the community. It is the product of
community intelligence directed to public affairs.

The individual can make conscious improvements in his condition only
through observation, analysis, conclusion and experiment. The community
is under the same limitations. Its progress will be intelligent only
when it works rationally and purposefully upon the problems with which
it is confronted.

The individual faced with a perplexing situation in his business or in
his private life, sits down and goes over the matter, examining it point
by point, until he thinks that he has a solution for his difficulties.
Society, under similar circumstances, must follow a like course of
action. People must ponder and discuss the issues before them until
there is some consensus of opinion as to what course should be followed.
It is only under such conditions of intelligently directed social action
that conscious social improvement is made.

Conscious social improvement is therefore practicable when the available
knowledge about social problems has been socialized or popularized to a
degree that renders the community intelligent concerning its own
affairs. The task of popularizing any form of knowledge falls primarily
to the educator, the journalist and the other moulders of public
opinion.

8. _The Barriers to Progress_

There are two important barriers to intelligent social progress. One is
the lack of organized knowledge concerning social matters. The other is
the restriction of this knowledge to a tiny fraction of the population.

Social science, still in its infancy, has ahead of it decades of
advancement before it attains a position corresponding with that of the
physical sciences. Even at that its progress must be slower, first
because of the intricate nature of social phenomena, and second because
of the herculean efforts that the vested interests make to destroy any
form of social experiment that threatens their privileges.

Equally serious, as a limitation on the efficacy of social knowledge, is
its restriction to a very small fraction of the community. Progress in
the physical sciences is initiated in the laboratory, without any
considerable participation by outsiders, but progress in social science
depends on the attitude if not on the consent of the community, and
therefore the socialization of social knowledge becomes one of the
indispensable elements in social progress.

The handling of social problems has been confin