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thinking about ourselves and were gradually brought to ruin. Could it be, I wondered, that our need for distraction, our mania for the new, was, in essence, an instinctive migratory urge akin to that of birds in autumn? All the Great Teachers have preached that Man, originally, was a "wanderer in the scorching and barren wilderness of this world"- the words are those of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor - and that to rediscover his humanity, he must slough off attachments and take to the road. My two most recent notebooks were crammed with jottings taken in South Africa, where I had examined, at first hand, certain evidence on the origin of our species. What I learned there - together with what I now knew about the Songlines - seemed to confirm the conjecture I had toyed with for so long: that Natural Selection has designed us - from the structure of our brain-cells to the structure of our big toe - for a career of seasonal journeys on foot through a blistering land of thorn-scrub or desert. If this were so; if the desert were "home"; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigors of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pail on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use copyright materials. The publishers apologize for any errors or omissions. The Songlines www.randomhouse.co.uk |
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