78 The Sea 
that occasionally shakes our civilization’s economic structure; | 
and the increasing severity of modern wars in the wake of 
technological progress. Man, the individual, differs from his 
brother animals in his awareness of his own finiteness, of 
his inevitable end in death. But mankind as a species, like 
all the rest of the animal kingdom, is unconcerned with its 
own distant future and eventual extinction. 
On the other hand, overspecialization of the brain may be 
a special kind of creation which by its own inherent powers, 
versatility, and ingenuity may overcome the inevitable 
changes which destroyed other less resourceful animals, and 
it may solve the peculiar difficulties which its own precocity 
and civilization have posed. In that case man might survive 
many millions of years more through whole cycles of geologi- 
cal change. Mountains will be leveled, ocean beds raised, 
now populous areas submerged, glacial periods come and go, 
the very orbit of the Earth changed, and through this all man 
may emerge in a future Golden Age. 
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