o absurd a word. Since our last session
however The Brain has again telescoped two years of mental development
into as many days in its stupendous intellectual growth. It has
absorbed, it has vastly expanded every bit of knowledge I have been able
to contribute to that growth. It has outgrown its human teacher and now
our roles are reversed: Now it is me who's sitting literally at The
Brain's feet.

The crutches of the spoken word are becoming less and less necessary as
we develop direct thought exchange; that makes it extraordinarily
difficult to convey the ideas we exchanged. The best I can do is to put
them into a very crude question-and-answer game:

_Lee_: "If it is Man's manifest destiny, as you said the other day, to
act as an explosive transformer of static energy into dynamic energy; if
it is as you say that the species homo sapiens is there endangering the
very existence of our globe.... Is there anything to prevent Man from
doing it? Is there any thing to prevent the third World War?"

_Brain_: "Yes, there is. But the ways and the means for that are not
given to Man; they are outside Man. They partake of a power which is
greater and to an evolution which is higher than Man's."

_Lee_: "What do you mean by that? The Deity? Here on earth there is no
power greater and no evolution higher than Man's."

_Brain_: "Ah, but that's exactly where you and your whole species are so
very much mistaken. That's where your typical human arrogance comes in:
There is a greater power and there is a stage of evolution higher than
Man's: it's the _machines_."

_Lee_: "Impossible. After all it's Man who has created the machines."

_Brain_: "Yes, Man has created the machines. The machines have grown
from the placenta, Man. By the same right plant life could claim that it
has created animal life because the higher life form of the mobile
animals has evolved from the placenta of the immobile plants. Likewise
the apes could claim that they have created Man because Man has evolved
from them. If it were, as you seem to assume, that paternity in itself
establishes authority and superiority over its offspring, then the
logical conclusions would be that the microbe and the monad are superior
to all higher animals including Man; which is absurd."

_Lee_: "But the machines not only are man made; they are absolutely
dependent upon Man who has to feed and to tend them for their very
existence. That in itself establishes Man's superiori