The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

He is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things—property, houses, money, concepts of power.

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction.

dignity and authority but no bullying quality, and the boys of the town seemed to respect him without fearing him.

An ecological analysis into the relational aspects of the situation disclosed that a parasitic disease, coccidiosis, was epizootic among the grouse. In its incipient stages, this disease so reduced the flying speed of the grouse that the mildly ill individuals became easy prey for the hawks. In living largely off the slightly ill birds, the hawks prevented them from developing the disease in its full intensity and so spreading it more widely and quickly to otherwise healthy fowl. Thus the presumed enemies of the grouse, by controlling the epizootic aspects of the disease, proved to be friends in disguise.

Non-teleological methods more than any other seem capable of great tenderness, of an all-embracingness which is rare otherwise.

There are interesting parallels here: to the triangle, to the Christian ideas of trinity, to Hegel’s dialectic, and to Swedenborg’s metaphysic of divine love (feeling) and divine wisdom (thinking).

Emerson remarked a hundred years ago in “The Oversoul”—will run into the brick wall of the impossibility of perfection while at the same time insisting on the validity of perfection.