THE FIRST WANDERERS OF THE EARTH: TRIBAL MIGRATION IN PREHISTORIC TIMES From the painting of “Cain” by Ferdinand Cormon ] [Sidenote: Man the Master of Nature] All this renders him independent. But he now also finds himself drawn into a new kind of dependence, for he has now come to take a new view of Nature. He perceives in her an enormous storehouse of wealth, by using which he can multiply his resources and gratify his always increasing desires to an extent practically unlimited. She provides forces, such as steam and electricity, which his knowledge enables him to employ for production and transport, so as to spare his own physical strength, needed now not so much for effort as for the direction of the efforts of Nature. She has in the forest, and still more beneath her own surface in the form of minerals, the materials by which these forces can be set in motion; and by using these forces man can, with comparatively little trouble, procure abundance of those materials. Thus his relation to Nature is changed. It was that of a servant, or, indeed, rather of a beggar, needing the bounty of a sovereign. It is now that of a master needing the labour of a servant, a servant infinitely stronger than the master, but absolutely obedient to the master so long as the master uses the proper spell. Thus the connection of man with Nature, changed though his attitude be, is really as close as ever, and far more complex. If his needs had remained what they were in his primitive days--let us say, in those palæolithic days which we can faintly adumbrate to ourselves by an observation of the Australian or Fuegian aborigines now--he would have sat comparatively lightly to Nature, getting easily what he wanted, and not caring to trouble her for more. But his needs--that is to say, his desires, both his physical appetites and his intellectual tastes, his ambitions and his fondness for comfort, things that were once luxuries having become necessaries--have so immeasurably expanded that, since he asks much more from Nature, he is obliged to study her more closely than ever. [Sidenote: Man’s New Relations to Nature]