52 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



been replaced (as, if we can read the future from the 

 past, it inevitably will be) by some form of federation 

 covering the globe. We find an immense increase 

 of control over environment — a. theme so hackneyed 

 as to need no labouring. We find an almost equally 

 striking, if less spectacular, increase in independence. 

 Man becomes less and less at the mercy of the forces 

 of nature and of other organisms, attains much more 

 to self-regulation. This has depended upon increased 

 efficiency of ' organs ' — here the extra-organismal 

 organs we call tools and machines ; and upon increased 

 rapidity and certainty of communication both within 

 and between units. There has been an almost over- 

 whelming increase (displaying too not a uniform 

 but an accelerated motion) of knowledge, of the 

 possibilities of acquiring new knowledge, and of what 

 may be called the ' group-memory ' — the power of 

 storing and rendering knowledge available, and this 

 in its turn brings about a huge increase in the size 

 of the environment with which man either physically 

 or mentally comes into contact. 



As regards increase of harmony or co-ordination, 

 human communities have advanced but little, although 

 in the increase of powers of communication there has 

 been laid the foundation for such possibility. 



That this lack of progress is partly due to the extreme 

 rapidity of change in type of unit and of the units' 

 increase in size, is not doubtful ; a further ground 

 for it, however, is to be found in the fact that human 



