Just as the ignorant and fitful curiosity of some little monkey
is hardly to be compared to the astronomer's magnificent search,
so the craft and cunning we see in our pussies would bear small
relation to the high-minded planning of some ruler of the race
we are imagining.

And yet--craft /is/ self-defeating in the end. Transmute it into
its finest possible form, let it be as subtle and civilized as
you please, as yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets
itself over against the wholeness of things; its role is that of
the part at war with the whole. Milton's Lucifer had the mind of
a fine super-cat.

That craft may defeat itself in the end, however, is not the real
point. That doesn't explain why the lions aren't ruling the planet.
The trouble is, it would defeat itself in the beginning. It would
have too bitterly stressed the struggle for existence. Conflict and
struggle make civilizations virile, but they do not by themselves
make civilizations. Mutual aid and support are needed for that.
There the felines are lacking. They do not co-operate well;
they have small group-devotion. Their lordliness, their strong
self-regard, and their coolness of heart, have somehow thwarted
the chance of their racial progress.



VII


There are many other beasts that one might once have thought