Publisher's Synopsis
From the INTRODUCTION.
We are learning that we may hope for unlimited improvement in everything, that Change is the law and that the most abiding things will yield to it. We can tie to nothing, and this is our difference from the old habit of mind which felt the need of a fixed rock; we of the modern world must deliver our minds from attachment to persistent forms.
But science itself is slow and reactionary, being still dominated by old and false notions of nature. Scientific men are not trained to love advancement passionately, they are trained to indifference, they are schooled to the idea that Nature is Inevitableness, that man must Lear prodigious evils and can only chip off a little of his cursing load from age to age.
This view is false. Man can drop the greater part of his huge burden by one act. He need not wait millenniums or generations for Evolution to change his state or his nature, but can alter both by choice with the suddenness of cataclysm yet with the peacefulness of growth. The scientific conceit that has done more harm than all others combined is the doctrine that Evolution is Slowness. This is an invaluable theory to those who want no evolution; it is invaluable to the selfish and lazy; it is priceless for the iniquitous who solemnly see in it nature's sweet plan for them to trample on others. But the doctrine is flatly false. Society may put itself through a sudden and vast transformation with the greatest ease, leaping over vast chasms of misery which accompany slow evolution, without touching them. This should be the object of men. It permits and compels the rejection of most of our theories of life, which is good since they are mostly excuses for inaction. All theories founded on the doctrine that evolution must be slow are unworthy.
What is the secret of this great power which mankind has never used? It is the same that enables an imaginary paralytic to walk and be well. This kind of a patient has the full physical ability to move but does not know it, and the secret of cure is to teach him that fact. There is a most simple shifting of ideas like stage scenery in his brain. So mankind is paralyzed by a false estimate of its strength and needs a shifting of thoughts to realize its might. No new power is added but a terrific latent force is set free. The dogma that evolution is slow is a disease of the imagination, causing race paralysis.
