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72   HISTORIC GROWTH OP MAN.

TIIE RIGHT TO BE HEARD.   la

How shall these be brought before the people and adopted? The Swiss Referendum requires that in any case of new measures there may be a petition presented to the government and this must be signed by a certain per cent. of the voters. In Britain or America this per cent. would require, say 250,000 voters. Then the matter is submitted to a vote of the whole nation for acceptance or rejection.

But the Swiss form of procedure is not in harmony with the great laws of evolution. For discoveries and inventions are not made by masses of men, nor by communities and nations. We all know that they are made by single persons, or in some cases, by two or three. And when a man makes an invention or a discovery which may affect the public welfare, lie has a natural right to be heard before a competent tribunal. In many cases he has used as the basis of his work all the knowledge on that subject which the world had accumulated, as in the case of Watt with his engine and Morse with the telegraph. After performing this great and beneficent task, what justice or wisdom is there in requiring him to go before the general public, here and there, as he may, finding by accident those who may become interested in his new work, until after years of effort he may gain the requisite number of petitioners? Nothing but stupidity or brutality could require this. In the case of Morse, lie petitioned a congress in which not one member was fitted by training or by knowledge to judge in the matter.

It is high time that humanity should learn that it is natural to grow, natural to learn and to invent new things. And that the man who leads in this

growth deserves the wise assistance and not the indifference or curses of the public.

The people often have had to wait long years for benefits which might have been secured at once. Instead of the older methods we propose

THE RECEPTUu. It is one function of the receptor and the cultist, acting in connection with the officers proper for each case, to receive, examine, and prove all proposed measures, inventions, or discoveries which may affect the public welfare, and to formulate these so that the presiding officers shall duly submit them to a vote of the people for acceptance or rejection.

The receptum is therefore a division in the department of culture. Its working can be easily understood. In order to fill their general duties these two officers must keep themselves familiar with the progress of science, art and invention. They must be trained in critical judgment and in the methods of testing in science. Let us suppose a case. In some town a member makes a scientific discovery. He works it out to the best of his ability. Then lie goes to the cultist and receptor in that town and lays the discovery before them with its proofs and the steps he has taken in making it. The receptor calls in the scientist, for the case will require his kind of knowledge and judgment. Together they examine the discovery with its process and the validity of its evidence. They may, perchance, detect vital defects in the reasoning and thus show the discoverer that his work is yet incomplete, or inconclusive. Or, they may approve it in every part. In the latter case they would prepare a statement of it for submission to a popular vote.


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