In what ways have the reasoned and deliberate purposes of man revised and even supplanted the processes of nature? The ways are so many that it would be easier to mention those in which he has not done so. A modern civilized man is hardly content with anything that nature does, nor willing to accept any of nature's products. He will not eat nature's fruits, he prefers the kinds that he himself has brought into being. He is not content with the skin that nature has given him; he has made himself an infinite variety of complicated coverings. He objects to nature's habit of pouring cold water upon him, and so he has built himself houses in which he makes his own climate; he has recently taken to creating for himself houses which roll along the ground, or which fly through the air, or which swim under the surface of the sea; so he carries his private climate with him to all these places. It was nature's custom to remove her blunders and her experiments quickly from her sight. But man has decided that he loves life so well that he will preserve even the imbeciles, the lame and the halt and the blind. In a state of nature, if a man's eyes were not properly focused, he blundered into the lair of a tiger and was eaten. But civilized man despises such a method of maintaining the standard of human eyes; he creates for himself a transparent product, ground to such a curve that it corrects the focus of his eyes, and makes them as good as any other eyes. In ten thousand such ways we might name, man has rebelled against the harshness of his ancient mother, and has freed himself from her control.