Man's greatest experience -- the one
that brings supreme exultation --
is spiritual, not physical. It is the catching of some vision
of the universe
and translating it into a poem or work of art, into a Sermon
on the
Mount, into a Gettysburg Address, into a mathematical
formula that
unlocks the doors of atomic energy. This is a drive that develops
early in
life. Boy's have it. The lad who picks up an arrowhead in the
woods has
established his first vivid and dramatic contact with history.
It was the
hand of a redman, now dead for centuries perhaps, that found
this stone
of agate or obsidian and fashioned from it a jagged-edged knife
point to
drop a rabbit or deer. Having received it from the redman, this
boy
walks for a moment by the redman's side in a long, silent,
swinging stride.
WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS
