44 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



reverie of the hero of Turgenev's Torrents of Spring. 

 " He did not picture life's sea, as the poets depict it, 

 covered with tempestuous waves ; no, he thought of 

 that sea as a smooth, untroubled surface, stagnant and 

 transparent to its darkest depths. He himself sits in 

 a little tottering boat, and down below in those dark 

 oozy depths, like prodigious fishes, he can just make 

 out the shapes of hideous monsters : all the ills of hfe, 

 diseases, sorrows, madness, poverty, bhndness. He 

 gazes ; and behold, one of these monsters separates 

 itself of! from the darkness, rises higher and higher, 

 stands out more and more distinct, more and more 

 loathsomely distinct. ... An instant yet, and the boat 

 that bears him will be overturned. But behold, it 

 grows dim again, it withdraws, sinks down to the bottom, 

 and there it lies, faintly stirring in the slime. . . . But 

 the fated day will come, and it will overturn the boat." 

 Times and ideas are changing, however, and there 

 is a broadening recognition that Science is for Life, 

 not Life for Science. Even the philosophers have 

 begun to tell us with their wonted clarity that the 

 systematisation of knowledge for the evolution of a 

 more perfect society is Man's supreme duty. 



