II 



FEOM THE ARTIFICIAL TO THE NATURAL 



"T71E0M the first the progress of mankind has been 

 -*- slowly hut surely from the artificial to the nat- 

 ural, from the arbitrary and chimerical to the simple 

 and scientific. Getting himself and his affairs more 

 and more into natural currents and following them 

 — this is the way man has progressed. 



AH early peoples and savage tribes have ex- 

 tremely arbitrary and artificial notions of the world 

 of forces amid which they live. The more they are 

 immersed in brute nature, the more unnatural will 

 be their practices and conceptions. People who live 

 in a state of nature are the victims of delusions and 

 superstitions. 



Nearly all the early conceptions of the universe 

 that have come down to us are artificial. The 

 Mosaic account of creation shows God a literal 

 maker and builder, Heaven and Hell mere places, 

 one above and the other beneath the earth. The 

 Ptolemaic system of astronomy shows how artificial 

 was the beginning of this science. The conception 

 which the early Christian fathers had of the universe 

 was that it was foursquare like Solomon's temple, 

 and that the sky was something fastened to the 

 outer edges. 



