Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 106.djvu/641

Rh  Man's mastery over nature has made him the victim of scores of diseases not known to the animals below him. The artificial conditions with which he has surrounded himself, his material comforts, his extra-natural aids and shields, have opened the way to the invasion of his kingdom by hosts of bacterial enemies from whose mischievous activities the lower orders are exempt. He has closed his door against wind and cold, and thereby opened it to a ruthless and invisible horde. Nature endows him with reason, and then challenges it at every turn. She puts a weapon into his hand that she has given to no other animal, and then confronts him with foes such as no other animal knows. He pays for his privileges. He has entered the lists as a free lance, and he must and does take his chances. For the privileges of mastering certain of nature's activities, he pays in a host of natural enemies. For the privilege of fire, he pays in the hazard of fire; for the privilege of steam, he pays in the risks of steam; for knowing how to overcome and use gravity, he pays in many a deadly surrender to gravity. He shakes out his sail to the wind at the risk of the wind's power and fury. So always does the new gift bring new danger and new responsibilities.

Man is endowed and blest above all other creatures, and above all other creatures is he exposed to defeat and death. But the problem is not as broad as it is long. The price paid does not always, or commonly, eat up all the profit. There has been a steady gain. Nature exacts her fee, but the service is more than worth it. Otherwise man would not be here. Unless man had been driven out of Paradise, what would he have come to? The lower orders are still in the Garden of Eden; they know not good from evil; but man's evolution has brought him out of the state of innocence and dependence, and he is supreme in the world. 



began his literary career (and may he so end it!) by writing an essay for the Atlantic Monthly; as good an introduction (and conclusion), speaking by the rhetoric, as a lifelong composition need have. That first essay entitled Expression, 'a somewhat Emersonian Expression,' says its author, was printed in the Atlantic for November, 1860, which was fifty years ago. Fifty years are not threescore and ten; many men have lived past threescore and ten, but not many men have written continuously for the Atlantic for fifty years, with eye undimmed and natural force unabated. Mr. Burroughs's eye for the truth of nature has grown clearer during these fifty years, and the vigor of his youth has steadied into a maturity of strength which in some of his latest essays—The Long Road, for in- 