262 a:nnu.\l report Smithsonian institution, 1939 



wlio has made his will can still enjoy life. "The play's the thing," 

 not to be spoilt by regrets that the actors will not hold the stage 

 forever. But whether or not we can derive comfort from such con- 

 siderations, the fact remains that all available evidence, paleontolog- 

 ical and historical, racial and personal, indicates the inevitable doom 

 of man the animal, and of all his works. 



Must we then reconcile ourselves to the belief that we are such stuff 

 as paleontological collections are made of, and that in the geologically 

 near future a few fossil relics will be all that remains of our species ? 

 A creed so desperate would demand extinction as an escape from a 

 farcically hopeless existence. Before finally abandoning ourselves to 

 utter pessimism, we may try to review our position from another 

 angle. 



Once, very long ago, even as a geologist reckons time, a strange 

 thing happened. We do not know why or how ; but a certain com- 

 bination of substances acquired the quality that we call life. In many 

 ways the first organisms, doubtless unicellular and microscopic, defied 

 the ordinary laws of physical nature. Especially was this the case 

 in their capacity for sexual reproduction and its consequent succession 

 of everchanging individuality; in other words, in their quality of 

 evolution. The organic world, surrounded, influenced, and in no 

 small measure controlled, by the inorganic, started on an adventure 

 that led it ever further from the mechanical principles of insensate 

 forces. Today that same "life," spread among a myriad of individ- 

 uals, is still flourishing, and shows no signs of decline. It is an im- 

 portant, though superficial, part of the economy of the globe. Its 

 more progressive exponents, elaborating their structural and mechan- 

 ical diversities, have acquired an enhanced sensitiveness that has be- 

 come concentrated into a definite nervous system, and has gradually 

 attained the faculty of intelligence. Being mammals ourselves, we 

 can recognize in our fellow mammals mental capacity and consequent 

 behavior that appeal to us as comparable with our own; it is not 

 possible to appreciate the mentality of creatures utterly unlike our- 

 selves, even if such mentality exists. Nevertheless, it seems evident 

 that reception of sensations and response to them become more acute 

 and intelligent with improving brain structure. Increasing faculties 

 of locomotion stimulate perception, and life becomes less automatic 

 and more emotional. The brain comes to dominate the organism. 



The earliest forms of life must have striven against their physical 

 surroundings, for life is an irritating alien in the inorganic world. 

 But when, by virtue of the faculty of multiplication, living things 

 came to exist in great quantity and congestion, internecine competi- 

 tion was added to environmental problems, and the complicated 

 anarchy of the "struggle for existence" began. Structural advan- 

 tages, or (in later stages) mental superiority, help to bring success to 



