The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

There is no certainty that the Easter of the Resurrection will really come. We were probably literarily affected by the service and the people and their feeling about it, the crippled and the pained who were in the church, the little half-hungry children, the ancient women with eyes of patient tragedy who stared up at the plaster saints with eyes of such pleading. We liked them and we felt at peace with them. And strolling slowly through the streets we thought a long time of these people in the church. We thought of the spirits of kindness which periodically cause them to be fed, a little before they are dropped back to hunger. And we thought of the good men who labored to cure them of disease and poverty. And then we thought of what they are, and we are—products of disease and sorrow and hunger and alcoholism. And suppose some all-powerful mind and will should cure our species so that for a number of generations we would be healthy and happy? We are the products of our disease and suffering. These are factors as powerful as other genetic factors. To cure and feed would be to change the species, and the result would be another animal entirely. We wonder if we would be able to tolerate our own species without a history of syphilis and tuberculosis. We don’t know.

As much as things change they stay the same.