Huxley Delivers Lecture on 'Man'

"With a kind of empirical intuition," the thinkers of the ancient world anticipated many of the most modern discoveries in psychology, Aldous Huxley observed tonight. In the first of his seven scheduled lectures on "What a Piece of Work Is a Man," the novelist discussed "Ancient Views of Human Nature" before an estimated 1,500 people at M.I.T.'s Kresge Auditorium.

The Homeric view of man, Huxley stated, attributed both evil and heroism to "possession" by supernatural forces. When a man erred or when he accomplished some feat of great valor, the ancient Greeks believed that he was visited by spirits from the gods, who inspired him to act as he did.

The idea of "possession" persisted in Western thought down to the 19th century, Huxley noted. At that time it was replaced by the concept of a "dynamic subconscious," which motivated an individual from within. But he went on to point out that, in subjective terms, such moments of inspiration actually seem to be visitations from outside.

Also valid, Huxley declared, was the Homeric view of man as essentially multiple rather than unitary.

In addition, Huxley commented, the Old Testament's fusion of the ideas of the mind and the body was intuitively correct. "They knew the meaning of the kidneys. In fact, modern psychology has discovered that viscera plays a very important part in our behavior."