But at present man puts into operation no real substitute for natural selection. "The standard raised by the rebel man is not that of fitness to the conditions proffered by extra-human Nature, but is one of ideal comfort, prosperity, and conscious joy of life--imposed by the will of man and involving a control, and in important respects a subversion, of what were Nature's methods of dealing with life before she had produced her insurgent son." Progress in the control of Nature has been going on with enormous rapidity during the last two centuries particularly--the "nature searchers" have placed almost limitless power in the hands of men. And yet the builders of society and governments and nations have failed to profit by this increase in natural knowledge. In our social and national organization we remain fixed in the old paths of ignorance. Lankester says: "I speak for those who would urge the conscious and deliberate assumption of his kingdom by Man--not as a matter of markets and of increased opportunity for the cosmopolitan dealers in finance--but as an absolute duty, the fulfillment of Man's destiny." The purpose of his essay is "to point out that civilized man has proceeded so far in his interference with extra-human Nature, has produced for himself and for the living organisms associated with him such a special state of things, by his rebellion against natural selection and his defiance of pre-human dispositions, that he must either go on and acquire firmer control of the conditions, or perish miserably by the vengeance certain to fall on the half-hearted meddler in great affairs." Man is a fighting rebel who at every forward step lays himself open to the liabilities of greater penalties should his attack prove unsuccessful. Moreover, while emancipating himself from the destructive and progressive methods of Nature, man has accumulated a new series of dangers and difficulties with which he must incessantly contend and which he must finally control. Man has taken a tremendous step--created desperate conditions by the exercise of his will--further control is essential in order that he should escape from final misery and destruction. Nor is this idle, academic invective. The biologist knows that this is true. It is not idle, for man has the means at his command--it is merely a question of their employment. This, then, is the second biological warning to sociology and to statecraft. Now we may return to consider briefly the nature of those social data which we suggested force us to think seriously of the problem of man's future.