The modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, but it is not an economic machine.

It is a biological engine.

It is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines the machinery in it.

The most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical parts.  They are the very biological parts.

The economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make very much difference about the made-people.  I find that as a plain, practical matter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much to understand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it.

In prospecting for a world, I watch the born people.

I watch especially the people who have been born twice.

As one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what is really making it go round, is not its being an economic machine, but its being a biological engine.

Industrial reform is a branch of biology.

The main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born.

The main fact of biology as regards society—­that is, the main fact of social biology—­is that a man can be born twice.

As long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is well enough to have been born once, but the moment a man deals with other people or with the world, he has to be born again.

This is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world.

The main fact about the Engine is the biology in it.

Every other fact for a man has to be worked out from this—­that is:  out of being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother, and out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world.

A man does not need to enter again into his mother’s womb and come out a child.  He enters into the World’s Womb and comes out a man.

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The world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the men who are born twice.

Not all men are cogs and wheels.

The first day I discovered this and believed this I went out into the streets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and I looked up at the factories and the churches and I was not afraid.

I do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common.

But I do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme based on the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels would work.  I believe in arranging the world on the principle that there are now and are going to be always enough men in it who are born, and enough who are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who have been born twice, who have visions for worlds, want done, and to keep people who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best and where they will help the running gear of the planet most—­by going round and round, in the way they like—­going round and round and round and round.