Probable Future Advances in Evolution 837 



ing, the cyclic changes noted in plants and animals around. 

 Results therefore accumulate that each describes to the home 

 circle, to friends, to the world, as impressively and effectively 

 mayhap, as does a teacher in some great University. This it 

 is which explains in large measure the remarkable success 

 which the works of Darwin, Spencer, Wallace, Huxley, Haeckel, 

 Drummond, and Kidd have achieved. This is the thinking, 

 reflecting, acting age of mankind, and so when it was groping 

 after such works, because it needed them, they were found 

 and welcomed. The truths these works contain w^ill grad- 

 ually be gathered and conserved, as jewels of the 19th century. 

 The slips, the mistakes, the rash statements, the false gener- 

 alizations will be eliminated, but meanwhile mankind will 

 march forward, as new seers arise to guide by added truths. 



" May we not regard it then as the crowning legacy of 19th 

 century advance that knowledge is now for all; that schools, 

 colleges, and universities no longer exist to manufacture a 

 select and privileged cult, but to people the world with the 

 highest types of earnest thinking individuals; that as today is 

 the best day in the world's history so future days will be on 

 ever higher planes?" 



We would attempt now to enlarge somewhat on the above 

 and this along purely economic or utilitarian lines. We be- 

 lieve that we make a fair, reasonable, and practical claim when 

 we assert that the world lies before advanced superman for 

 future exact exploitation, subjection, and guidance along such 

 highest proenvironal lines as he may resolve upon. A few 

 examples of future possible and realizable advances may be 

 given. 



Till within the past seventy-five years man was practically 

 ignorant of all fungoid — including bacterial — diseases, and ac- 

 cordingly was powerless to cope with them when they acted 

 as injurious agents, or to aid and further develop them when 

 beneficial. But the past half century has truly witnessed a 

 revolution — a mutation — in his attitude to these. Agents in- 

 jurious to human life, like the diphtheritic, the malarial, the 

 tubercle, splenic fever, and related organisms, have had their 



