Oddly enough at the very moment when we have thus had reimpressed upon us the uncertainty of our outward mechanical defenses against the elements, we have been making a curious addition to our knowledge of inner means of defense.  The science of medicine has taken several impressive strides in recent years, but none more suggestive of future possibilities of prolonging human life than the recent work done in preserving man’s internal organs and tissues to a life of their own outside the body.[2] Already it is possible to transfer healthy tissues thus preserved, or even some of the simpler organs, from one body to another.  Men begin to talk of the probability of rejuvenating the entire physical form.  Thus science may yet bring us to encounter as actual fact the deep philosophic thought of old, the thought that regards man as merely a will and a brain, and the body as but the outward clothing of these, mere drapery, capable of being changed as the spirit wills.  There is no visible limit to this wondrous drama in which man’s patient mastering of his immediate environment is gradually teaching him to mold to his purpose all the potent forces of the universe.

[Footnote 2:  See Our Progressing Knowledge of Life Surgery, page 273.]

In this assurance of ultimate success, let us find such consolation as we may.  Though world-war may continue its devastation, though its increasing horrors may shake our civilization to the deepest depths, though its wanton destruction may rob us of the hoarded wealth of generations and the art treasures of all the past, though its beastlike massacres may reduce the number of men fitted to bear onward the torch of progress until of their millions only a mere pitiable handful survive, yet the steps which science has already won cannot be lost.  Knowledge survives; and a happier generation than ours standing some day secure against the monster of militarism shall continue to uplift man’s understanding till he dwells habitually on heights as yet undreamed.

THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF GOVERNORS

A NEW MACHINERY ADDED TO THE FEDERAL FORM OF GOVERNMENT

A.D. 1910

WILLIAM G. JORDAN

THE GOVERNORS

The formal establishment of the “House of Governors,” which took place in January of 1910, marked the climax of a definite movement which has swept onward through the entire history of the United States.

When in 1775 the thirteen American colonies made their first effort toward united action, they were in truth thirteen different nations, each possessed of differing traditions and a separate history, and each suspicious and jealous of all the others.  Their widely diverging interests made concerted action almost impossible during the Revolutionary War.  And when necessity ultimately drove them to join in the close bond of the present United States, their constitution was planned less for union than for the protection of each suspicious State against the aggressions of the others.