The other way is based on creative intervention which shortcuts evolutionary gradualism in the same way that a great leap shortcuts many ordinary steps.

Perhaps the conception can be illustrated in a most effective way by the alternative presented during the great revolution of 1750-1970.  At the beginning of this epoch man walked the earth literally, except when he sailed on the water or used the horse or some other swift animal to travel by land.  In the course of the great revolution mankind has learned to move his body at speeds which sometimes exceed the movement of sound, on the land, on the water, through the air and into space.  He has done this short-cutting by revolutionary changes in types of energy coming from outside his physical body.  In another sphere—­communication devices—­man has stepped up the movement of his emotions and thoughts and his creative imagination beyond the speed of light.

This analogy is not complete, nor is it wholly convincing.  But the great revolution in science and technology, applied in the field of social science can quite conceivably provide humanity with the means of short-cutting the normal or “natural” processes in sociology as it has already short-cutted the normal or “natural” process in human transportation and communication.

As long as human beings accept the normal, traditional, “natural” principles of association and group action, humanity will continue on the tread-mill of civilization with its long established cycles of beginning, expansion, exploitation, maturity, conflict, decline and extermination.

This aspect of planetary sociology may be illustrated by the rise and decline of total membership in the human family.  We know that Roman civilization passed through a completed cycle of population expansion to an optimum, followed by a catastrophic population decline.  Western civilization has been experiencing a population expansion or explosion that can be measured with a moderate degree of statistical accuracy.  Planetary human population doubled from 500 million in 1650 to 1000 million in 1850.  Between 1850 and 1950 population more than doubled (from 1000 million to 2,500 million).  In 1975 the human population of the earth is close to 3,700 million.

An essential aspect of world government will be a population program designed to adjust social structure and planning to the means of production and to make generally available to all humans and, where possible, all living things, the results of invention, discovery and experience with affluence, general security and wide variations of vocational and avocational choice.  In practice such a program would include the planned utilization and conservation of nature and the conscious improvement of society by society.