The Transformations of Man by Lewis Mumford (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 391 playfully. But in war as well as in the midst of peace he shall look to his leader and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should be under this leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals ... only if he has been told to do so. . . . In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently , and, in fact, should become utterly incapable of such independent action." (Laws 94~A ff., cf. 739C ff.) University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. ANTON-HERMANN CHROUST The Transformations of Man. By LEWIS MuMFORD. Volume Seven of World Perspectives, planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956. Pp. 249. $3.50. The series World Perspectives, of which this is one volume, is intended to gain insight into the meaning of man, who, in the words of Ruth Nanda Anshen, " not only is determined by history but who also determines history," " to help quicken the ' unshaken heart of well-rounded truth' and interpret the significant elements of the World Age now taking shape out of the core of that undimmed continuity of the creative process which restores man to mankind while deepening and enhancing his communion with the universe." (xii, xviii) After noting that " almost every people has fashioned a myth about its origin, nature and destiny," Lewis Mumford purposes "to fashion a myth that will be more in keeping with the science of our time, yet more ready to venture into factual quicksand than the scientist, if true to his prudent code, can let himself be." (p. 1) He states that we no longer ask for some dramatic moment of creation that calls for an external and all-powerful creator, that man seems to have descended from a group of apelike primates that lived in trees, and that the undifferentiated material for symbols and fabrications which constitute thought rises out of man's " not waiting for any external challenge, but prompted by his own maturation." (p. 3) After describing what he considers the evolution of the human from the animal, Mumford warns that sophisticated modern man is in danger of succumbing to a degradation that primitive man must have learned, after many lapses, to guard against: "the threat of losing his own humanity by giving precedence to his animal self and his nonhuman characteristics over the social ego and the ideal superego that have transmuted this original inheritance." (p. 22) To implement the myth calculated to guard against modern man's loss of humanity, the author traces the evolution of humanity in terms of the 392 BOOK REVIEWS "archaic man," "civilized man," " axial man," "Old World man," and "New World man," which presently exists; then he sketches the nature of " post-historic man " and the prospects of a world culture. Archaic man took form in the neolithic village; his communal life is earthbound, with the family the social nucleus. Custom and law, education and work, government and morality are all part of a carefully ordered collective ritual that punctuates not merely man's works and days, but the stages of life; the very restrictions of this environment increased man's sense of adequacy. The archaic tradition, Mumford avers, has maintained its hold, with varying degrees of tenacity, in every part of the world right down to our own time, "least perhaps in North America, and most, it seems likely, in India and China." (p. 39) At a late moment in man's emergence, "an audacious minority, in a handful of specially situated communities, made a daring thrust in a new direction: the experiment of civilization." (p. 4~) Again stating" we must fashion a myth to make the whole process a little more intelligible," (ibid.) the author shows how civilization brought a new kind of unity based on division and specialization, a new uniformity imposed by deliberate repression , a new agreement that sprang out of a partial reconciliation of opposites. " For civilization brought about the equation of human life with property and power; indeed property and power became more dear than life "; (p. 46) the other transformation of...