Deckhbeb 31, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



949 



ensure actual realization. There arise at 

 once questions of biological adaptation, of 

 vital tenacity and of purposeful action. 

 Appeal to the record of the animal races 

 reveals in some cases a marvelous endu- 

 rance, in others the briefest of records, 

 while the majority fall between the ex- 

 tremes. Many families persisted for mil- 

 lions of yeai's. A long career for man 

 may not therefore be denied on historical 

 grounds, neither can it be a.ssured ; it is an 

 individual race problem ; it Ls a special case 

 of the problem of the races in the largest 

 sense of the phrase. 



But into the problem of human endu- 

 rance two new factors have entered, the 

 power of definite moral purpose and the 

 resources of research. No previous race 

 has shown clear evidence that it was guided 

 by moral purpose in seeking distant ends. 

 In man such moral purpose has risen to 

 distinctness. As it grows, bej'ond question 

 it will count in the perpetuity of the race. 

 No doubt it will come to weigh more and 

 more as the resources of destructive pleas- 

 ure, on the one hand, and of altruistic recti- 

 tude on the other are increa.sed by human 

 ingenuity. It will become more critical as 

 the growing multiplicity of the race brings 

 upon it, in increasing stress, the distinctive 

 humanistic phases of the struggle for exist- 

 ence now dimly foreshadowed. It will, 

 beyond question, be more fully realized as 

 the .survival of the fittest shall render its 

 verdict on what is good and what is evil in 

 this realm of the moral world. 



But to be mo.st efiieient, moral purpose 

 needs to be eon.ioined with the highest in- 

 telligence, and herein lies the function of 

 research. None of the earlier races made 

 sj'stematic inquiry into the conditions of 

 life and sought thereby to extend their 

 careers. What can research do for the 

 extension of the career of man? "We are 

 witnesses of what it is beginning to do in 



rendering the forces of nature subservient 

 to man's control and in giving him com- 

 mand over the maladies of which he has 

 long been the victim. Can it master the 

 secrets of vital endurance, the my.steries of 

 heredity and all the fundamental physi- 

 ological processes that condition the lon- 

 gevity of the race? The answer must be 

 left to the future, but I take no risk in 

 affirming that when ethics and research 

 .join hands in a broad and earnest endeavor 

 to compass the highest development and 

 the greatest longevity of the race the era 

 of humanity will really have begun. 



T. C. Chambeblin 



THE THEHIH OF MODERN LOdlfiTW' 

 I HAVE chosen to report upon this .sub- 

 .ject because it is one in which I have found 

 no little interest in recent years; because 

 the thesis in qviestion represents one among 

 the greatest of all the triumphs of critical 

 thought ; because it possesses such high and 

 permanent importance as belongs to in- 

 tellectual activity above the levels of 

 workaday life ; because it is .suflfieiently 

 new, timely and general in its appeal; and 

 finally because, whilst it has come to be 

 everywhere a topic of much philosophic 

 and .scientific allusion, but relatively few, 

 it seems, have been at the pains to ascertain 

 what the thesis precisely i.s. 



To tell what it is, to render it intelligible 

 not merely to astronomers and mathema- 

 ticians but also to that larger class of edu- 

 cated folk who, as their primary interests 

 lie el.sewhere, are not accustomed to think- 

 ing much about the fundamental subtleties 

 of logic and mathematics— </ia( is one of 

 the two aims of this address ; the other one 

 being to present, in so far as time will 



' Address of the vice-president and clmirman of 

 Section .V — Mathematics and Astronomy — -Amer- 

 ican Association for tlie Advancement of Science, 

 Boston, 1909. 



