cline and fall of great
civilizations of the past emphatically indicate. Even the bitterest
opponent of our ideals would refuse to subscribe to a philosophy of mere
quantity, of wealth and population lacking in spiritual direction or
significance. All of us hope for and look forward to the fine flowering
of human genius--of genius not expending and dissipating its energy
in the bitter struggle for mere existence, but developing to a fine
maturity, sustained and nourished by the soil of active appreciation,
criticism, and recognition.

Not by denying the central and basic biological facts of our nature, not
by subscribing to the glittering but false values of any philosophy or
program of escape, not by wild Utopian dreams of the brotherhood of men,
not by any sanctimonious debauch of sentimentality or religiosity, may
we accomplish the first feeble step toward liberation. On the contrary,
only by firmly planting our feet on the solid ground of scientific fact
may we even stand erect--may we even rise from the servile stooping
posture of the slave, borne down by the weight of age-old oppression.

In looking forward to this radiant release of the inner energies of
a regenerated humanity, I am not thinking merely of inventions and
discoveries and the application of these to the perfecting of the
external and mechanical details of social life. This external and
scientific perfecting of the mechanism of external life is a phenomenon
we are to a great extent witnessing today. But in a deeper sense this
tendency can be of no true or lasting value if it cannot be made to
subserve the biological and spiritual development of the human organism,
individual and collective. Our great problem is not merely to perfect
machinery, to produce superb ships, motor cars or great buildings, but
to remodel the race so that it may equal the amazing progress we see
now making in the externals of life. We must first free our bodies from
disease and predisposition to disease. We must perfect these bodies and
make them fine instruments of the mind and the spirit. Only thus, when
the body becomes an aid instead of a hindrance to human expression may
we attain any civilization worthy of the name. Only thus may we create
our bodies a fitting temple for the soul, which is nothing but a vague
unreality except insofar as it is able to manifest itself in the beauty
of the concrete.

Once we have accomplished the first tentative steps toward the creation