Part Eight - Page 6

31. Follow the great steel plates through the foundries, see the thousands of people employed in their production; go still further back, and see the ore as it comes from the mine, see it loaded on cars, see it melted and properly treated; go back still further and see the architect and engineers who planned the vessel; let the thought carry you back still further in order to determine why they planned the vessel; you will see that you are now so far back that the vessel is something intangible, it no longer exists, it is now only a thought existing in the brain of the architect; but from where did the order come to plan the vessel? Probably from a business person; but probably this vessel was planned long before the business was thought of, and that Shipping company had to obtain a loan for the money; possibly there was opposition, and speeches for or against the loan. Whom do these company people represent? They represent you and me, so that our line of thought begins with the cargo ship and ends with ourselves, and we find in the last analysis that our own thought is responsible for this and many other things, of which we seldom think, and a little further reflection will develop the most important fact of all and that is, if someone had not discovered the law by which this tremendous mass of steel and iron could be made to float upon the water instead of immediately going to the bottom, the cargo ship could not have come into existence at all.
32. This law is that, the specific gravity of any substance is the weight of any volume of it, compared with an equal volume of water. The discovery of this law revolutionized every kind of ocean travel, commerce and cruises, and made the existence of the cargo ship, barges, and cruise ships possible.
33. You will find exercises of this kind invaluable. When the thought has been trained to look below the surface everything takes on a different appearance, the insignificant becomes significant, the uninteresting interesting; the things which we supposed to be of no importance are seen to be the only really vital things in existence.