But of course the story has another side. After all, Nature is not so malevolent as at first glance she seems. She has opposed man at every stage of his attempted progress; yet at the same time she has supplied him all his weapons for waging war upon her. Her great power of gravitation opposes every effort he makes; yet without that same power he could do nothing--he could not walk or stay upon the earth even; and no structure that he builds would hold in place for an instant. So, too, the wind that smites him and tears at his handiwork, may be made to serve the purposes of turning his windmills and supplying him with power. The water will serve a like purpose in turning his mills; and, changed to steam with the aid of Nature's store of coal, will make his steam engines and dynamos possible. Even the lightning he will harness and make subject to his will in the telegraphic currents and dynamos. And in the fields, the grains which man struggles so arduously to produce are after all no thing of his creating. They are only adopted products of Nature, which he has striven to make serve his purpose by growing them under artificial conditions. So, too, the domesticated beasts are creatures that belong in the wilds and in distant lands. Man has brought them, in defiance of Nature, to uncongenial climes, and made them serve as workers and as food-suppliers where Nature alone could not support them. Turn loose the cow and the horse to forage for themselves here in the inhospitable north, and they would starve. They survive because man helps them to combat the adverse conditions imposed by Nature, yet no one of them could live for an hour were not the vital capacities supplied by Nature still in control. Everywhere, then, it is the opposing of Nature, up to certain limits, with the aid of Nature's own tools, that constitutes man's work in the world. Just in proportion as he bends the elements to meet his needs, transforms the plants and animals, defies and exceeds the limitations of primeval Nature--just in proportion as he conquers Nature, in a word, is he civilized. Barbaric man is called a child of Nature with full reason. He must accept what Nature offers. But civilized man is the child grown to adult stature, and able in a manner to control, to dominate--if you please to conquer--the parent.