THE MALOJA--THE UPPER ENGADIN--PONTRESINA.
There’s place and means for every man alive.--SHAKESPEARE.
_August 10._--As I had undertaken to present myself to-day at
Pontresina in time for an early dinner, I engaged a _char_ at Casaccia
to take me as far as St. Moritz; and having walked to the top of the
Maloja, was there overtaken by it. The Maloja has an altitude of only
5,941 feet, which makes it the lowest of all the passes by which Italy
may be entered from Switzerland. Its ascent from Casaccia is over an
excellent road, with a rise of 1,150 feet, the latter part of which is
through well-grown pine woods. I reached the summit so much in advance
of my carriage as to have plenty of time for contemplating the backward
view of the upper reach of the Bregaglia over the head of the forest--a
view which was well worth the time.
The books tell us so much of the peculiarities, interest, and beauties
of the Upper Engadin, that every one who goes to see it expects much;
and I cannot think that there will be many of those who see it, who
will feel any disappointment. In respect of length, and of capability
for supporting human life, it may be equalled, or exceeded, by other
Swiss Valleys, as for instance by those of the Rhine, of the Rhone, and
of the Ticino, but there are other particulars of interest in which
it leaves them all far behind. The great point is that it combines
an elevation above the sea, which is elsewhere found to be but ill
suited for supporting human life with an amount of population which
would in any other valley be regarded as considerable; and that this
large amount of population is evidently maintained in circumstances
of comparative comfort. Beginning at the height just mentioned, it
descends at first so gradually that at St. Moritz, twelve miles down
the valley, the stream is only 150 feet below the summit of the
Pass; while the town of St. Moritz itself, which is 300 feet above
the stream, is actually 150 feet higher than the summit of the Pass.
And in the sixty miles of its course from the Maloja to Martinsbruck
it only loses 2,598 feet. The effect, too, of its actual elevation
upon vegetable, and therefore, upon human life, must be somewhat
aggravated by its direction, which being to the north-east exposes it
to cold winds, and renders it, moreover, somewhat unfavourable for the
reception of sunshine. And, then, its temperature is still further
lowered by the contiguity on either side of many snowy summits. These
conditions make in its upper parts all kinds of cultivation, except
that of grass, almost impossible. I saw this day at St. Moritz, and a
little above it, some few potato patches, but as in every instance the
haulm of these had been killed back by recent midsummer frosts, nothing
this year would be got from them but disappointment. Still I found
this part of the valley surprisingly populous, for it contains what
almost may be called a chain of little towns, in every one of which are
several good houses, and in not one of which is there the slightest
indication of any approach to pauperism. The absence, however, of this
form of wretchedness might almost have been expected, because where the
winter is eight or nine months long no family can exist which has not
some assured means of living. But this does not explain the well-to-do
condition you must infer is the lot of many, whose substantial and
neatly kept houses you see in every one of these little towns. Nature
you conclude at a glance is too niggard here to maintain so many
well-to-do families; you begin then to inquire how they are maintained?
Whence come their means? What are they living upon?
The answer to these questions is worth obtaining not only for the sake
of what it will tell us of the history of these people’s lives, but
also because it will remind us of a change that is now coming over
the whole world. These good people are living mainly upon capital,
either upon the interest of capital invested in good securities, or
upon the dividends of capital employed in such ventures as are open
to them. This is a fact of Grison life to which reference has already
been made, and to which we shall have to recur again. The reader is
already aware that my companion, the circumnavigator, who was now
seated by my side, was one of those who had failed in the Grison method
of wooing fortune; but the owners of almost all these good houses had
been successful wooers, for the good houses that belong to old Grison
families are comparatively few. You pass a house which appears to be
a goodly mansion. It covers a great deal of ground, is solidly built,
and of two, or possibly of three, stories. It may not, however, be
quite so large a dwelling-house as it looks, for the ground floor, or
part of it, is perhaps a stable for half-a-dozen, or more, cows, and a
couple of horses--these are seldom kept in outhouses. And this house
may also contain a haystack sufficiently large to maintain these cows
and horses for seven or eight months. Still after these deductions have
been made it is a goodly house, and much ornamented, for its owner is
proud of it; and the question arises, Whence came the money to purchase
the land on which it stands, then to build it, then to buy the land
which supplies the hay, and last, but not least, of all to support
the family in comfort according to Engadin ideas? The money required
for all this must have been a considerable sum, and the valley of the
Inn has hitherto offered no opportunities for making such sums. In
the particular case now before us it was all made by selling little
cups of coffee, and still smaller glasses of liqueurs, at Paris. And
before its owner could begin this small trade on his own account, he
had to serve some years as waiter in an hotel; for he took no capital
with him to Paris except the determination to get on. That was then
all his stock in trade, but it was of such a kind as to be enough for
the purpose. It was ultimately upon that foundation that the big house
was built. His pecuniary savings began in the hotel. By the time he
had learnt the ways and the language of the place, he had saved enough
to commence the sale on his own account of the little cups of coffee,
and smaller glasses of liqueurs. With what care must the cent or two
that was made by each cup, or glass, have been guarded! How rarely were
any of them spent in self-indulgence! It was self-indulgence enough to
look forward to the house in the Engadin, with the thought that its
owner would become one of the aristocracy of the valley; and to find
at the end of the week that the life-supporting prospect--the ambition
of a life, was so many francs nearer to realization. The next house
was built by one who had rolled up his francs by vending little cakes,
and small confectionery at Vienna. The process had been throughout the
same. You inquire about a third with a coat of arms over the door, and
gilt lattice at the window. Its owner climbed the ladder by becoming
a _bon-bon_ maker at Brussels. After half a life spent in unswerving
fidelity to their single purpose these keen accumulators of small
gains had made enough to enable them to take their ease for the rest
of their days in Paris, Vienna, or Brussels; but that was not what
they had been slaving and saving for. Of the 100,000 francs each of
them had made, each invested the greater part in some good security,
and the rest he expended in buying a piece of land, and in building a
house, in that valley that has the climate of Iceland; and this house
and land together with the money invested, which enables him to live
in the house, is his unquestioned patent of nobility. In right of his
manifestly achieved success he assumes his place in the aristocracy of
the valley.
This is a spontaneously formed, and self-acting system. The distinction
is real and substantial, and the way to it is open to all, and must be
travelled by all who attain to the distinction, and none who travel it
successfully can miss the distinction. With us it is different. Here
there are many ways of making money, and but few only of those who have
trodden successfully some one or other of the many ways attain to the
splendid summits of society. It is not so in the Grisons. There the man
who makes the money in the hard and humble way open to him, and builds
the big house, and lives in it, becomes _ipso facto_ a Grison grandee.
He climbed up to his Herrship by a ladder that was very difficult to
mount, but was equally accessible to all; and every one that climbs
it enters the charmed circle. Enterprise, self-denial, and patience;
great enterprise, for it is that in a penniless peasant to go out into
the unknown world to compete with the natives of some great foreign
city, unflinching self-denial, and heroical patience are the only
course open to them. If the same mental stuff is needed for the making
of the Cæsar of the village as of the Cæsar of the world, then we may
suppose that under different circumstances, these men would have risen
to eminence through higher paths. They were made of good stuff. We see
in them men, who had their lot been cast here, would have become Lord
Chancellors, Admirals, Generals, Statesmen, Scholars, merchant Princes,
perhaps even Bishops.
But these successful builders of big houses are not all the people;
and we must not allow their big houses to hide from our view the
small houses of these little towns, and the small people who live in
them. All men have not the same gifts; and of those who have all do
not exercise them alike and to like issues. Many may have had the
enterprise without the heroical self-denial and patience, which in some
cases may mean a narrow horizon and a hard heart, but which narrow
horizon and hard heart were necessary for success in the case of such
small traffickers. And some, too, may have had the self-denial and
the patience in heroical degrees, and not been deficient either in
the requisite enterprise, but yet were kept back from turning these
qualities to good account by the goodness of their hearts. That may
have kept them at home to provide for, and to tend, an aged parent in
his chair-days; or an early affection may have influenced them to the
same result. And so possibly there may be as good stuff, intellectually
and morally, among those who have never left the village as among those
who went forth into the world, and prospered. Chance, too, has a place
in the affairs of men. Good fortune does not always mean good conduct,
nor bad fortune bad conduct. Conduct that was both wise and good may
have had ill-fortuned results. But we will set these cases aside, and
ask if those who, because they stayed at home for good reasons, and
so are now in no better condition than their fathers were, and those
who went forth and prospered, find in any sense their rewards equal?
Certainly not, if both of them measure, as the world does, all things
by francs. Still each has his reward, and the reward of satisfied
affections, and of a satisfied sense of duty, is great as it is felt at
the moment, for at that time every consideration gives way to it; and
it is great also in retrospect, which is the recalling of the feelings
of that moment. We are glad, then, to witness the success of those who
made the francs, and built the stone houses, and to talk with them
of their experiences of the world in which the francs were made; but
this does not diminish our respect for those who stayed at home, and
who will live, and toil, and die in the same small wooden _châlets_ in
which their fathers lived, and toiled, and died. Indeed, our respect
for them, and even our disposition to like them, are rather increased
by the sight of the big mansions of the lemonade, and bon-bon, and
coffee and confectionery lords.
So much in explanation of the big houses we find not only in the
Engadin, but more or less in all the Grison valleys. We now come to
the valley itself. The sun on this day was unclouded; but we were on
the road from the Maloja to St. Moritz; these words, therefore, must
not be taken to mean what they would stand for had they been said of a
drive from Bath to Bristol. We all know what a cloudless day is here
in the middle of August: in the Upper Engadin it is not quite the same
sort of thing. With respect to what meets the eye: there is no trace
of haze; the definition of every mountain and glacier outline is sharp
and clear; the luminous blue is not blue, or luminous, in our subdued
fashion; and even the greens and grays of the mountains are hardly
less green and gray quite up to the distant sky-line. There is little
toning down. Distance only blends the local variegation into an uniform
colour. You cannot make out the variegation of the flowery turf, of
the lichen-painted rock, and of the glancing foliage and shaded trunks
of the forest, on account of the distance: that is all. The distance
as it were fuses together the smaller differences; and then it puts
a varnish over the whole: the clear bright air is the varnish. Then
as to the appeal this diaphanous rarefied air makes to the sense of
feeling: though, indeed, it is not air; that is a word that here would
mislead; it is a celestial ether; and so with the sun, though it is
hot, what you feel is not heat; it is a permeating, invigorating,
life-creating warmth; this warmth, then, which the sun imparts to
this ether, pervades your lungs, your heart, and reaches to your very
bones. It makes you conscious of a lighter, and of a quicker life
than you ever felt before. Like the air of the desert it so rapidly,
so instantaneously evaporates the imperceptible perspiration that the
skin beneath your clothes as well as that of your face develops a new
sensation. It has ceased to be merely a tough, half-dead integument,
whose function is just to protect you from external rubs. As the flower
expands to the light, and turns to it, from the satisfaction it has
in absorbing it, so your skin has become sensitive to this ether, and
feels the delight of being in contact with it. And a third sense has
yet to be gladdened. Up here it is now the middle of hay harvest, and
the air is pervaded with the fragrance of the new hay. And you are all
the way passing by, or through, pine-forests, and the bright sun is
constantly raising into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves
myriad molecules of their resinous exudations; and this perfume also is
wafted to you.
And then the scene has its peculiar features. In these twelve miles
you pass four lakes; the small lake of the Maloja summit, the Silser
see, four and a half miles long, the Silva Planer see somewhat longer,
and that of St. Moritz about a mile in length. Thus, throughout almost
all the way, you are driving along this chain of lakes, on a road a
little above them. Of the colour of these mountain lakes our English
home-trained eyes know nothing. It must be seen to be understood.
It is of the blue of the sky, only a shade less deep, and with some
slight admixture of green. You wonder what the trout that live in them
can find to live upon in water so pure, and which, in truth, is not
water, but the lymph of the celestial depths--heaven’s azure liquefied.
Everyone feels the charm of water as an addition to the scene: but such
lakes as these, which are not of water, but of some less earthly fluid,
how great is the charm they add to this scene! And the more so, if you
have come upon them suddenly after some days of trudging and toiling in
the mountains, where the eyes were wearied, almost wounded, with the
continual recurrence of pinnacles and precipices, rocks and ravines,
nothing but what was hard, dark, jagged, and torn. The impressions of
sombreness, ruggedness, and terror that had of late been stamped on
your brain, and seemed to be in it like things that were alive, are now
laid to rest by the sight of the smooth blue: its effects are soothing
and healing.
Another peculiarity of this road is the number of glaciers and snow
summits that are seen from it. Of these, too, as it is with the blue
lakes, you are hardly ever out of sight. You come abreast of a lateral
valley; and as you look up it you see at its head a mighty glacier,
the view of which seems so complete that you think you can make out
its whole course, that is to say its whole life, from the snowfield
out of which it is compacted, and by which it is forced on, till at
last it issues, in another form, from its own mouth. Or a range before
you recedes a little, or becomes depressed a little, and you see at
this point a mighty snow-capped giant from behind peering over into
the valley; and you feel the current of crisp air that is flowing down
into the valley from the glacier, or from the giant’s head--the breath
of the glacier, or of the giant. And in the twelve miles you pass as
many towns as you do lakes; one for every three miles: all clean, and
flourishing: and not a dilapidated hovel in a land where nothing is
grown but grass, and where there are nine months of winter and three
of cold, with the exception of a few such days as was to-day! This
absence of visible poverty adds much to the sense of satisfaction with
which you contemplate the scene. Nature here has made it difficult for
man to live upon his fellow man, for a man, under the conditions here
imposed upon him, can hardly do more than support himself. Of course
three-fourths of the population might be cleared off, and half the
quantity of cattle maintained; but that is not the turn things took
here. Every man, excepting the capitalists we have already spoken of,
and no one grudges them their hard-earned accumulations, which besides
do good to some, and no harm to anyone, everyone, excepting them, must
work hard to live; but to live here by his hard work a man must himself
have the fruits of it.
The direction in which the stream by your side is flowing is often an
ingredient in the thought of the wanderer among these mountains of
central Europe. ‘This stream,’ he says to himself, ‘is hurrying to join
the Po, or the Rhine, or the Rhone.’ On this day I said to myself,
‘These charming lakes are among the head Waters of the Danube.’ The
little stream we passed as it came racing down from Monte Lunghino into
the Silser see is the furthest urn of the Inn. This makes you feel that
you have passed into another region. The continent is now inclining
in another direction. The Danube, and the Black Sea for a time become
the goal of your thoughts of this kind. In this respect Lunghino along
the eastern roots of which I was now passing, and the opposite side
of which I had traversed yesterday, is pre-eminent, for it contains
the diffluent urns of three great historic rivers, the Rhine, the Po,
and the Danube; of the Rhine by giving birth to one of the feeders of
the Oberhalbstein stream, of the Po by giving birth to a feeder of the
Maira, which joins the Adda as it is on the point of entering the lake
of Como, and of the Danube by giving birth to the actual head water of
the Inn.
A little more than a mile before you reach St. Moritz, you look down
on the old monster Kurhaus, and a new and more monstrous one nearly
completed. They are upon the alluvial flat at the head of the lake.
As I saw by my side a patch or two of potatoes smitten by summer
frosts, I thought it strange that any people, possessed of free agency,
especially invalids, could be found to descend into, and to stay in,
such a place. With what ice-cold vapour must the evaporation from that
alluvial bottom load the air so soon in the afternoon as the sun is
off the ground, and down there they cannot have much of him! And how
cutting must the cold wind be down there! Is there anything that can
compensate for these evils? I doubt much whether mineral waters can
that sometimes are in fashion, and sometimes are forsaken. But there
will always be plenty of people who will try anything of this kind,
and there will always be some who will endeavour to persuade people to
resort to such supposed remedies. One would like to know what is the
proportion of people who go to these places a second time, not for the
sake of the society they expect to find at them, but for the sake of
the waters; and whether the proportion of actual cures is much greater
than of the cures effected by touching the bones, or the old clothes,
of some supposed saint. If after two or three weeks at such a place
as this a man finds himself no worse than when he reached it, he may
infer that after all his system is not so far enfeebled but that air,
exercise, and diet may do something for him.
The above wayside remark is made subject to correction from those who
thoroughly understand these subjects. There is, however, another way of
looking at this charming lake, with the green forest that descends to
it from the opposite mountain, and beyond the lake the valley opening
up to Pontresina, and with the long varied vistas up and down the main
valley, and with the little town of St. Moritz, perched on its niche on
the mountain side, close before you. There is so much variety, so many
objects, so much colour, and everything is so clear and fresh, and so
bright in the sunshine, that you can hardly think the scene belongs to
the same world as you are accustomed to at home. It hardly looks real,
the difference is so great. It looks like something got up to please
and astonish you, and in this it quite succeeds.
We reached the Post _bureau_ of St. Moritz at 11.30, and started
at once for Pontresina, the Australian having shouldered my _sac_,
or--to be accurate--having taken it in his hand, for from a feeling of
self-respect he would never shoulder it in a town, lest this method
of carrying it might lead to the degrading inference that he was a
professional. The walk was a pleasant one of about four miles down to
and across the Inn, along the lake side, and through woods and meadows.
I was just in time to save my engagement. Of course everybody knows
that time was made for slaves, but sometimes it is pleasant to be
punctual, for instance when a long business, subject throughout to a
variety of circumstances, has been brought to a close at a prearranged
moment, for then you may fancy that it is you who are master of time
and of yourself.
As I parted with the Australian he was sufficiently professional to ask
for more than he had agreed to serve me for plus the present I added
to the agreement. This demand I did not decline to comply with, for
had I not now reached my destination for the time with some treasure
of memorable sights and of pleasant thoughts for myself, and how could
our journeyings benefit him except in this way of francs? And why
by withstanding his request for more should I ruffle my companion,
or be ruffled myself? Besides, too, in our last four miles I had
begun to think him less burdensome, or more tolerable, than he had
appeared to me at any time previously. In those four miles he had
again, as he had frequently done on other occasions (but as now I was
about to see him no more the incongruity seemed rather amusing than
shocking) called the ravines gullies, the forest bush, my _sac_ the
swag, and the glaciers--how horrible, but how explicable in such a
circumnavigator--the icebergs! And so after all we parted amicably, as
it is best that people should, and with reciprocal expressions of good
wishes for each other’s welfare.
Pontresina consists of a long narrow street. At its northern extremity,
by which those arriving from the Engadin enter it, the first building
you pass is one of its two large hotels. The other is at its southern
extremity. A few hundred yards beyond this is a second little town,
Upper Pontresina, with its hotel. The two will soon be united into
one long unbroken street of about a mile in length. This street is
crowded at most hours of the day. There are people returning from
their forenoon excursions, and others starting for their afternoon
excursions. People arriving from, or leaving for the near towns of the
Engadin, or from or for Italy by the Bernina Pass. After the early
dinner, which had regulated my movements throughout the forenoon,
and indeed for some days back, my wife and her little boy took me in
hand, to introduce me to the sights of the place. ‘There is the Roseg
valley, and the Roseg glacier, with such and such peaks above it.’
These could be seen from Pontresina. ‘We will take you there to-morrow.
This afternoon we will go along the main valley, and give you a look
at the Morterasch.’ And that was what they did. The road, like the
street, only in a less degree, was alive with parties coming and going,
for it is not only the way to the Morterasch and Bernina, but also the
route to Italy by Poschiavo and Tirano. The evening was closing in when
we returned to Pontresina. The crowd in the single street had now in
the neighbourhood of the Post _bureau_ become almost a block. In the
crowd I met an Englishman I had seen in the morning at Casaccia. His
air was distracted. He had been for some time in search of a place to
shelter him for the night, but was everywhere told the same story, that
his search would be hopeless: even every landing and passage in every
private house, where a shake-down could be placed, was already bespoken.
Bewildering was the stir in the narrow street. There were many Germans,
but the English including the Americans, or as they might put it, the
Americans including the English, were largely in the majority. The
peculiarity of the crowd was that it included many children, and almost
as many ladies as gentlemen. What was it that had brought together this
concourse of people from many nations, and even from the New World?
It was simply to see glaciers. The glaciers had been there from time
before history, from the time, it may be, that man had trod the soil
of Europe: it is scarcely, however, a dozen years since such crowds
began to assemble here to see them. This indicates new thoughts and
new sentiments about the world we live in, as well as an increase of
wealth and of facilities for locomotion. It was never so seen of old
times. In our fathers’ times men and women flocked to London and Paris,
as they had done in the old world to Rome, to see and to be seen.
Society was the great attraction. For a little time a few had been
attracted to Athens, because it was the centre of art, of culture, and
of refinement, but that was a dawn of promise that was soon overcast.
For some thousand years before that dawn so soon obscured, the greatest
annual gatherings of men had been at Egyptian Thebes. The object,
however, which had brought them together there had been the exchange
of the commodities of Asia and of Africa. The attraction was first
commerce, then social dissipation. Here men are brought together in
a lofty Alpine valley, too cold to grow a potato, where there is no
trade, and no society, to see mountains and glaciers. This is a higher,
because a purely intellectual, purpose. In the first gatherings of the
young world only one class of men took part, merchants and traders. In
the next mainly those who had riches and nothing to do. Here we have,
without excluding the rich, men of all professions, mostly not rich,
and many of them with plenty to do. They come in multitudes; and the
cry is still, ‘they come,’ that is in yearly increasing multitudes.
But the impulse that has carried the world to Pontresina, will not stop
at Pontresina. At no distant day the children of these summer-tourists,
when locomotion shall have been still further improved, will cross
oceans for their summer excursions, and will climb the Andes, and
the Himalaya, as their children may the Mountains of the Moon, going
perhaps by the Soudan railway we now hear is in contemplation, and
taking the sources of the Nile by the way. People will not for ever,
now that they have begun to look out on the world, be content with the
moderate altitudes, and the sombre, monotonous pine woods of central
Europe. The appetite for seeing nature is one that grows with what it
feeds on. Those who have found pleasurable emotions result from seeing
Switzerland will wish to see something more of this glorious world.
They will long to become acquainted with grander mountain ranges,
with nobler and more diversified faunas and floras than those of our
temperate zone, and with other conditions and forms of human life than
those which obtain among a portion of our near kindred circumstanced
not very dissimilarly from ourselves.
The history of the recent spread of the love now so widely felt for
nature is interesting and instructive. Clearly it had its rise in that
increase in the knowledge of nature which belongs to our times. It
is, however, obvious that it is not confined to those who have this
knowledge in the form and degree which would entitle it to be regarded
as scientific. They are few, but the desire is felt by many, almost,
indeed, by all who have received any culture worthy of the name. It
seems, therefore, to have spread from the few to the many by a kind
of infection, which shows that it is a natural taste, which former
conditions kept in a state of repression. From what we see we may
conclude that the acquisition and possession of the images and ideas,
which the contemplation, or if that is too strong a word for the case
of those who have been debarred from any scientific acquaintance with
nature, then which the mere sight of the forms and phenomena of nature
supplies to the mind, is a source of delight. Of course, the delight
would be far greater, had the previous knowledge been wider and deeper,
that is to say had the mind been better fitted for the reception of
the images and ideas; but still it is felt, and so strongly as to give
rise to a desire for more extended fields of observation. Even in old
times there are indications of this pleasure having been felt. It was
not absent from the awe and wonder which accompanied the observation of
the starry firmament, and of the phenomena of the great deep, or from
the attempt to co-ordinate the details of the natural scene as depicted
in the hundred and fourth Psalm. Solomon’s collection of facts and
observations about animals and plants--for his works on these subjects
must have been something of this kind--was suggested by this pleasure.
And as these emotions had such issues among the ancient Hebrews, we
cannot suppose that their kindred neighbours were strangers to them. We
know, too, that by the Greeks and Romans they were still more strongly
felt. From these early observations and impressions, accompanied by
pleasurable emotions, as from a small germ, but one that was full of
vital power, has arisen the distinctly aimed effort to grasp in one
intelligible whole all the phenomena and forces of nature, and all the
forms of life the world has to show us. What was long ago dimly divined
is now clearly understood that the world, and all it contains, are very
good; that precisely it, and nothing else is the great external gift of
God to man--man’s great inheritance; and that it is only by seeing it,
and understanding it, that he can enter on the possession of it: for
there is no other way in which he can make it his own.
But the picture which the world presents to us for contemplation is not
composed merely of land and water, ranging through different zones,
with their respective floras and faunas, and physical phenomena: the
soul of the picture is the observer himself--man; not the individual
observer, but the race. Man it is that imparts dramatic life and
interest to the picture. Not that this globe is without a progress,
that is a history, of its own. It has that, but its history is devoid
of the highest element of interest, that is the moral element. It is
by viewing the world in connexion with man that the picture becomes
invested with this, the highest source of interest. And if an extended
view of the world, inclusive of man’s place in it, and relation to
it, be taken, whether the extension be in the direction of space, or
of time, it will be seen in each view with equal clearness--and the
inference from one view proves and confirms the inference from the
other, for they are identical--that in the long drama of human history
it is increase in the knowledge of nature which has led to increase
in man’s dominion over nature, and it is increase in his dominion over
nature which has led on to, and given rise to, those conditions which
have resulted in a richer and higher moral life.