Surely, if the earth were made for our benefit, Nature has been not only a very poor provider, but a very thoughtless parent.
Some say that man is Nature's best product, that the earth was made for us, that we are particularly selected by God, and that a certain race is his chosen people. But that is not true. The Jews are no more God's chosen people than the jay is his chosen bird, or the mosquito his chosen insect.
It is not true that Nature particularly works for us—facts prove the contrary.
Facts prove that we are nothing but an undesirable by-product, to make our way and to live our life as best we can within a cruelly turbulent space, imprisoned by invisible, impenetrable walls of limitation.
No, it is not true that our life is favored by Nature. After we build our homes, make our cities and add improvements, what happens? Nature, with her forceful winds, blows them down; her cruel storms and rising floods wash them away as so much refuse, and a tremor of the earth destroys not only our homes but ourselves also, leaving no traces of our efforts, treasures and sacred ties.
Even as individuals we "curse God" for the shortcomings with which we are afflicted. The exceedingly stout person, one who is "in his own way" curses God for making him so stout. The thin person has a similar grievance. Those who are too large and those who are too small are equally dissatisfied. The shape of an eye, the curve of the mouth, a blemish here, an impediment there, is the direct cause of poignant embarrassment. Organs or dimensions too unsightly and unsatisfactory are productive of continual worry and torment throughout our lives. The blind, the deaf, the dumb and the crippled have forever a curse for God upon their lips.
We inhabit the air, with a density of fifteen pounds to the square inch, a mixture of dirt and water, in the same manner that the fish inhabits the water and the worm the earth. Were we beings of a superior type, Nature would have made us so versatile that we should be able to accustom ourselves to any condition, and survive in any climate. But despite all our improvements, despite all man's efforts to avoid and escape the conditions of Nature, many of us freeze to death in winter and become prostrate from the heat of summer. If it were true that the earth were purposely made and existing for us there would be "no flowers born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air."
We, ourselves, scientists tell us, are the result of a long series of evolutionary development. They tell us that Nature started with a single cell of protoplasm, a single cell of living organism, and produced the present human species after the life and death of an illimitable number of forms through the stages of countless ages, not exempting those lives from the fear, torture and misery that are still so essential a part of the scheme of life. Why impose so cruel and wasteful a condition upon those numberless billions that have lived before us, since nothing but eternal death was gained by their existence?
Surely, Nature is a poor architect and builder, after taking so much material and so much time, to make such an incomplete place for such an outlandish form to rule and occupy. If we were given the same opportunity (that is, you and I), with all the power and resources of Nature, to build a habitable place, and mold a living something to inhabit it, our results would be ten thousand times better than that which circles the scope and boundary of our lives, with the incomprehensible physical form with which we breathe and manifest life.
Truthfully, and without the slightest element of egotism, I should be ashamed of my efforts were I to present as my handiwork nothing better than the level and plane which Nature has attained.