But secondly, side by side with this decidedly positive advice, many of
us have been brought to accept a practical attitude towards the world
which has seemed to us negative and discouraging. This second attitude
may be expressed in the sad precept: Hope not to find this world in any
universal sense a world of ideal values. Nature is indifferent to
values. Values are human, and merely human. Man can indeed give to his
own life much of what he calls value, if he uses his natural knowledge
for human ends. But when he sets out upon this task, he ought to know
that, however sweet and ideal human companionship may be as it exists
among men, humanity as a whole must fight its battle with nature and
with the universe substantially alone, comfortless except for the
comforts that it wins precisely as it builds its houses; namely, by
using the mechanisms of nature for its own purposes. The world happens,
indeed, to give man some power to control natural conditions. But even
this power is due to the very fact that man also is one of nature's
products,--a product possessing a certain stability, a certain natural
plasticity and docility, a limited range of natural initiative.
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