Reason Is Simply A Vast Tautology.

It Seemed To Me That All Things Were Possible On The Island, All Tyrannies And Cruelties, Though In Small; And If, In Despite Of What Was Possible, We Lived At Peace With Another, Surely This Was Proof That Certain Laws Unknown To Us Held Sway, Or Else That We Had Been Following The Promptings Of Our Hearts All This Time, And Our Hearts Had Not Betrayed Us.

What Is Miraculous About The Past Is That We Have Succeeded--god Knows How--in Making Thousands And Millions Of Individual Human Beings, Lock Well Enought Into One Another To Give Us What Looks Like A Common Past, A Shared Story.

We Are Not By Nature Cruel.

If It Is Indeed Impossible - Or At Least Very Difficult - To Inhabit The Consciousness Of An Animal, Then In Writing About Animals There Is A Temptation To Project Upon Them Feelings And Thoughts That May Belong Only To Our Own Human Mind And Heart.

I Know Somewhat Too Much; And From This Knowledge, Once One Has Been Infected, There Seems To Be No Recovering.