Region 5 Zone 01 Directory 01 Page 01

Once started in the launch _Rimac_, we went through interesting channels, outlets of the main stream being often noticeable on either bank, cutting wide passages through the forest and forming one or more shallow lakelets, with innumerable aquatic plants on the surface of the water. As we went farther it became easy to understand how islands were constantly forming in the river. Quantities of large and small logs of wood were continually floating down the stream; the banks were gradually being eaten away by the current. Whole trees fell down with their immense branches and polypi-like roots, and formed a barrier arresting the progress of the floating wood. Particles of earth deposited by wind and by water saturated with impurities settled there. Soon grass would begin to grow on those deposits, which quickly collected more deposits of flying and floating particles. The soft bottom of the river, disturbed by the deviated current, piled up mud against the submerged branches resting on the river-bed. Quickly an island was then formed; more wood accumulated, more grass, more mud; the base of the islands would increase rapidly, and in the space of a few years islands several kilometres in length rose above the water.

The immediate effects of this brilliant success were immense. Many of the Spanish tribes deserted the Carthaginian cause; and when Scipio took the field in the following year (B.C. 209) Mandonius and Indibilis, two of the most powerful and hitherto the most faithful supporters of Carthage, quitted the camp of Hasdrubal Barca, and awaited the arrival of the Roman commander. Hasdrubal was encamped in a strong position near the town of Baecula, in the upper valley of the Baetis (Guadalquiver), where he was attacked and defeated by Scipio. He succeeded, however, in making good his retreat, and retired into northern Spain. He subsequently crossed the Pyrenees, and marched into Italy to the assistance of his brother Hannibal, as already narrated.

Race or breed was a moment ago described as a factor in human nature. But to break up human nature into factors is something that we can do, or try to do, in thought only. In practice we can never succeed in doing anything of the kind. A machine such as a watch we can take to bits and then put together again. Even a chemical compound such as water we can resolve into oxygen and hydrogen and then reproduce out of its elements. But to dissect a living thing is to kill it once and for all. Life, as was said in the first chapter, is something unique, with the unique property of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free to take a new line of its own. Race, then, stands for the stiffening in the evolutionary process. Just up to what point it goes in any given case we probably can never quite tell. Yet, if we could think our way anywhere near to that point in regard to man, I doubt not that we should eventually succeed in forging a fresh instrument for controlling the destinies of our species, an instrument perhaps more powerful than education itself--I mean, eugenics, the art of improving the human breed.