Article November 3, 1945 Issue

And What Is Man?

FLORENCE HOOD JOHNSON

Perhaps no topic has held greater fascination for the scholarly or the imaginative than that of the origin and ultimate of man. Anthropology, ontology, physiology, and many other branches of learning have been predicated upon the search for the truth of man's being. Whence did he come? Whither does he tend? And, above all, what will be his ultimate development?

According to an interesting account in The Christian Science Monitor of the report rendered to the Smithsonian Institute by the British natural scientist, Dr. James Ritchie, natural scientists "cannot regard mankind, the crowning glory of the present, to be more than a stage in life's progress and a milestone upon the path of evolution toward a great future." The reporter states that Dr. Ritchie "foresees a superman as different from you and me as we are from the dinosaur."

To the devout Christian, familiar with the Bible and with the words of him who trod the shores of Galilee nineteen centuries ago, all this search for the origin, future development, and ultimate of man seems anomalous.

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