"The average college graduate doesn't even know where he is in relation to other objects. Couldn't point to the ecliptic. Or explain the changing seasons. Couldn't point toward the sun, at night. Friends of mine, well-known writers, belong to a society that believes the earth is flat. There's another buddyship of boobs who think the earth is hollow and we live inside. Till the government began financing research for war, America spent twice as much on astrology as on scientific investigation. The folks would rather, by twice, be fooled than find out the truth." "We've made a lot of progress." "Individuals have learned a lot. The people ignore it. They are interested in the applications of science--appalled by the implications. Our civilization is just one more swarm of low cheats. It won't last because cheats can't. Only inertia sustains the current shape of it, and that momentum is encountering more friction every day. A republic of crooked dumbbells can't safely use the instruments of clever men. People not only don't know how to behave, they don't even know they are ignorant. Yet in the main, people are thoroughly satisfied with themselves. In view of sure catastrophes that loom on every margin toward which they hurry--the very self-satisfaction of people is the statistical guarantor of their doom. Hence that crack about pride going before a fall." "I think people behave rather well, on the whole." "Sure. They'll even be decent about doomsday. Blame somebody else as they perish, like flies, but perish heroically. A pity." "You can't depress me!" I laughed. "Bear in mind that you brought up that word 'depress.' I'm not depressed. I've had to learn how to get along in the certainty that all I was taught to live for is either rubbish or a dream of a future that lies ages beyond the public expectation. People don't know--won't know--can't know, in their present frame of mind. Take your little problem, for example." Her face changed. Interest replaced antagonism. "So all right. Take my problem. Kick that around awhile!" "You believe in evolution?" "A person can still believe in evolution--and in God!" "Certainly. Something exists in men which they've given the name of all their gods. That's fact. And evolution is a fact, too--a simple reality. A minority of the educated people in our land have accepted the fact that man's body evolved from the bodies of other animals. A still smaller per cent realize that man's mind--personality--spirit--also must have evolved from animals and the animal equivalent: instinct. The question is, How? Most of such people believe that it is the supreme function of the conscious human mind to repress instinct. That's their answer." "But not yours!"