s zoological
ethics--the righteousness of tooth and claw; below the human dimensions of
life, utterly unworthy of the creative energy--the time-binding capacity--of
humanity. Socialism feels keenly and sees dimly that human affairs are not
conducted in conformity with natural laws. Capitalism neither sees it nor
keenly feels it. Neither the one nor the other stops to investigate
natural laws--nature's laws--laws of human nature--scientifically. They both
of them use the same speculative methods in their arguments, and there can
be no issue. Against one old-fashioned, speculative argument, there is
always a speculative answer. They both speak about the truth, but their
methods can not find the truth nor their language express it. They speak
of "justice," "right" and so forth, not knowing that their conceptions of
those terms are based on a wrong understanding of values. There is one and
but one remedy, and that remedy consists in applying scientific method to
the study of the subject. Sound reasoning, once introduced, will overrun
humanity as the fields turn green in the spring; it will eliminate the
waste of energy in controversies; it will attract all forces toward
construction and the exploitation of nature for the common weal.

There are capitalists and capitalists; there are socialists and
socialists. Among the capitalists there are those who want wealth--mainly
the fruit of dead men's toil--for themselves. Among the socialists there
are those--the orthodox socialists--who seek to disperse it. The former do
not perceive that the product of the labor of the dead is itself dead if
not quickened by the energies of living men. The orthodox socialists do
not perceive the tremendous benefits that accrue to mankind from the
accumulation of wealth, if _rightly used_.

Whether we be capitalists or socialists or neither, we must learn that to
prey upon the treasury left by the dead is to live, not the life of a
human being, but that of a _ghoul_. Legalistic title--documentary
ownership--does not alter the fact. Neither does lust for the same.

When we have acquired the just conception of what a human being is we
shall get away from the Roman conception according to which a human being
is _instrumentum vocale_; an animal, _instrumentum semivocale_: and a
tool, _instrumentum mutum_. To regard human beings as tools--as
instruments--for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but
it is repugnant, stupid and short