Every doctrine that makes disciples freely must contain in it some embodiment of psychological reality, however exiguous; but where it has been arrived at by the methods of the prophet, there is no reason to expect that stress will be laid on the true more than on the false elements of the doctrinal scheme, and experience shows that the inessential falsity has for the expositor as many, if not more, attractions than the essential truth. An expert statecraft would be able to identify the real elements of discovery that were present in any fresh prophetic appeal to public belief, and would be able at any rate to save the state from the condition of petrified embarrassment into which it now falls when faced by social dogmas and experiments which win attention and adhesion while at the same time they outrage convention and common sense.
The examination of the functional satisfactoriness of society, which has been a chief object of this book, has yielded a certain general body of conclusions. An attempt will now be made to summarize these in a compact and even dogmatic form, and to add what further element of definition seems indispensable for clearness. {255}
- All societies of which we have any knowledge have shown two general defects—they have proved unable to develop and direct more than a small fraction of the resources they theoretically possess, and they have been impermanent, so that time after time laborious accumulations of constructive effort have been wasted. According to our analysis these defects are due to the drift of power into the hands of the stable-minded class, and to the derivation of moral power and enterprise from the mechanisms of leadership and class segregation.