The humane future

Dr. Loren C. Eiseley, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, lectures from material in his 1958 prize-winning book, "Darwin's Century." He explains why he teaches and how man's brain receives impressions and profits from experiences. He reads from Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" as well as from Alfred Russel Wallace's work that recognizes man's brain as the totally new factor in the history of life. Man has the ability to invent, progress, and make changes in his surroundings; and man's ethics, arts, and religions determine his cruelty or humaneness. Dr. Eiseley notes that man is relatively young in the total history of life, but with his mechanical inventions and implements of war and power of choice for good or evil, man and his science have made humanity's extinction possible. Showing a chart of anthropoidal skulls of man's ancestors, Dr. Eiseley says the potential destiny of man is unknown. Because of the Cold War, we need to take responsibility now for spiritual greatness. He warns that man should not abandon or forget how he has always tried to transcend himself spiritually, and he quotes C. S. Lewis on the rationality of man.