use tools involves using reason, instead of sticking to instinct.
Now, sticking to instinct has its disadvantages, but so has using
reason. Whichever faculty you use, the other atrophies, and partly
deserts you. We are trying to use both. But we still don't know
which has the more value.

A sudden vision comes to me of one of the first far-away ape-men who
tried to use reason instead of instinct as a guide for his conduct.
I imagine him, perched in his tree, torn between those two voices,
wailing loudly at night by a river, in his puzzled distress.

My poor far-off brother!



VIII


We have been considering which species was on the whole most finely
equipped to be rulers, and thereafter achieve a high civilization;
but that wasn't the problem. The real problem was which would /do/
it:--a different matter.

To do it there was need of a species that had at least these two
qualities: some quenchless desire, to urge them on and on; and also
adaptability of a thousand kinds to their environment.

The rhinoceros cares little for adaptability. He slogs through the
world. But we! we are experts. Adaptability is what we depend on.
We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the