A great many of the things brought to our knowledge by our senses, such
as houses and furniture, carriages and machines, are termed =artificial
things= or =objects=, because they have been shaped by the =art= of man;
indeed, they are generally said to be made by man. But a far greater
number of things owe nothing to the hand of man, and would be just what
they are if mankind did not exist,—such as the sky and the clouds; the
sun, moon and stars; the sea with its rocks and shingly or sandy shores;
the hills and dales of the land; and all wild plants and animals. Things
of this kind are termed =natural objects=, and to the whole of them we
give the name of =Nature=.
6. =Artificial Things are only Natural Things shaped and brought
together or separated by Men.=
Although this distinction between =nature= and =art=, between =natural=
and =artificial= things, is very easily made and very convenient, it is
needful to remember that, in the long run, we owe everything to nature;
that even those artificial objects which we commonly say are made by
men, are only natural objects shaped and moved by men; and that, in the
sense of =creating=, that is to say, of causing something to exist which
did not exist in some other shape before, man can make nothing whatever.
Moreover, we must recollect that what men do in the way of shaping and
bringing together or separating natural objects, is done in virtue of
the powers which they themselves possess as natural objects.
Artificial things are, in fact, all produced by the action of that part
of nature which we call mankind, upon the rest.
We talk of “making” a box, and rightly enough, if we mean only that we
have shaped the pieces of wood and nailed them together; but the wood is
a natural object and so is the iron of the nails. A watch is “made” of
the natural objects gold and other metals, sand, soda, rubies, brought
together, and shaped in various ways; a coat is “made” of the natural
object, wool; and a frock of the natural objects, cotton or silk.
Moreover, the men who make all these things are natural objects.
Carpenters, builders, shoemakers, and all other artisans and artists,
are persons who have learned so much of the powers and properties of
certain natural objects, and of the chain of causes and effects in
nature, as enables them to shape and put together those natural objects,
so as to make them useful to man.
A carpenter could not, as we say, “make” a chair unless he knew
something of the properties and powers of wood; a blacksmith could not
“make” a horseshoe unless he knew that it is a property of iron to
become soft and easily hammered into shape when it is made red-hot; a
brickmaker must know many of the properties of clay; and a plumber could
not do his work unless he knew that lead has the properties of softness
and flexibility, and that a moderate heat causes it to melt.
So that the practice of every art implies a certain knowledge of natural
causes and effects; and the improvement of the arts depends upon our
learning more and more of the properties and powers of natural objects,
and discovering how to turn the properties and the powers of things and
the connections of cause and effect among them to our own advantage.
7. =Many Objects and Chains of Causes and Effects in Nature are out of
our reach.=
Among natural objects, as we have seen, there are some that we can get
hold of and turn to account. But all the greatest things in nature and
the links of cause and effect which connect them, are utterly beyond our
reach. The sun rises and sets; the moon and the stars move through the
sky; fine weather and storms, cold and heat, alternate. The sea changes
from violent disturbance to glassy calm, as the winds sweep over it with
varying strength or die away; innumerable plants and animals come in
being and vanish again, without our being able to exert the slightest
influence on the majestic procession of the series of great natural
events. Hurricanes ravage one spot; earthquakes destroy another;
volcanic eruptions lay waste a third. A fine season scatters wealth and
abundance here, and a long drought brings pestilence and famine there.
In all such cases, the direct influence of man avails him nothing; and,
so long as he is ignorant, he is the mere sport of the greater powers of
nature.
8. =The Order of Nature: nothing happens by Accident, and there is no
such thing as Chance.=
But the first thing that men learned, as soon as they began to study
nature carefully, was that some events take place in regular order and
that some causes always give rise to the same effects. The sun always
rises on one side and sets on the other side of the sky; the changes of
the moon follow one another in the same order and with similar
intervals; some stars never sink below the horizon of the place in which
we live; the seasons are more or less regular; water always flows
down-hill; fire always burns; plants grow up from seed and yield seed,
from which like plants grow up again; animals are born, grow, reach
maturity, and die, age after age, in the same way. Thus the notion of an
=order of nature= and of a fixity in the relation of cause and effect
between things gradually entered the minds of men. So far as such order
prevailed it was felt that things were explained; while the things that
could not be explained were said to have come about by =chance=, or to
happen by =accident=.
But the more carefully nature has been studied, the more widely has
order been found to prevail, while what seemed disorder has proved to be
nothing but complexity; until, at present, no one is so foolish as to
believe that anything happens by chance, or that there are any real
accidents, in the sense of events which have no cause. And if we say
that a thing happens by chance, everybody admits that all we really mean
is, that we do not know its cause or the reason why that particular
thing happens. Chance and accident are only _aliases_ of ignorance.
At this present moment, as I look out of my window, it is raining and
blowing hard, and the branches of the trees are waving wildly to and
fro. It may be that a man has taken shelter under one of these trees;
perhaps, if a stronger gust than usual comes, a branch will break, fall
upon the man, and seriously hurt him. If that happens it will be called
an “accident,” and the man will perhaps say that by “chance” he went
out, and then “chanced” to take refuge under the tree, and so the
“accident” happened. But there is neither chance nor accident in the
matter. The storm is the effect of causes operating upon the atmosphere,
perhaps hundreds of miles away; every vibration of a leaf is the
consequence of the mechanical force of the wind acting on the surface
exposed to it; if the bough breaks, it will do so in consequence of the
relation between its strength and the force of the wind; if it falls
upon the man it will do so in consequence of the action of other
definite natural causes; and the position of the man under it is only
the last term in a series of causes and effects, which have followed one
another in natural order, from that cause, the effect of which was his
setting out, to that the effect of which was his stepping under the
tree.
But, inasmuch as we are not wise enough to be able to unravel all these
long and complicated series of causes and effects which lead to the
falling of the branch upon the man, we call such an event an accident.