JULIAN HUXLEY 
goods has led to neglect of quality in life. In general, man’s 
exploration and control of external nature has far outrun his 
exploration and control of his own nature. 
However, there is one field in which real and decisive advance 
is being made—the field of knowledge and understanding. 
Here, for the first time, man is being given a reasonably com- 
prehensive and reasonably correct vision of himself, of his own 
nature, and of his place in nature—in other words, his destiny: 
a broad picture of the unitary evolutionary process and of 
what his réle in it might be. 
There have been many situations in biological evolution 
where a successful type of organization has apparently realized 
all the main possibilities open to it. Further advance can then 
only be achieved through the rise of a new type with a new 
pattern of organization and new possibilities of development. 
Today, the passage to a new phase is being made possible by 
this new picture of human destiny. In place of the conflicting 
aims of the present, our new vision is already indicating the 
single and over-riding aim of fulfilment—greater fulfilment for 
more individuals and fuller achievement by more societies, 
through greater realization of human possibilities and fuller 
enjoyment of human capacities. 
This new vision inevitably results from our new knowledge, 
though only with the aid of intellectual and imaginative effort. 
It could and should provide the basis for an operational system 
of ideas and beliefs to support and guide us in the next phase of 
our psychosocial evolution. Thus we must make every effort to 
clarify this new vision of destiny, to follow out its implications, 
and set it to work. An obvious first task is to examine the out- 
standing problem situations of the present, in the light of this 
dawning idea-system. 
There is first the increasing psychosocial pressure caused by 
the convergence of the psychosocial process upon itself. This, 
as Teilhard de Chardin pointed out in The Phenomenon of Man', 
is due to the apparently banal fact that man’s habitat is the 
surface of a globe. During his brief history, he has multiplied 
his numbers and improved his communications, until his 
6 
