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[ti:Of Men and Galaxies]

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[00:01.49]Lesson 45

[00:03.61]Of men and galaxies

[00:12.68]What is the most influential factor in any human society?

[00:19.40]In man's early days, competition with other creatures must have been critical.

[00:25.83]But this phase of our development is now finished.

[00:29.61]Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions.

[00:36.39]I am sure that, without modern weapons,

[00:39.21]I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear,

[00:44.59]and in this I do not think that I stand alone.

[00:48.63]The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito.

[00:52.80]But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.

[00:59.92]Competition between ourselves, person against person,

[01:03.70]community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.

[01:10.86]But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology.

[01:17.37]It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment,

[01:23.88]because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical.

[01:30.07]Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe.