x THE NEXT GENERATION 



spins out the thread as the years go by ; and Atropos, the 

 third sister Fate, stands by with huge shears. She is the 

 oldest, the most haggard, the most cruel of them all, and she 

 threatens the thread from the moment the spinning begins 

 until she decides to cut it. 



Sometimes she clips her shears together and cuts when 

 the thread has lengthened no more than a hand's breadth. 

 This means that the baby dies very young. Sometimes the 

 thread grows longer and longer, until yards of it have been 

 spun off by Lachesis. This means that, although Atropos 

 continued to threaten with her shears, she did not actually 

 bring them together until years had passed and the baby had 

 grown to be a man. 



The teaching of the picture of the myth is that human 

 beings of every age, in every generation, are but the play- 

 things of the Fates — that life is longer or shorter as the 

 Fates decide, and that no act of man can change either his 

 own destiny or that of his descendants. 



Here, then, is the difference between ancient myth and 

 modern science. Nowadays science declares that man is by 

 no means altogether helpless concerning his own future — that 

 only the fool believes he cannot help himself. And, laden 

 with facts to prove each point, science goes on to show how 

 man may shorten his life or lengthen it, how he may bless 

 his life or curse it, how he may make his life or mar it, by 

 what he knows and by the way he puts his knowledge to use. 



Science does not stop even here, but, with proofs in hand, 

 shows that the destiny of future generations lies in the hands 

 of the men and the women, the boys and the girls, who are 

 alive to-day. 



This book deals with the same absorbing topic. It tries to 

 show how it is that science has crippled those ancient Fates, 



