¶ But there is something that grows and keeps on growing in the Nevada desert--the sagebrush. It couldn't move away and it couldn't change its waterless environment, so it did what you and I must do if we expect to succeed. It adapted itself to its environment, and there it stands, each little stalwart shrub a reminder of what even a plant can do when it tries! Moving Won't Help Much ¶ Human life faces the same alternatives that confront all other forms of life--of adapting itself to the conditions under which it must live or becoming extinct. You have an advantage over the sagebrush in that you can move from your city or state or country to another, but after all that is not much of an advantage. For though you may improve your situation slightly you will still find that in any civilized country the main elements of your problem are the same. Understand Yourself and Others ¶ So long as you live in a civilized or thickly populated community you will still need to understand your own nature and the natures of other people. No matter what you desire of life, other people's aims, ambitions and activities constitute vital obstructions along your pathway. You will never get far without the co-operation, confidence and comradeship of other men and women. Primitive Problems ¶ It was not always so. And its recentness in human history may account for some of our blindness to this great fact. In primitive times people saw each other rarely and had much less to do with each other. The human element was then not the chief problem. Their environmental problems had to do with such things as the elements, violent storms, extremes of heat and cold, darkness, the ever-present menace of wild beasts whose flesh was their food, yet who would eat them first unless they were quick in brain and body. Civilization's Changes ¶ But all that is changed. Man has subjugated all other creatures and now walks the earth its supreme sovereign. He has discovered and invented and builded until now we live in skyscrapers, talk around the world without wires and by pressing a button turn darkness into daylight. Causes of Failure ¶ Yet with all our knowledge of the outside world ninety-nine lives out of every hundred are comparative failures. ¶ The reason is plain to every scientific investigator. We have failed to study ourselves in relation to the great environmental problem of today. The stage-setting has been changed but not the play. The game is the same old game--you must adjust and adapt yourself to your environment or it will destroy you. Mastering His Own Environment