Further discussion of details seems unnecessary.  Yet the full 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 gains and gives external expression to the reality of his inner nature, his freedom, his personality.  True, instead of bringing health and long life, knowledge and deep enjoyment, they may become the means of bitterest curses.  But the lesson to learn from this fact is how to use these powers aright, not how to forbid their use altogether.  They are not to be branded as hindrances to progress.