VII The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age

subject. Even so, his study of it was incomplete, and he was ultimately able to write only one volume of his proposed book, Capital. This is far from being all that there is to the matter. The reality of man is so complex, such a mixture of opposites that, in the words of a philosopher, the only definite thing we can say about it in the light of present knowledge is that it is impossible to hold an indisputable and consistent opinion on man. It would follow that only those with insufficient knowledge could feel confident about entertaining certain convictions about man, which the writer has dismissed as ‘illusive confidence’. (p. 231) With the increase in knowledge, such contradiction and disparate questions appear before one that it becomes impossible to strike a balance or find any compatibility between them, far less reach any final conclusion about them. For confirmation of this, we need only see how the opinions of specialists in various fields differ quite drastically from one another. For instance, Watson and the Behaviorists proclaim that education and environment are capable of giving human beings any desired form. To their way of thinking, education would be all, and heredity of negligible importance. Geneticists, on the contrary, hold that heredity pursues man like the furies of antiquity and that the salvation of the human race lies, not in education, but in eugenics. This being so, it is hardly to be supposed that such men exist as will adequately cover a broad spectrum of the human science without becoming a prey to the same disparities and dislocation as have plagued the various specialists. 3. The writer has ignored the fact that man is a creature with a will. This places a wide and insurmountable gulf between him and all material objects. Of material things, we are confident of knowing the truth, because we are sure that with all matter of a similar kind, identical results will be ensured in every similar experiment (e.g. water will always boil at 100°C at standard atmospheric pressure). But man is a different matter altogether. Any human being, provided he has the will, can change himself at any point in time. In the words of Dr. Carrel: