"If man lived in accord with nature," said Sartliff, "she would not harm him. It is a baby's notion that everything is made to eat, and that all must go into the mouth. Men should have got beyond this universal alimentiveness, ere this. Find the uses of things, and poisons and nettles fall into their places in harmony, and are no longer poisons and nettles."
"And accidents would help us on, instead of off," suggested Case.
"They help as often one way as the other now," replied Sartliff. "But there are really no accidents; everything is produced by law."
"There must be two or three systems then," suggested Case. "Things collide, while each obeys its law. Your systems clash."
"Not a bit. This is apparent only; man acts abnormally under evil influences; he will not observe law; he turns upon nature and says he will subvert her laws, and compel her to obey his. Of course confusion, disorder, and death are the consequences, and always will be, till he puts himself in harmony with her."
"It seems to me, Mr. Sartliff, that in your effort to get back individually, you have encountered more difficulties, collisions, and ills, than the most of us do, who keep on the old orthodox civilized way to the devil."
"That may be; I am one, looking alone; nobody helps me."
"And like the younger Mr. Weller, you find it a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties."
"Precisely; I inherited an artificial constitution, and tastes, and needs. I began perverted and corrupted, and when I go back to Nature, she teaches me less than she does the beasts and birds. Before I can understand, or even hear her voice, I must recover the original purity and strength of organs and faculties which I might have had. I may perish in the attempt to reach a point at which I can learn. The earth chills and hurts my feet, the sun burns my skin, the winds shrivel me, and the snows and frosts would kill me, while many of the fruits good for food are indigestible to me. See to what the perversions of civilization have reduced me."
"Do you propose in thus getting back to nature, to go back to what we call savagery?" asked Bart.