HUMAN COLONY FORMATION 



situation in which matter has become aware of its own 

 existence and to some extent of its nature. This is in- 

 deed such a remarkable circumstance that it has fre- 

 quently been considered to be beyond the possibility 

 of any scientific understanding. This situation has 

 formed the basis for much mystical speculation. Such 

 speculation has at times led to the belief that man is in 

 some fundamental aspect different from all other crea- 

 tures and that his mind must contain some principle 

 not explicable in terms of it being an extremely com- 

 plex aggregate of matter. 



It is indeed true, that man is fundamentally different 

 from any of the other animals. But it is not individual 

 man in terms of his structural makeup who is so very 

 much different; it is the fact that man is a component 

 of a societal organism in the process of formation that 

 accounts for the vast difference. Even as relatively re- 

 cent as during earliest historical times, man's knowl- 

 edge of his own structure, both from an anatomical 

 point of view and certainly from a biochemical stand- 

 point, was practically nonexistent. Yet man of that pe- 

 riod was structurally, and this includes the potential 

 of his central nervous system, scarcely different from 

 the present-day species. What has occurred since that 

 time is not so much a change in individual man, but 

 integration of individuals into a societal pattern, con- 

 current with societal accumulation of knowledge. If 

 one is to regard consciousness in terms of its most gen- 



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