The sombre and distressing news of the past few weeks and months brings a clear message that the ills that have beset the world for centuries are still with us. There is a change in the state of man that is quite possibly the most profound in either written or unrecorded history. It is of this change that I will speak with you this morning. I venture to do so because I believe that this change does present new dimensions of opportunity, that they are the consequences of human thought, and they have their origin in science and their consequences in your area of interest.

I am convinced that the state of man has changed over the past two decades - profoundly, dramatically, and irrevocably. In probing this statement, however, we must carefully distinguish between basic change and symptoms of change. The transformation in transportation and communications that give new meaning to the term one world; the specter of a nuclear holocaust, the promise of nuclear power; the agricultural revolution and the associated urban explosion; the hope and the danger of new science and technology; the challenge to the human mind and spirit of space exploration; the ominous shadow of environmental pollution; the widening and frightening gap in economic development between the advanced and the advancing countries; the domestic problem of poverty; the frightening phenomenon of alienation that threatens to estrange modern man from his fellow man and from the world which he has in- herited; the growth in population that conflicts with achievement of human aspirations in the short term and adequate space for all on this planet in the long term; the 700 million illiterates; the one and one-half billion undernourished in a world which has a potential for plenty for all; the future of international organizations - these and all the other characteristics of a modern society are measures of the condition of man, his problems and his prospects. (p. 45-46)