So I live in the
wilds the greater part of the year, I keep my muscles in trim, and I
have always food for myself and for any chance wayfarer--and I can look
everybody in the eye and tell them to go to the fiery regions if I
happen to feel that way. What business would I have running a grocery
store, or a bank, or a real-estate office, when all my instincts rebel
against it? What normal being wants to be chained to a desk between
four walls eight or ten hours a day fifty weeks in the year? I'll bet
a nickel there was many a time when you were clacking a typewriter for
a living that you'd have given anything to get out in the green fields
for a while. Isn't that so?"
Hazel admitted it.
"You see," Bill concluded, "this civilization of ours, with its
peculiar business ethics, and its funny little air of importance, is a
comparatively recent thing--a product of the last two or three thousand
years, to give it its full historic value. And mankind has been a
great many millions of years in the making, all of which has been spent
under primitive conditions. So that we are as yet barbarians, savages
even, with just a little veneer. Why, man, as such, is only beginning
to get a glimmering of his relation to the universe.
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