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which is the law of human nature. In the preceding
chapters I have given what seem to me to be the main
principles of this law, and if I have given them correctly
or even roughly so, it will be seen that the general trend
of history is inevitable. It becomes hardly more than a
summary of my previous discussions.
The variety of happenings of a million years is ob-
viously so prodigious that, at some place and at some
time, almost anything that could be thought of will be
found to have occurred, and so a prophet can foretell
what he likes with the fair certainty that an example of it
could be cited before the end of the period. I should not
be content with such a verification of my predictions. I
want to foretell the things that will be happening most
of the time and over most of the earth, and I should
count it as defeat if the historian of a million years hence
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THE NEXT MILLION YEARS
should point out that my forecasts were verified, be-
cause they did once happen for a few decades on some
remote island in the Pacific. Indeed I might express my
ambition better by putting it the other way round. At
the end of a million years some Gibbon, with all the vast
archives of the world at his disposal, may undertake the
stupendous task of writing the whole history of the
human race. In the excessively unlikely event of his
reading this work, I should be best content if he con-
sidered it as unworthy of mention, because it was a mere
description of all the things that were entirely familiar
and therefore uninteresting, the things that all his readers
would take for granted. He would feel free to pass them
over, and spend his time in describing the more excep-
tional and remarkable things that had happened in the
course of the ages.
Before coming to the details it may be well to remind
the reader once again of the operation of the law of
large numbers in connection with probabilities. In the
events of the world one cannot of course actually give
numerical values to the odds as one can in a game of
chance, but I can use the analogy to show what I mean.
If I said that the odds were two to one on such and such
a state of the world as compared to some rival state, I
should not mean that it was twice as likely that the
favoured state would be happening all the time; I should
mean that in the course of the ages it would prevail for
about two-thirds of the time, and the rival state for one-
third. Now there can be no doubt that most things in
the world fall under the category of large numbers
the mere fact that there are even at the present time two
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THE HISTORY
thousand million individuals guarantees this so that
probabilities become certainties in the sense that very
probable things will be happening most of the time,
while less probable things will still happen, but only for
a small part of the time. But there may be occurrences
so rare that the law of large numbers cannot be applied
to them at all; for example the discovery of the New
World in the fifteenth century was a unique thing, be-
cause there were no other new worlds to discover. Or
again there is the unlikely, but possible, chance that there
should be a collision of the solar system with another
star, which would destroy all life on earth. If any such
rare event should occur, it would upset all predictions,
and there is nothing more to be said about it.
There are no doubt readers who will dislike many of
the things I am forecasting and who will try to evade
them by the hope that one of these rare unforeseeable
chances will entirely alter things, and lead to a condition
of the world more to their liking. It is possible, but it is
much more likely that such things will be unfavourable
than favourable. Whereas small changes produced by
chance are as likely to be beneficial as detrimental, when
it comes to large changes, the probability is that they
will be unfavourable. I have already cited an example of
this from the science of genetics, where, by means of
X-rays, changes can be induced in the genes of the cells
of animals. If the change is small, it may benefit the
animal, but if it is large it is almost invariably deleteri-
ous, and often lethal. The balance of the natural forces
in an animal is so delicate, that any large change in one
feature upsets it entirely; only if there were compensat-
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THE NEXT MILLION YEARS
ing large changes in other features could the condition
of the animal be improved, and there is practically no
chance of these other changes happening to occur
simultaneously. A similar principle must apply to the
delicate balance of interactions which go to make up the
life of the human race. Thus anyone who hopes that
some rare, large, unforeseeable occurrence may better
the fate of humanity is almost certain to be disappointed,
for it is enormously more likely to worsen it. The best
hopes of benefiting humanity are to be based not on
this, but on the working of small changes and the law of
large numbers, by which there is at least some prospect
little by little of improving the condition of the world.
In what follows I shall divide up the principal activi-
ties of humanity under the headings of population,
economics and so on, and consider each briefly in turn.
It may be well to repeat that the views I put forward on
these subjects are not intended to be exclusive. It is to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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