The prevalent mood of contemporary mankind is one of despair, for never before have the prospects of civilization seemed gloomier or the situation of mankind more helpless. The extinction of the race within the foreseeable future seems threatened from every quarter, whether by the exhaustion of the resources of the earth, or by the pollution of the sea and its life-giving waters, or by the destruction of the ecological systems in which living species cooperate to maintain themselves and one another. All these deleterious processes seem to be happening at an accelerating pace without any deliberate action on the part of man and despite such feeble efforts as he has yet made or seems likely to make to stem the tide of deterioration.