The doctor thought for a few minutes. "Let's see. Suppose we assume
that a certain human once happened to be in the neighborhood of a
hive, just when it was attacked by a drove of ants. Ants are great
lovers of honey, you know. Suppose the man stepped among the ants
and was bitten. Naturally he would trample them to death, and smash
with his hands all that he couldn't trample. Now, what's to prevent
the bees from seeing how easily the man had dealt with the ants? A
man would be far more efficient, destroying ants, than a bee; just
as a horse is more efficient, dragging a load, than a man. And yet
we know that the horse was domesticated, here on the earth, simply
because the humans saw his possibilities; the horse could do a
certain thing more efficiently than a human.
"You notice," the doctor went on, with great care, "that everything
I've assumed is natural enough: the combination of an ant attack and
the man's approach, occurring at the same time. Suppose we add a
third factor: that the bees, even while fighting the ants, also
started to attack the man; but that he chanced to turn his attention
to the ants FIRST.
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