save these could successfully perform it, with no previous preparation, relying only on the fertility of their own invention to devise the means to overcome each danger and difficulty as it arose. ”

“ The means by which natural exigencies are to be provided for, national inconveniences obviated, national prosperity promoted are of such infinite variety, extent, and complexity, that there must of necessity be great latitude of discretion in the selection and application of those means. ”

“ Although the reaction to these measures among our people may be varied and new, their effectivity is not rigid; we have undergone more onerous expedients which we were able to survive in the past. Our citizens shall be heard and the application of these measures shall be relaxed where stability, efficiency, and the common good so demand. ”

“ But it certainly does not seem to be a measure insuperably difficult, to preserve whatever is really good in the present system, and even to remedy some of its defects, without departing from the path of experience, and resorting to improvements of theory and experiment. ”