God, if you prefer) continues to make so profusely avail-
able to those whom nature (or God) has given both the
desire for, and the ability to obtain?
Otherwise, why are we given the desire? Why
are we given the ability? Why the abundance? If life,
through an incomprehensible and magnificent process,
spreads before us a table overflowing with abundance,
shall we turn aside and let the gifts of nature rot? Is there
not a purpose in the providing? Otherwise why are things
for our use provided, if we are not to accept them?
Perhaps examples are better than general ques-
tions.
Is the little poor girl, looking wistfully at the
doll in the store window, somehow better by not having
the doll? Is her character strengthened by doing without-
or would it be better if she could own and cuddle the doll
in her tiny arms, expressing the child-mother love which
only little girls can give their dolls? Would she receive
more happiness by doing without? Or even more character?
Are the backward, starving millions of India
better in any way than the progressive, affluent Amer-
icans? Granting the many moral, spiritual and other de-
ficiencies of our affluent society, is it not better for us to
accept our blessings, to multiply them, and to share them
with the less fortunate? Or must we seek, instead, the
moral discipline of doing without?
Certainly there is more than one philosophy-
so why not a Philosophy of Abundance? Surely there is
more than one interpretation of a religion which some-
times seems to advocate the doing without all worldly