Autumn comes to the sea with a fresh blaze of phosphorescence, when every wave crest is aflame. Here and there the whole surface may glow with sheets of cold fire, while below schools of fish pour through the water like molten metal.

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the earth itself - the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflit and eternal change.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.