So they got settled and the field work begun next day. The two men would ride off early to a place about five miles north of here that used to be an ancient lake—so I was told. I don't know whether it did or not. It's dry enough now. It certainly can't be considered any part of our present water supply. They would take spades and hammers and magnifying glasses and fountain pens, and Oswald's cigar lighter and some lunch, and come back at night with a fine mess of these here trilobites and vertebrae; and ganoids and petrified horseflies, and I don't know what all; mebbe oyster shells, or the footprints of a bird left in solid rock, or the outlines of starfish, or a shrimp that was fifty-two million years old and perfectly useless.
They seemed to have a good time. And Oswald would set up late writing remarks about the petrified game they had brought in.
I didn't used to see much of 'em, except at night when we'd gather for the evening meal. But their talk at those times did wonders for me. All about the aims of science and how we got here and what of it. The Prof was a bulky old boy, with long gray hair and long black eyebrows, and the habit of prevailing in argument. Him and Oswald never did agree on anything in my hearing, except the Chink's corn muffins; and they looked kind of mad at each other when they had to agree on them.
Take the age of this earth on which we make our living. They never got within a couple of hundred million years of each other. Oswald was strong for the earth's being exactly fifty-seven million years old. Trust him to have it down fine! And the old man hung out for four hundred million. They used to get all fussed up about this.
They quoted authorities. One scientist had figured close and found it was fifty-six million years. And another, who seemed to be a headliner in the world of science, said it was between twenty million and four hundred million, with a probability of its being ninety-eight million. I kind of liked that scientist. He seemed so human, like a woman in a bean-guessing contest at the county fair. But still another scientist had horned in with a guess of five hundred million years, which was at least easy to remember.
Of course I never did much but listen, even when they argued this thing that I knew all about; for back in Fredonia, New York, where I went to Sunday-school, it was settled over fifty years ago. Our dear old pastor told us the earth was exactly six thousand years old. But I let the poor things talk on, not wanting to spoil their fun. When one of 'em said the world was made at least fifty-seven million years ago I merely said it didn't look anywhere near as old as that, and let it go.
We had some merry little meals for about a month. If it wasn't the age of God's footstool it would be about what we are descended from, the best bet in sight being that it's from fishes that had lungs and breathed under water as easy as anything, which at least put dimmers on that old monkey scandal in our ancestry. Or, after we moved outside on the porch, which we had to do on account of Oswald smoking the very worst cigars he was able to find in all the world, they would get gabby about all things in the world being simply nothing, which is known to us scientists as metaphysics.
Metaphysics is silly-simple—like one, two, three. It consists of subject and object. I only think I'm knitting this here sock. There ain't any sock here and there ain't any me. We're illusions. The sound of that Chink washing dishes out in the kitchen is a mere sensation inside my head. So's the check for eighty dollars I will have to hand him on the first of the month—though the fool bank down in Red Gap will look on it with uneducated eyes and think it's real. Philosophers have dug into these matters and made 'em simple for us. It took thousands of books to do it; but it's done at last. Everything is nothing. Ask any scientist; he'll make it just as clear to you as a mist in a fog.
And even nothing itself ain't real. They go to that extreme. Not even empty space is real. And the human mind can't comprehend infinite space. I got kind of hot when one of 'em said that. I asked 'em right off whether the human mind could comprehend space that had an end to it. Of course it can't comprehend anything else but infinite space. I had 'em, all right; they had to change the subject. So they switched over to free will. None of us has it.
That made me hot again. I told 'em to try for even five minutes and see if they could act as if they didn't have the power of choice. Of course I had 'em again. Mebbe there ain't free will, but we can't act as if there wasn't. Those two would certainly make the game of poker impossible if folks believed 'em.