SILAS: Do people believe this?
FELIX: The whole intellectual world is at war about it. The best scientists accept it. Teachers are losing their positions for believing it. Of course, ministers can't believe it.
GRANDMOTHER: I should think not. Anyway, what's the use believing a thing that's so discouraging?
FEJEVARY: (gently) But is it that? It almost seems to me we have to accept it because it is so encouraging. (holding out his hand) Why have we hands?
GRANDMOTHER: Cause God gave them to us, I s'pose.
FEJEVARY: But that's rather general, and there isn't much in it to give us self-confidence. But when you think we have hands because ages back—before life had taken form as man, there was an impulse to do what had never been done—when you think that we have hands today because from the first of life there have been adventurers—those of best brain and courage who wanted to be more than life had been, and that from aspiration has come doing, and doing has shaped the thing with which to do—it gives our hand a history which should make us want to use it well.
SILAS: (breathed from deep) Well, by God! And you've known this all this while! Dog-gone you—why didn't you tell me?
FEJEVARY: I've been thinking about it. I haven't known what to believe. This hurts—beliefs of earlier years.
FELIX: The things it hurts will have to go.
FEJEVARY: I don't know about that, Felix. Perhaps in time we'll find truth in them.