Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 81.djvu/569

Rh modern methods of production. It remains to be seen whether the east will use this increased power over nature, gained by voluntary imitation, for the development of a higher plane of living or will merely increase the total population of the Orient on the present plane of misery. The argument from the past is never wholly safe but so far as that argument applies to the present problem it seems to indicate that, as man continues to profit by the method of proving all things and holding fast to that which is good, he will learn in the east as well as in the west that progress will occur by the discovery and rational imitation of those processes which, to use terms employed by Mr. Herbert Spencer, develop individuation with the least necessary expenditure for genesis, or, in terms of this essay, will produce the greatest surplus with the minimum expenditure for survival. When that lesson has been learned man may turn more of his energies from the effort to live, to the endeavor to live well.