And here we close our consideration of the principle accordant with which we have rendered more clear that aspect of the unity of the inner life with its natural environment which we posited as secret or potential, not at any rate directly due to human activity. (_b_) The second phase of this harmonious relation may be explained more positively, being expressly due to man's own activity and his adaptation of means to ends. For man adapts external objects to his own uses and, by means of the satisfaction which his work supplies, places himself in a harmonious relation to them. In contrast therefore to our first indefinite[384], and, in fact, entirely general type of harmonious association the present one is directly concerned with what is particular, as exemplified in the particular needs of man and their satisfaction by his converting to his use such natural objects as he may require. The range of his wants and the consequent impulse of their satisfaction is of a practically unlimited variety; yet it is nothing in comparison with the variety of Nature herself. Simplification is therefore inseparable from the task whereby, our humanity imposes on the facts of Nature its own vital purposes, and interpenetrates the external world with its own volitions. In this way man's environment is humanized; he proves by his own acts that it is capable of satisfying his nature and is unable to preserve any predominant independence over against him. Here at last, by virtue, that is, of his own productive exertions, we find him no longer in a merely general sense of the term, but actually in every detail of his particular surroundings a real centre of his own substance and at home.