Ahead of him lay freedom of choice and invention as a new imperative if a revolutionary creature were to meet the unpredictable challenges of a revolutionary way of life. No man can regard the way of war as good. It has simply been our way. No man can evaluate the eternal contest of weapons as anything but the sheerest waste and the sheerest folly. It has been simply our only means of final arbitration.
Any man can suggest reasonable alternatives to the judgement of arms.
But we are not creatures of reason except in our own eyes. And in the shadowed byways of his world so consummately free, this ingenious, normal adolescent human creature has created a way of life in perfect image of his animal needs. We are a transitional species, without doubt. We are a pioneer creature testing the potentialities of the enlarged brain. . . . And if we do not behave too badly, then we shall pass on the power of thought, one day, to a descendant species who may count it a part of their animal endowment.