This volume contains the views of fourteen scientists and philosophers on the ‘irreducible foundations’ of human nature and the ‘constraints or limits’ within which it develops and operates. There is valuable information on recent research in a number of disciplines including artificial intelligence research; the Jungian viewpoint is not voiced. Only contributions of special interest to readers of this Journal can here ben considered.

According to Rousseau, to whom pace Alan Ryan, a political scientist, modern thinking is still indebted, human nature contains the ‘seeds of total transformation’, but civilization is a condition in which we lose touch with ourselves. We put on masks, playing social roles, and in the end there may be no real self behind the masks we wear or, as we would say, man is in danger of losing his soul behind his persona. According to this