Part 1

QUO VADIMUS?

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES

_DÆDALUS, or Science and the Future_ By J. B. S. Haldane

_ICARUS, or The Future of Science_ By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.

_THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST_ By F. G. Crookshank, M.D. _Fully Illustrated_

_WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES_ By Prof. A. M. Low. _With four Diagrams_

_NARCISSUS, or An Anatomy of Clothes_ By Gerald Heard. _Illustrated_

_TANTALUS, or The Future of Man_ By Dr. F. C. S. Schiller

_THE PASSING OF THE PHANTOMS_ By Prof. C. J. Patten, M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.R.A.I.

_CALLINICUS, A Defence of Chemical Warfare_ By J. B. S. Haldane

_QUO VADIMUS? Some Glimpses of the Future_ By E. E. Fournier d’Albe, D.Sc., F.Inst.P.

_THE CONQUEST OF CANCER_ By H. W. S. Wright, M.S., F.R.C.S.

_HYPATIA, or Woman and Knowledge_ By Dora Russell (Hon. Mrs. Bertrand Russell)

_LYSISTRATA, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman_ By A. M. Ludovici

_WHAT I BELIEVE_ By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.

_In Preparation_

_PERSEUS, of Dragons_ By H. F. Scott Stokes, M.A.

_THE FUTURE OF SEX_ By Rebecca West

_THE EVOCATION OF GENIUS_ By Alan Porter

_AESCULAPIUS, or Disease and The Man_ By F. G. Crookshank, M.D.

_Other Volumes in Preparation_

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

QUO VADIMUS?

SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE

BY E. E. FOURNIER d’ALBE D.Sc., F.Inst.P.

_Author of The Life of Sir William Crookes, The Electron Theory, The Moon-Element, etc._

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright 1925 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

_All Rights Reserved_

_Printed in the United States of America_

QUO VADIMUS?

Sitting at my desk by a cosy and up-to-date gas fire on a foggy day, with tufts of mist steadily rolling up from the swollen waters of the wise old Thames, I try to realize that I am travelling through space at a rate of over a thousand miles a minute, on board a minor planet in forced revolution round a vast white-hot globe nearly a hundred million miles away.

Somebody has called astronomy the Futile Science, and I am not at all sure that the epithet is wholly undeserved. What do the stars matter to us? There was a time when they were believed to have an influence on human affairs, particularly those of kings and emperors. To-day they are insignificant specks at an immense distance from us, a distance so great that if they all were utterly annihilated neither we nor our remotest descendants should experience the smallest material effect.

The only assignable value of the stars to us, beyond the general enlargement of our mental horizon, is that they serve as an accurate measure of time. But even that use is now almost superfluous, since other absolute standards of time have become available, such as the rates of disintegration of the radio-active elements.

How, then, can I account for the fact that there is a perpetual fascination about “the heavens,” that books are constantly being written about them, societies founded to study them, and vast observatories built to watch them?

It cannot be simply the thirst for knowledge. Knowledge in the abstract has but few devotees. For every one person who wants the Truth at all costs there are a thousand who want an Illusion at all costs, even at the cost of mental balance. Let a man go about proclaiming truths ascertained by research and experiment, and he will be considered a bore by all except a few specialists. But let him boldly assert an absurdity or a paradox, and he will obtain millions of adherents, all animated by the Will to Believe. And the more absurd his assertions, the more self-assured and fanatical will be his followers.

No, the popular interest in astronomy is not due to a thirst for accurate information. It is due to a vestige of the old astrological belief in the significance of the constellations. We still try to “read our fate in the stars.” They are of interest to us for what they can tell us of the future, proximate or remote. We search the heavens for an answer to the question “Whither?”――_Quo vadimus?_

In trying to predict the fate of the human race we must begin by gauging the chances of permanence possessed by our habitable globe. Its probable age has been put at a hundred million years. Predictions as to when it will cease to be habitable vary enormously, but the latest figures go into many millions of years, and the discovery of radio-activity has had the effect of greatly postponing the general freezing up of our planet.

Our earthly habitation, then, seems assured for many millions of years. But millions of years are, after all, but relative, and they vanish before the vast age of the stellar universe[1] and the enormous vistas of time yet to come.

[1] Dr. Jeans, on very modern data, puts this age at seven million million years.

How far can our gaze penetrate the fog which obscures our future? Can we build for eternity? Must we prepare for a catastrophe or an inevitable decay? Can we assure to our descendants an indefinitely prolonged future of perpetual progress and ever-increasing happiness?

The answer to these questions is ultimately based upon psychological factors. Human life requires certain physical conditions for its maintenance. It also requires the passive assistance of many forms of animal life and plant life. But Man is, without exception, the most adaptable inhabitant of this globe, and there is little fear of any physical or biological factors bringing about his extinction, provided they change sufficiently gradually. If life is adaptation to surroundings, then Man has more chance of surviving changing conditions than any other form of terrestrial life. What other species can thrive equally in the Arctic and under the Equator? The dog is man’s only rival in that respect, and is but second best.

We need, therefore, not be anxious lest a change in general physical environment bring our race to an end. The end of the human race, if ever it comes, will be due to the human race itself. If the race dies, it will die by suicide. And suicide is a matter of psychology.

Let us examine the possibility of a voluntary euthanasia of the human race. It seems the only sort of suicide that is at all conceivable. Can we imagine a state of things arising in which the leaders will say: “We have lived long enough. Our race has had a glorious history, let it have a glorious end. We cannot and will not bow to the new conditions imposed by Nature. We would rather die and end it all. Let us all perish together.”

Such an attitude would indeed be a new phenomenon. People have died rather than surrender, but it was with the thought of the approval of their fellows and the perpetual honour of their names. In the case contemplated there would be no such inducement to heroism. The surrender would be unchronicled and unsung.

A refusal to adapt itself to new conditions is not unknown among savage races, nor among classes of civilized society. Tribes have perished off the face of the earth, owing to a voluntary refusal or to inability to adapt themselves to new conditions of life. But, so far as we know, this has always taken place in the presence of races of superior adaptability.

Civilizations have perished. We do not know, of course, how many civilizations have disappeared without leaving a trace. But we do know that races have existed, even in our own islands, who were capable of transporting and building up great pieces of rock, and of arranging them in an astronomically significant manner. Did these races perish under the attacks of an enemy? Or did they die off owing to the exhaustion of their own vitality? We may suppose that it was the former rather than the latter alternative. For in view of the great and increasing power of the human race we hardly need fear any enemies from without. Our destruction, if ever it comes, will come from within. It will come if and when we develop a Will to Die.

Such a Will to Die has been observed on a small scale in the wave of suicide sweeping over Central Europe after the Great War. But it was only a symptom of readjustment. It was partial, and practically confined to the class bound up with social and governmental stability, and incapable of adaptation to radically changed conditions.

A more ominous phenomenon is the fall in the birth-rate of most of the insular tribes of the Pacific, which in some cases has led to their total extinction. The causes of this fall have never been fully cleared up. If it is due to the introduction of diseases by Indo-European germ carriers, or the adoption of modern clothing, or the destruction of native standards of morality by the introduction of Asiatic religions, there is no cause for alarm concerning the future of the human race as a whole. But if the mere discouragement of the tribe when faced with new conditions can act directly upon the instinct of procreation, and affect, so to speak, the _élan vital_ of the germ-plasm, then we are faced with the gravest danger to which the human race can be exposed.

For such an effect would be too insidious to be dealt with by public measures. It would be a psychological disease of the most fatal and virulent kind. It might affect the whole human race during some crisis in its fortunes, and might bring about its destruction by the failure of the sex instinct.

Although such a failure must always be a menacing possibility, it is a remote one, and at no time has it threatened the human race as a whole. Hunger and Love have kept our race going up to now, and, barring unforeseen developments, they will do so _in sœcula sœculorum_.

But there are other dangers. A new germ might be evolved which, like the gonococcus, might attack the germ plasm, and produce general sterility. This is one of the dangers that _can_ be fought by hygienic and sanitary measures, and the wiles and intricacies of bacteriological novelties may be safely left to the ever-increasing resources of bacteriology itself.

Again, there is the danger of new “rays.” It is now a well-known fact that X-rays produce sterility when penetrating the human body in considerable strength or for any length of time. The effect can be guarded against by an armour of lead screens. X-rays are cut off by a thin sheet of lead. There are other rays, known as gamma-rays, which can penetrate several inches of lead. And higher up in the atmosphere, about seven miles up, another kind of radiation is found from which even a plate of lead five feet thick would be no protection. If the sun, entering an unknown part of space filled with denser matter, were to develop a form of radiation leading to a considerable increase in the penetrating atmospheric rays, the persistent action of these rays upon the human germ plasm might bring about the total destruction of the human race by reducing its birth-rate to zero. The effect might not even be discovered until it was too late to remedy it. And even if it were discovered in time, the action of the rays upon all life on the earth’s surface might have produced havoc enough to stop all food-supplies and produce universal starvation.

It is difficult to see how even the greatest resources of science could meet such an emergency as that. But, short of such a new danger, there is little doubt that the resources of humanity will be able to meet all conceivable situations which may threaten it with destruction.

In order to ensure the indefinite continuance of the human race on earth, it is necessary

(1) to maintain adequate food supplies and (2) to conserve the procreative impulse.

The latter condition might, indeed, be put first on the list.

These are the conditions of bare existence. Progress and happiness are, as they always have been, secondary considerations. Many minds have regarded one or both of them as unessential. Thus, it is not at all necessary to contemplate an _increasing_ population of the globe. The leadership of the human race can much more effectively be maintained by educating individuals than by increasing their numbers. And as regards happiness, that can safely be left to take care of itself. All progress is progress towards greater happiness. Even mere existence can be a source of supreme happiness, as when a great danger has been successfully averted.

* * * * *

Once we are sure that the human race has a reasonable chance of indefinite survival, we can proceed to contemplate the changes, if any, which are likely to take place as the centuries and millennia roll on.

Anthropologists put the age of the human race roughly at half a million years. In that comparatively long period――long as compared with history, but short as reckoned by geology――man has evolved from an ape-like, tree-dwelling nut-eater into a plodding, illiterate, monosyllabic tiller of the soil, (I take the majority of mankind as representative of its state of progress rather than the _élite_). The 500 millennia of human evolution have had but little effect on the human form and the average human character. The brain is somewhat larger generally and the mouth rather less protruding. The mental equipment of the representative man――the man representing the majority――is in many ways inferior to that of the dog or the ant. He is full of greeds and lusts and superstitions which place him on a level with the higher animal life, or even below it.

It is in his possibilities rather than in his actual state of development that man is a superior being. Those possibilities have to some extent been realized in the educated few. When we speak of civilization, of modern life and scientific advance, we fix our attention exclusively on the educated _élite_. In asserting, for instance, that nowadays nobody doubts that the earth is round, we are referring to a very small minority of the human race, composed of perhaps half the adults of Europe and America and Australia, with a small sprinkling of Africans and Asiatics, in all perhaps 10 per cent. of the total population. If a vote were taken of every man, woman, and child in the world to decide whether the earth is flat or round, there would be a majority of perhaps 9 to 1 in favour of a flat earth.

Again, “everybody” is supposed to know that a whale is not a fish, that it does not spawn or lay eggs, but that it suckles its young like any other mammalian. What proportion of the human race actually _does_ know that simple fact? How many human beings even know that the sun is larger than the moon? A great many, no doubt, but how many out of the whole race?

Scientific knowledge is the birthright of every human child. But on that very account, perhaps, it is neither prized nor cherished. In the markets where thoughts are bought and sold, an ounce of illusion is worth a ton of fact.

The enormous disproportion between the amount of knowledge accumulated by the human intelligentsia and the general level of knowledge is productive of many evils and anomalies. It necessarily breeds an attitude of contemptuous superiority towards the uninformed masses, and supplies a temptation to profit by that superiority in order to dominate and oppress the majority. Many wars, strikes, revolutions, and other social crises are the outcome of this anomalous condition. On the other hand, the very existence of empires requires the presence of a great substratum of the half-educated or uncultivated to follow the lead and obey the behests of the Imperial few.

The British Empire derives its strength from the numerical strength of its _élite_. The Russian Empire and its direct heir, the present Oligarchy, have had a small _élite_ raised above an enormous mass of what is probably the least-educated population in the world, outside Africa. The French African Empire disguises the hegemony of Paris under the liberal concession of a nominal French citizenship to its subject tribes. The French _élite_ is broader than the British, as wealth in France is more evenly distributed. In Germany, on the other hand, and in certain smaller countries, like Denmark and Finland, it is education rather than wealth which is more or less impartially distributed. This also tends to broaden the _élite_ and make the nation (as distinguished from the empire) more intrinsically powerful.

We thus get an _élite_ among nations as well as individuals. This _élite_ is, however, based upon force rather than intellectual leadership, owing to the fact that a nation regarded as an organism is in a much more primitive stage of evolution than is a civilized individual. Nations have no morality, no curbs upon their greed, their hatred, their jealousy and vindictiveness.

The rivalry among nations makes for progress, but its most active manifestations may produce a serious set-back of long duration, involving irreparable loss.

So long as peace and goodwill do not prevail among individual men it is absurd to expect them to prevail among a collection of beasts of prey such as we have in the nations of the world. Yet it is obviously desirable that the human population of the globe should advance as one man. There is one thing, and one thing only, which can unite humanity into one closely-knit organism, and that is _an external enemy_.

If Mr. H. G. Wells’s _War of the Worlds_ were to come true, and an expeditionary force of Martians were to land on the earth with a view to its annexation, then the human race might instantly unite to repel the invader. It would be an inspiring sight to see Japanese and Turks, Abyssinians and Zulus, Eskimos and Swiss, Brazilians and Mexicans and Doughboys, Tahitians and Britishers and Russians, Irish and Egyptians, Persians and Chinese, all vying with each other in devotion and bravery, fighting for their native planet against a ruthless and merciless invader.

Without such a danger from without, the close federation of the nations of the world is almost unthinkable. Take the case of Ireland. There we have two nationalities in one island, as opposed to each other as any two nations in the same continent. In the North, a hardy, stern, rough and unbending type of Scottish origin, who despises the “natives” of Ireland as an inferior race, and makes good by converting a large slice of the “distressful country” into a garden of prosperity. In the South, a graceful and indolent peasant race, with all the mingled diffidence and bravado of a conquered people largely pervaded by the blood of its conquerors, and imbued with the idea of martyrdom for the twin ideas of religion and nationality (in this case, as it happens, quite incompatible). How can anyone expect peace under such conditions? The situation is the very stuff that ruthless wars are made of. The Ulsterman will not “go under” a Dublin parliament run by what he considers to be ignorant cornerboys. The Munsterman looks upon the “blaack Praatestant” of the North as dirt, which Ireland must disgorge before she can rise to the height of her destiny. England, with her good-natured religious and ethnical tolerance, is despised by both parties, though the Ulsterman clings passionately to the empire, which he provides with the largest ships afloat.

That sort of thing makes international tribunals and Leagues of Nations look ridiculous. Here are two populations in a small island, ready to rend each other limb from limb on the slightest excuse because the country is not large enough to hold both.

On the other hand, it is an undoubted fact that international trade, finance, and intercourse has increased enormously with improved means of transport. The Postal Union is a fine achievement towards the unification of the whole human family. Its successful working shows that enterprises covering the entire civilized population of the globe can now be undertaken and carried through. It so happens that the two greatest States of the world, the British Empire and the United States of America, are also the States whose home countries are freest from national intolerance and race prejudice, both consisting of a mixture of many nationalities. It is to them, as well as France, that we must look for the greatest advances towards the ideal of a world federation. Germany before the War cherished dreams of World Supremacy, but lacked the schooling which might have led to success.

The two great Empires――British and Japanese――and the two great Republics――France and U.S.A.――will, if they can agree, form a good nucleus for a federation of the world. The world, in its present state, requires leadership, and if the leaders are a representative and benevolent oligarchy, it is about the best we can hope for.

* * * * *

Given a reasonable degree of stability, guaranteed by a combination of the best instruments of government yet devised, we may expect a very rapid progress. What direction will this progress take, and what will be the fruits of it?

Do not listen to those futile people who say there is no progress, and that there is “nothing new under the sun”! So far from maintaining that what is has been and ever shall be I should assert that nothing that is has ever been before, that there are new things evolved every day, and that every child born is a unique personality, unprecedented in the annals of creation.

And not only are things new, but the new things are, on the general average, a bit more advanced than the last. Advanced towards what? Towards perfection, towards greater happiness, a fuller and more enduring life.

Who will dare deny that life in England――to take the nearest example――is happier now than it was even fifty years ago? Some people will sigh for the good old times of the Victorian reign, when money and employment were plentiful, when there was ample leisure for the rich, with pleasant ways of spending it, when masters were masters indeed and servants were loyal, respectful, and dutiful. But in recent times, apart from the tragedy of the Great War, there has been an immense improvement in the life of the average Englishman and his dependents. The general level of education has risen, infectious diseases have been successfully fought, schooling has become brighter and more effective, clothing has become more rational. There is more fresh air and less drudgery. The workman draws a larger share of the product of his effort, and often drives his motor car while his employer goes by train. The workman draws his bloated wage under the protection of his trade union, while the employer lies awake at night wondering how best to keep the works running and find new markets for old. That is nearly all to the good, since there are many more workmen than employers, and the general level of contentment is raised.

Even the aged, instead of being thrown on the scrap heap, are guarded from destitution by pensions honourably drawn from a wise government.

It will, I hope, be put to my credit that I have not carolled the blessings of the cinema theatre or even of wireless broadcasting. The optimist who emphasizes these is usually met with the reply that these do more harm than good, and spoil young people for ordinary life. Whatever may be said concerning the dull hotch-potch turned out “in bulk” by the American film industry, nobody can deny that an element of romance has been brought into the lives of countless poor people by Edison’s and Berliner’s great invention.