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

442 MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY
expected to act betimes like a beast and to seek justification in a zoological philosophy of human nature.
In view of such considerations it is a great pleasure
to turn to Korzybski's concept of man, for it is not only
a noble conception, as none can fail to perceive, but it is
also, as we have seen, undoubtedly just. Nothing can
be more important. What are its implications? And
what are its bearings? You cannot take them in at a
glance-meditation is essential; but, if you will meditate upon the concept, you will find that the body of its
implications looms larger and larger and that the range
of its bearings grows ever clearer and wider. Indeed
we may say of it what Carlyle said of Wilhelm Meister:
"It significantly tends towards infinity in all directions."
Let us reflect upon it a little. We shall see that human
history, the philosophy thereof, the present status of the
world, the future welfare of mankind, are all of them
involved.
The central concept or thesis is that our human kind
is the time-binding class of life; it is, in other words, that
there is in our world a peculiar kind of energy, timebinding energy, and that man is its organ-its sole instrument or agency. What are its implicates and bearings?
One of them we have already noted. It is that,
though we humans are not a species of animal, we are
natural beings: it is as natural for humans to bind time
as it is natural for fishes to swim, for birds to fly, for
plants to live after the manner of plants. It is as natural
for man to make things achieved the means to greater
achievements as it is natural for animals not to do so.
That fact is fundamental. Another one, also fundamental, is this: time-binding faculty,-the characteristic
of humanity,-is not an effect of civilization but is its