To be strictly logical, even the nature of scientific research should be added to the consequences of a people’s ruling values; because the ultimate goal of scientific investigation is necessarily determined by the desiderata implicit in values. If the values of an age tend more and more towards tolerating bodily defects, and towards securing satisfaction merely by patching or artificially replacing them, scientific research will concentrate ever more and more on those discoveries which promise either to alleviate physical degeneration or else to conceal it. And, as fast as we slough off further parts of our bodies, or lose further powers of functioning, we may rely upon science being ever ready with artificial aids, to make our lives just possible notwithstanding. In this way, _values direct science_. If we altered our ruling values, we should find that the direction of science was also altered, because the desiderata always implicit in ruling values would then have changed. “But,” cry the modernists _à outrance_, “if science is ever ready, and will continue to be ever ready, with artificial aids to make good the losses in our corporeal equipment and efficiency, why all this fuss and pother? Why worry?” Now this view, tacitly held or openly professed by the bulk of modern mankind to-day, would be all very well, and would justify a certain modicum of optimistic contentment, if we could act and think, and continue to reproduce our kind in a desirable form, independently of our bodies. But, unfortunately for the modern man, this is impossible. Not only that, but a good many of life’s joys—some of its greatest and most lasting—are connected precisely with the reproduction of our kind, with the maintenance of our bodily efficiency, and with happy functioning. The moment physiological serenity goes, the moment a function ceases to be a pleasure, the body becomes the most tyrannical and insistent pleader against Life. It constantly sets the most formidable question-mark against the value of Life.