So much for the extreme possibilities of the future, which we need hardly consider; for the present, humanity would be glad enough to be represented by men and women of our best types, sound in lung and limb and brain, full of bodily vigour and capable of enjoying exercise both of body and of mind. One cannot for a moment doubt that, by selection, England in a hundred years might have its average man and woman as well endowed in body and mind as are the best of us to-day. This is not much to claim, for this potent agent selection has formed the higher animals and man himself from lower forms, and has evolved the multitudinous varieties of structure and form we see around us. What we may more reasonably doubt is whether our countrymen will have intelligence and unselfishness enough to bring this about, to sow where others will reap, to distract their thoughts from the pursuit of self-interest and turn their attention to a course of action which will produce its results when their individual lives have passed away. _Rights of the Individual, and Obligations to the Community._ But even here the outlook seems hopeful, for no historical fact is more striking than the gradual subordination of individual interests to those of the community, which for many years has been going on. The clamorous appeals for personal rights are giving way to a growing sense of obligation and a desire to further the interests of others. At a time when the labouring classes had too little power of establishing their claims to just treatment and proper consideration, the sense of public obligation was naturally not so strong. Men and women were struggling, and very rightly, for what unjustly was withheld from them; for though men had united in communities for self-interest and self-defence, wealth and its transmission had set up barriers between those who felt their equality as men, and who resented social disqualifications due probably to the ill fortune of their ancestors; under these circumstances men thought and talked more about their rights than about their obligations.