FUTURE OF MAN

Evening Star, Issue 20255, 16 August 1929, Page 2

FUTURE OF MAN

MAKER AND SHAKER OF THE WORLD OAH WE PROGRESS FURTHER The discoveries of modern science have confirmed the feeling of proud humility which led tho Psalmist to say long ago; “When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained—What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou regardest him?” (Writes Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, in ‘John o London’s Weekly’). For we have had to learn to speak of the universe in the plural; our galactic system is only one out of many; our sun is not more than a mediocre star, compared, for instance, with Betelgeuse, within whose vast sphere the earth in its orbit could well revolve; our solar system is inconceivably far away from the hub of the system: and our earth is a minor planet. And was not a whirling nebula the gaseous pit whence we were digged and tho electronic rock whence we were hewn? We cannot but be overwhelmed with a sense of our insignificance. As an old thinker said; “Man is a maggot and tho eon of man a worm.” A REED IN THE WIND.

Yet we know that this salutary impression'of man’s insignificance amidst his environment has to_ be corrected by a conviction of bis organismal greatness. For, after all, this reed shaken by the wind is a thinking reed, as Pascal said, and it is man who has been the measurer and interpreter of the world. It is man who has weighed the heavens in a balance and counted not only the hairs on his head but the chromosomes in the nuclei of his cells. It is in man that Nature has become articulate. In a very deep sense he is the maker and the shaker of the world. A frail creature, with feet of clay, shot through and through with weaknesses, easily bowled over by a bacillus, and yet great. He stands alone in having Reason or tho power of experimenting with general ideas, in having Language that expresses judgments, in controlling his conduct in the light of ideals, in being aware of bis past and in being able in some- measure to fashion his future, and in his power of building up outside himself a lasting social heritage which transcends the trammels of protoplasm. We must judge every species by its best, and man at his best is great. Our question must change from “What is Man?” to “What is Man not?” OUR POOR RELATIONS.

We think of it as a compliment that a ■ great statesman or investigator, priest or poet, had a humble origin, but wo have a somewhat snobbish dislike of being reminded of our own poor relations—the anthropoid apes. It is difficult to understand the repugnance, unless it be that we dislike to discern in ourselves the lingering traces of ancestral imperfections. After all, the divergence of hominoids from anthropoids occurred too long ago to bring a blush to our cheeks when we contemplate our nearest living relatives, like the gorilla; for the divergence must have occurred not less than a million years ago; and the Ascent of Man is greatly to his credit. In any case, the value of a hero is not affected by the fact that he was Once a wayward child, and long before that an egg-cell of microscopic dimensions. Man’s value depends on what ho is and what we will bo. And even as ho is, solidary with the rest of creation, weighted with anachronisms and riddled with imperfections, how great are his qualities. “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving bow express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god.” Here Shakespeare ?aw man at his best, and that is the best way of regarding him. It is thus that we get nearest a discernment of his true inwardness. EVER STRIVING UPWARDS.

The story of Organic Evolution includes retrogressions and eddies, but the big fact is advancement. As the hundreds of millions of years have passed, life has been slowly creeping upwards, over finding nobler and finer expression, associated throughout with a growing emancipation of mind. As Emerson put it, wo see the worm, striving to be man, mount through all the spires of form. And while there is much to be said in praise of birds and bees, and the like, we cannot but regard Man as the climax of the age-long progress. He has the greatest freedom of mind and the firmest mastery of fate. He is the most highly evolved living creature; ho is not an episode but the end that crowns the work. And just as,we must consider man in the light of evolution, so we must envisage evolution in the light of man. For his uniqueness seems to give moaning to the long-drawn-out preface to all the groaning and travailing of creation. IN PREHISTORIC DAYS. Wo remember, however, that many very remarkable animals, such as Flying Dragons, have had their day and ceased to be. Without leaving any direct descendants, they have passed from the stage with no more residue than a complication of the plot. Will this happen to Man? We remember also how our antecedent, though not direct ancestor, Neanderthal Man, was for a time the crown of creation, and yet was superseded by an upstart mutant who led on to Homo sapiens, that is to say to us. 'ls there, perhaps, arising from our species a new mutant that will rise as high above Homo sapiens as wo have risen above Neanderthal Man, That possibility cannot be disproved. Nor can we deny the possibility, suggested by the Bishop of Birmingham, that in the course oi millions of years there may be a fresh start from a stock not even mammalian. Against the likelihood of that possibility it may be urged that the fortuitous factor in Organic Evolution has dwindled greatly since Darwin’s da^; that there has been in the evolution of Animate Nature something extraordinarily like a preparation for man: that it is difficult even to dream of the repeated emergence of a masterpiece as remarkable as Man; and that a new super-organ-ism would have little chance of survival in an. environment which consists so largely of Man’s external heritage. As long as Man does not stand still, ho is not likely to be superseded!