The Kingdom of Man

by Sir E. Ray Lankester

15. The Increase of Human Population.

Whilst there is a certainty of Man’s power to remove all disease from his life, a difficulty which he has already created for himself will be thereby increased. That difficulty is the increase of human population beyond the capacity of the earth’s surface to provide food and the other necessities of life. By rebelling against Nature’s method, Man has made himself the only animal which constantly increases in numbers. Whenever disease is controlled his increase will be still more rapid than at present. At the same time no attempt at present has been made by the more advanced communities of civilized men to prevent the multiplication of the weakly or of those liable to congenital disease. Already something like a panic on this subject has appeared in this country. Inquiries have been conducted by public authorities. But the only possible method of dealing with this matter, and in the first place of estimating its importance as immediate or remote, has not been applied. Man can only deal with this difficulty created by his own departure from Nature—to which he can never return—by thoroughly investigating the laws of breeding and heredity, and proceeding to apply a control to human multiplication based upon certain and indisputable knowledge.

It may be a century, or it may be more than five centuries, before the matter would, if let alone, force itself upon a desperate humanity, brutalized by over-crowding, and the struggle for food. A return to Nature’s terrible selection of the fittest may, it is conceivable, be in this way in store for us. But it is more probable that humanity will submit, before that condition occurs, to a restriction by the community in respect of the right to multiply, with as good a grace as it has given up the right to murder and to steal. In view of this Man must, in entering on his kingdom, at once proceed to perfect those studies as to the transmission of qualities by heredity which have as yet been only roughly carried out by breeders of animals and horticulturists.

There is absolutely no provision for this study in any civilized community, and no conception among the people or their leaders that it is a matter which concerns any one but farmers.

16. An Untouched Source of Energy.

The applications of steam and electricity have so far astonished and gratified the rebel Man, that he is sometimes disposed to conclude that he has come to the end of his power of relieving himself from the use of his own muscles for anything but refined movements and well-considered health-giving exercises. One of the greatest of chemical discoverers at this time living, M. Berthelot, has, however, recently pressed on our attention the question of the possibility of tapping the central heat of the earth and making use of it as a perennial source of energy. Many competent physicists have expressed the opinion that the mechanical difficulties of such a boring, as would be necessary, are insuperable. No one, however, would venture to prophesy, in such a matter as this, that what is prevented by insuperable obstacles to-day may not be within our powers in the course of a few years.

17. Speculations as to the Martians.

Such audacious control of the resources of our planet is suggested as a possibility, a legitimate hope and aim, by recent observations and speculations as to our neighbour, the planet Mars. I do not venture to express any opinion as to the interpretation of the appearances revealed by the telescope on the surface of the planet Mars, and indeed would take the most sceptical attitude until further information is obtained. But the influence of these statements about Mars on the imagination and hopes of Man seems to me to possess considerable interest. The markings on the surface of the planet Mars, which have been interpreted as a system of canals, have been known and discussed for many years (see [Figs. 7] and [8]). It has recently been observed that these canals undergo a recurrent seasonal change of appearance consistent with the hypothesis that they are periodically filled with water, which is derived from the polar snow-caps of the planet at the season of greatest polar heat. It is suggested that Mars is inhabited by an intelligent population, not necessarily closely similar to mankind, but, on the contrary unlike mankind in proportion as the conditions of Mars are unlike those of the Earth, and that these inhabitants have constructed by their own efforts the enormous irrigation works upon which the fertility and habitability of their planet, at the present time, depend. These speculations lead M. Faguet of the French Academy to further reflections. The Martians who have carried out this vast manipulation of a planet must be not only far in advance of the inhabitants of the Earth in intelligence and mechanical power, as a result of the greater age of their planet and the longer continuance there of the evolution of an intelligent race, but such a vast work and its maintenance would seem to imply a complete unanimity among the Martians, a world-wide peace and common government. Since we can imagine such a result of the prolonged play of forces in Mars, similar to those at work in our own Earth, and even obtain some slight confirmation of the supposition, may we not indulge in the surmise that some such future is in store for Man, that he may be able hereafter to deal with great planetary factors to his own advantage, and not only draw heat from the bowels of the earth for such purposes as are at present within his scope, but even so as to regulate, at some distant day, the climates of the earth’s surface, and the winds and the rain which seem now for ever beyond his control?