_we_ desire, the whole thing would blow up in our faces.
People don't like being shoved around."

"And still you're doing it!" One hand dropped to her gun. "You, a
clique of maybe a hundred men...."

"More than that. You'd be surprised how many are with us."

"You've decided _you_ are the almighty arbiters. Your superior wisdom
is going to lead poor blind mankind up the road to heaven. I say it's
down the road to hell! The last century saw the dictatorship of the
elite and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This one seems to be
birthing the dictatorship of the intellectuals. I don't like any of
them!"

"Look, Elena." Dalgetty leaned on one elbow and faced her. "It isn't
that simple. All right, we've got some special knowledge. When we
first realized we were getting somewhere in our research we had to
decide whether to make our results public or merely give out selected
less important findings. Don't you see, no matter what we did it would
have been us, the few men, who decided? Even destroying all our
information would have been a decision."

His voice grew more urgent. "So we made what I think was the right
choice. History shows as conclusively as our own equations that
freedom is not a 'natural' condition of man. It's a metastable state
at best, all too likely to collapse into tyranny. The tyranny can be
imposed from outside by the better-organized armies of a conqueror, or
it can come from within--through the will of the people themselves,
surrendering their rights to the father-image, the almighty leader,
the absolute state.

"What use does Bertrand Meade want to make of our findings if he can
get them? To bring about the end of freedom by working on the people
till they themselves desire it. And the damnable part of it is that
Meade's goal is much more easily attained than ours.

"So suppose we made our knowledge public. Suppose we educated anyone
who desired it in our techniques. Can't you see what would happen?
Can't you see the struggle that would be waged for control of the
human mind? It could start as innocuously as a businessman planning a
more effective advertising campaign. It would end in a welter of
propaganda, counter-propaganda, social and economic manipulations,
corruption, competition for the key offices--and so, ultimately, there
would be violence.

"All the psychodynamic tensors ever written down won't stop a
machine-gun. Violence riding over a society thrown into chaos,
enforced peac