The hope of the world is in this resolute spirit of control,--control of the material without us, and of the passions within. Bit by bit, one is not afraid to say, we shall make for ourselves a better world. Shall we not find a way to eliminate disease, to control the increase of population, to find in plastic organization a substitute for revolution? Shall we perhaps even succeed in transmuting the lust for power over man into ambition to conquer the forces that impede man? Shall we make men understand that there is more potency of joy in the sense of having contributed to the power of men over nature than in any personal triumph of one over another man?--more glory in a conquest of bacteria than in all the martial victories that have ever spilled human blood? Here is the beginning of real civilization, and the mark of man. “The environment transforms the animal; man transforms the environment.”[80] “Looking at the history of the world as a whole, the tendency has been in Europe to subordinate nature to man; out of Europe, to subordinate man to nature. Formerly the richest countries were those in which nature was most bountiful; now the richest countries are those in which man is most active.”[81] Control is the sign of maturity, the achievement of Europe, the future of America. It is, one argues again, the drama of history, this war between Asia and Europe, between nature and man, between worship and control. Fundamentally it is the upward struggle of intelligence: Plato is its voice, Zeno its passing exhaustion, Bacon its resurrection. It was not an unopposed rebirth: there is still no telling whether East or West will win. Surrounded by the backwash of Oriental currents everywhere, the lover of the Baconian spirit needs constantly to refresh himself at the fount of Bacon’s inexhaustible inspiration and confidence. “I stake all,” he says, “on the victory of art over nature in the race.” And one needs to hold ever before oneself Bacon’s favorite device: A ship passing through the Pillars of Hercules out into the unknown sea, and over it the words, PLUS ULTRA. More beyond! CHAPTER IV SPINOZA ON THE SOCIAL PROBLEM[82] I Hobbes