NIAGARA AT WORK 165 



through which a part of the water falls, no longer 

 to run riot in commotion at the bottom, but smoothly 

 to be checked and deprived of its energy in a turbine, 

 to which is geared a dynamo, from which, again, 

 the transformed energy flows out as electric power 

 capable of lightening the labours of men. 



Niagara to-day is a mechanism as before, but 

 it has been linked to an external intelligence, capable 

 of guiding and varying its action at will. It is thus 

 one step nearer to being a living organism than 

 before, and it may serve as a rough and partial 

 model of that which I have conceived the living 

 organism to be. 



There is no life body, mind or soul, so far as 

 this world is concerned no birth, growth or even 

 existence, without a continuous supply and expendi- 

 ture of energy. For good or evil, man has geared 

 his own mechanism with the unbounded machinery 

 of inanimate Nature, and so has made possible 

 the elimination of the ugliest features of his existence, 

 under wisdom, or their accentuation to a degree 

 hitherto unimagined, under folly. Not only fertilisers 

 but also high explosives, or some of raw materials 

 from which they are made, such as nitric acid, 

 are now largely produced by the power of hydro- 

 electric installations. A modern definition of the 

 valleys of Switzerland is "glacier at one end and 

 98 per cent, nitric acid at the other." 



Man is thus able to project out of himself the 

 personality, that is in control of his own body, into 

 the mechanism of Nature, so that, without violating 

 any law or principle, a process that goes naturally 

 in a useless direction may be made to go in a 

 direction that is useful. In the control of his 

 own mechanism, similarly, it is the energy of the 

 external inanimate universe which is guided, not 

 coerced, and still less created. The guidance with- 



