AND PERSONALITY 



less young, lives in the midst of his cutthroat enemies. His 

 only superiority is a brain in which his stern environment 

 has laid down a greater number of action patterns than in 

 the brain of his fellow animals. Man, when in the role of a 

 hunting animal, like man in war, must be elusive, resource- 

 ful, adaptive, deceitful, brave, and persistent. Through the 

 action patterns handed on from parent to offspring from 

 one generation to another, native man makes use of fire, 

 the club, the spear, and the simple means by which he is 

 able to enslave animals, making them labor for him. He 

 steals from them the milk to which, by abstract law, their 

 own young are entitled. He slays the animals that trust 

 him and eats their flesh. 



These are facts, not fancy. They do not belong to ancient 

 time. They form our world today. Not only does our own 

 so-called "Christian" civilization demand furs of trapped 

 animals, plumage of birds, but today not alone in the 

 jungles of Africa does the relentless struggle between naked 

 man and beast exist, for our civilized world is rocked by the 

 greed of individualistic civilized man. 



In some religions such traits are called "original sin," 

 but at the time of the founding of such religions little was 

 known of the imperfect record of man's ascent along a 

 crimson trail. The founders of various religions were 

 usually solitary individuals. None was an exponent of the 

 science of his day. They were enthusiastic and willing to 

 meet the battle of life with naked hands. In the jungle they 

 would not have survived. The concept of "original sin" is 

 the inheritance from the days of struggle of the individual 

 for himself. 



The present-day development of science and invention 

 and of the wide control over the forces of nature by which 

 man has taken legs of steel and wings for flight has allowed 

 solitary man to be succeeded by collective man. The action 

 patterns laid down in the brain of children today by parents, 

 teachers, and preachers are of truth and honesty, unselfish- 



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