instance, he observes that nature does not grow edible things just anywhere and at any time, but only when and where soil of a given texture enjoys a given amount of sunshine and a given amount of moisture. Learning these secrets of nature, he sets them down in formulae, which he calls natural laws. Then, guiding himself by these laws, he goes about growing the food he wants; he becomes a maker of abundance. That, his animal friends cannot do.
We say man "conquers" nature, but the fact is his conquest consists of accommodating himself to the means employed by nature in achieving its ends; he cannot get the results he is after unless he learns and makes himself subservient to its laws. Primitive people are primitive simply because they have not gotten around to fathoming these laws and making use of them. And the failures of what we call the "civilized" man, in whatever field he chooses to operate, are likewise due to his ignorance of nature's laws or his arrogance in trying to make his way in disregard of them; they are, however, immutable and self-enforcing, and his failures indicate that they carry their own sanctions. He builds an atomic bomb because he has mastered the physical laws pertaining thereto; he destroys Society with it because he neither knows nor is willing to submit to the social laws that nature has writ in its book of knowledge. He is particularly at a disadvantage when he declares (as he sometimes does, especially in the fields of economics and social science) that there are no natural laws, that man is uninhibited by any such fictions; that's when he gets himself into real trouble.
Given the natural resources and a knowledge of nature's laws, the making of a living calls for an expenditure of labor. That is the inexorable price of production. But the expenditure of labor induces the unpleasant experience of weariness,
