, brilliant, pure and cheap as those that are manufactured in the
laboratory. I haven't that amount of money with me at the moment, but
the dyers would be glad to put it up for the discovery of a satisfactory
natural source for their tinctorial materials. This is not an opinion of
mine but a matter of fact, not to be decided by Shakespeare, who was not
acquainted with the aniline products.

Shakespeare in the passage quoted is indulging in his favorite amusement
of a play upon words. There is a possible and a proper sense of the word
"nature" that makes it include everything except the supernatural.
Therefore man and all his works belong to the realm of nature. A
tenement house in this sense is as "natural" as a bird's nest, a peapod
or a crystal.

But such a wide extension of the term destroys its distinctive value. It
is more convenient and quite as correct to use "nature" as I have used
it, in contradistinction to "art," meaning by the former the products of
the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, excluding the designs,
inventions and constructions of man which we call "art."

We cannot, in a general and abstract fashion, say which is superior, art
or nature, because it all depends on the point of view. The worm loves a
rotten log into which he can bore. Man prefers a steel cabinet into
which the worm cannot bore. If man cannot improve Upon nature he has no
motive for making anything. Artificial products are therefore superior
to natural products as measured by man's convenience, otherwise they
would have no reason for existence.

Science and Christianity are at one in abhorring the natural man and
calling upon the civilized man to fight and subdue him. The conquest of
nature, not the imitation of nature, is the whole duty of man.
Metchnikoff and St. Paul unite in criticizing the body we were born
with. St. Augustine and Huxley are in agreement as to the eternal
conflict between man and nature. In his Romanes lecture on "Evolution
and Ethics" Huxley said: "The ethical progress of society depends, not
on imitating the cosmic process, still less on running away from it, but
on combating it," and again: "The history of civilization details the
steps by which man has succeeded in building up an artificial world
within the cosmos."

There speaks the true evolutionist, whose one desire is to get away from
nature as fast and far as possible. Imitate Nature? Yes, when we cannot
improve upon her. Admire Nature? Possi