THE OUTLOOK 
scientific knowledge believe that the future will greatly 
transcend what we witness to-day. , We do well to 
remember, however, that the possibilities are, after all, 
limited by the nature not only of Man himself, but also 
of his environment. 
There is no reason whatever to believe that the old 
civilisations of China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Peru and 
Mexico attained to anything like the great develop- 
ments in science and invention which are characteristic 
of modern times. All available historic records indicate 
that recent human progress is unique. Man is living 
in a larger and more difficult world than in the past, 
and apparently for the first time. And to-day his 
great problem is how to carry on the issues he has 
raised. His intelligence compels him to have regard 
to the significance of this problem. 
When the question of the world’s past is reviewed in 
a large way, one realises that the vicissitudes of Nature, 
with which we are familiar through meteorological 
studies, may possibly have greatly checked human 
increase. On the other hand, however, the develop- 
ments of agriculture, the facilities for transportation 
which enable commodities to be transferred readily 
to wherever they are found to be most serviceable, 
and those accessions of knowledge which have made 
the earth more productive—for example, schemes of 
irrigation and fertilisation—open up possibilities of 
supporting larger populations. The limits of this 
possibility are by no means definite. 
There is, moreover, another side to the whole ques- 
tion. Human desires have no intrinsic limit, Man 
tends to surround himself with more than is necessary 
for the maintenance of life. He desires luxuries, not 
only in foods but also in clothing, housing and mode 
of living. Compared even with the general conditions 
of living but two or three hundred years ago, the 
elaborations of modern civilisation are very striking.