Responsibility in Relation to Nature 23 



with equity. This comprehension can (and does) arise in 

 a behef that the obscured operations of nature are under 

 laws which can be known in visible facts and can be thence 

 inferred as continuing. With this belief a rule is naturally 

 sought first in the primary facts because they are simple, and 

 is applied to the secondary and later happenings which are 

 complex. 



The individual in the relation to inanimate nature, reveals 

 conduct in its elementary form. The use of energy guided 

 by volition of will against the inertia and momentum of 

 matter in the beginning neglects any considerations of duty 

 and morality or obligation except toward self. Such an 

 attitude is not in practice possible, yet it is a valuable con- 

 ception. It is an attitude based upon the theory scarcely 

 disputable that life must begin its contest with non-living 

 environment, before it becomes crowded enough to create 

 a contest with other life of its own kind. 



The law of responsibility based upon this primitive atti- 

 tude of life towards inanimate nature, with self alone con- 

 cerned, is one of those standards persisting in which the 

 old principle is not displaced by complications, but only 

 qualified and further defined. The law thus found to cover 

 both man and microbe, is seen to be uniform and not any- 

 where inconsistent with higher law. There is more of the 

 higher later law applicable to the man, and less to the mi- 

 crobe ; so that the primitive is relatively less ; but what there 

 is of it for the small, is equally true for the great. 



