HUMANITY IN GEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 553 



the individual into mortal conflict with an invincible opponent. One or 

 the other of these disasters is in store for every living thing, be it a cell, 

 a body, a race or a species. To be alive is to be changing, and there is a 

 limit to the range of possible harmonies. 



Recognition of the orderliness of animate nature, and of the inevitable 

 sequence, of change, decay and replacement, does not engender optimism 

 when we think of ourselves, our institutions, and our species. A com- 

 plicated mammalian mechanism with an over-developed nervous system 

 seems like a diagnosis of a very short-lived race. 



If we despairingly claim that our wits have enabled us to reduce the 

 risks of environment, the records of our history are open to show that the 

 internal dangers develop none the less. Diseases of disproportionate 

 development, such as cancer, attack individuals ; and civilisations crumble 

 through over-complexity and dissension. Our cleverness may make our 

 success spectacular, but it speeds on the ensuing collapse. 



By virtue of our over-developed intelligence we accelerate the processes 

 of evolution, especially in our social relations ; and whatever hope evolu- 

 tion may hold for the unborn, a tomb is all that it can offer to the living. 

 The history of the decline and fall of empires makes familiar reading for a 

 palaeontologist ; it illustrates in a condensed and diagrammatic form the 

 late phases of evolution in other creatures that are the normal subjects of 

 his study. Regrettable though it may be, the human animal seems to a 

 palaeontologist superior to a Dinosaur or an Ammonite merely in the speed 

 with which it rushes towards extinction. 



This is a tragic outlook ; but there is nothing unfamiliar about it. 

 All individuals realise, when they choose to think, that they are not 

 immortal ; every philosophy and religion lays emphasis on the transient 

 nature of ' man's earthly hopes.' It is not only the palaeontologist who 

 knows that the prize awaiting the winners in the struggle for existence 

 is death. Nor need we be morbid in our outlook ; a man who has made 

 his will can still enjoy life. ' The pla/s the thing,' not to be spoilt by 

 regrets that the actors will not hold the stage for ever. But whether or 

 not we can derive comfort from such considerations, the fact remains that 

 all available evidence, palasontological and historical, racial and personal, 

 indicates the inevitable doom of man the animal, and of all his works. 



Must we then reconcile ourselves to the belief that we are such stuff 

 as palaeontological collections are made of, and that in the geologically 

 near future a few fossil relics will be all that remains of our species ? 

 A creed so desperate would demand extinction as an escape from a 

 farcically hopeless existence. Before finally abandoning ourselves to 

 utter pessimism, we may try to review our position from another angle. 



Once, very long ago even as a geologist reckons time, a strange thing 

 happened. We do not know why or how ; but a certain combination of 

 substances acquired the quality that we call life. In many ways the first 

 organisms, doubtless unicellular and microscopic, defied the ordinary laws 

 of physical nature. Especially was this the case in their capacity for 

 sexual reproduction and its consequent succession of ever-changing 

 individuality ; in other words, in their quality of evolution. The organic 

 world, surrounded, influenced and in no small measure controlled, by the 

 inorganic, started on an adventure that led it ever further from the 



