“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Those human abilities that you consider to be characteristic of your species are, again, dependent upon the existence of infinite numbers of variations that appear in the aggregate, to give you often obviously opposing states. What you think of then as the average intelligence is a condition that exists because of the activity of constant variables, minute variations that give you at one end of the scale the idiot, and at the other the genius.

Particularly in your own species there is a great give-and-take between human genetic systems, the environment, and cultural events—and by cultural events I mean events having to do with your peculiarly unique field of activity that includes the worlds of politics, economics, and so forth.

(9:45.) In no way do I mean to demean the indisputable value of geniuses, or their great contributions to the quality of life—but the quality of life is, again, also benefited by the existence of idiots. Not only because both ends of the scale are necessary for genetic reasons, but also because idiots themselves are in no way considered failures or defects by nature. Those terms are human judgments. Idiots also serve their role by moderating the sometimes fierce hold that the reasoning mind can (underlined) have upon human activity.

Ruburt read an article about the development of a strain of mice without thymus [glands]. Since the thymus is very important in the necessary process of maintaining bodily resistance to disease, these particular mice have little resistance. They are bred and sold for experimental purposes. The intent of such procedures is to promote the quality of human life, to study the nature of diseases, and hopefully apply what is learned to some of the lives of human beings. Mice are not considered human. They are not. So like any animal, they are thought of as dispensable, sacrificed to a fine humanitarian end.

(10:05.) Jews were considered almost not human, however, and whenever such atrocities against your own species are concerned, you indulge in the same kind of twisted reasoning (underlined). Because the Jews were considered less than human—or, at best, human defects—they were thought of as justifiable sacrifices on the altar of “the genetic betterment of mankind.” You cannot improve the quality of your own lives by destroying the quality of any other kinds of life. There is no genetic master race. The very classification of the species into races to begin with is based upon distinctions that are ridiculously minute in the overall picture of the similarities.

However, if given a choice, Jane and I now would forgo the “benefits” stemming from animal experimentation, even if our own future welfares were to suffer because of a subsequent lack of knowledge—and providing that at a time of crisis we didn’t weaken in our joint resolve! Following such a course would actually be most difficult, so pervasive in our society are the results flowing from animal research: I even think it might be necessary to live as a hermit in the wild to get away from them. Using animals in the laboratory is imposing human goals and values upon other life forms, even though the modern scientific method is supposed to be value-free. For such research is carried out in the name of progress and the practical common good, of course—and that progress applies also in the remedial treatment of other animals, let us remember. We think that every reader of this book has benefited, and still does, from animal experimentation, some of it most cruel, in ways that he or she can hardly suspect, let alone specify: even benefiting from the use of animals in the study of medical and chemical, beauty and recreational products that can be found in practically every home in the country. Jane and I live in one of those homes. I see the passive, thinking and unthinking tolerance of animal experimentation as a classical case of a society using ends to justify means—yet in the United States, at least, we carefully teach each generation of our species that such rationalizations aren’t morally acceptable….

I’m sure that Seth would be the first to agree that consciousness obviously contains an unlimited number of viewpoints, regardless of which ones we humans may choose to call “true” at any particular time. Consciousness is just as amenable to having some of its physical manifestations scientifically studied, its parts manipulated through “genetic engineering,” as it is to encompassing Seth’s material. All of our species’ actions represent our keen and creative interests in studying ourselves in the finest details possible. That the scientific approach has limitations is obvious. So do all others in this physical realm. A discipline, of whatever nature and motivation, can erect barriers to “outside” influences—and those barriers are often artifacts growing almost automatically out of the very nature of the belief system in question.