September 9, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



211 



or that definite integration is a species of 

 addition or that a symphony is just a species 

 of sound. 



Such, then, is the new conception of man — 

 the conception of a being whose character 

 and appropriate dignity consist in his pe- 

 culiar capacity or power for binding time. 

 The nobility of the conception is obvious, un- 

 mistakable. It has two other marks that be- 

 long to all really great ideas — it is intelligible 

 to all and is universal in its interest and ap- 

 peal. Your sense of its significance, if your 

 experience repeats my own, will grow as you 

 meditate upon it, for its significance, I do 

 not doubt, is mighty. The author, I believe, 

 is right in his belief that it marks the begin- 

 ning and will guide the development of 

 humanity's manhood. I wish it were pos- 

 sible to examine here some of its bearings on 

 the cardinal interests of mankind ; but " the 

 hour contracts " and I can do no more than 

 barely allude to a few salient considerations. 



One of them is that, though we human 

 beings are indeed not a species of animal, we 

 are natural beings: it is as natural for us to 

 bind time as it is natural for fishes to swim 

 or birds to fly. 



That fact is fundamental. Another one, 

 also fundamental, is this: time-binding power 

 — the characteristic of humanity — is not an 

 effect of civilization but is its cause; it is 

 not civilized energy, it is the energy that 

 civilizes; it is not produced by wealth, whether 

 material or spiritual, but is the source and 

 creator of both. 



I come now to the gravest of considerations. 

 Inasmuch as time-binding is the character- 

 istic of humanity, to study and understand 

 man is to study and understand the nature 

 of his time-binding energies; the laws of 

 human nature are the natural laws of these 

 energies; to discover these laws is a task of 

 supreme importance for it is evident that upon 

 the natural laws of time-binding must be 

 based the future science and art of human 

 life and human welfare. 



One of the laws we already know — not in- 

 deed precisely — ^but fairly well — we know its 

 general type — and it merits our best atten- 



tion. It is the natural law of progress in 

 time-binding, or civilization-building. Let us 

 glance at it. Each generation of (say) 

 beavers begins where the preceding generation 

 began; that is a law for animals— there is 

 no advancement, no time-binding— a beaver 

 dam is a beaver dam. Contrast this with 

 human life. Man invents and discovers and 

 creates. An invention or discovery or cre- 

 ation once achieved, what happens? Each 

 invention leads to new inventions, each dis- 

 covery to new discoveries, each creation to new 

 creations; invention breeds invention, science 

 begets science, the children of knowledge and 

 art and wisdom produce their kind in larger 

 and larger families; each generation begins, 

 not where its predecessor began, but where 

 it ended; things done become instruments 

 for the doing of better things; the Past sur- 

 vives in the living achievements of the dead; 

 the body of these achievements — invention, 

 science, art, wisdom — is the living capital of 

 the ever passing Present, inherited to be held 

 in trust for enlargement and for transmission 

 to Future man; the process is that of time- 

 binding: Past and Future are thus united 

 in one eternal Now owning a law of per- 

 petual growth and continual progress. What 

 is the Law thereof — the natural law? Tou 

 see at once what it is: it is that of a rapidly 

 increasing geometric progression — if P be the 

 progress made in a given generation, called 

 the ficrst, and if R be the ratio, then the pro- 

 gress made in the second generation is PR, 

 that in the third PR-, and that made in the 

 single rth generation will be PR'^-^. Observe 

 that R is & large number and that the time T 

 enters as an exponent — and so the expression 

 PR^-^ is called an exponential function of 

 Time. This is an amazing function ; as T in- 

 creases, the function not only increases but 

 does so at a rate which itself increases accord- 

 ing to a similar law, and the rate of increase 

 of the rate of increase again increases in like 

 maimer, and so on endlessly, thus sweeping 

 on towards infinity in a way that is truly 

 marvelous. Yet that is the law — the natural 

 law — for the advancement of civilization — 



