Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/772

 756 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

orders. And that such orders are everywhere incipient and rapidly developing, there are many evidences to show. These evidences are vividly depicted in the sociological writings of Mr. H. G. Wells, who more than anyone else, perhaps, in the English- speaking w r qrld has seen, or at least expressed for us in literature, the incipient changes in city development which are being effected by these new secular orders of applied physical science.

The new type of engineer is tending more and more to assume control of the communications of our cities, their facto- ries and workshops, the 'great public works of water supply, lighting, drainage, etc. And thus gradually determining for us the material conditions of life, the new engineer acquires social status and prestige. And, in pursuance of the well-known socio- logical law that those who have social power tend also to get civil and political power, we are bound to assume that the engineer types, as they are already tending to control civic policy, will sooner or later seek to control national and even world-policy. That these higher aspirations are already well on the way toward achievement is seen in the influence now being exercised by the railway kings of America, not only in their own country, but also in world-politics. With the advantages brought about by the activities of these new secular orders, there are, of course, corresponding disadvantages. The conception of a city held by the railway engineer is, we have already seen, not that of a city at all, but that of a town. And this limitation applies through- out the whole sphere of thought and action belonging to this phase of life. It manifests itself even in Mr. Wells's utopist pic- tures of the cities of the future, for in these id)ealist cities is it not the case that the inhabitants, notwithstanding their manifold cultural activities, have still their main interests in the material aspects and conditions of things? Are they not, in fact, towns- men first, and citizens only thereafter?

XXVI. If the foregoing criticism is a just one, the cause of the limitation is doubtless to be sought in some arrestment of normal scientific development. The physical scientist who re- mains such falls a long way short of repeating and resuming his normal racial development. For above and beyond the physical