Books of the Day
Science and Society
r is generally agreed that Dr. Julian Huxley (as his grandfather as before him) is one of our greatest scientific writers, in that e can express the implications of science in a form " under- standed of the people." The present book is a new link in a aim already long, and for anything which does so well the job hich it sets out to do praise would be almost an impertinence. oreover, the job is more urgently and desperately necessary an it was in T. H. Huxley's time, since the rapid progress of science has so much increased the possibilities for good or evil in "biological and social engineering," and our age stands in no lack of enthusiasts who are ready to put any theories into ractice, no matter how much they may contradict the estab- ished results of the scientific method. An essay analysing, for stance, the full gamut of biological inconsistencies and absur- ties in Mein Kampf would have been a welcome inclusion in = The Uniqueness of Man, had Dr. Huxley thought of it, and no one could have done it better than he.
But these are points which need not be laboured. The value if Dr. Huxley's place in the thought of our generation is that he s a preacher of sound doctrine concerning the origin and evolu- ion of man and of human society. It so happened that just before reading The Uniqueness of Man I had been glancing hrough that admirable travel-book of another preacher of sound octrine, G. Lowes Dickinson, written after his journey round the world. In it he contrasts what he calls " the Western ligion of Time" (including Chinese civilisation) with " the astern religion of Eternity " (based on India).
According to him, the former's confession of faith would be mething like this: "I believe in the ultimate distinction between Good and Evil, and in a real process in a real Time. I believe it to be my duty to increase Good and to diminish Evil, and that in doing this I am serving the purpose of the world. I know this ; I do not know anything else ; and I am reluctant to put questions to which I have no answer, and to which I do not believe that anyone has an answer. Action, as defined above, is my creed ; Speculation weakens Action. I do not wish to speculate, I with to live. And I believe the true life to be the life I have described."
In the innermost life of Western feeling, the original strain was resumably Christian (for the fall, redemption, prophecies and 'dance of the ecclesia, were part of a time-process) and ulti- tely Hebrew, not Graeco-Indian. But the outlook so pro- oundly sketched by Lowes Dickinson was enormously strengthened as science came into its own. Science has always ad to take Time seriously, and as bit by bit the vast drama of he evolution-process unfolded itself before our eyes, static or superficially Platonic conceptions were forced back into the Inds of those alone who were prepared to shut their eyes to he evidence of biological and social evolution. Moreover, nother conclusion followed which those who had been glad to cept Darwinism as an excuse for jungle-economics were less ady to see—namely, that our state of society could not be re- arded as the climax of all the ages, as the highest feat of which attire was capable. On the contrary, the only thread which ould be found to run through the array of creatures below the arliest human level, and of social organisms above it, was the rogressive" increase in organised complexity, in organisation. e should have to look, therefore, in surveying the future of uman society, for whatever forms of social system would give s the highest degree of organisation, subject to the nature of an and the limitations of his environment. Dr. Huxley's virtue is that in all that he writes he never loses ght of this background. In the essay which gives its title to e book, he examines the various characteristics which distin- sh man from the other animals his kin. Whoever reads such n essay as this will be preserved from ever again talking non- nse about the possible supersession of man by insects or other animals, or about racialism Dr eugenics, to which separate says are devoted. In the essay on the size of living things o be read profitably with a famous one of Prof. J. B. S. aldane's on the same subject), Dr. Huxley points out that in tie the individual man stands just about half way between atom d star, and the whole mass of humanity half way between lemon and universe. It is curious how a measure of the thropocentricity which Copernicus took from us is now creep- g back again, with the modern conclusion that worlds like our vin, which could support life like ours, are so rare among stellar aten..omena as to occur certainly not more than once or twice I am each galaxy. But let us not be too ambitious in the ques- Oils We ask.
The book concludes with essays bearing on the place of reli- gion in man's life. It is to be hoped that Dr. Huxley's frankly non-theistic standpoint will not prevent Christian and other religious men from attending to what he says, for it is of some importance. He argues that religion is passing out of its cosmo- gonic stage, when it was mainly interested in man's relation with his external environment, into a stage in which it will be pri- marily interested in his social environment. This is a strain not unknown to Christian thought, and we find it earlier still in the saying of the great Confucius: " Why do you ask me what should be done about gods and spirits? Pay respect to them, but keep them at a distance. When you have learnt how to deal with your fellow-men, then you may ask me again how to deal with gods and spirits."
And so, helped by teachers in advance of their times, human social evolution goes ever forward. Julian Huxley is of their number, and never is their message more welcome than in times such as these, when civilisation is threatened by barbaric flood.
JOSEPH NEEDHAM.
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