PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS, 29 
mankind.’ It is notthe eugenists who will give us what Plato has called 
divine releases from the common ways. If some fancier with the 
eatholicity of Shakespeare would take us in hand, well and good; but 
I would not trust even Shakespeares meeting as a committee. Let us 
remember that Beethoven’s father was an habitual drunkard and that 
his mother died of consumption. From the genealogy of the patriarchs 
also we learn—what may very well be the truth—that the fathers of 
such as dwell in tents, and of all such as handle the harp or organ, 
and the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron—the founders, 
that is to say, of the arts and the sciences—came in direct descent 
from Cain, and not in the posterity of the irreproachable Seth, who 
is to us, as he probably was also in the narrow circle of his own 
contemporaries, what naturalists call a nomen nudum. 
Genetic research will make it possible for a nation to elect by what 
sort of beings it will be represented not very many generations hence, 
much as a farmer can decide whether his byres shall be full of short- 
horns or Herefords. It will be very surprising indeed if some nation 
does not make trial of this new power. They may make awful mis- 
takes, but I think they will try. 
Whether we like it or not, extraordinary and far-reaching changes in 
public opinion are coming to pass. Man is just beginning to know 
himself for what he is—a rather long-lived animal, with great powers 
of enjoyment if he does not deliberately forgo them. Hitherto 
superstition and mythical ideas of sin have predominantly controlled 
these powers. Mysticism will not die out: for those strange fancies 
knowledge is no cure; but their forms may change, and mysticism as 
a force for the suppression of joy is happily losing its hold on the 
modern world. As in the decay of earlier religions Ushabti dolls 
were substituted for human victims, so telepathy, necromancy, and 
other harmless toys take the place of eschatology and the inculcation 
of a ferocious moral code. Among the civilised races of Kurope we 
are witnessing an emancipation from traditional control in thought, in 
art, and in conduct which is likely to have prolonged and wonderful 
influences. Returning to freer or, if you will, simpler conceptions of 
life and death, the coming generations are determined to get more out 
of this world than their forefathers did. Is it then to be supposed 
that when science puts into their hand means for the alleviation of 
suffering immeasurable, and for making this world a happier place, 
that they will demur to using those powers? The intenser struggle 
between communities is only now beginning, and with the approach- 
ing exhaustion of that capital of energy stored in the earth before man 
began it must soon become still more fierce. In England some of our 
great-grandchildren will see the end of the easily accessible coal, and, 
failing some miraculous discovery of available energy, a wholesale 
