Do you have magic in
you? You bet. Because the minimum of genetic material -- the
amount necessary to give us all the messages about where our
hundred million rods and cones go and about the whole works,
conscious mind and unconscious -- would fit in a sphere a sixth
of an inch in diameter. That sums up the minimum genetic material
needed to produce the hundred billion people who have ever lived.
That magic, that miracle of life, has been passed on for three
and a half billion years. In that time millions of species went
by the wayside, but we didn't. From when it began three and a
half billion years ago to everyone here: no mistakes, no failure.
So a little tiny part of each of us is three and a half billion
years old, and everything that's alive is related. How did this
miracle happen? What shaped it? What informed it? It wasn't civilization,
because there wasn't any.
David
R. Brower
