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An ancient Talmudic legend tells of the heathen who came before a sage and asked him to teach him Torah in the brief span of time that he could balance himself on one foot. The sage dismissed the heathen with contempt at the suggestion that the wisdom of Torah could be taught in so brief a span of time. Eventually the heathen came to the gentle Hillel and repeated his request. Hillel obliged and said simply: “Do not unto others what you do not wish others to do unto you. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go learn.” And thus it has come to be spoken among Jews that when one seeks to know much in a scandalously brief time he is answered with “All Torah on one foot.” If one were compelled to divine the heart of the contemporary scene on one foot, he might say, “Man is infinitely modifiable. He had best modify his present choices in his beliefs and in his ways of living if he would survive. Now change.”
Fifty-three scholars, most of them drawn from the biological and natural sciences, appear in these pages, brought together under the skilled editorship of Paul B. Weisz, Professor of Biology at Brown University. The contributors’ fields range from anthropology to zoology. For those of us whose readings over the years since our undergraduate days have been mainly concerned with the soft sciences of psychology, sociology, and politics, this work is important reading. In the opening chapter, “The Source of Mankind,” Norman J. Berrill, an embryologist, proceeds immediately to lay the groundwork for a vivid understanding of our creature inheritance of survival and endurance mechanisms. An introductory line from Ortega establishes the theme, not only of this opening chapter, but of the entire work. “Man has no nature. What he has is … history.” And so we are instantly brought to the view that man is a product of experience and not of brute nature.
In chapter after chapter racial characteristics are presented endlessly, tirelessly; characteristics which were lo