220 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



consider man as an improver and innovator in the 

 world, there is much that suggests a contrariety be 

 tween him and nature, and that instead of being the 

 pupil of his environment he becomes its tyrant. In 

 this aspect man, and especially civilised 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 comfortable support and becomes a desert. Vast 

 regions of the earth are in this impoverished con 

 dition, and the westward march of exhaustion warns 

 us that the time may come when even in compara 

 tively 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 produced 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 unprofitable art. A time might 



