Morality should be based not on human nature in its existing vitiated condition, but on human nature, ideal, as it may be in the future. Before all things, it is necessary to try to amend the evolution of the human life, that is to say, to transform its disharmonies into harmonies (_Orthobiosis_). This task can be undertaken only by science, and to science the opportunity of accomplishing it must be given. However, even in the most civilised countries, science is far from being in this ideal condition. Obstacles lie in its way and retard its advance. To make the human constitution better, it would be necessary to know it thoroughly. How can we try to transform to a normal and physiological condition old age, at present utterly pathological, unless we first understand the most intimate details of its mechanism? Deeply rooted prejudices make it very difficult to examine the organs of the aged dead. The difficulties surrounding post-mortem investigations are almost insurmountable. According to the regulations enforced in France, autopsies cannot be made until twenty-four hours after death. An autopsy cannot be made except when the corpse has not been claimed by any relatives in the direct line, husband or wife, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces. If kinsmen put in no claim, co-operative societies may take possession of the corpse and oppose the holding of an examination. Even when an examination has been permitted, it must extend only to “the ascertaining of exact facts, and this must be taken as excluding the mutilation of the corpse by the removal of any organ or portion of the anatomy, however interesting scientifically such material might be.” (Circular of the Director of “Assistance publique,” January 20, 1900.[341]) It is easy to see that such regulations make extremely difficult the investigation of senile degeneration, and the search for means of preventing it, especially by the use of serums obtained after injecting emulsions of human organs. These difficulties in reality arise from the prejudice in favour of the existence of a life beyond the grave and a resurrection of the body. Almost similar difficulties stand in the way of obtaining the bodies of old animals. Their owners prefer to keep animals, after they are useless, until they die, and to bury the bodies instead of devoting them to the scientific investigation that is so important to humanity. As soon as we come to believe that the solution of the problems of human happiness will come not from religions nor from systems of metaphysical philosophy, but from exact science alone, the obstacles to progress will be removed. That scientific methods will redress the disharmonies of the human constitution is the more probable inasmuch as the old age of human beings was more physiological, and their death more natural, in earlier times than they are to-day.