Higher Usefulness of Science 63 



does it appear that the conceptions of man engendered 

 by both these hypotheses are hardly better than carica- 

 tures of what the best archeological, anthropological, 

 historical and psychological investigations prove man 

 actually to be. If ever a doctrine of man based on the 

 facts, all of them, of actual man rather than on hy- 

 potheses of the origin of man, is clearly formulated, it 

 will be something very different from the doctrines 

 either of theology or of science, as science has been up 

 to this time. 



But now comes the important question: Would an 

 adequate doctrine of man ignore wholly the question 

 of his origin? Would it refuse to make any pro- 

 nouncement on this question? By no means. A very 

 definite pronouncement on man's origin would be one 

 of the emphatic and most potent elements of such a 

 doctrine. And this brings us back to the statements 

 about determining what nature is because man is a 

 part of it, and about the superiority of a natural whole 

 over any of its parts being generative as well as quan- 

 titative. 



The generative processes of nature seem to be every- 

 where and always such as to enable us to be far more 

 certain that a particular generator, taken as a whole, 

 produced its particular offspring than we can be as to 

 exactly what part each constituent of the generator 

 takes in the productive process, and as to exactly how 

 the process goes on. This truth is so vital and failure 

 to grasp it firmly has led to so much confused thinking 



