THE CONQUEST OF NATURE 



under artificial conditions. So, too, the domesticated 

 beasts are creatures that belong in the wilds and in 

 distant lands. Man has brought them, in defiance 

 of Nature, to uncongenial climes, and made them serve 

 as workers and as food-suppliers where Nature alone 

 could not support them. Turn loose the cow and 

 the horse to forage for themselves here in the inhospit- 

 able north, and they would starve. They survive 

 because man helps them to combat the adverse con- 

 ditions imposed by Nature, yet no one of them could 

 live for an hour were not the vital capacities supplied by 

 Nature still in control. 



Everywhere, then, it is the opposing of Nature, up 

 to certain limits, with the aid of Nature's own tools, 

 that constitutes man's work in the world. Just in 

 proportion as he bends the elements to meet his 

 needs, transforms the plants and animals, defies and 

 exceeds the limitations of primeval Nature just in 

 proportion as he conquers Nature, in a word, is he 

 civilized. 



Barbaric man is called a child of Nature with full 

 reason. He must accept what Nature offers. But 

 civilized man is the child grown to adult stature, and 

 able in a manner to control, to dominate if you please 

 to conquer the parent. 



If we were to seek the means by which developing 

 man has gradually achieved this conquest, we should 

 find it in the single word, Tools; that is to say, machines 

 for utilizing the powers of Nature, and, as it were, 

 multiplying them for man's benefit. So unique is the 

 capacity that man exerts in this direction, that he has 



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