Part 23

WHO IS INDEPENDENT? NOBODY

We all have our moments of imagining ourselves INDEPENDENT characters. We take pride in our independence and are never as foolish as when trying to prove how independent we are.

Every man, to begin with, is born absolutely at the mercy of his ancestry. You have not a thing in you, and you never will have a thing in you, that you did not inherit from some one of the thousands and thousands of ancestors, all of whom are dimly stored away in your complex make-up.

You may develop marvellously the faculties which they gave you.

But you ARE DEPENDENT on those who brought you into the world, and upon those back of them.

The Kaffir, sober, industrious, honest, with all the virtues rolled up within him, has not a fragment of one chance in ten thousand billions of equalling the achievements of a tenth-rate white man whose ancestral start was better. ----

After birth you start with dependence on your ancestors, and after youth you are dependent on your education.

Facts are your tools, and you can't work without them.

If your mind has the right formation, if your brain is provided with the deep convolutions, and good luck has supplied you with a good education in youth, the whole thing is dependent on your health--on your liver, your stomach, or some other part of your internal machinery.

Very often your success is dependent on your temper and tact. These depend on your digestion. Digestion, of course, depends on your cook, and the cook's attention to business may depend on the politeness of the policeman in front of the house.

You may FEEL absolutely independent and THINK you are independent, when as a matter of fact you are miserably dependent on the mood of the policeman who has snubbed the lady who cooks your food.

WHEN WE BEGIN USING LAND UNDER THE OCEANS BIG WORK AHEAD FOR MAN, KIND FRIENDS

There is a great deal of water on this earth of ours and a great deal of land underneath it.

All the treasures of these hidden plains are simply put away for our future use by bountiful nature, as prudent parents put money in the savings bank for their young ones. ----

Already in Chili they are mining coal under the bed of the Pacific Ocean, and the traveler may ride on electric cars through solid tunnels of coal beneath the waters of the greatest ocean.

The tin mines in Wales extend far out beneath the sea.

Workers in the Calumet and Hecla mines work beneath the waters of Lake Superior.

Oil wells are worked out beyond the edge of the Pacific Ocean. You may see the oil derricks just off Santa Barbara's surf.

In the bay of San Francisco artesian wells, going through the preliminary depths of salt water, bring the water of fresh submarine springs to the surface.

But these little enterprises are but faint beginnings of the great work that man has to do in exploiting the wealth beneath the waters covering two-thirds of the earth's surface.

This earth will be quite a romantic abode when sub-oceanic exploitation reaches full development, when the great gold mines beneath the waters are indicated simply by latitude and longitude.

Mars, with his huge canals distributing a planet's waters scientifically, will be matched perhaps by our network of tunnels under the water from here to Asia, and by our boring, with the aid of cooling mediums, toward the earth's centre and bringing up metals in a molten state.

Before he finishes with her, man will make old earth know that he is at work "in her midst." He will make the harnessing of a tiny Niagara or the boring of a poor little isthmus seem feeble efforts.

WHERE YOUR BODY CAME FROM LET IT BE SCATTERED AS IT WAS GATHERED

Did you ever think about the construction of the body which you inhabit? Did it ever occur to you that your shoulders and hands and chest and legs and lungs are made of contributions from widely different parts of the earth?

Your brain, a wonderfully complex machine, the seat of thought and of the will, is packed away in darkness in the bony skull.

The heart, working ceaselessly, pumps the blood that feeds the brain and makes possible its work.

The eyes, with the aid of the nerves that perceive light, guide you. The ears, with the nerves that interpret sound waves, tell their story.