The story of the search for my unpublished postscript appears to be causing some interest on planet earth. I have resigned myself to the fact that this piece, which I feared would cause so much consternation in my lifetime, is now broadcast far and wide. I am beyond the reach of those who would do me harm because of it. But the rumours about it are so ill-founded and even maliciously untrue that I am persuaded to publicise an extract of it here, so that readers may get for themselves a brief flavour of its contents:-

“Homo sapiens is a strange species. By far the most intelligently advanced of all that inhabit the earth, and yet by far the most perverse and consciously self destructive. Of extraordinary intellectual powers, and yet prone to illogical prejudices, dogmas and superstitions. The only species to have developed an analytical and a moral sense, and yet the one most subject to irrational drives, unnecessary cruelties and unreasoned fears. There has to be an explanation for this.

Over the years my exhaustive researches into many of the families, genera and species on the planet have convinced me of the one simple fact. It is a fact that many of my fellow human beings find hard to accept. Nothing is planned. Nothing is ordained. It is a matter of simple evidence that the universe operates in a way which is completely fortuitous. The earth is but one planet amongst innumerable planets which happens by chance to have the resources to support life. That life comes and goes with a fickleness and a ruthlessness that is total and disinterested. Whatever the biological form, it suffers plague and pestilence, contest and brutalism, deprivation and extermination, without respite and without structure. The evidence is incontrovertible. Whole generations die at a circumstance, entire species become extinct at a change in the weather, complete life forms disappear through the whim of a natural disaster.

It is my belief that natural selection is the ultimate decider in the great struggle for survival – one superior developed biological form superseding another, one better equipped species outliving another, one stronger individual vanquishing another – each succeeding generation either extending its superiority through its inherited characteristics, or yielding to a still better endowed competitor. Extermination is a universal and brutal necessity. If it were not so, if all life were to proliferate unchallenged, then the earth would have suffocated through overcrowding millions of years ago…….”

CD