SECURITY OF LIFE 645 



lem of producing, conserving, and distributing food. 

 Control of the environment in this respect means not 

 only the production of sufficient food for the feeding 

 of mankind, but its production in the most efficient 

 manner possible, since, as has already been pointed out, 

 it is only as leisure time is gained from the satisfaction 

 of the fundamental requirements that man is enabled 

 to devote himself to the enrichment of life. Even so 

 elementary a part of the problem as securing for every 

 human being the amount of food required for his ade- 

 quate nourishment is still far from solution. Competent 

 authorities assert that there are millions who live out 

 their entire lives without having ever been adequately 

 nourished. So long as this condition prevails the environ- 

 mental handicap imposed by food shortage must be con- 

 sidered acute. And even when progress has reached 

 the point where every human being always has enough 

 to eat, there will still remain the task of producing food 

 so efficiently that all mankind will be assured of ade- 

 quate leisure which he may devote to the higher phases 

 of living. 



Security of Life. — The second of the fundamental 

 biological requirements is that of individual security. 

 Mankind strives to control the environment in such a 

 way as to lessen his liability to injury and death. The 

 greatest menace to human security has always been 

 man's competitive struggle with other organisms — either 

 with wild animals or with the organisms of disease, or with 

 other men either in individual struggle or on the wholesale 

 scale of war. Progress toward overcoming the handicap of 

 personal insecurity is achieved — so far as danger from 

 wild animals or from disease-producing organisms is con- 

 cerned — by a policy of extermination. The first care of 

 the pioneer is to destroy such wild animals as constitute 

 an immediate menace. The final aim of medical science is 

 to exterminate the organisms of disease or to render man 

 immune to their attacks. A preceding chapter has em- 



