Unitary Man

THE NEXT DEVELOPMENT IN MAN (322 pp.) -- Lancelot Law Whyte -- Holt ($3.50).

Albert Einstein says that this book is "stimulating, original and full of understanding for the pressing problems of our time." It is.

Professor Einstein does not say that the book is clear, or well-written, or lucid. It is not. The book is the work of a Scottish physicist, Lancelot Whyte, 51, who was chairman and managing director of Power Jets, Ltd. from 1936 to 1941. With Frank Whittle, inventor of gas turbine jet propulsion, he shared in the development of jet propulsion. Whyte is a scientist who believes that science has a social duty to perform.

Dissociated Man. His main interest is "the unification of science, and the relation of a synthesis of scientific knowledge to the present human situation."

It may appear daring, he says, to offer a vision of a constructive social order at "the moment of Europe's greatest agony" (the book was written during the war). "But the more cruel the world, the greater the temptation to escape it in thought, and it is disquieting to consider the intensity of optimism which, failing the proper catharsis of constructive action, may shortly be necessary to deaden the pains that are now scarring the memory of the race.

"When a great ideal has ceased to illuminate the human understanding and has therefore lost its power, man has no choice but to search afresh for some element in the processes of the real world with which he can identify himself."

In constructive periods of history, writes Physicist Whyte, "the dominance of one general tendency ensured the spontaneous cooperation of countless individuals, most of whom were unaware of the broader significance of their actions. They unquestioningly accepted their part in the expansion of empire, the spreading of religion, or the development of science and industry." But with the exhaustion of the European tradition, those who had the deepest sense of it were paralyzed by its decay. "Genius felt itself frustrated, and failed to guide. . . . Europe passed into the hands of those who had deliberately renounced the influence of the old tradition and had thus escaped the paralysis of its decay."

Black & White Confusion. Author Whyte considers the years between 1914 and 1944 another Thirty Years' War. "For thirty years the human mind has suffered confusion, myriads of lives have suffered premature disaster, and the necessities of war still dominate life and thought. Yet this half-century has not been a monotone of evil, but a black and white confusion, bewilderingly paradoxical until beneath its contrasts the underlying transformation is recognized. On the one hand there has been ... a tremendous sense of new opportunities of ... material security, of personal readjustment, of love relieved from fear -- a sense of the possibility of a development as far-reaching as any that already lie in the human past.

"On the other hand there have been the complementary disasters in the subjective and objective worlds, the failure of personal initiative, lacking a principle of integration and intimidated by the knowledge that thought is conditioned by hunger and desire. . . . This is the moment of potential anarchy when the community lacks any explicit principle of order which can be effective under the conditions of the time. This is the night of violent and bestial release, the opportunity of the inhibited perversions which can now ally themselves with technical power. The dominance of the dissociated idealisms is over, and the two remaining active principles, sadistic vitality and technical power, join forces in a brief period of dominance ... [a] short reign of Antichrist."

Unitary Thought. The development that Author Whyte now foresees is that which he calls unitary man. Marx saw man as part of an economic process; Freud saw man as the creature of his sexual drives. The whole man, the complete man, living in harmony with nature, of which he recognizes himself to be a conscious part, freed of the sense of guilt which comes from the lack of balance between Christian idealism and the chaotic contemporary world, equally free of the sadistic drives of the fascist, consciously making himself a part of the life of his community, and visualizing himself according to the norm of human life at this time--such, crudely, is the image of the next development of man that Author Whyte projects with great subtlety and his own kind of eloquence.

The image is necessarily dim. Unitary man, conceiving himself a part of nature, rejoices in it, and gives himself unhesitatingly to life, with no thought of the survival of his own immortal soul. Of Christianity, humanism, and Marxism, he automatically preserves whatever is proper to his nature. When Author Whyte wrote the book he thought that Russia had perhaps gone farthest in the direction of a unitary society. Since that time, he says in the preface, he has concluded differently: "World order implies a unity tolerant of diversity; truth, justice, and the welfare of man depend on individuals with the courage and opportunity to express their varied opinions."

To achieve a unitary view of life, man must pay a price--from one point of view, a terrible price. The rich must give up their illusion that power can be accumulated and preserved, and "the adherents of the Christian religion their assurance of personal survival." The humanists must likewise give up their emphasis on the subjective aspects of personality. He believes that mankind is at the greatest opportunity in its history. "The species can now . . . realize unity without loss of diversity or differentiation." The opportunity Author Whyte likens to that of a man & woman whose love remains in suspense until the first word is spoken.

Ideas in the Air. The arresting nature of Lancelot Whyte's thought, his curious, almost hypnotic use of language, almost as if he regarded words as mathematical symbols, may give readers something of the sense of wonder that came to the first readers of Emerson. Like Emerson, he releases ideas like a man startling a flock of pigeons into the air.

Unlike Emerson, he applies scientific notions to life in a fashion that leaves ordinary readers with something of the feeling that the paper has been plastered on them, instead of on the wall. Yet the mere comparison with Emerson suggests the deepest difficulty that readers may find in Author Whyte's book.

It was not necessary for Emerson to speak of man in harmony with nature: he wrote of nature in terms that made that harmony unmistakable. When readers compare The Next Development in Man with such products of postwar thought as existentialism, the health of Author Whyte's views become clear, despite the arbitrary opinions scattered through it. When they compare it with the great essays of the past, it is likely to seem a heartening reaffirmation of something they wish they had never forgotten.

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