their legs, catch them with
their hands. In their need for protein, the colonists were finding, as
many Earth peoples had found, raw fish were excellent in flavor and
texture as food.

At the beginning of the road man had traveled first there was awareness,
awareness of self as something separate from environment. There was
awareness of self-strength, ability to do certain things to and with
that environment. There was awareness of self always at the center of
things, and therefore awareness of his importance in the scheme of
things. But there was awareness of more.

There was awareness of things happening to his environment which he, in
all his strength and importance, could not do. Awareness gives rise to
reason, reason gives rise to rationalization. If things happened in his
environment which he himself could not do, then there must be something
stronger and more important than he.

To be ascendant at the center of things, to remain ascendant, meant that
all things of lesser importance, outside the center, must be made
subservient to him, else that ascendancy was lost. And if they would not
assume positions of subservience, they must be destroyed.

If there were unseen beings, stronger and more important than he, who
could do unexplained things to his environment; then it was plain that
he must assume positions of subservience to those beings, lest he
himself be destroyed.

So man created his gods in his own image, with his own attributes
magnified.

Was this a wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it
its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and
willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only
answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the
important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not
do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher
beings. Without such an answer, awareness without resolution would have
driven him into madness. Without such an answer, man could not have
survived to remain aware.

But answers also carry in themselves their commands and their penalties.
The penalty being that when one thinks he has the answer he stops
looking for it. The command being that he must conduct himself in accord
with the answer.

The long, long road that led him nowhere. That today still leads untold
millions nowhere. For the penalty of a wrong answer is failure to solve
the