NCEIV45 0-0815

Question 1

Lesson 45

Answer 1

Lesson 45 Of men and galaxies

Question 2

In man’s early

Answer 2

In man’s early days.

Question 3

competition wit

Answer 3

competition with other creatures must have been critical.

Question 4

But this phase

Answer 4

But this phase of our development is now finished.

Question 5

Indeed, we lack

Answer 5

Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions.

Question 6

I am sure that,

Answer 6

I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone.

Question 7

The last creatu

Answer 7

The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito.

Question 8

But even the mo

Answer 8

But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.

Question 9

Competition bet

Answer 9

Competition between ourselves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.

Question 10

But the competi

Answer 10

But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology.

Question 11

It is not a sim

Answer 11

It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical.

Question 12

Our environment

Answer 12

Our environment is chiefly conditioned by the things we believe.

Question 13

Morocco and Cal

Answer 13

Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources.

Question 14

Yet their prese

Answer 14

Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize.

Question 15

The most import

Answer 15

The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.

Question 16

It is well know

Answer 16

It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas.

Question 17

Ideas are dange

Answer 17

Ideas are dangerous.

Question 18

The Holy Office

Answer 18

The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by.

Question 19

Indeed, the con

Answer 19

Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive.

Question 20

It is only some

Answer 20

It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts.

Question 21

I do not doubt

Answer 21

I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us.

Question 22

I would like to

Answer 22

I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so.

Question 23

Perhaps it will

Answer 23

Perhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb.

Question 24

Of making the e

Answer 24

Of making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed.

Question 25

Twenty or thirt

Answer 25

Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history.

Question 26

It is a strange

Answer 26

It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it.

Question 27

I have often tr

Answer 27

I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.