“The scientific study of behavior not only justifies raising
the general pattern of such proposal; its promises new and
better hypotheses. The earliest cultural practices must have
originated in sheer accidents. Those which strengthened the
group survive with the group in a sort of natural selection. As
soon as men began to propose and carry out changes in practice
for the sake of possible consequences, the evolutionary process
must have accelerated… A further acceleration is now to be
expected. As laws of behavior are more precisely stated, the
changes in the environment required to bring about a given
effect may be more clearly specified… This is no time, then,
to abandon notions of progress, improvement or, indeed, human
perfectibility. The simple fact is that man is able, and now as
even before, to lift himself by his own bootstraps. In achieving
control of which he is part of, he may learn at last to control
himself.”