Excerpt from The Psychology of Social Reconstruction Macaulay in his essay on Lord Bacon said that it was not Bacon's purpose to make men perfect. His humble aim was to make imperfect men comfortable. This Baconian philosophy, whose aim is to exploit all the forces of nature for the comfort and convenience of mankind, and which finds happiness not in the exercise of man's highest powers but in the release and satisfaction of human desires, originally characterized only the English-speaking peoples, but has now extended to the whole world. While personally I believe that a civilization based on such a foundation as this is artificial and ephemeral, nevertheless to write a book to prove this would be a thankless task. It would be just a sermon, fruitful of nothing but yawns. We do not now look with very much alarm at such warnings as Civilization at the Crossroads. We are not greatly impressed when we are told that the kind of society which the social reformers promise us is not such a society as we ought to have; just as the laborer is not very much impressed when the capitalist tells him that his poverty is good for him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.