LARGER IMAGE
Man the Master of Nature
All this renders him independent. But he now also finds himself drawn into a new kind of dependence, for he has now come to take a new view of Nature. He perceives in her an enormous storehouse of wealth, by using which he can multiply his resources and gratify his always increasing desires to an extent practically unlimited. She provides forces, such as steam and electricity, which his knowledge enables him to employ for production and transport, so as to spare his own physical strength, needed now not so much for effort as for the direction of the efforts of Nature. She has in the forest, and still more beneath her own surface in the form of minerals, the materials by which these forces can be set in motion; and by using these forces man can, with comparatively little trouble, procure abundance of those materials.
Thus his relation to Nature is changed. It was that of a servant, or, indeed, rather of a beggar, needing the bounty of a sovereign. It is now that of a master needing the labour of a servant, a servant infinitely stronger than the master, but absolutely obedient to the master so long as the master uses the proper spell. Thus the connection of man with Nature, changed though his attitude be, is really as close as ever, and far more complex. If his needs had remained what they were in his primitive days—let us say, in those palæolithic days which we can faintly adumbrate to ourselves by an observation of the Australian or Fuegian aborigines now—he would have sat comparatively lightly to Nature, getting easily what he wanted, and not caring to trouble her for more. But his needs—that is to say, his desires, both his physical appetites and his intellectual tastes, his ambitions and his fondness for comfort, things that were once luxuries having become necessaries—have so immeasurably expanded that, since he asks much more from Nature, he is obliged to study her more closely than ever.
Man’s New Relations to Nature
Thus he enters into a new sort of dependence upon her, because it is only by understanding her capacities and the means of using them that he can get from her what he wants. Primitive man was satisfied if he could find spots where the trees gave edible fruit, where the sun was not too hot, nor the winds too cold, where the beasts easy of capture were abundant, and no tigers or pythons made the forest terrible. Civilised man has more complex problems to deal with, and wider fields to search. The study of Nature is not only still essential to him, but really more essential than ever. His life and action are conditioned by her. His industry and his commerce are directed by her to certain spots. That which she has to give is still, directly or indirectly, the source of strife, and a frequent cause of war. As men fought long ago with flint-headed arrows for a spring of water or a coconut grove, so they fight to-day for mineral treasures imbedded in the soil. It is mainly by Nature that the movements of emigration and the rise of populous centres of industry are determined.
Though Nature still rules for many purposes and in many ways the course of human affairs, the respective value of her various gifts changes from age to age, as man’s knowledge and power of turning them to account have changed. The things most prized by primitive man are not those which semi-civilised man chiefly prized, still less are they those most sought for now.
Using Natural Wealth
In primitive times the spots most attractive, because most favourable to human life, were those in which food could be most easily and safely obtained from fruit-bearing trees or by the chase, and where the climate was genial enough to make clothing and shelter needless, at least during the greater part of the year. Later, when the keeping of cattle and tillage had come into use, good pastures and a fertile soil in the valley of a river were the chief sources of material well-being. Wild beasts were less terrible, because man was better armed; but as human enemies were formidable, regions where hills and rocks facilitated defence by furnishing natural strongholds had their advantages.
Still later, forests came to be recognised as useful for fuel, and for carpentry and shipbuilding. Mineral deposits, usually found in hilly or mountainous districts, became pre-eminently important sources of wealth; and rivers were valued as highways of commerce and as sources of motive power by the force of their currents. To the Red Indians of the Ohio valley the places which were the most attractive camping-grounds were those whither the buffaloes came in vast herds to lick the rock salt exposed in the sides of the hills. It is now not the salt-licks, but the existence of immense deposits of coal and iron, that have determined the growth of huge communities in those regions whence the red man and the buffalo have both vanished. England was once, as New Zealand is now, a great wool-growing and wool-exporting country, whereas she is to-day a country which spins and weaves far more wool than she produces.