How far can our gaze penetrate the fog which obscures our future? Can we build for eternity? Must we prepare for a catastrophe or an inevitable decay? Can we assure to our descendants an indefinitely prolonged future of perpetual progress and ever-increasing happiness? The answer to these questions is ultimately based upon psychological factors. Human life requires certain physical conditions for its maintenance. It also requires the passive assistance of many forms of animal life and plant life. But Man is, without exception, the most adaptable inhabitant of this globe, and there is little fear of any physical or biological factors bringing about his extinction, provided they change sufficiently gradually. If life is adaptation to surroundings, then Man has more chance of surviving changing conditions than any other form of terrestrial life. What other species can thrive equally in the Arctic and under the Equator? The dog is man’s only rival in that respect, and is but second best. We need, therefore, not be anxious lest a change in general physical environment bring our race to an end. The end of the human race, if ever it comes, will be due to the human race itself. If the race dies, it will die by suicide. And suicide is a matter of psychology. Let us examine the possibility of a voluntary euthanasia of the human race. It seems the only sort of suicide that is at all conceivable. Can we imagine a state of things arising in which the leaders will say: “We have lived long enough. Our race has had a glorious history, let it have a glorious end. We cannot and will not bow to the new conditions imposed by Nature. We would rather die and end it all. Let us all perish together.” Such an attitude would indeed be a new phenomenon. People have died rather than surrender, but it was with the thought of the approval of their fellows and the perpetual honour of their names. In the case contemplated there would be no such inducement to heroism. The surrender would be unchronicled and unsung. A refusal to adapt itself to new conditions is not unknown among savage races, nor among classes of civilized society. Tribes have perished off the face of the earth, owing to a voluntary refusal or to inability to adapt themselves to new conditions of life. But, so far as we know, this has always taken place in the presence of races of superior adaptability.