BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



have conceived as the last w^ord in fulfilled desire have 

 always seemed to me to be a little tiresome. There is in 

 them no place for diversity — and variety is a very acceptable 

 thing. The vision of society that advance in science, 

 properly applied, raises in one's mind is a distinctly human 

 society, after all; for the dissimilarity of individual endow- 

 ments can never be eliminated, the drives of the basic 

 instincts can never be wholly suppressed or sublimated, 

 and man must get along as best he can with an imperfectly 

 designed set of organs which will often function badly. 



As I see it, the possibilities of Scientific Humanism, 

 which must not be confused with Literary Humanism, run 

 somewhat as follows: 



Under a just and humane government the machine can 

 abolish poverty. Indeed it can furnish creature comforts 

 amounting to luxury, although with the inculcation of 

 healthy ideals, inordinate demands for luxury may be 

 expected to diminish. Birth control can lay the Malthusian 

 spectre of overpopulation and keep the census figures at 

 somewhere near the optimum for effective effort. Genetic 

 information, sanely directed, can lessen the proportion of 

 the mentally and physically deficient, and can raise the 

 average intelligence materially. Medicine and surgery 

 can increase the average expectation of life at birth to 

 sixty or seventy years, and this span can be made rela- 

 tively free from disease. 



Murmurs of criticism will break out at this point, I 

 dare say. "This is all very nice, but the chief object of such 

 a program is to make man a sleek, healthy animal. Vice 

 and corruption will still flourish." Not so fast! In a 

 scientific world, the term vice will not be used. It will be 

 replaced by the phrase asocial conduct. And asocial conduct 

 will be studied and understood, prevented or forgiven. 

 Moreover, behavior has a physical basis, though the 

 immediate stimulus may be due to other factors. A con- 



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