Darn The Wheel Of The World! Why

All My Life I Have Had An Awareness Of Other Times And Places. I Have Been Aware Of Other Persons In Me. Oh, And Trust Me, So Have You, My Reader That Is To Be. Read Back Into Your Childhood, And This Sense Of Awareness I Speak Of Will Be Remembered As An Experience Of Childhood. You Were Then Not Fixed, Not Crystallized. You Were Plastic, A Soul In Flux, A Consciousness And An Identity In The Process Of Forming--ay, Of Forming And Forgetting.

A Human Life The Treasure Of The World Cannot Buy; Nor Can It Redeem One Which Is Misspent; Nor Can It Make Full And Complete And Beautiful A Life Which Is Dwarfed And Warped And Ugly.

Buck Did Not Read The Newspapers, Or He Would Have Known That Trouble Was Brewing, Not Alone For Himself, But For Every Tide-water Dog, Strong Of Muscle And With Warm, Long Hair, From Puget Sound To San Diego.

He Was Sounding The Deeps Of His Nature, And Of The Parts Of His Nature That Were Deeper Than He, Going Back Into The Womb Of Time.

The First Theft Marked Buck As Fit To Survive In The Hostile Northland Environment. It Marked His Adaptability, His Capacity To Adjust Himself To Changing Conditions, The Lack Of Which Would Have Meant Swift And Terrible Death. It Marked, Further, The Decay Or Going To Pieces Of His Moral Nature, A Vain Thing And A Handicap In The Ruthless Struggle For Existence.