Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization
Edited by . New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1928. 8vo. 408 pp.
A SCORE of well-known writers have gathered together their views concerning the present and the future of mankind, in this age of science and machines, asking the question, Whither? and returning answers on the whole reassuring. The ‘outstanding material prosperity of the common man’ is studied from many sides. Labor, Literature, Law, Philosophy, and their fate amid machines and science, are thoughtfully discussed.
There is a notable theme common to all these essays, all the more striking because it was evidently not foreseen or consciously introduced: nearly every writer has recorded facts or principles which are additional illustrations for Emerson’s great essay on Compensation. Thus Bertrand Russell tells us that, ‘ while man collectively has been freed from bondage to the nonhuman world, men individually are held in bondage to their fellow men more completely than in the prescientific age.’ The authors of the chapter on Labor supplement this when they say that ’the new atmosphere of personal obligation results, paradoxically, in the enlargement of individual faculty - law has been the mother of freedom.’ Havelock Ellis, describing the loosening of the ties of family life, nevertheless adds that ‘the younger generation cultivates ideals of self-discipline and self-control.’
Side by side with these more ideal compensations are others quite palpable and concrete. Thus, the fall of the death rate in nearly all Western countries is everywhere shadowed by a falling birth rate. And, while medical science has banished or diminished many evils, the net result is hardly changed: ‘To-day, we are dying of heart disease and apoplexy and nephritis and cancer and pneumonia.’ But there are compensations of a happier kind. The machine age has increased, it is true, the roll of millionaires; the millionaires in their turn have multiplied universities and researches of humane intent. Again, while our many legislatures are grinding out new laws by the hundred every session, while lawyers are elaborating new subtleties and evasions, the practical men are setting aside this whole legal machinery, and turning more and more to arbitration. So we are reminded that the many afflictions imposed upon the workers in the early decades of the industrial age have engendered, on the one hand, protective factory acts, and, on the other, combinations among the workers to defend their own interests. Tradeunions in their turn have led many far-sighted employers to introduce physical and social ameliorations in the daily life of their workers.
The principle of compensation touches contemporary writing also. Carl van Doren, in a closely thought essay, propounds the paradox that the machine age ‘has drawn author and audience closer together; it has driven author and audience farther apart.’ And finally we have, from George A. Dorsey, an ironic climax: ‘The epoch-making achievement of genetics during the last quarter of a century is the complete, comprehensive, and general demonstration that heredity does not mean that like produces like.'
Thus fortified by these able writers, let us consider whether the great law of compensation may not be at work in the warp and woof of this age of science and machines. To begin with, the view advanced by the editor, that the advance of machines has led to a decline in agriculture, appears open to question. Is it not true that agriculture has largely profited both by science and by machines, so that the kindly fruits of the earth are gathered to-day in a profusion never known before? Is it not equally open to question that machine products are either cheap or shoddy? The selection of materials is better than ever before, as is much of the design and workmanship. The point really open to criticism is the monotony of the result. Then, to go deeper, may there not be at least a promise of large compensation inherent in this age of science? After all, science means a tremendous awakening of consciousness, even though it be a one-sided awakening. But does it not suggest the possibility, now that old moulds of thought are shattered, of widening and deepening consciousness in other ways? Of giving to our consciousness a wider and deeper sense of mystery and beauty, of finer reverence and joy? If consciousness can be awakened, our destiny is in our own hands; everything depends on the quality of consciousness to which our hearts sincerely turn.
CHARLES JOHNSTON