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impression on him, even if at the cost of his own life. Joe, one of the hardest things to believe is the
abysmal depth of human stupidity.
"That is why there is always room at the top, why a man with just a leetle more on the ball can so
easily become governor, millionaire, or college president- and why homo sap is sure to be displaced by
New Man, because there is so much room for improvement and evolution never stops.
"Here and there among ordinary men is a rare individual who really thinks, can and does use logic in
at least one field-he's often as stupid as the rest outside his study or laboratory-but he can think, if he's
not disturbed or sick or frightened. This rare individual is responsible for all the progress made by the
race; the others reluctantly adopt his results. Much as the ordinary man dislikes and distrusts and
persecutes the process of thinking he is forced to accept the results occasionally, because thinking is
efficient compared with his own maunderings. He may still plant his corn in the dark of the Moon but he
will plant better corn developed by better men than he.
"Still rarer is the man who thinks habitually, who applies reason, rather than habit pattern, to aU his
activity. Unless he masques himself, his is a dangerous life; he is regarded as queer, untrustworthy,
subversive of public morals; he is a pink monkey among brown monkeys-a fatal mistake. Unless the pink
monkey can dye himself brown before he is caught.
"The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.
"Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite
hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with
clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact. Such men exist, Joe; they are 'New
Man'-human in all respects, indistinguishable in appearance or under the scalpel from homo sap, yet as
unlike him in action as the Sun is unlike a single candle."
Gilead said, "Are you that sort?"
"You will continue to form your own opinions."
"And you think I may be, too?"
"Could be. I'll have more data in a few days."
Gilead laughed until the tears came. "Kettle Belly, if I'm the future hope of the race, they had better
send in the second team quick. Sure I'm brighter than most of the jerks I run into, but, as you say, the
competition isn't stiff. But I haven't any sublime aspirations. I've got as lecherous an eye as the next man.
I enjoy wasting time over a glass of beer. I just don't feel like a superman."
"Speaking of beer, let's have some." Baldwin got up and obtained two cans of the brew. "Remember
that Mowgli felt like a wolf. Being a New Man does not divorce you from human sympathies and
pleasures. There have been New Men all through history; I doubt if most of them suspected that their
difference entitled them to call themselves a different breed. Then they went ahead and bred with the
daughters of men, diffusing their talents through the racial organism, preventing them from effectuating
until chance brought the genetic factors together again."
"Then I take it that New Man is not a special mutation?"
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"Huh? Who isn't a mutation, Joe? All of us are a collection of millions of mutations. Around the globe
hundreds of mutations have taken place in our human germ plasm while we have been sitting here. No,
homo novis didn't come about because great grandfather stood too close to a cyclotron; homo novis was
not even a separate breed until he became aware of himself, organized, and decided to hang on to what
his genes had handed him. You could mix New Man back into the race today and lose him; he's merely a
variation becoming a species. A million years from now is another matter; I venture to predict that New
Man, of that year and model, won't be able to interbreed with homo sap-no viable offspring."
"You don't expect present man-homo sapiens-to disappear?"
"Not necessarily. The dog adapted to man. Probably more dogs now than in umpteen B.C.-and
better fed."
"And man would be New Man's dog."
"Again not necessarily. Consider the cat." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]