Many Of Us Who Walk

I Once Saw, On A Flower Pot In My Own Living Room, The Efforts Of A Field Mouse To Build A Remembered Field. I Have Lived To See This Episode Repeated In A Thousand Guises, And Since I Have Spent A Large Portion Of My Life In The Shade Of A Nonexistent Tree I Think I Am Entitled To Speak For The Field Mouse.

After Chiding The Theologian For His Reliance On Myth And Miracle, Science Found Itself In The Unenviable Position Of Having To Create Mythology Of Its Own: Namely, The Assumption That What, After Long Effort, Could Not Be Proved To Take Place Today Had, In Truth, Taken Place In The Primeval Past.

If It Should Turn Out That We Have Mishandled Our Own Lives As Several Civilizations Before Us Have Done, It Seems A Pity That We Should Involve The Violet And The Tree Frog In Our Departure.

It Is A Commonplace Of All Religious Thought, Even The Most Primitive, That The Man Seeking Visions And Insight Must Go Apart From His Fellows And Love For A Time In The Wilderness.

Perhaps A Creature Of So Much Ingenuity And Deep Memory Is Almost Bound To Grow Alienated From His World, His Fellows, And The Objects Around Him. He Suffers From A Nostalgia For Which There Is No Remedy Upon Earth Except As It Is To Be Found In The Enlightenment Of The Spirit--some Ability To Have A Perceptive Rather Than An Exploitive Relationship With His Fellow Creatures.