of her thunderbolts by lightning rods; of her
inundations by embankments, of her oceans by breakwaters.[1]

[Footnote 1: Mill: _Three Essays on Religion_, p. 19 (essay on "Nature").]

By irrigation man has learned to make the "wilderness blossom
as the rose." By railways, telegraphs, and telephones, he
has learned to minimize the obstacles that time and space offer
to the fulfillment of his desires. By controlling, by means of
education and social organization, his own instincts in the
light of the purposes he would attain, by studying "the secret
processes of Nature," man has learned to make the world a fit
habitation for himself. To dig, to plough, to sow, to reap, are
instances of the means whereby man has applied intelligent
control to his half-friendly, half-hostile environment.

Man's deliberate control of Nature arises thus under the
sharp pressure of practical necessity. Man is inherently
active, but, as pointed out in an earlier connection, his activity
takes coherent and consecutive form primarily under the compulsion
of satisfying his physical wants, of finding food, clothing,
and shelter. The greater part of human energy, certainly
under primitive conditions, is devoted to maintaining a
precarious equilibrium among the mysterious and terrifying
forces of a half-understood environment. There is not much
time for leisure, play, or art, where food is a continuously
urgent problem, where one's shelter is likely to be destroyed by
storm or wind, where one is threatened incessantly by beasts
of prey, and, as primitive man supposed, by capricious supernatural
powers. Under such circumstances, life is largely
spent in instrumental or imperative pursuits. Action is
fixed by necessity. It is controlled with immediate and urgent
reference to the business of keeping alive. There is scarcely
time for the activity of art, which is spontaneous and free.

In civilized life, also, the greater part of human energy
must be spent in necessary or instrumental business. Men
must, as always, be fed, clothed, and housed, and the fulfillment
of these primary human demands absorbs the greater
part of the waking hours of the majority of mankind. Our
civilization is predominantly industrial; it is devoted almost
entirely to the transforming of the world of nature into products
for the gratification of the physical wants of men. These
wants have, of course, become much complicated and refined:
men wish not only to live, but to l