A school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored
to substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto
been the motive of politics a general coherency or completeness
in the social system which has gained the nick-name of "efficiency."
I am not very certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter.
But, as far as I can make out, "efficiency" means that we ought
to discover everything about a machine except what it is for.
There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy:
the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man.
It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we
need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist.
A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice,
to the way things commonly work. When things will not work,
you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why
they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning;
but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while
Rome is burning.

It is then necessary to drop one's daily agnosticism
and attempt rerum cognoscere causas. If your aeroplane
has a slight indisposition, a handy man may mend it.
But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that some
absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be
dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil.
The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more
absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it;
and in some extreme cases, no one but the man (probably insane)
who invented your flying-ship could possibly say what was
the matter with it.