Page:The Kingdom of Man - Ralph Vary Chamberlin 1938.djvu/36

30 is that adequate thought in this matter will come only under the compulsion of events. Until they have to, most people avoid thinking, especially on unpleasant and long-range topics.

When it becomes evident to people that a stabilized population is inevitable, they will perforce think of progress no longer in terms of bigness or quantity but in terms of quality. When they do, a new era in the development of the Kingdom of Man will have dawned. They will have learned that no construction of society, however precise, will automatically bring the millenium. It is not the machinery of life, but life itself with its capacities and purposes that is primary, and the "millenium, like the kingdom of heaven, is within us." The machinery must be commanded by ability and purpose to become a means to new realms and new life. It is faith, not evidence, which encourages some educators, social workers and economists to hope so greatly in the ameliorating effects of the conditions of life, while ignoring the basic fact that equality of ability is a biological impossiblty. [sic]

There can be no ultimate solution of any important social or governmental problem, national or international, in which applied eugenics does not have an important role. No doubt for a considerable time men will continue to try legislation or other measures of betterment before they recognize this fact. But unless we soon rigorously apply to ourselves and our various social activities and institutions the scientific method, every further step forward in science will bring additional hazards. If and when such application is made thoroughly and whole-heartedly, the dangers and pitfalls in man's forward path will disappear by being clearly seen and understood. Then the people, recognizing that the new power is harmful only in so far as man is foolish but beneficent in so far as he is wise, will become "fervent disciples of a new social faith upon which a lever made in the workshops of natural knowledge may be placed to move the world."

Everything thus points to education as the necessary first step in any program of betterment. Present-day education is inadequate, though vastly better, in both trend and substance, than any that could result from following the incredible proposal of President Hutchins that we return to the subjects of the good old classical learning. On the contrary, what we must have to enable us to live well in this age of science is, along with other things, a more widespread and more thorough-going instruction in grade A scientific subjects, and in the ethics of science.

We cannot any longer educate children in any final or detailed way for the world as it is, for by the time they grow up the world will have changed. Nor can we educate them for the world as it