fatal. It made us war with our natural
instincts, and my chief criticism is that it made a whole and rounded view of human
nature impossible. It proceeded also from an inadequate knowledge of biology and
psychology, and of the place of the senses, emotions and, above all, instincts in
our life. Man is made of flesh and spirit both, and it should be philosophy's business
to see that the mind and body live harmoniously together, that there be a
reconciliation between the two.

Ill. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW
The better knowledge of our own bodily functions and mental processes gives us a truer
and broader view of ourselves and takes away from the word "animal" some of its old
bad flavor. The old proverb that "to understand is to forgive" is applicable to our
own bodily and mental processes. It may seem strange, but it is true, that the very
fact that we have a better understanding of our bodily functions makes it impossible
for us to look down upon them with contempt. The important thing is not to say whether
our digestive process is noble or ignoble; the important thing is just to understand
it, and somehow it becomes extremely noble. This is true of every biological function
or process in our body, from perspiration and the elimination of waste to the functions
of the pancreatic juice, the gall, the endocrine glands and the finer emotive and
cogitative processes. One no longer despises the kidney, one merely tries to
understand it; and one no longer looks upon a bad tooth as symbolic of the final decay
of our body and a reminder to attend to the welfare of our soul, but merely goes to
a dentist, has it examined, explained and properly fixed up. Somehow a man coming
out from a dentist's office no longer despises his teeth, but has an increased respect
for them because he is going to gnaw apples and chicken bones with increased delight.
As for the superfine metaphysician who says that the teeth belong to the devil, and
the Neo-Platonists who deny that individual teeth exist, I always get a satirical
delight in seeing a philosopher suffering from a toothache and an optimistic poet
suffering from dyspepsia. Why doesn't he go on with his philosophic disquisitions,
and why does he hold his hand against his cheek, just as you or I or the woman in
the next house would do? And why does optimism seem so unconvincing to a dyspeptic
poet? Why doesn't he sing any more? How ungrateful it is, of him, therefore, to forget
the intestines and sing about the spirit when the intestines behave and give him no
trouble!
Science, if anything, has taught us an increased respect for our body, by deepening
a sense of the wonder and mystery of its workings. In the first place, genetically,
we begin to understand how we came about, and see that, instead of being made out▒▒網▒文▒檔▒下▒載▒與▒在▒線▒閱▒讀▒
of clay, we are sitting on the top of the genealogical tree of the animal kingdom.
That must be a fine sensation, sufficiently satisfying for any man who is not
intoxicated with his own spirit. Not that I believe dinosaurs lived and died millions
of years ago in order that we today might walk erect with our two legs upon this earth.
Without such gratuitous assumptions, biology has not at all destroyed a whit of human
dignity, or cast doubt upon the view that we are probably the most splendid animals
ever evolved on this earth. So that is quite satisfying for any man who wants to insist
on human dignity. In the second place, we are more impressed than ever with the mystery
and beauty of the body. The workings of the internal parts of our body and the wonderful
correlation between them compel in us a sense of the extreme difficulty with which
these correlations are brought about and the extreme simplicity and finality with
which they are nevertheless accomplished. Instead of simplifying these internal
chemical processes by explaining them, science makes them all the more difficult to
explain. These processes are incredibly more difficult than the lay