No doubt, it may be properly urged that the operation of human energy
and intelligence, which has brought into existence and maintains the
garden, by what I have called "the horticultural process," is,
strictly speaking, part and parcel of the cosmic process. And no one
could more readily agree to that proposition than I. In fact, I do not
know that any one has taken more pains than I have, during the last
thirty years, to insist upon the doctrine, so much reviled in the
early part of that period, that man, physical, intellectual, and
moral, is as much a part of nature, as purely a product of the cosmic
process, as the humblest weed.*
* See "Man's Place in Nature," Collected Essays, vol. vii., and
"On the Struggle for Existence in Human Society" (1888), below.
But if, following up this admission, it is urged [12] that, such being
the case, the cosmic process cannot be in antagonism with that
horticultural process which is part of itself--I can only reply, that
if the conclusion that the two are antagonistic is logically absurd,
I am sorry for logic, because, as we have seen, the fact is so. The
garden is in the same position as every other work of man's art; it is
a result of the cosmic process working through and by human energy and
intelligence; and, as is the case with every other artificial thing
set up in the state of nature, the influences of the latter, are
constantly tending to break it down and destroy it. No doubt, the
Forth bridge and an ironclad in the offing, are, in ultimate resort,
products of the cosmic process; as much so as the river which flows
under the one, or the seawater on which the other floats.
Nevertheless, every breeze strains the bridge a little, every tide
does something to weaken its foundations; every change of temperature
alters the adjustment of its parts, produces friction and consequent
wear and tear. From time to time, the bridge must be repaired, just
as the ironclad must go into dock; simply because nature is always
tending to reclaim that which her child, man, has borrowed from her
and has arranged in combinations which are not those favoured by the
general cosmic process.
Thus, it is not only true that the cosmic energy, working through man
upon a portion of [13] the plant world, opposes the same energy as it
works through the state of nature, but a similar antagonism is
everywhere manifest between the artificial and the natural. Even in
the state of nature itself, what is the struggle for existence but the
antagonism of the results of the cosmic process in the region of life,
one to another?*
* Or to put the case still more simply. When a man lays hold of
the two ends of a piece of string and pulls them, with intent
to break it, the right arm is certainly exerted in antagonism
to the left arm; yet both arms derive their energy from the
same original source.