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

KORZYBSKI'S CONCEPT OF MAN 437
gods-that is what they say-and they must surely have
known their own ancestors. How can we doubt the word
of the children of the gods? Although they give uo
probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare that they
are speaking of what took place in their own family, we
must conform to custom and believe them." 1 But this
gentle irony,-the way of the Greek philosopher,-is not
the way of the Polish engineer. The latter is not indeed
without a blithesome sense of humor but in this matter
he is tremendously in earnest, and he bluntly affirms,
boldly and confidently, that the mythological conception
of man is both false and vicious. As to its validity or
invalidity, it involves, he says, the same kind of logical
blunder as the zoological conception-it involves, that is,
a fatal confusion of types, or mixing of dimensions. To
say that man is a being so inscrutably constituted that he
must be regarded as partly natural (partly animal) and
partly supernatural (partly divine) is logically like saying
that a geometrical solid is a thing so wonderful that it
must certainly be a surface miraculously touched by some
mysterious influence from outside the universe of space.
Among the life-classes of the world, our humankind is
the time-binding class; and Korzybski stresses again and
again the importance of recognizing that time-binding
energy and all the phenomena thereof are perfectly
natural-that Newton, for example, or Confucius, was
as thoroughly natural as an eagle or an oak.
What does he mean by "natural"? He has not told
us,-at all events, not explicitly,-and that omission is
doubtless a defect which ought to be remedied in a future
edition of the book.
You are aware that the terms "nature" and "natural"
1Jowett's translation.