Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

KORZYBSKT'S CONCEPT OF MAN 425
conception,-of what a bird is. We are speaking of
concepts, and our question, you see, is this: Have we
humans a just Concept of Man? If we have, it is reasonable to suppose that we inherited it, for so important
a thing, had it originated in our time, would have made
itself heard of as a grave discovery. So I say that, if
we have a just concept of man, it must have come down
to us entangled in the mesh of our inherited opinions
and must have been taken in, as such opinions are usually
taken in, from the common air, by a kind of "cerebral
suction."
If we discover that we have never had a just concept
of man, the fact should not greatly astonish us, for the
difficulty is unique; man, you see, is to be both the knower
and the object known; the difficulty is that of a knower
having to objectify itself and having then to form a just
concept of what the object is.
In saying that in the thought of our time the great
question has not been asked, I have now to make one
important exception and, so far as I know, only one.2 I
refer to Count Alfred Korzybski, the Polish engineer.
In his momentous book (The Manhood of Humanity:
The Science and Art of Human Engineering3), he has
both propounded the question and submitted an answer
that is worthy of the serious attention of every serious
student, whatever his field of study. It is the aim of this
lecture to present the answer and to examine it by help
of the Theory of Logical Types, the Theory of Classes,
'Since writing the foregoing I have observed a learned discussion of
the question by Professor Wm. E. Ritter in an article, Science and Organized Civilization, in the Scientific Monthly, Aug., 1917. Professor
Ritter once more defines man as a kind of animal but the distinctive
marks of the kind, as given by him, are so grave as to make one
wonder why he did not altogether drop the "animal" element from the
definition.
'E. P. Dutton & Company.