462 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



But why continue these recitals, for no intelhgent man 

 today needs to be convinced that our material prosperity rests 

 wholly upon the development of our science. It is as to the 

 broader values, intellectual and spiritual, that even intelhgent 

 men sometimes express doubt. Let me then start with the 

 foundations that I have already laid and try to show to what 

 these beginnings are leading, whither we are going, not 

 materially, but as feehng, thinking and wilhng beings. 



Was Pasteur only a scientific enthusiast when he wrote: " In 

 our century science is the soul of the prosperity of nations and 

 the hving source of all progress. Undoubtedly the tiring 

 discussions of pohtics seem to be our guide^ — empty appear- 

 ances! What really leads us forward is a few scientific 

 discoveries and their apphcation. " 



Or was H. G. Wells, himself not a scientist at all, merely 

 talking nonsense when he wrote: "When the intellectual 

 history of this time comes to be written, nothing, I think, will 

 stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in quahty 

 between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations 

 that are going on, and the general thought of other educated 

 sections of the community. I do not mean that scientific 

 men are, as a whole, a class of supermen, deahng and thinking 

 about everything in a way altogether better than the 

 common run of humanity, but in their field they think and 

 work with an intensity and integrity, a breadth, a boldness, 

 patience, thoroughness, fruitfuhiess, excepting only a few 

 artists, which puts their work out of all comparison with 

 any other human activity. In these particular directions the 

 human mind has achieved a new and higher quality of 

 attitude and gesture, a veracity, a self detachment, and 

 self-abrogating vigor of criticism that tends to spread out 

 and must ultimately spread to every other human affair. " 



These ma}^ be extravagant statements, most of us scientists 

 are sure they are, but I should like to attempt to picture a 

 little of what I think was in the back of the minds of their 

 authors when they made them. I shall do it by drawing an 

 analogy between the life of mankind as a whole and the life 

 of man as an individual. But first let me answer the question 

 as to what we know about the duration of the life of mankind. 

 A hundred years ago we knew practically nothing about it, as 



