significance of this point can hardly be appreciated without a
perception of the great principle that underlies it. The only way in
which man has become and continues to be increasingly superior to
animals is in his use of mechanisms. The animal does by brute force
what man accomplishes by various devices. The inventiveness of
different races differs vastly. But everywhere, the most advanced are
the most powerful. Take the individual man of the more developed race
and separate him from his tools and machines, and it is doubtless
true that he cannot in some selected points compete with an individual
of a less developed race. But let ten thousand men of the higher
development compete with ten thousand of the lower, each using the
mechanisms under his control, and can there be any doubt as to which
is the superior?

In other words, the method of human progress consists, in no small
degree, in the progressive mastery of nature, first through
understanding her and then through the use of her immense forces by
means of suitable mechanisms. All the machines and furniture, and
tools and clothing, and houses and canned foods, and shoes and boots,
and railroads and telegraph lines, and typewriters and watches, and
the ten thousand other so-called "impedimenta" of the Occidental
civilization are but devices whereby Western man has sought to
increase his health, his wealth, his knowledge, his comfort, his
independence, his capacity of travel--in a word, his well-being.
Through these mechanisms he masters nature. He extracts a rich living
from nature; he annihilates time and space; he defies the storms; he
tunnels the mountains; he extracts precious ores and metals from the
rock-ribbed hills; with a magic touch he loosens the grip of the
elements and makes them surrender their gold, their silver, and, more
precious still, their iron; with these he builds his spacious cities
and parks, his railroads and ocean steamers; he travels the whole
world around, fearing neither beast nor alien man; all are subject to
his command and will. He investigates and knows the constitution of
stellar worlds no less than that of the world in which he lives. By
his instruments he explores the infinite depths of heaven and the no
less infinite depths of the microscopic world. All these reviled
"impedimenta" thus bring to the race that has them a wealth of life
both physical and psychical, practical and ideal, that is otherwise
unattainable. By them he