s Insurgent Son#

Life has laws, which it is possible to ascertain; and with each bit of
knowledge acquired, the environment is changed, the life becomes a new
thing. Consider, for example, what a different place the world became
to the man who discovered that the force which laid the forest in
ashes could be tamed and made to warm a cave and make wild grains
nutritious! In other words, man can create life, he can make the world
and himself into that which his reason decides it ought to be, The
means by which he does this is the most magical of all the tools he
has invented since his arboreal ancestor made the first club; the tool
of experimental science--and when one considers that this weapon has
been understood and deliberately employed for but two or three
centuries, he realizes that we are indeed only at the beginning of
human evolution.

To take command of life, to replace instincts by reasoned and
deliberate acts, to make the world a conscious and ordered
product--that is the task of man. Sir Ray Lankester has set this forth
with beautiful precision in his book, "The Kingdom of Man". We are, at
this time, in an uncomfortable and dangerous transition stage, as a
child playing with explosives. This child has found out how to alter
his environment in many startling ways, but he does not yet know why
he wishes to alter it, nor to what purpose. He finds that certain
things are uncomfortable, and these he proceeds immediately to change.
Discovering that grain fermented dispels boredom, he creates a race of
drunkards; discovering that foods can be produced in profusion, and
prepared in alluring combinations, he makes himself so many diseases
that it takes an encyclopedia to tell about them. Discovering that
captives taken in war can be made to work, he makes a procession of
empires, which are eaten through with luxury and corruption, and fall
into ruins again.

This is Nature's way; she produces without limit, groping blindly,
experimenting ceaselessly, eliminating ruthlessly. It takes a million
eggs to produce one salmon; it has taken a million million men to
produce one idea--algebra, or the bow and arrow, or democracy.
Nature's present impulse appears as a rebellion against her own
methods; man, her creature, will emancipate himself from her law, will
save himself from her blindness and her ruthlessness. He is "Nature's
insurgent son"; but, being the child of his mother, goes at the task
in her old blundering way