But Nature has her own code of laws. They are just, these laws, but they are inexorable and there is no court of appeal.
Nature will give unto us and she will give without stint, but in return she demands that we study her precepts and abide by her dictates.
A hundred cows in a meadow meant for only fifty spell disaster-a bit of wisdom with which every farmer is thoroughly familiar. A million people gathered in one spot where there should be only a hundred thousand cause congestion, poverty and unnecessary suffering, a fact which apparently has been overlooked by those who are supposed to guide our destinies.
That, however, is not the most serious of our manifold errors. There is another way in which we offend our generous foster-mother. Man is the only living organism that is hostile to its own kind. Dog does not eat dog-tiger does not eat tiger-yea, even the loathsome hyena lives at peace with the members of his own species. But Man hates Man, Man kills Man and in the world of today the prime concern of every nation is to prepare itself for the coming slaughter of some more of its neighbours.
This open violation of Article I of the Great Code of Creation, which insists upon peace and goodwill among the members of the same species has carried us to a point where soon the human race may be faced with the possibility of complete annihilation. For our enemies are ever on the alert. If Homo sapiens (the all-too-flattering name given to our race by a cynical scientist to denote our intellectual superiority over the rest of the animal world) if Homo Sapiens is unable or un-willing to assert himself as the master of all he surveys, there are thousands of other candidates for the job and it ofttimes seems as if a world dominated by cats or dogs or elephants or some of the more highly organized insects (and how they watch their opportunity!) might offer very decided advantages over a planet top-heavy with battleships and siege-guns.
What is the answer and what is the way out of this hideous and shameful state of affairs?
In a humble way this little book hopes to point to the one and only way out of that lugubrious and disastrous blind-alley into which we have strayed through the clumsy ignorance of our ancestors.
It will take time, it will take hundreds of years of slow and painful education to enable us to find the true road of salvation. But that road leads towards the consciousness that we are all of us fellow-passengers on one and the same planet. Once we have got hold of this absolute verity -once we have realized and grasped the fact that for better or for worse this is our common home-that we have never known another place of abode-that we shall never be able to move from the spot in space upon which we happened to be born-that it therefore behooves us to behave as we would if we found ourselves on board a train or a steamer bound for an unknown destination-we shall have taken the first but most important step towards the solution of that terrible problem which is at the root of all our difficulties.
We are all of us fellow-passengers on the same planet and the weal and woe of everybody else means the weal and woe of ourselves!
Call me a dreamer and call me a fool-call me a visionary or call for the police or the ambulance to remove me to a spot where I can no longer proclaim such unwelcome heresies. But mark my words and remember them on that fatal day when the human race shall be requested to pack up its little toys and surrender the keys of happiness to a more worthy successor.
The only hope for survival lies in that one sentence:
We are all of us fellow-passengers on the same planet and we are all of us equally responsible for the happiness and well-being of the world in which we happen to live.