Spencer Heath Archive

Item 538

Reviewing for Spencer MacCallum, N.J. Berrill, Man’s Emerging Mind

August 1958

Here is one book among many, outstanding in its anthro­pological field. The author has a gorgeous scientific and academic background (member of the Royal Society and honored in many fields), but what is far more, is the far ranging, universal outlook of his mind. With sound scientific authority he carries the reader through the aeons of time from amoeba to modern man and in imagination past present dangers towards the arch-angelic stature he may possibly attain.

His manner of writing is intimate and engaging, and with an almost sportive finesse, out of his perspective of the already known, he throws many lights and beams upon the age-old riddle of the nature and the destiny of man. One can only wish that the author, besides his learning, could have presented more material out of his own creative consciousness than he has. But profoundly original or not, it is an arresting and, on the whole, a magnificent and inspiring book.

N.J. Berrill’s book, Man’s Emerging Mind, is a volume to be remembered and to be referred to again and again. It is in effect a culmination /?/ of just about every­thing that the sciences have learned about the origin and development of mankind over the millions of years. It is cast in language at once intimate and profound that gives the reader an almost cosmic perspective of the origin, development and the possible destiny of mankind.