Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-01-09
The Way the World Is Going
Confined from First PageD

ferences between the average Briton
of today and his predecessor OF only
a few centuries ago. The former
has, for instance, a scissor bite of
the teeth instead of an edge-to edge
bite; his facer is fine and longer and
his paIate narrower: his nose is
thinner and more prominent These
are the notifications wrought upon
him by the comparatively slow and
slight alterations in his circum-
stances. extended and altered dietary,
increased clothing and the like, that
went on during the Middle Ages and
the subsequent two or three cen
turtles. They are unimnortant in com
parison with the notifications that
are being pressed upon him by the
chensng circumstances of today.
Very few of us realize the enor-
nous distortions that are now going
On in the life cycle Of the human
animal. There is biological revolu.
ton in progress-of far profounder
moment than any French or Russian
revolution that ever happened. The
facts come dripping in to us, here
para graph in newspa per. there
book, now a chance remark; we are
busy about our personal affairs and
rarely find time TO sit hack and con-
slider the immense significance of the
whole continuing process. We forget
this before we hear of that. and do
not put two and two together,
Here, to begin with, is a specimen
of the kind Of quietlooking fact that
r l. laA,- -t1e~
a shadow of it's enormous implica-.
lions. l find it mentioned casually in
Instrumentation" a book by DR.. Nor
man Hare. which | chance to be
consulting upon a point I shall deal
with later. It Is that since the open
ing of the present century insurance
statistics, presumably Brtish-Dr.
Hare does not say-show that the
average length of human life within
the scope of these statistics has been
increased by IL years. This. when
we make the necessary inquiries, does
not mean that people are living on to
two and eighty instead of the tradi-
tfonal three score and ten, but that
the hope of survival for every infant
born in Britain has been increased
in a brief quarter century by about
a third. It may expect to live four
Years for every three It could have
hoped for if 1t had been born in 1900.
That is the latest step in a series of
changes that have been going on for
a much longer period. 1t points for
ward to a time when nearly every
child born into a civilized community
Will live to maturity. Because of late
A3rvN 60 AI Ia
causes there are In every thousand
individuals of a modern Atlantic pop.
ulation 20 or less infants of under l
year, and upon that such populations
can and do increase.
II
This marks q quite novel rarity Of
children in the new world. To Judge
by Oriental cities in which medieval
conditions still prevail and the tomb
stones in old English churches. some
thing like fifty out of the thousand
of our ancestral populations, before
the day of our great-greatgrand-
mothers, We're infants under ] year,
of which 80 or more were doomed
to die in childhood or adolescence.
A lot of that 80 died in the first year,
q lot of the survivors from the previ-
Gus year were at the same time dying
In their second year, and so on. Pro
portionally there were more ailing
children in that vanished state OF af-
fairs among our populations that all
the children In our community today.
Upward of half the human beings then
alive lived what we should now re-
gard as tragically foreshortened ex-
istences. And the rest of the popu-
lation. the moiety that contrived to
grow up, must have been mainly oc-
c1pied in mothering, fathering and
nursing this superhuity Of offspring.
\ 4 =
AS we examine the dry.looking fig
ures of birth rates and death rates in
the vital statistics that have become
available in the past hundred years
and touch them with imaginative I'M
derstanding we begin to realize that
the life of man so far, up to our
own times-and of women far more
so--has been almost wholly sexual
one: that-whh the exception OF a
few priests, nuns, eccentrics and un-
attractive women-the full round OF
life for every one who could achieve
Al. who wasn't killed too soon, was
to grow up, to pair to produce and
sustain a large family. burying most
of 1t, and SO TO decay and age and
die
The whole adult life was consumed
be sex and it's consequences; the bust
ness If the family, Of making it and
of toiling for 1t, of weeping over the
dead and beginning again, was the
complete circle Of life. Man was al.
most as sexual as cat. with its ever
recurring kittens In the past the
normal existence fell wholly into the
frame of the family Man was fam.
ilv animal. Now this is no longer the
case. Now family life becomes mere
~ a phase in a more ample expert
ence. Human life escapes beside 1t
and beyond 1t.
Human life, which was formerly
almost completely filed by that re.
productive business the family. has
come very suddenly upon conditions
under which the necessity for sexual
E ureoccupations has enormously di.
unfinished. That means a biological
revolution Of quite primary quality.
Women and men can no longer use
themselves UP. even If they would,
IN that immemorial round. The re-
lease of women-if we may regard
1t as a release and not as a dep
rtvation-is conspicuously immense.
Homo Sapiens, departing from the
usual practice Of the animal king.
dom, is beginning to breed much
later than his physical adolescence
70 conserve all his offspring and so