"Religion or nonreligion, belief in a personal, immanent God or a rank
materialism that holds to a purely mechanical theory of the universe, it
doesn't make much difference which you hold to if you do not set
yourself up as the supreme authority and insist that the other fellow
must believe as you do.
"Because, my dear sir, you cannot escape material factors. The human
organism can't exist without food, clothing, and shelter. Society cannot
attain to a culture which tends to soften the harshnesses of existence,
without leisure in which to develop that culture. Machinery and science
and art weren't handed to humanity done up in a package. Man only
attained to these things through a long process of evolution, and he
only attained them by the use of his muscle and the exercise of his
intellect. Strength and skill--plus application. Nothing else gets
either an individual or a race forward. Don't you see the force of that?
Here is man with his fundamental, undeniable needs. Here is the earth
with the fullness thereof. There's nothing mysterious or supernatural
about it. Brain and brawn applied to the problems of living. That's all.
And you can't dodge it. The first, pressing requirements of any man can
only be filled in two ways. First by working and planning and getting
for himself. Second by being able to compel the strength and skill of
others to function for him so that his needs will be supplied; in other
words, by some turn of circumstances, or some dominant quality in
himself, to get something for nothing."
Sam Carr had delivered himself of this as a wind-up to a conversation
with Thompson the evening before. Now, while his forgotten biscuits
scorched and he listened to Tommy Ashe and Sophie Carr taking their toll
of meat from the flocks of waterfowl, he was thinking over what Carr had
said. He dissented. Oh, he dissented with a vigor that was almost
bitterness, because the smiling quirk of Sam Carr's lips when he uttered
the last sentence gave it something of a personal edge. However it was
meant, Thompson could not help taking it that way. And Mr. Thompson's
desire was to give--to give lavishly. Only here in this forsaken corner
of the world he seemed to have nothing to give that was of any value.
He was, at the same time, discovering in himself personal needs to which
he had never given a thought, sordid everyday necessities the
satisfaction of which had always been at hand, unquestioned, taken for
granted much as one takes the sun and the air for granted. His meals had
been provided. His bed had been provided. The funds which had clothed
and educated him and trained him for the ministry had been provided, and
likewise his transportation to the scene of his endeavors. How, he had
not known except in the vaguest way, he had not particularly inquired,
any more than the child inquires the whence and the why of luscious
berries he finds growing upon a bush in the garden.