EPILOGUE 



attained marks a limit, at least from an order of magni- 

 tude point of view. Scientific advances of the past cen- 

 tury have increased our understanding of the world we 

 live in enormously, yet have raised entirely new ques- 

 tions. This process should accelerate, as integration of 

 the human societal organism proceeds at a quicker 

 pace. Full comprehension of nature, however, must be 

 relegated to a higher level of integration, in the very 

 distant future. 



The control over other matter that such a super- 

 societal organism representing a higher level of integra- 

 tion will be able to exercise is beyond ordinary 

 conception. It should again be greater by about the 

 same ratio by which the control that man is able to 

 exercise now, exceeds that possible for a primitive cell 

 colony. An increase of control by such an order of 

 magnitude brings us quite conceivably to a stage where 

 the living material of the organism will control the 

 non-living portion of matter in such a fashion as is 

 necessitated by its problem of preserving its own 

 extremely complex organization. 



Eventually then, if we are extrapolating correctly, 

 living matter succeeding in controlling cosmic proc- 

 esses will ever more completely control the nature of 

 the universe as well as comprise in its own entity an 

 increasing portion of the material in the universe. 

 This, drawn to its inescapable conclusion, means that 

 the entity of living matter will become ever more iden- 



117 



