Our civilization, as each of us is uncomfortably aware, is passing through a time of crisis. Why should this be? What are the causes of our present troubles? They are all due, in the last resort to the fact that science has been applied to human affairs, but not applied adequately or consistently.

In the past, man’s worst enemy was Nature. He lived under the continual threat of famine and pestilence! A hot summer could bring death to whole nations, and every winter was a menace. Mountains stood like a barrier between people and people! A sea was less a highway than an impassable division. Today, Nature, though still an enemy, is an enemy almost completely conquered.

Our present troubles are not due to Nature. They are entirely artificial, genuinely homemade. The very arts and sciences which we have used to conquer Nature have turned on their creators and are now conquering us. The present crisis is of our own making. We have brought it on ourselves by allowing our mechanical and agricultural science to develop more rapidly than our economical science. We cannot buy what we produce and are, therefore, compelled to keep our factories idle and let our held he fallows. Millions are hungry, but wheat has to be thrown into the sea. This is where at the moment, science has brought us.