Page:The vested interests and the state of the industrial arts - ("the modern point of view and the new order") (IA vestedinterestss00vebliala).pdf/97



are certain saving clauses in common use among persons who speak for that well-known order of pecuniary rights and obligations which the modern point of view assumes as “the natural state of man.” Among them are these: “Given the state of the industrial arts”; “Other things remaining the same”; “In the long run”; “In the absence of disturbing causes.” It has been the praiseworthy endeavor of the votaries of this established law and custom to hold fast the good old plan on a strategic line of interpretation resting on these provisos. There have been painstaking elucidations of what is fundamental and intrinsic in the way of human institutions, of what essentially ought to be, and of what must eventually come to pass in the natural course of time and change as it is believed to run along under the guidance of those indefeasible principles that make up the modern point of view. And the disquieting incursions of the New Order have been disallowed as not being of the essence of Nature’s contract with mankind, within the constituent principles of the modern point of view stabilised in the eighteenth century.

Now, as has already been remarked in an earlier passage, the state of the industrial arts has at no