Burned Bridges

"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.