160 THE NEXT GENERATION 



decide the fate of future generations. He has hopes, ambi- 

 tions, longings, and he loves his fellow men. When the need 

 comes, he even dies to save them. He throws his thought 

 into future years and believes in life beyond the grave. 



Besides all else he has studied the laws of modern life so 

 well — has learned so much about health and the way to 

 secure it, about happiness and the way to attain it — that 

 he is now able to lengthen human life or to shorten it, 

 to bless the human race or to curse it, by what he knows 

 and by what he does in carrying out the commands of his 

 unhindered will. 



There has been both advantage and disadvantage in this 

 turn of evolution which gave man his crown — his brain. 



The advantage is that there is hardly any limit to what 

 man may now do for himself and for his descendants, pro- 

 vided he has a normal, healthy, well-trained brain, and 

 provided it decides to serve him according to its own best 

 judgment. 



The disadvantage is that even when his brain is not 

 normal and healthy, even when it has been badly trained 

 and is ignorant, even when its desires are for such things 

 as will harm itself hopelessly, it can still make choices ; it 

 can still choose a road to its own destruction and force the 

 consequences on the children of the next generation. 



We therefore meet this strange fact of evolution, that 

 through his highest gift, the brain, man is now able to do 

 himself and his descendants more harm than can be done to 

 themselves by any other creatures, however large or small 

 their brains may be 



In point of fact, from the beginnings of brain power until 

 now, man has made decisions both wise and unwise ; he has 

 been guided by choices both good and bad. 



