Lecture I

For the subject of these lectures, I have chosen an account of man's development during a particular period of the past, of his situation today, and of the outlook for his future evolution on this Earth-planet. No world-conception which has had any influence upon Western civilization, or its American off-shoot, has been content to deal only with present-day man and to show how the individual fits into the pattern of world-population. The world-conceptions acceptable to Western civilization have always emphasized the place of man in the whole course of human history on Earth. They have always shown the relationship between man of the present and of the past, no matter whether they go back only to a certain point—as the Old Testament does in describing the history of the Earth—or whether they trace man right through the stages of cosmic evolution.