We would do better to remember Loren Eisely's warning about "the wounded outcry of the
human ego as . . . it learns that the world made supposedly for
his enjoyment has existed for untold eons entirely indifferent
to its coming."
'The need is not for
more brains", Eiseley said, "the need is now for a
gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against
the ice, the tiger, and the bear. The hand that hefted the axe,
out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine
gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive,
but the roots go very deep."
Elsewhere Eiseley spoke
of the machine gun's monstrous successor. "He holds the
heat of suns within his hands and threatens with it both the
lives and happiness of his unborn descendants . . . caught in
a physiological trap and faced with the problem of escaping from
his own ingenuity."
David R. Brower
