In the beginning the guide is instinct, and the act of trust is automatic.  But with the dawn of reason the thinker has to justify his faith; to convince himself that life is sincere, that there is worth-whileness in being, or in seeking to be; that there is order in creation, laws which can be discovered, processes which can be applied.  Just as the babe trusts life when it gropes for its mother’s breast, so the most skeptical of scientists trusts it when he declares that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and sets it down for a certainty that this will always be so—­that he is not being played with by some sportive demon, who will today cause H20 to behave like water, and tomorrow like benzine.

#Nature’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.