Buck Did Not Read The Newspapers, Or

Life Creeps Slowly Upward.... When Some Forgotten Inventor Of The Older World Smote His Rival Or Enemy With A Branch Of Wood And Found That It Was Good And Thereafter Made A Practice Of Smiting Rivals And Enemies With Branches Of Wood, Then, And On That Day, Artificiality May Be Said To Have Begun. Then, And On That Day, Was Begun A Revolution Destined To Change The History Of Life. Then, And On That Day, Was Laid The Cornerstone Of That Most Tremendous Of Artifices, Civilization!

But Under It All They Were Men, Penetrating The Land Of Desolation And Mockery And Silence, Puny Adventurers Bent On Colossal Adventure, Pitting Themselves Against The Might Of A World As Remote And Alien And Pulseless As The Abysses Of Space.

Deep In The Forest A Call Was Sounding, And As Often As He Heard This Call, Mysteriously Thrilling And Luring, He Felt Compelled To Turn His Back Upon The Fire And The Beaten Earth Around It, And To Plunge Into The Forest, And On And On, He Knew Not Where Or Why; Nor Did He Wonder Where Or Why, The Call Sounding Imperiously, Deep In The Forest.

Of Her Own Experience She Had No Memory Of The Thing Happening; But In Her Instinct, Which Was The Experience Of All Mothers Of Wolves, There Lurked A Memory Of Fathers That Had Eaten Their New-born And Helpless Progeny.

It Is A Simple Matter To See The Obvious, To Do The Expected. The Tendency Of The Individual Life Is To Be Static Rather Than Dynamic, And This Tendency Is Made Into A Propulsion By Civilization, Where The Obvious Only Is Seen, And The Unexpected Rarely Happens. When The Unexpected Does Happen, However, And When It Is Of Sufficiently Grave Import, The Unfit Perish. They Do Not See What Is Not Obvious, Are Unable To Do The Unexpected, Are Incapable Of Adjusting Their Well-grooved Lives To Other And Strange Grooves. In Short, When They Come To The End Of Their Own Groove, They Die.