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The Uncompleted Man Loren Eiseley Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröffentli- chungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. The Uncompleted Man Loren Eiseley "The Uncompleted Man," in: B. Landis and E. S. Tauber (Eds.), In the Name of Life. Essays in Honor of Erich Fromm, New York (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) 1971, pp. 143-149. Dr. Loren Eiseley is Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Curator of Early Man at the University Museum. He is the author of The Immense Journey, The Firmament of Time, Darwin's Century, and The Unexpected Universe. The nature into which Shakespeare's Macbeth Who, we may now inquire, are these strange dabbles so unsuccessfully with the aid of witch- beings who waylaid Macbeth, and why do I, craft, in the famous scene on the heath, is unfor- who have spent a lifetime in the domain of sci- gettable in literature. We watch in horrified fas- ence, make the audacious claim that this old cination the malevolent change in the character murderous tale of the scientific twilight extends of Macbeth as he gains a dubious insight into the its shadow across the doorway of our modern unfolding future—a future which we know to laboratories? [144] These bearded, sexless crea- be self-created. This scene, fearsome enough at tures who possess the faculty of vanishing into all times, is today almost unbearable to the dis- air or who reappear in some ultimate flame- cerning observer. Its power lies in its symbolic wreathed landscape only to mock our folly, are delineation of the relationship of Macbeth's an exteriorized portion of ourselves. They are midnight world to the realm of modern sci- projections from our own psyche, smoking ence—a relationship grasped by few. wisps of mental vapor that proclaim our sub- The good general, Banquo, who, unlike conscious intentions and bolster them with Del- Macbeth, is wary of such glimpses into the fu- phic utterances— half-truths which we con- ture as the witches have allowed the two com- sciously accept, and which then take power over panions, seeks to restrain his impetuous com- us. Under the spell of such oracles we create, rade. " 'Tis strange," Banquo says, not a necessary or real future, but a counterfeit drawn from within ourselves, which we then And oftentimes, to win us to our harm superimpose, through purely human power, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, upon reality. Indeed one could say that these Win us with honest trifles, to betray's phantoms create a world which is at the same In deepest consequence. time spurious and genuine, so complex is our human destiny. Macbeth who, in contrast to Banquo, has im- Every age has its style in these necromantic mediately seized upon the self-imposed reality projections. The corpse-lifting divinations of the induced by the witches' prophecies, stumbles out Elizabethan sorcerers have given way, in our of their toils at the last, only to protest in his dy- time, to other and, at first sight, more scientific ing hour: interpretations of the future. Today we know more about man, where he has come from, and And be these juggling fiends no more be- what we may expect of him—or so we think. liev'd ... But there is one thing, in my belief, which iden- That keep the word of promise to our ear tifies Macbeth's "juggling fiends" in any age, And break it to our hope! whether these uncanny phantoms appear as page 1 of 4 Eiseley, L., 1971 The Uncompleted Man Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröffentli- chungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. witches, star readers, or today's technologists. their usual habits. "Their real nature," he con- This quality is their claim to omniscience—an tended, "is what they would discover themselves ominiscience only half-stated on the basis of the to be if they possessed self-knowledge, or as the past or specious present, and always lacking in Indian scripture has it, if they became what they genuine knowledge of the future. The leading are." I should like to approach this mystery of characteristic of the future they present is its the self, which so intrigued the great philoso- fixed, static, inflexible quality. pher, from a mundane path strewn with the Such a future is fated beyond human will to sticks and stones through which the archaeolo- change, just as Macbeth's demons, by prophecy, gist must pick his way. worked in him a transformation of character which then created inevitable tragedy. Until the appearance of the witches on the heath gave it Contemplating the Fish shape, that tragedy existed only as a latent pos- sibility in Macbeth's subconscious. Similarly, in Let me illustrate what I mean by a very heavy this age, one could quote those who seek con- and peculiar stone which I keep upon my desk. trol of man's destiny by the evocation of his It has been split across; carbon black, imprinted past. Their wizardry is deceptive because their in the gray shale, is the outline of a fish. The spells are woven out of a genuine portion of re- chemicals that composed the fish—most of them ality—which, however, has taken on this always at least—are still there in the stone. They are, in identifiable quality of fixity in an unfixed uni- a sense, imperishable. They may come and go, verse. The ape is always in our hearts, we are pass in and out of living things, trickle away in made to say, although each time a child is born the long erosion of time. They are inanimate, something totally and genetically unique enters yet at one time they constituted a living crea- the universe, just as it did long ago when the ture. great ethical leaders—Christ, the Buddha, Con- Often at my desk, now, I sit contemplating fucius—spoke to their followers. the fish. It does not have to be a fish. It could be Man escapes definition even as the modern the long-horned Alaskan bison on my wall. For phantoms in militarist garb proclaim—as I have the point is, you see, that the fish is extinct and heard them do—that man will fight from one gone, just as those great heavy-headed beasts side of the solar system to the other, and be- are gone, just as our massive-faced and sham- yond. The danger, of course, is truly there, but it bling forebears of the Ice Age have vanished. is a danger which, while it lies partially in what The chemicals still about us here took a shape man is, lies much closer to what he chooses to that will never be seen again so long as grass believe about himself. Man's whole [145] history grows or the sun shines. Just once out of all time is one of transcendence and of self-examination, there was a pattern that we call Bison regius, a which have led him to angelic heights of sacrifice fish-like amphibian called Ichthyostega, and, at as well as into the bleakest regions of despair. this present moment, a primate who knows, or The future is not truly fixed but the world arena thinks he knows, the entire score. In the past is smoking with the caldrons of those who there has been armor; there have been bellow- would create tomorrow by evoking, rather than ings out of throats like iron furnaces; there have exorcising, the stalking ghosts of the past. been phantom lights in the dark forest, and Even this past, however, has been far toothed reptiles winging through the air. It has deeper and more pregnant with novelty than all been carbon and its compounds, the black the short-time realist can envisage. As an evolu- stain running perpetually across the stone. [146] tionist I never cease to be astounded by the But though the elements are known, noth- past. It is replete with more features than one ing in all those shapes is now returnable. No liv- world can realize. Perhaps it was this that led ing chemist can shape a dinosaur, no living hand the philosopher Santayana to speak of men's can start the dreaming tentacular extensions that true natures as not adequately manifested in characterize the life of the simplest ameboid cell. their condition at any given moment, or even in Finally, as the greatest mystery of all, I who page 2 of 4 Eiseley, L., 1971 The Uncompleted Man Propriety of the Erich Fromm Document Center. For personal use only. Citation or publication of material prohibited without express written permission of the copyright holder. Eigentum des Erich Fromm Dokumentationszentrums. Nutzung nur für persönliche Zwecke. Veröffentli- chungen – auch von Teilen – bedürfen der schriftlichen Erlaubnis des Rechteinhabers. write these words on paper, cannot establish my similar gloom enwraps the individual life of each own reality. I am, by any reasonable and con- of us. There are moments in my bed at mid- sidered logic, dead. This may be a matter of night, or watching the [147] play of moonlight concern to you reading these words; but if it is on the ceiling, when this ghostliness of myself any consolation, I can assure you that you are as comes home to me with appalling force, when I dead as I.
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