The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

THE PRESENT PHASE OF HUMAN ASSOCIATION

wo, the development of a persona and of the self-knowledge and the practical psychological commonsense necessary for happy personal conduct and the filling of a distinctive réle in life ; three, the establishment of a picture of the universe in accordance with reality, the realization of the great adventure of humanity and of a personal role in that drama ; and, four, the special technical training and experience needed for the due enactment of the individual réle. Or inverting the order, education should aim to make of each individual a good versatile artisan—versatile, for conditions change—a good citizen consciously playing a part in a general scheme, and a well-disposed, considerate, amiable person in full possession of all his or her powers. And throughout life there should be a persistence in educational adaptation. The dismal old-fashioned idea that one learns all that one has to learn before adolescence and then works out the consequences, as many animals do, is fading out of human thought. Adult education and self-education become duties in the modern state, and sloth, as we pointed out in our chapter on Conduct, a deadlier sin than ever. The modern world has less and less use for men and women who have ceased to learn.

It is not within the scope of this book to deal with educational method and still less with educational organization. The work of the behaviourists is manifestly bound to have a profound influence on early training and we have shown by example how the problems of conduct change as the light of psycho-analysis is brought to bear upon them. General education has become a function of the modern state. The whole of education does not go on in schools even

during the school years, but the purpose of”

state education is plainly to equip all its citizens, or all the citizens that matter, with the means of understanding and participating in a collective aim. It is natural for the state to seek to justify and establish itself in the minds of its future subjects. In a world of militant independent sovereign governments, it follows that the inculcation of patriotism and a military spirit will be a constant preoccupation with the directors of the people’s schools. But as we have pointed out in the previous section, the division and wastage of human effort by a multiplicity of independent potentially belligerent governments may be a transitory phase in human affairs which is now approaching its end. The struggle to bring it to an end will be necessarily an educational

struggle. For the next few centuries that struggle will determine the main forms of intellectual life. There will be much instinct, much vigour and passion on the nationalist side, but in every country the nationalist side will be telling a different story, while all over the world men imbued with the scientific spirit and a realization of historical values will be working for identical ends. Social, economic, political and intellectual progress will be different aspects of the same process.

$5 The Breeding of Mankind

We have already called attention in this work to the fact that Homo sapiens, or at any rate, his civilized variety, is peculiar among other animals in the lesser pressure of natural selection upon him ; he is not being killed off to the same extent as most creatures. He has so fenced himself about with security, so increased his food supply and defeated his enemies, that for a time at least he is relieved from those searching destructive tests which in the case of most species under normal conditions maintain a _ certain numerical stability. The human population of the world is increasing very impressively. In Book 6 (Chap. 5, § 7) we wrote of the “breeding storms” that will occasionally upset the balance of this or that biological community, when conditions are favourable, and produce a vast excess of some particular creature. Mankind seems to be going through such a breeding storm now, the favourable conditions being provided by his new-found control over nature.

According to Professor Carr-Saunders in his excellent little book on Population, there now exist one thousand seven hundred million human beings. A century ago there was not half this number. The present rate of increase, he estimates, is about one per cent. per annum. Such a rate would in five hundred years’ time give a world population of two hundred and fifty thousand million. ‘This means that all over the globe there would be five hundred times as many people as you now find in such congested regions as England or Belgium. And a not very remote prolongation of our arithmetic would bring us to a time when all the land and shallow water of the world would scarcely afford standing room for mankind, much less space for food-growing. Manifestly something will happen long before that state of affairs arrives.

One thing indeed is happening now, a

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