Page:Earth-Hunger and Other Essays.djvu/237

Rh although nature never utters but one speech to us: "I will yield you a subsistence, if you know how to extort it from me."

We think that we can have an age of steam and electricity, and not put any more brains into the task of life in it than our grandfathers put into living in an age of agricultural simplicity. We find it a hardship to be prudent and to be forced to think; therefore we think that those who have been prudent for themselves should be forced to be so for others. We think that we can beget children without care or responsibility, and that our liberty to marry when we choose has nothing to do with our position in the "house of have" or the "house of want."

We started out a century ago with the notion that there are some "rights of man"; we have been trying ever since to formulate a statement of what they are. Although these attempts have been made on purely a priori grounds, and without the limitations which would be imposed by an investigation of the facts of our existence on earth, nevertheless they have all failed. So far their outcome is: every man has a right to enjoy; if he fails of it, he has a right to destroy.