CONTROL OF HEREDITY: EUGENICS 411 



shall stand with one foot on the sea and the 

 other on land and declare that time shall be 

 no more. But science has taught us something 

 of the wonderful stability of nature, something 

 of the immensity of past time and of future 

 ages, something of the eternity of natural pro- 

 cesses. Compared with this infinite stability 

 and eternity of nature what are our little sys- 

 tems and customs! Our years and centuries 

 fall like grains of sand into this abyss of time. 

 Our individual lives are like drops of water in 

 this great ocean of life. What intellectual de- 

 velopments, what social institutions, what con- 

 trol of natural processes may come in the long 

 ages of futurity it has not entered into the 

 heart of man to conceive. And yet so far as 

 we may judge by the small portion of the 

 record of the past which we can read there 

 has been no necessary progress. There has 

 been "eternal process moving on," but not 

 eternal progress. Stagnation, degeneration, 

 elimination, as well as progression, have 

 occurred all along the path of evolution. 

 And vet on the whole evolution has been 



