ase in
natural knowledge. In our social and national organization we remain
fixed in the old paths of ignorance. Lankester says: "I speak for
those who would urge the conscious and deliberate assumption of his
kingdom by Man--not as a matter of markets and of increased
opportunity for the cosmopolitan dealers in finance--but as an
absolute duty, the fulfillment of Man's destiny." The purpose of his
essay is "to point out that civilized man has proceeded so far in his
interference with extra-human Nature, has produced for himself and for
the living organisms associated with him such a special state of
things, by his rebellion against natural selection and his defiance of
pre-human dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire firmer
control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the vengeance
certain to fall on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs." Man is
a fighting rebel who at every forward step lays himself open to the
liabilities of greater penalties should his attack prove unsuccessful.
Moreover, while emancipating himself from the destructive and
progressive methods of Nature, man has accumulated a new series of
dangers and difficulties with which he must incessantly contend and
which he must finally control. Man has taken a tremendous
step--created desperate conditions by the exercise of his
will--further control is essential in order that he should escape from
final misery and destruction.

Nor is this idle, academic invective. The biologist knows that this is
true. It is not idle, for man has the means at his command--it is
merely a question of their employment. This, then, is the second
biological warning to sociology and to statecraft.

Now we may return to consider briefly the nature of those social data
which we suggested force us to think seriously of the problem of man's
future.

As a primary datum we may note the increasing population of the
countries of Europe and North America (Fig. 1). The countries whose
population is increasing most rapidly are the United States, Russia,
and the German Empire. We know that one important factor of the
increase in this country is that of immigration, but this is not
sufficient to account for the total. There is continued multiplication
of the native population, and of the immigrant after he is here. We
wish only to point out in connection with this diagram the steady
trend of the population upward, and the fact that obviously somewhere
there must be