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

KORZYBSKI'S CONCEPT OF MAN 435
that the two classes, thus distinct by an infinite difference
of kind of endowment, be not intermixed in thought and
discourse; it is a fact that use of the same term "animal"
to denote the members of both classes,-men and beasts
alike,-constantly, subtly, powerfully tends to produce
both intellectual and moral obfuscation; it is, therefore,
a fact that the author's condemnation of the zoological
conception as false to fact is amply justified on the best
of grounds.
It is indeed true that humans have certain animal
organs, animal functions, and animal propensities, but to
say that, therefore, humans are animals is precisely the
same kind of logical blunder as we should commit if we
said that animals or humans are plants because they have
certain organs, functions and properties in common with
plants; and the blunder is of a kind that is fundamentaI
-it is the kind which mathematicians call the confusion
of types or of classes and which Korzybski calls the
"mixing of dimensions." To say that humans are animals
because they have certain animal propensities is logically
on a par with saying that geometric solids are surfaces
because they have certain surface properties or with saying that fractions are whole numbers because they have
certain properties that whole numbers have.
Why is it that people are shocked on encountering for
the first time a categorical denial of their belief that man
is a species of animal? Do they feel that their proper
dignity as human beings is thus assailed? Is it because
the animal basis of their space-binding ethics is being thus
attacked? Is it that a well-reasoned scientific conviction
is suddenly contradicted? I do not think the shock is
due to any of these things. It is, I believe, due simply
to the fact that an old unquestioned, uncriticized creed