t have a form of
awareness. Alien to their kind, perhaps, yet a kind which must be
acknowledged.

For they found something, at last, in a viscid non-crystalline
substance, protoplasm.

On one distant planet this substance was already differentiated and
specialized to a high degree. From the simplest to the most complex of
its organization there were degrees of awareness, and in the most
complex of these there was undeniable evidence of sentience outside of
self.

Joy! Unparalleled ecstasy!

Recognition is not wisdom. With the unwisdom of inexperience in
communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of
their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind,
they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous
pyrotechnical display of material manipulation to show this new life
form that they too were aware--to communicate that the loneliness of one
might now be softened by the presence of the other.

And man fell down to the ground and groveled his face in the dust.

His awareness was of the outer shapes of things, his security lay in
adapting himself to those shapes, his certainties lay in the
dependability of those shapes. A rock was a rock.

But no! The crystals were delighted that they had brought something
which they could share with this new life form. The rock could be a
tree! See!

And lo, the rock was a tree.

And the people were sore afraid.

For that which had been certain and sure was no longer so. This
mountain wall which had formed an impassable barrier to migration into a
new and richer valley was rent asunder, so! And beyond, the new valley
beckoned. But the people huddled in their caves and dared not venture
forth.

The vibrating entities, no longer dependent upon their crystalline
forms, withdrew to confer among themselves. To one life form, awareness
composed of the outer shape of things, the relationship of those shapes,
security in the unchanging shape. To the other life form, awareness
composed of the inner vibration, the relationships of those vibrations,
with outer shapes changed at will, and therefore meaningless.

Yet even this protoplasmic life must see the changing shapes of things.
The clouds that formed and disappeared; the seed that became root and
stem and leaf and flower; the infant that became man, and man that
decomposed as corpse. Surely this life form must see an inner cause!
Surely they must see that even the permane