X INTRODUCTION 



ever-increasing knowledge of physics and chemistry which 

 may be used for mutual benefit or equally for world destruc- 

 tion. We must improve beyond recognition by present 

 standards both the significance and the extent of our 

 educational system; we must continue to protect our health 

 and hves if we are not to lose irreparably in individual 

 and group progress. But since after all we may assume 

 that we have developed from a definite species and since the 

 limits of our progress are involved in this ancestry and in the 

 degree to which we have evolved from it, a fundamental 

 question of the future is: Can we to some extent control 

 the direction of the evolution of the race? 



THE CONTROL OF NATURE 



Human progress has been a series of triumphs over 

 natural forces. But when anything new is proposed, certain 

 people cry out that this is a perversion of nature. Of course 

 it is. Man rules by bending the world to his will and to the 

 service of his ends. 



Man has progressed by mastery over other forces. He 

 rules, insofar as he does, because he has turned nature to 

 his service. Natural science is a series of victories over 

 other animals and over inanimate forces. Coal, which in 

 the normal "state of nature" lies in deep pockets under- 

 ground, he has mined and burned to keep him warm and 

 to run his engines; electricity, which naturally is jumping 

 haphazard about the universe, he has harnessed into means 

 for communication and power. He has exploited the tendency 

 of bees to store up honey and has lured these busy little insects 

 into building up great piles of this sweet food, not for 

 themselves, but for man. Cows, that by nature furnish 

 milk for their young, he has perverted into continuing their 

 supply of milk long past the need of their calves so that 

 it may be poured out for his nourishment. He has exploited 

 the seed-bearing nature of fruits and grains and has used 

 this super-abundance of seed for his food; he has crossed 

 one species with another and produced such hybrid foods as 

 the loganberry and the tangelo grapefruit to please his 

 palate, and new varieties of flowers for his enjoyment. 

 He has developed to a state of perversion the normal 



