The Book-Of-The-Semester Project 2007 - 2008

“There are things that pass through us along the bloodline that don’t surface in our children, or in our grandchildren. They may not even surface in our great-great-great grandchildren, but eventually they will surface, you know?... We’re connected with everything. We’re connected with the primal instincts. And whatever is primal in us goes to the beginning of the species and back even beyond that. You follow? (20)…. [N]ature doesn’t place either a prize or a price on such gifts. It simply deposits them, and they can stay dormant in the bloodline for centuries. They don’t necessarily have to be passed from father to son, you know? (21) That’s the way it goes, because it’s a single human family. The apparatus is the same. All these experiences were registered, because there was a consciousness that was taking all that stuff in, even if it couldn’t articulate it or define it. It was just taking that stuff in and responding. There was a response to it, just a nervous response, an instinctive response, and that was passed on, and the next generation got it in some form or other and the next generation after that in some form or other and all the way across history” (19-21).