The Message of Science. 95 



as yet to perceive the tremendous advantages of coopera- 

 tion. Personal selfishness still outweighs the larger view. 

 The inherent immorality of a short life prompts to snatch 

 at personal pleasure and let the next generation take care 

 of itself. It is all a part of this horrible immorality of 

 certain death and cannot be ameliorated as long as human 

 life is so perilously insecure and brief. With death but 

 a few years ahead at best, human beings will work for 

 those few years and continue indifferent to larger 

 interests." 



All of which is but too true. And yet there is always 

 a measure of altruism in the human heart, a balance of 

 philanthropic good-will and a strain of generous heroism, 

 prompting individuals to deeds of self-sacrifice for the 

 common weal. 



It is to these saving traits in us that posterity, yet 

 unborn, makes appeal. Personally, too, we would all of 

 us be willing to do more than we do for the common 

 good, and cooperate in mutual undertakings more than we 

 do, but for the impracticability of such efforts, the diffi- 

 culty of initiating united action, the inertia of existent 

 social, political and economic methods. It is this inertia 

 of olden forms, customs, race antipathies, creeds and na- 

 tional prejudices among the billion and a half of the 

 earth's inhabitants which so baffles and withstands rational 

 progress. All of which brings us to a practical question 

 of what can first and best be done, under the circum- 



