BIOLOGY AND HUMAN TRENDS — PEARL 335 



gone. Yet very little lias been done in the way of attempting to 

 analyze thoroughly and penetratingly the biological effects of en- 

 vironmental conditions upon human beings. 



In truth science, perhaps in common with all other modes of hu- 

 man thought, has a seemingly ineradicable tendency to crystallize its 

 temporarily successful philosophies into dogma, and having accom- 

 plished the crystallization proceeds to the scourging of whatever 

 skeptics and heretics may appear. Public-health workers sometimes 

 display a religious attitude toward their achievements as intense as 

 the crusading zeal of the eugenists for their dogmas. Only a few 

 hardy souls throughout history and at the present time seem able to 

 realize for longer than brief periods that new knowledge is more 

 often than in any other way engendered out of skepticism by hard 

 work, and that religious attitudes and modes of thought for however 

 noble a purpose enlisted not only have nothing whatsoever to do with 

 science, but are the most effective hindrances to getting new knowl- 

 edge yet heard of. 



Ill 



Let us now turn to the examination of some of the more conspicu- 

 ous and far-reaching social consequences of the basic biological prin- 

 ciples we have briefly reviewed. The three most obvious and 

 important ones are, I think, that : 



1. Man is enjoying better health and individually surviving longer 

 than ever before, likes it, and intends to go farther along the same 

 road. 



2. He is vaguely conscious of being more crowded than ever before, 

 and finds the various consequences of this crowding increasingly 

 unpleasant, but chiefly because it threatens that enhanced survival 

 that is always his first and deepest biological concern. 



3. Therefore he is groping about to find ways to alleviate the pro- 

 gressive overcrowding and preserve the health and survival gains 

 he has made; trying a great variety of experiments, some of which 

 are sensible, others highly dubious, and a few completely idiotic. 



For the sake of clarity these three statements need a little ex- 

 pansion. The urge to survival is the ultimate biological motivating 

 factor that has transferred the maintenance and improvement of 

 health from an individual to a social concern. The gains in this 

 field have been enormous. How enormous perhaps only a statistician 

 can appreciate. This is not the place, nor is there any need, to go 

 into the question of how they have been achieved. But the interest- 

 ing thing about the case, broadly viewed, is that without the abate- 

 ment by a single bit of that basic individual selfishness in which 

 the biological urge for survival is rooted, it has been perceived that 



