of
human destiny as lying on the knees of the gods. Action so
often wanders from intent, so much in the best-laid plans is at
the mercy of external circumstance! A creature whose being
can be snuffed out in a moment, whose life is less than an
instant in the magnificent perspective of eternity, comes not
unnaturally to be aware of his own insignificance as compared
with those vast forces, some auspicious and some terrible,
which are patently afoot in the world.

But as patent a fact as man's impotence is his desire. The
individual realizes how powerless is a human being to fulfill,
independently of external forces, those impulses with which
these same inexplicable forces have launched him into the
world. Thus do we feel even to-day when we have learned
that the forces of Nature, obdurate to the ignorant, yet
become flexible and fruitful under the knowing manipulation
of science. We realize that despite our cunning and contrivance,
our successes are, as it were, largely matters of grace;
the changes we can make in Nature are as nothing to the slow,
gradual processes by which Nature makes mountains into
molehills, builds and destroys continents, develops man out of
the lower animals, and, by varying climates and topographies,
affects the destinies of nations.

To primitive man the sense of impotence and need were not
derived from any general reflections upon the insecurity of
man's place in the cosmos, but rather from the sharp pressure
of practical necessity.

The helplessness of primitive man set down in the midst of a universe
of which he knew not the laws, may perhaps be brought home
to the mind of modern man, if we compare the universe to a vast
workshop full of the most various and highly-complicated machinery
working at full speed. The machinery, if properly handled, is capable
of producing everything that the heart of primitive man can
wish for, but also, if he sets hand to the wrong part of the machinery,
is capable of whirling him off between its wheels, and crushing
and killing him in its inexorable and ruthless movement. Further,
primitive man cannot decline to submit himself to the perilous test:
he must make his experiments or perish, and even so his survival is
conditional on his selecting the right part of the machine to handle.
Nor can he take his own time and study the dangerous mechanism
long and carefully before setting his hand to it: his needs are pressing
and his action must be immediate.[1]