Why Not Interfere With Nature?

THE fear of interfering with Nature is an ancient spectre which still haunts the minds of men. I say ‘of men’ advisedly, for women have ever been more willing than men to risk the displeasure of this forbidding phantom. Perhaps they inherit this superior courage from their ancestral Mother Eve, who certainly had no inhibitions in such matters.

From the dawn of civilization until the mid-morning of the Machine Age, every newly invented device of the creative artificer was denounced by guardians of tribal mores on the ground that it was a sacrilegious interference with Nature. When, for example, the first locomotive drew the first carload of passengers over the rails at a speed of ten miles an hour, there was a fearful outcry against the impiety of the proceeding. It was asserted that if God had intended men to travel at this awesome speed He would have endowed them with wings. Of course the very persons who raised this outcry were quite used to riding in carriages drawn by horses and rolling on wheels. And of course they were unmindful that Nature had not domesticated the horse, nor appended wheels to the human frame.

The Machine Age has domesticated the deus ex machina and set him to work in an industrial laboratory. No longer does he solve human problems by interfering with humans, as he used to do; instead, he reveals to humans the secrets of Nature and shows them how to outwit her by subtile and skillful methods of interference. These achievements are the glory and the pride of our age. In commerce and industry, in agriculture and husbandry, in science (both pure and applied), and in several other fields, the men who depart from traditional ways and make experimental tests of unorthodox theories are no longer regarded as heretics, but are crowned with honor and pictured in rotogravure.

But the ancient spectre still haunts the minds of men. Banished from the realm of practical affairs, it haunts with heightened effect the more important realms of man’s personal and social affairs. Let any courageous innovator suggest an effective method of preventing the propagation of subnormal persons, or of controlling the propagation of normal persons, of providing release from prolonged and hopeless suffering for the physically defective infant or for any person in the late stages of an incurable and painful disease, or let the courageous innovator suggest any other new and radical method of dealing with any vital problem of human relations, and behold: the spectre! It is interfering with Nature.

And so it is. But the word ‘interfere’ has been made to carry a burden of obloquy which does not belong to it. It may, indeed, be used to denote officious and impertinent meddling, but it may also be used with equal accuracy to denote the exercise of rightful authority or rightful privilege. In this sense it may imply cooperation and not opposition.

Nature has ever given her richest gifts to those who have interfered with her intelligently and coöperatively. Every domesticated animal, every cultivated flower, fruit, and vegetable, is the result of man’s intelligent interference with Nature. So are his houses and clothes, his spectacles and telescopes, his radios and his airplanes, and everything else that he has added to his primitive heritage, including his third set of teeth.

But we do not yet grant the authority of intelligence to determine our individual rights, or to settle our social problems. The pre-war father upbraids his post-war daughter for using rouge and lipstick.

‘But, Father, what reason have you against my using them? They really do make me look more beautiful.’

‘I don’t agree with you. They give you an artificial look which takes away from the natural beauty of your face.’

‘But you shave, Daddy. You don’t let the hair grow all over your face the way it naturally would.’

‘That’s a very different matter! But if you can’t see the difference there’s no use talking to you.’

Father’s reason, like most of our own reasons, is not a matter of intelligence, but of personal prejudice.

I called on such a father a few days ago. He is a ‘poor white’ and lives on a little farm a few miles out of the city. The school nurse had reported to me that this man’s seven-year-old daughter needed quite desperately to have her tonsils removed. The father had refused his consent and had sent back a threatening message to the nurse. She urged me to go and talk with him.

I talked with him for an hour, standing in the hot sun outside his mountain cabin. He was leading a dilapidated mule out of a dilapidated shed when I came to his clearing, and we stood there between the shed and the cabin, talking. After a full hour of explaining and arguing, I gave it up.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Crang,’ I said. ‘But perhaps you will change your mind before the school term ends.’

‘Well, I won’t,’ he replied, testily. ‘And nothing’s going to make me. It’s interferin’ with Nacher and I won’t stand for’t.’

He spat out a stream of tobacco juice with conclusive vehemence, swung a lean leg over his mule’s back, and rode off without another word.

‘Any luck with old Crang?’ asked the school nurse, looking in at my office the next morning.

I told her of my call, and of Crang’s concluding remarks, and of his riding off in sullen silence on his ancient mule.

‘So he’s opposed to “interferin’ with Nacher,”is he?’ asked the nurse, and I saw a gleam of humor in her blue eyes. ‘And yet you say he rode off on a mule!‘

After she had gone, laughing, out of the room, I sat there for a while chuckling, and wishing to heaven I had thought of the mule when I was talking to Crang.

The ancient spectre still haunts the minds of men, but I know now that it is a doomed spectre. Its doom is assured, not by Science and not by the Machine, but by laughter — perhaps by the laughter of women.

Let the reformer no longer appeal to the intelligence of the multitudes; let him rather appeal to their sense of humor. Instead of attempting argument to prove the reasonableness of his proposal, let him make a realistic picture of the stubborn mountaineer sitting astride his serviceable mule and vehemently denouncing any attempt of Man to interfere with Nature.

And as for our right to interfere with Nature, I, personally, don’t see why we should not interfere with her, considering how much she interferes with us.