of many of the most dreaded aspects of disease and suffering.
Only for forty years have we practiced antisepsis; only for
sixty years have we had anesthetics; yet life to-day is
well-nigh inconceivable without them. And all of this has been
accomplished without any forethought on the part of the
acknowledged rulers and leaders of mankind or any save the most
trumpery and uncertain provision for research. What will the
millions of years which stretch in front of us bring of power
to mankind? We can barely foreshadow things too vast to grasp;
things that will make the imaginings of Jules Verne and H. G.
Wells seem puny by comparison. The future, with the uncanny
control which it will bring over things that seem to us almost
sacred--over life and death and development and thought
itself--might well seem to us a terrifying prospect were it not
for one great saving clause. Through all that may happen to
man, of this we may be sure, that he will remain human; and
because of that we can face the future unafraid and confident
that because it will be greater, it will also be better than
the present.

What can we do to accelerate the coming of this future? Not
very much, it is true, but we can surely do something. We can
not create geniuses, often we can not discern them, but having
discerned, surely we can use them to the best advantage. It is
true that all scientific research has depended and will depend
upon individuals; Simon Newcomb expresses the matter thus:

'It is impressive to think how few men we should have to remove
from the earth during the past three centuries to have stopped
the advance of our civilization. In the seventeenth century