MAN AND NATURE
"Young men," said a wise physician in addressing a class of graduates in medicine, "you are about to enter the battle of life. Note that I say the 'battle' of life. Not a playground, but a battlefield is before you. It is a hard contest—a battle royal. Make no mistake as to that. Your studies here have furnished your equipment; now you must go forth each to fight for himself."
The same words might be said to every neophyte in whatever walk of life. The pursuit of every trade, every profession is a battle—a struggle for existence and for supremacy. Partly it is a battle against fellow men; partly against the contending powers of Nature. The physician meets rivalry from his brothers; but his chief battle is with disease. In the creative and manufacturing fields which will chiefly concern us in the following volumes, it is the powers of Nature that furnish an ever-present antagonism.
No stone can be lifted above another, to make the crudest wall or dwelling, but Nature—represented by her power of gravitation—strives at once to pull it down again. No structure is completed before the elements are at work defacing it, preparing its slow but certain ruin. Summer heat and winter cold expand and contract materials of every kind; rain and wind wear and warp and twist; the oxygen of the air gnaws into stone and iron alike;—in a word, all the elements are at work undoing what man has accomplished.