On Board the Good Ship Earth; A Survey of World Problems (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III CHANGING OUR QUARTERS ON SHIPBOARD MINDS may differ as to how man came into being on the good ship Earth. Some will see in man the last stage of evolution?the end of that great chain beginning with a spot of slime?the first tiny mass of protoplasm?and ending with us. Others will see in him a creature produced by a special creative act of God, and quite unrelated by heredity to his fellow beings in the world of life. It matters little to me. However it may be, this is sure, we have been formed in some way out of the dust of the earth?out of the planking of the decks of the ship on which we voyage. Here we are We must live. We must live together. We must win our subsistence out of the decks from which we have been formed. Our quarters on the ship must be found somewhere on her broad decks?those portionswhich rise out of the water, and which we call land. How shall we occupy it? What shall be our relations with one another? Shall we fight and quarrel for the best places, and eat one another up, as people have been known to do when cast away on other ships? Or shall we organize and place the matter under regulations? In fact have we not already apportioned among us this great original Zeppelin on which we career through space? If so, is the apportionment the best that could be made? Is it permanent, or shall we?can we move about, as nations, changing our quarters on the ship?moving fore and aft and from starboard to port? In the nature of things, can any apportionment of the Earth among its tenants be permanent? Is there such a principle as right? If so, can it be applied to our earth-tenancy? Do we need to find and apply the principle, if it exists, or will it come into operation automatically?by some force outside ourselves, like the wireless control that ...