THE ATLANTIC AND WESTERN MAN 305 



And now the west as well as the eastern borders of the Ocean 

 River face an immediate problem — particularly in the Carib- 

 bean — of overpopulation in relation to economic opportunity. 

 These are the static or negative factors. But the great advance 

 in scientific knowledge and the new techniques of science 

 foreshadow a new frontier of economic opportunity in the 

 lands bordering and even in the depths of the Ocean River 

 itself — with one all-important proviso: that science is put 

 to disciplined use, not only in expanding fresh resources of 

 food and raw material, but in governing and controlling a 

 beneficial and selective growth of populations. Two dreams 

 are gone: one, that Americans have escaped from the com- 

 petitions and problems of Europe; and two, that Europeans 

 by a westward leap can find a new world of promise ready 

 to hand. On both sides of the Ocean River the natural way 

 out of this dilemma is to study the available resources of the 

 Atlantic common to all the inhabitants of its borders. This 

 demands a partnership of science and government beyond 

 the narrow concept of temporary, nationalistic advantage. 

 We can hark back to Robinson's advice to the Pilgrim fathers: 

 '*We are not over one another but with one another." 



This is not a matter of political slogans, but a common prac- 

 tical problem that involves the uses of our new weapons of 

 science in social, industrial, and political fields alike. The dino- 

 saurs and other huge animals of a once lush environment had 

 to meet a changing world, but failed because they had become 

 fixed and unadjustable in their development of size alone. All 

 animals of land or sea fail when they cannot meet new situ- 

 ations with fresh patterns of behavior; the animals that sur- 

 vived the long sea change of prehistory were those that could 

 adapt themselves to new circumstance. An eminent scientist, 

 Joseph Needham, puts it this way: 'The law of evolution is 

 a kind of converse of the second law of thermodynamics, 

 equally irreversible but contrary in tendency. We are reminded 



