Review of Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization

Abstract

Reviews the book, Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization edited by Charles A. Beard (1928). In the volume, Beard and seventeen able collaborators have attempted as dispassionately as possible to evaluate our modern Western civilization and to understand its drift. The position taken at the outset may be summarized in the following sentence:--"What is called Western or modern civilization by way of contrast with the civilization of the Orient or mediaeval times is at bottom a civilization that rests upon machinery and science as distinguished from one founded on agriculture or handicraft commerce" (p. 14). What kind of civilization is it? What are the gains and losses of the life that it offers as compared with those of other civilizations the earth has known? It is such questions as these that the book, Whither Mankind , seeks tentatively to answer. Since the reviewer has not sufficient skill to comment upon more than one or two of the chapters in the space allotted to him, he can only commend them to the reader with the brief statement that they are suitable for either casual or careful perusal. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that no better effort has hitherto been made to assess and weigh the forces of twentieth century life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)