Science and Sentimentalism

When Milton asked, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” he intended the qualifying clause to place uppermost the relationship of man to God. Now, three centuries later, the question is generally amended to read, “What is man in terms of the scientifically analyzable factors that have combined to produce him?” This is essentially the line of inquiry of In Seach of Man (Hawthorn, $5.95), by Andre Missenard, engineer, teacher and former collaborator of the late Dr. Alexis Carrel.

The work is not, however, an essay in simple materialism. Professor Missenard is concerned primarily to attack Descartes’ notion of the independence of the body and the mind, which he regards as having done vast harm. But his concept of science is very broad, and he aims at “a view of man in the ensemble which will restore to him his integrality, and which will take cognizance of the interaction of his various aspects: the moral on the physical, the physical on the moral, and nutrition on the body and soul.”

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Richard M. Weaver

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When Milton asked, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” he intended the qualifying clause to place uppermost the relationship of man to God. Now, three centuries later, the question is generally amended to read, “What is man in terms of the scientifically analyzable factors that have combined to produce him?” This is essentially the line of inquiry of In Seach of Man (Hawthorn, $5.95), by Andre Missenard, engineer, teacher and former collaborator of the late Dr. Alexis Carrel.

The work is not, however, an essay in simple materialism. Professor Missenard is concerned primarily to attack Descartes’ notion of the independence of the body and the mind, which he regards as having done vast harm. But his concept of science is very broad, and he aims at “a view of man in the ensemble which will restore to him his integrality, and which will take cognizance of the interaction of his various aspects: the moral on the physical, the physical on the moral, and nutrition on the body and soul.”