argued in these
times that the establishment of such a science--the science of human
welfare--is an undertaking of immeasurable importance. No one can fail to
see that its importance is supreme.

It is evident that, if such a science is to be established it must be
founded on ascertained facts--it must accord with what is _characteristic_
of Man--it must be based upon a just conception of what Man is--upon a right
understanding of Man's place in the scheme of Nature.

No one need be told how indispensable it is to have true ideas--just
concepts--correct notions--of the things with which we humans have to deal;
everyone knows for example, that to mistake solids for surfaces or lines
would wreck the science and art of geometry; anyone knows that to confuse
fractions with whole numbers would wreck the science and art of
arithmetic; everyone knows that to mistake vice for virtue would destroy
the foundation of ethics; everyone knows that to mistake a desert mirage
for a lake of fresh water does but lure the fainting traveler to dire
disappointment or death. Now, it is perfectly clear that of all the things
with which human beings have to deal, the most important by far is Man
himself--humankind--men, women and children. It follows that for us human
beings nothing else can be quite so important as a clear, true, just,
scientific concept of Man--a right understanding of what we as human beings
really are. For it requires no great wisdom, it needs only a little
reflection, to see that, if we humans radically misconceive the nature of
man--if we regard man as being something which he is not, whether it be
something higher than man or lower--we thereby commit an error so
fundamental and far reaching as to produce every manner of confusion and
disaster in individual life, in community life and in the life of the
race.

The question we have, therefore, to consider first of all is
fundamentally: What is Man? What is a man? What is a human being? What is
the defining or characteristic mark of humanity? To this question two
answers and only two have been given in the course of the ages, and they
are both of them current to-day. One of the answers is biological--man is
an animal, a certain kind of animal; the other answer is a mixture partly
biological and partly mythological or partly biological and partly
philosophical--man is a combination or _union_ of animal with something
supernatural. An important part of my task will be to s