as geological time is reckoned, man has so far existed only for a very short period one million years at the most. what he has achieved, especially during the last 6,000 years, is something utterly new in the history of the cosmos, so far at least as we are acquainted with it. for countless ages the sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night, but it was only with the coming of man that these things were understood. in the great world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom, man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable. in art and literature and religion, some men have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species worth preserving. is all this to end in trivial horror because so few are able to think of man rather than of this or that group of men? is our race so destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation, that the last proof of its silly cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet? - for it will be not only men who will perish, but also the animals, whom no one can accuse of communism or anticommunism.
i cannot believe that this is to be the end. i would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that, if they will allow themselves to survive, there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past. there lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? i appeal, as a human being to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. if you can do so, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death.
