26. THE CONQUEST OF NATURE AND THE WELL-BEING OF MAN.--It is evident that the successful exploitation of the resources of material nature is of enormous significance to the life of man. It may bring emancipation; it offers opportunity. One is tempted to affirm, without stopping to reflect, that the development of the arts and sciences, the increase of wealth and of knowledge, must in the nature of things increase human happiness. One is tempted, further, to maintain that an advance in civilization must imply an advance in moralization. Man has a moral nature which exhibits itself to some degree at every stage of his development. What more natural to conclude than that, with the progressive unfolding of his intelligence, with increase in knowledge, with some relaxation of the struggle for existence which pits man against his fellow-man, and subordinates all other considerations to the inexorable law of self- preservation, his moral nature would have the opportunity to show itself in a fuller measure? When we compare man at his very lowest with man at his highest such judgments appear to be justified. But man is to be found at all sorts of intermediate stages. His knowledge may be limited, the development of the arts not far advanced, his control over nature far from complete, and yet he may live in comparative security and with such wants as he has reasonably well satisfied. His competition with his fellows may not be bitter and absorbing. The simple life is not necessarily an unhappy life, if the simplicity which characterizes it be not too extreme. In judging broadly of the significance for human life of the control over nature which is implied in the advance of civilization, one must take into consideration several points of capital importance: (1) The multiplication of man's wants results, not in happiness, but in unhappiness, unless the satisfaction of those wants can be adequately provided for. (2) The effort to satisfy the new wants which have been called into being may be accompanied by an enormous expenditure of effort. Where the effort is excessive man becomes again the slave of his environment. His task is set for him, and he fulfills it under the lash of an imperious necessity. The higher standard may become as inexorable a task-master as was the lower.