not conceivable that would vastly accelerate repair, nor that the elimination and neutralisation of fatigue products might not also be enormously hastened.  There is no inherent impossibility in the idea not only of various glands being induced to function in a modified manner, but even in the insertion upon the circulation of interceptors and artificial glandular structures.  No doubt that may strike even an adventurous surgeon as chimerical, but consider what people, even authoritative people, were saying of flying and electric traction twenty years ago.  At present a man probably does not get more than three or four hours of maximum mental and physical efficiency in the day.  Few men can keep at their best in either physical or intellectual work for so long as that.  The rest of the time goes in feeding, digesting, sleeping, sitting about, relaxation of various kinds.  It is quite possible that science may set itself presently to extend systematically that proportion of efficient time.  The area of maximum efficiency may invade the periods now demanded by digestion, sleep, exercise, so that at last nearly the whole of a man’s twenty-four hours will be concentrated on his primary interests instead of dispersed among these secondary necessary matters.

Please understand I do not consider this concentration of activity and these vast “artificialisations” of the human body as attractive or desirable things.  At the first proposal much of this tampering with the natural stuff of life will strike anyone, I think, as ugly and horrible, just as seeing a little child, green-white and still under an anaesthetic, gripped my heart much more dreadfully than the sight of the same child actively bawling with pain.  But the business of this paper is to discuss things that may happen, and not to evolve dreams of loveliness.  Perhaps things of this kind will be manageable without dreadfulness.  Perhaps man will come to such wisdom that neither the knife nor the drugs nor any of the powers which science thrusts into his hand will slay the beauty of life for him.  Suppose we assume that he is not such a fool as to let that happen, and that ultimately he will emerge triumphant with all these powers utilised and controlled.

It is not only that an amplifying science may give mankind happier bodies and far more active and eventful lives, but that psychology and educational and social science, reinforcing literature and working through literature and art, may dare to establish serenities in his soul.  For surely no one who has lived, no one who has watched sin and crime and punishment, but must have come to realise the enormous amount of misbehaviour that is mere ignorance and want of mental scope.  For my own part I have never believed in the devil.  And it may be a greater undertaking but no more impossible to make ways to goodwill and a good heart in men than it is to tunnel mountains and dyke back the sea.  The way that led from the darkness of the cave to the electric light is the way that will lead to light in the souls of men, that is to say, the way of free and fearless thinking, free and fearless experiment, organised exchange of thoughts and results, and patience and persistence and a sort of intellectual civility.