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once. I can even pick a point of away from where I am physically, and look at
the other side of things—but that is harder."
"You two make me feel like the mother of the Ugly Duckling," said Phil bitterly.
"Will you still think of me kindly when you have passed beyond human
communication?"
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"Poor Phil!" exclaimed Joan, with sincere sympathy in her voice. "You taught us,
but no one has bothered to teach you. Tell you what, Ben, let's stop tonight at
an auto camp—pick a nice quiet one on the outskirts ofSacramento —and spend a
couple of days doing for Phil what he has done for us."
"Okay by me. It's a good idea."
"That's mighty white of you,pardner ," Phil conceded, but it was obvious that he
was pleased and mollified. "After you get through with me will I be able to
drive a car on two wheels, too?"
"Why not learn to levitate?" Ben suggested. "It's simpler—less expensive and
nothing to get out of order."
"Maybe we will some day," returned Phil, quite seriously, "there's no telling
where this line of investigation may lead."
"Yeah, you're right," Ben answered him with equal sobriety. "I'm getting so that
I can believe seven impossible things before breakfast. What were you saying
just before we passed that oil tanker?"
"I was just trying to lay before you an idea I've been mulling over in my mind
the past several weeks. It's a big idea, so big that I can hardly believe it
myself." —Well, spill it."
Phil commenced checking points off on his fingers. "We've proved, or tended to
prove, that the normal human mind has powers previously unsuspected, haven't
we?"
"Tentatively—yes. It looks that way."
"Powers way beyond any that the race as a whole makes regular use of."
"Yes, surely. Go on."
"And we have reason to believe that these powers exist, have their being, by
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virtue of certain areas of the brain to which functions were not previously
assigned by physiologists? That is to say, they have organic basis, just as the
eye and the sight centers in the brain are the organic basis for normal sight?"
"Yes, of course."
"You can trace the evolution of any organ from a simple beginning to a complex,
highly developed form. The organ develops through use. In an evolutionary sense
function begets organ."
"Yes. That's elementary."
"Don't you see what that implies?"
Cobumlooked puzzled, then a look of comprehension spread over his face. Phil
continued, with delight in his voice, "You see it, too?" The conclusion is
inescapable: there must have been a time when the entire race used these strange
powers as easily as they heard, or saw, or smelled. And there must have been a
long, long period—hundreds of thousands, probably millions of years—during which
these powers were developed as a race. Individuals couldn't do it, any more than
I could grow wings. It had to be done racially, over a long period of time.
Mutation theory is no use either—mutation goes by little jumps, with use
confirming the change. No indeed—these strange powers are vestigial—hangovers
from a time when the whole race had 'emand used 'em."
Phil stopped talking, and Ben did not answer him, but sat in a brown study while
some ten miles spun past. Joan started to speak once, then thought better of it.
Finally Ben commenced to speak slowly.
"I can't see any fault in your reasoning. It's not reasonable to assume that
whole areas of the brain with complex functions 'jestgrowed .' But, brother,
you've sure raised hell with modern anthropology."
"That worried me when I first got the notion, and that's why I kept my mouth
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shut. Do you know anything about anthropology?"
"Nothing except the casual glance that any medical student gets."
"Neither did I, but I had quite a lot of respect for it. Professor
Whoosistwitehellwould reconstruct one of our great grand-daddies from his
collar bone and his store teeth and deliver a long dissertation on his most
intimate habits, and I would swallow it, hook, line, and sinker, and be much
impressed. But I began to read up on the subject. Do you know what I found?"
"Go ahead."
"In the first place there isn't a distinguished anthropologist in the world but
what you'll find one equally distinguished who will call him a diamond-studded
liar. They can't agree on the simplest elements of their alleged science. In the
second place, there isn't a corporal's guard of really decent exhibits to back
up their assertions about the ancestry of mankind. I never saw so much stew from
one oyster, They write book after book and what have they got to go on?—The
Dawson Man, thePelkin Man, the Heidelberg Man and a couple of others. And those
aren't complete skeletons, a damaged skull, a couple of teeth, maybe another
bone or two."
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