EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



speaking individual experience. It is rather the experi- 

 ence of many other members of the species, existing 

 now and extending back over many generations. One 

 might say that much of the apparent intelligence of 

 man is not his own individual intelligence, but is a 

 manifestation of the intelligence of the developing so- 

 cietal organism. This realization does in no way imply 

 that the minds of individual human beings are not 

 repositories of this societal knowledge. Nor does it deny 

 the very real contributions made by individual human 

 beings to the growing record of human achievement. 

 However, it is well to keep in mind that all such in- 

 dividuals made their contributions largely because they 

 functioned within the total stream of accumulated 

 human experience of their time. No individual genius, 

 no matter how great, could possibly have designed a 

 functioning television receiver either in the year 1000, 

 nor in the year 1800 for that matter. The societal 

 knowledge then available simply did not suffice. While 

 it is of course true that the total knowledge of society 

 is carried forward by individual contributions, it must 

 nevertheless be recognized that compared to the total 

 volume of human knowledge existing at any one pe- 

 riod, the quantitative effect of even a greatly con- 

 tributing individual must of necessity be small. While 

 there is no doubt that our genius of 100 years ago could 

 not have designed a functioning television set, his suc- 

 cessfully constructing one, is even further out of the 



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