We haven't the habit of candidly facing this danger. We read our
biological history but we don't take it in. We blandly assume we
were always "intended" to rule, and that no other outcome could even
be considered by Nature. This is one of the remnants of ignorance
certain religions have left: but it's odd that men who don't believe
in Easter should still believe this. For the facts are of course
this is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and
infirmity must be paid for in full.


If mankind ever is swept aside as a failure however, what a brilliant
and enterprising failure he at least will have been. I felt this
with a kind of warm suddenness only today, as I finished these
dreamings and drove through the gates of the park. I had been
shutting my modern surroundings out of my thoughts, so completely,
and living as it were in the wild world of ages ago, that when I
let myself come back suddenly to the twentieth century, and stare
at the park and the people, the change was tremendous. All around
me were the well-dressed descendants of primitive animals, whizzing
about in bright motors, past tall, soaring buildings. What gifted,
energetic achievers they suddenly seemed!

I thought of a photograph I had once seen, of a ship being torpedoed.
There it was, the huge, finely made structure, awash in the sea, with
tiny black spots hanging on to its side--crew and passengers. The
great ship, even while sinking, was so mighty, and those atoms so
helpless. Yet, it was those tiny beings that had created that ship.
They had planned it and built it and guided its bulk through the
waves. They had also invented a torpedo that could rend it asunder.