49 2 MAN IN NATURE 



It may, however, occur to us here, that when we consider 

 man as an improver and innovator in the world, there is much 

 that suggests a contrariety between him and nature, and that, 

 instead of being the pupil of his environment, he becomes its 

 tyrant. In this aspect man, and especially civilized man, appears 

 as the enemy of wild nature, so that in those districts which 

 he has most fully subdued, many animals and plants have been 

 exterminated, and nearly the whole surface has come under his 

 processes of culture, and has lost the characteristics which 

 belonged to it in its primitive state. Nay more, we find that 

 by certain kinds of so-called culture man tends to exhaust and 

 impoverish the soil, so that it ceases to minister to his com- 

 fortable support, and becomes a desert. Vast regions of the 

 earth are in this impoverished condition, and the westward 

 march of exhaustion warns us that the time may come when 

 even in comparatively new countries, like America, the land will 

 cease to be able to sustain its inhabitants. Behind this stands 

 a still farther and portentous possibility. The resources of 

 chemistry are now being taxed to the utmost to discover 

 methods by which the materials of human food may be pro- 

 duced synthetically, and we may possibly, at some future time, 

 find that albumen and starch may be manufactured cheaply 

 from their elements by artificial processes. Such a discovery 

 might render man independent of the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms. Agriculture might become an unnecessary and un- 

 profitable art. A time might come when it would no longer 

 be possible to find on earth a green field, or a wild animal ; 

 and when the whole earth would be one great factory, in which 

 toiling millions were producing all the materials of food, cloth- 

 ing, and shelter. Such a world may never exist, but its pos- 

 sible existence may be imagined, and its contemplation brings 

 vividly before us the vast powers inherent in man as a sub- 

 verter of the ordinary course of nature. Yet even this ultimate 

 annulling of wild nature would be brought about not by any- 



