Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 457
that "nature"-to wind and wave and tide and gravity
and heat and so on. Such things, we say, are non-human,
-man has great interest in them but they have no interest
in man,-and when they are made, as they can be made,
to serve human welfare, what is it that makes them serve?
Everyone knows the answer: what makes them serve is
human thought,-it is human intelligence and purpose
and will,-it is the power that invents,-the power that
observes and remembers and imagines and conceives and
reasons and creates,-it is, in a word, what we may for
convenience call the spiritual energies of our human kind.
These energies are just as natural as Tredgold's "power."
The reflection is no doubt just but it is very obvious.
Why, then, insist upon it so? Because, as you must see,
it fundamentally alters the traditional point of view. We
are seeking a just and worthy conception of the science
and art of Engineering, and the reflection in question
radically shifts the incidence of the major emphasis. It
shifts it from the non-human to the human. For it is
clear that what requires "directing"-what requires to
be engineered-is primarily, not the blind forces of external nature, but those other natural forces-the spiritual energies of Man. It is perfectly evident that the
ultimate aim and ideal of engineering,-the welfare of
our human kind,-not only demands the conquest of
physical nature, not only demands subjugation of the nonhuman forces of the world, but also demands, as even
more essential, world-wide enlightenment of human
beings, world-wide coordination of human effort, worldwide establishment of Justice; and it is perfectly evident
that the sole means to these great ends is the understanding and "directing,"-the "engineering," if you please,
-of what we have called the spiritual energies of man,