 That year, in an obituary piece for the socialist physician Ioan Cantacuzino, Popa outlined his own humanist vision of science as a "sacred fire".In his view, material civilization had evolved faster than culture, unwittingly instigating a sort of "pseudo-culture" that opposed progress.He combined Herbert Spencer's take on sociocultural evolution with a measure of genetic determinism, and, against psychological nativism, suggested that all concept of morality was produced by and through evolution; he also held that primitive society, and "semi-civilized" fascism, were regulated by the brainstem, whereas civilization was a realm of the cerebral cortex.