He had been at Lone Moose two weeks now.  His real work, his essential labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced.  He made about the same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook.  In so far as Lone Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage.  He had the intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to any message he could deliver.  His power to deliver a message was vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity.  He was, and realized that he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in a house where there is neither food nor drink.

Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all things work for an ultimate good.  He was not so sure that a sparrow, or even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none the wiser.  The material considerations which he had always scorned pressed upon him in an unescapable manner.  There was no getting away from them.  Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,—­and he could not escape certain conclusions.  Faith may move mountains, but chiefly through the medium of a shovel.  When a man is hungry his need is for food.  When he is lonely he craves companionship.  When he grieves he desires sympathy.  And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.

“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.”