this attitude of mind, there can be no question that it is exclusively a modern attitude. Time out of mind, physical labor has been distasteful to mankind, and it is a later development of philosophy that appreciates the beneficence of the task so little relished.

The barbarian forces his wife to do most of the work, and glories in his own freedom. Early civilization kept conquered foes in thraldom, developing an hereditary body of slaves, whose function it was to do the physical work.

The Hebrew explained the necessity for labor as a curse imposed upon Father Adam and Mother Eve. Plato and Aristotle, voicing the spirit of the Greeks, considered manual toil as degrading.

To-day we hear much of the dignity of labor; but if we would avoid cant we must admit that now—scarcely less than in all the olden days—the physical toiler is such because he cannot help himself. Few indeed are the manual laborers who know any other means of getting their daily bread than that which they employ. The most strenuous advocates of the strenuous life are not themselves tillers of the soil or workers in factories or machine shops.

The farm youth of intelligence does not remain a farmer; he goes to the city, and we find him presently at the head of a railroad or a bank, or practising law or medicine. The more intelligent laborer becomes finally a foreman, and no longer handles the axe or sledge. We should think it grotesque were we to see a man of intellectual power obstinately following a pursuit that cost him habitual physical toil. When now and then a Tolstoi offers an exception to this rule, we feel that he is at least eccentric; and we may be excused the doubt whether he would follow the manual task cheerfully if he did not know that he could at any moment abandon it. It is because he knows that the world understands him to be only a dilettante that he rejoices in his task.

After all, then, judged by the modern practice, rather than by the philosopher's precept, the old Hebrew and Greek ideas were not so far wrong. Using the poetical language which was so native to them, it might be said that the necessity for physical labor is a curse—a disgrace.

A partial explanation of this may be found in the fact that the most uncongenial tasks are also the worst paid, while the congenial tasks command the high emoluments. Generally speaking there is no distinction between one laborer and another in the same field—except where the eminently fair method of piece work can be employed. Even the skilled laborer is usually paid by the day, and the amount he is to receive is commonly fixed by a Union regardless of his efficiency as compared with other laborers of the same class. And there is no possibility of his receiving any such sums as the man who plans the work, but does nothing with his own hands.

It has always been so. Just as "those who think must govern those that toil," so the thinker must command the high reward. Partly this is because man, considered as a mere toiler, is so relatively inefficient a worker. When he strives to work with his hands, his effort is but a pitiful one; he can by no possibility compete (as regards mere quantity of labor) with the ox and the horse. He is impatient of his own puerile efforts. It is only when he brings the products of ingenuity to his aid that he is able to show his superiority, and to justify his own egotism. So it is that in every age he has striven to find means of adding to his feeble powers of body through the use of his relatively gigantic powers of mind. And in proportion as he thus is able to "make his head work for his hands" as the saying goes, he verges toward the heights of civilization. To accomplish this more and more fully has ever been the task of science as applied to the industries.

It will be our object in the ensuing chapters to inquire how far science has accomplished the protean task thus set for it. We shall see that much has been done; but that much still remains to be done. In proportion as the problems are unsolved, science is reproached for its shortcomings—and stimulated to new efforts.

In proportion as labor has been minimized and production increased—in just that proportion has science justified itself; and in the same proportion has the Conquest of Nature been carried toward completion.