Western Civilization, Because Of Fortuitous Historical Circumstances,

The Prime Lesson The Social Sciences Can Learn From The Natural Sciences Is Just This: That It Is Necessary To Press On To Find The Positive Conditions Under Which Desired Events Take Place, And That These Can Be Just As Scientifically Investigated As Can Instances Of Negative Correlation. This Problem Is Beyond Relativity.

Our National Experience In Americanizing Millions Of Europeans Whose Chief Wish Was To Become Americans Has Been A Heady Wine Which Has Made Us Believe, As Perhaps No Nation Before Us Has Ever Believed, That, Given The Slimmest Chance, All Peoples Will Pattern Themselves Upon Our Model.

. . . Work Even When I'm Satisfied With It Is Never My Child I Love Nor My Servant I've Brought To Heel. It's Always Busy Work I Do With My Left Hand, And Part Of Me Watches Grudging The Wastes Of A Lifetime.

An Observer Will See The Bizarre Developments Of Behavior Only In Alien Cultures, Not His Own. Nevertheless This Is Obviously A Local And Temporary Bias. There Is No Reason To Suppose That Any One Culture Has Seized Upon An Eternal Sanity And Will Stand In History As A Solitary Solution Of The Human Problem. Even The Next Generation Knows Better. Our Only Scientific Course Is To Consider Our Own Culture, So Far As We Are Able, As One Example Among Innumerable Others Of The Variant Configurations Of Human Culture.

Success And Failure In Our Own National Economy Will Hang Upon The Degree To Which We Are Able To Work With Races And Nations Whose Social Order And Whose Behavior And Attitudes Are Strange To Us.