Control of Heredity: Eugenics 289 



The past history of man has been a long one, no one can say 

 how long, but probably not less than half a million years have 

 passed since the Hominidae appeared, and not less than fifty 

 thousand years since the present species arose. There is every 

 reason to believe that the future history of man will be even 

 longer. Barring great secular changes, catastrophes or cataclysms, 

 which cannot be foreseen nor provided against, man controls his 

 own destiny on this planet. 



It is a curious fact that in prescientific times the instability of 

 nature especially appealed to men. How often in the past have 

 men looked forward to a "speedy end of the world"! It may 

 well have" seemed to our ancestors a useless thing to take any 

 thought for the morrow if very soon the heavens are to be rolled 

 up as a parchment and the elements dissolved in fervent heat; it 

 would be folly to plan for future ages if the time is at hand when 

 the angel shall stand with one foot on the sea and the other on 

 land and declare that time shall be no more. But science has 

 taught us something of the wonderful stability of nature, some- 

 thing of the immensity of past time and of future ages, some- 

 thing of the eternity of natural processes. Compared with this 

 infinite stability and eternity of nature what are our little sys- 

 tems and customs! Our years and centuries fall like grains of 

 sand into this abyss of time. Our individual lives are like drops 

 of water in this great ocean of life. What intellectual develop- 

 ments, what social institutions, what control of natural processes 

 may come in the long ages of futurity it has not entered into the 

 heart of man to conceive. And yet so far as we may judge by 

 the small portion of the record of the past which we can read there 

 has been no necessary progress. There has been "eternal process 

 moving on," but not eternal progress. Stagnation, degeneration, 

 elimination, as well as progression, have occurred all along the 

 path of evolution. And yet on the whole evolution has been pro- 

 gressive and there is no reason to suppose that the elimination of 



