The Message of Science. 57 



country devise methods and form habits of united effort, 

 to accomplish great ends. The first step to this is good- 

 fellowship, good will one to another, mutual confidence, 

 and a determination to cooperate. There is no other way. 

 Selfishness is retrogression. The way to enduring life is 

 through consecration of self to the common good. This 

 is the lesson from the cells. This is the method of nature. 

 By following this method, for example, multicellular man 

 may live eighteen thousand years. He may live forever. 



In unicellular life, no separate single cell, by any de- 

 vice, or husbandry of its life, could have lived a century, 

 or a year. It is only by union and self-consecration that 

 the long-lived organism has been developed and the 

 neuron become a partaker in its longer life. And even so 

 in organized, perfected humanity the component individ- 

 uals will become macro-bio tic. 



By united effort all are raised up to a higher plane of 

 life. Faulty and imperfect as it is, human civilization has 

 doubled the years of man. Twelve centuries ago the 

 average length of a human life in Europe was evidently 

 less than eighteen years. But compared with what science 

 could do with its present resources of knowledge, existent 

 civilization is but the most rudimentary of organizations. 

 The effort at an advanced civilization is barely inaugu- 

 rated, as yet. All the great results are to come. 



The only obstacle is ignorance : ignorant distrust, igno- 

 rant hatreds for creed's sake, or for race's sake ; fatuous 



