Q. That is for the Unity to decide. You set yourself up as Mankind's conscience.
A. Not conscience. I plead for self-examination—for a reappraisal of ideas.
Q. Yet you only succeed in irritating them.
A. That may be the best way. And you confuse conscience with consciousness. If there's one thing I've found out, it's that Man differs from the animals in having more consciousness, just as animals have more than plants. I don't suppose that hydrogen has any at all.
Q. But you have turned what was intended to be a field-trip for examination and analysis into a crusade. With all your nagging and irritating them, there have been no results—no real advances.
A. I thought you were complaining that I was altering what I was sent to examine. You talk about unification—or absorption—as if it were a catchword. That's the trouble with generalities: they're not necessarily true in all cases.
Q. You mean they are too general?
A. I mean that they are not general enough. I agree that men progress too slowly toward unification, but we mustn't confuse it with domination. We cannot impose it on them. That would lead to a world divided into the ruled and the rulers—not a unity.
Q. Then you are for absorption?
A. You know, you twist things around much worse than I do.