MAN. 369 



362. Man's Relation to Nature. There is nothing in 

 what we can learn about man that suggests that he is not 

 just as dependent on the natural laws of his own being 

 and of the environment about him as any other animal 

 in the animal kingdom. He starts in the same 

 humble way, as a single cell; he has the same powers 

 of growth and development, but he must have conditions 

 favorable to them. To-day is always the child of yester- 

 day, just as with the other animals. He has the like 

 diseases; he is affected with similar parasites; he has 

 enemies among the animals just as is true of the others. 

 Equally, he depends on them for his food. The same 

 struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest that 

 we find in all of life can be traced in much of human 

 history. 



Man, however, has made a mastery of nature which no 

 other forms have been able to do. Probably through his 

 wits and his supple hands, rather than by strength, he 

 held his own against the powerful mammals which 

 preceded him on the earth. By the same means, but in 

 increasing degree he holds that mastery to-day. Through 

 his wits, again, and his wonderful hands he has managed 

 to use the inorganic forces of nature as no other animal 

 has or can do. Through his wits, and most of all through 

 his growing sympathies and unselfishness, he bids fair to 

 build up a society, based on friendship and love, which will 

 substitute cooperation for competition in the broader rela- 

 tions of life just as it has already done in the home itself. 



363. The Artificial Surroundings of Man. In what 

 we call civilization man has so controlled the natural 

 conditions as to create for himself an environment which 

 is greatly different from that under which man first 



