Now what is the material environment of our population?—Quite clearly, it is one in which the mechanical elaboration of daily life has been carried to a degree entirely bewildering. These sub-human people of the twentieth century live among marvels of technical skill and ingenuity; and the appliances, apparatus, and general equipment of their every-day life have reached a complexity and perfection quite unprecedented in history. Far from having learnt any lesson from the doctrines Darwin taught last century, all our energy and skill have been concentrated in precisely the opposite direction. Progressive evolution is no longer a fact with us; for, as a species we are steadily falling back to a level below that attained by our race in former ages. While we ourselves, however, steadily recede along the scale of quality, our environmental conditions, our tools, our means, acquire ever greater perfection. The onus of evolution has, as it were, been transferred from our own shoulders to the shoulders of our environment. Blinded by the dazzling achievements of the mechanical and other sciences, we still speak about ourselves as if it were we, as living organisms, who were continuing to evolve. But, truth to tell, it is nothing of the sort. Even in the sphere of intellectual powers, we are miserably below standards already achieved. To the bulk of unobservant and unthinking mankind, this state of affairs is largely hidden; because, while science increases the efficiency of our extra-corporeal equipment, it has also, _pari passu_ with our degeneration, provided us with the means of keeping our corporeal equipment going. Almost as fast as we have wanted them, the sciences of chemistry and of medicine have given us the means of replacing lost parts of our bodies, and of supplementing failing functions. A whole sphere of activity—indeed a whole world of interests and ingenuity—has been created by modern physical degeneracy. The patent-medicine, patent-appliance, and patent-food industries, alone represent some of the largest going concerns in the land. In fact, it might be said that these industries themselves are but the reverse of the medal representing our fundamental values. Where you have values such as ours, you will necessarily possess a huge and flourishing medical profession and a vast army of dentists, chemists, and osteopaths, daily directing their wits towards making good the increasing defects of the human body. You will also be compelled to have your patent-drug, patent-appliance, and patent-food magnates, who, taking advantage of the universal physiological depravity of their contemporaries, amass large fortunes in merely offering “salvation” at popular prices to the physiologically depraved.