FUTURE HABITABILITY OP THE EARTH CHAMBEELIN. 389 



with the higher development of the race, beyond question it will 

 count in the perpetuity of man, or of the superman into which he 

 may evolve. No doubt it will come to weigh more and more as the 

 resources of helpful and harmful indulgence are increased by human 

 ingenuity. New issues will arise as man is put to trial by new 

 temptations to the deleterious and new promptings to rectitude. 

 Organic ethics will quite certainly become more critical in deciding 

 the strains that shall live on and the strains that shall perish, as the 

 growing multiplicity of numbers brings upon the race with increasing 

 stress those phases of the struggle for existence that are distinctively 

 human. The ethical factor will, beyond question, be more fully rec- 

 ognized as a source of perpetuity or as a cause of extinction, accord- 

 ing as the criterion of the survival of the fittest shall render its unim- 

 peachable verdict on what is organically good and what is organically 

 evil, as determined by the actual working test. 



But to be most efficient, moral purpose must not only be shaped by 

 the highest intelligence, it must be united in action with specific 

 knowledge of the conditions under which it works and of the agencies 

 which it may control. Herein lies the function of research, for re- 

 search is to be looked upon as the sole reliable means of trustworthy 

 knowledge. None of the earlier races made systematic inquiry into 

 the conditions of life, nor did they consciously seek thereby to pro- 

 tract their racial careers. Wliat can research yet do for the extension 

 of the career of man? We are witnesses of what it is beginning to 

 do in making the forces of nature subservient to man's purposes and 

 in giving him command over the maladies that hedge him about. 

 Can research master the secrets of vital endurance ; can it reveal the 

 mysteries of heredity ; can it disclose the fundamental processes that 

 condition the longevity of the race ? The answer must be left to the 

 future ; but I take no risk in affirming that when moral purpose and 

 research come to be the preeminent characteristics of our race by 

 voluntary adoption and by the selective action of the survival of the 

 fittest, and when these most potent attributes join in an unflagging 

 endeavor to compass the highest development and the greatest per- 

 petuity of the race, the true era of humanity will really have been 

 begun. 



