338 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

(III) ARE LAWS OF NATURE CURRENT IN
HISTORY INEXORABLE OR CONTROLLABLE?

If our foregoing survey has convinced us that human affairs are amen-
able to laws of Nature as a matter of fact, and that the currency of these
laws in this realm is also explicable, at least to some extent, we may now
go on to inquire whether laws of Nature current in human history are
inexorable or controllable. If we here abide by our previous procedure of
considering laws of Non-Human Nature first before we bring laws of
Human Nature into our picture, we shall find that, as far as laws of Non-
Human Nature are concerned, we have virtually answered our present
question in the preceding chapter.

The short answer is that, though Man is powerless either to modify
the terms of any law of Non-Human Nature or to suspend its operation,
he can affect the incidence of these immutable and inexorable physical
laws on human affairs by steering his own course on lines on which the
laws of Non-Human Nature will be ministering to human purposes
instead of frustrating them. It is true, for example, that no human being,
by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature;1 but it is also true
that a biped on whose bodily height a 'ceiling' of little more than four
cubits above ground level had been imposed by Physical Nature so long
as the creature was standing with its feet on terra firma, had succeeded in
raising this 'ceiling' to an altitude of several miles above sea-level for
human beings whose intelligence and manual skill had enabled them to
take to the air by making other laws of Non-Human Nature work for
Man through the device of the internal combustion engine. We have
already watched Man eluding the incidence of the Day-and-Night Cycle
by equipping his ships and his industrial plants with large enough crews
to keep the ship travelling, or the factory wheels turning, for twenty-four
hours in the day by the device of dividing the crews into 'shifts' con- ,
stantly relieving one another. We have likewise watched Man eluding the
incidence of the Year Cycle by growing crops in the antipodes, inventing
cold storage and rapid means of transport in bulk, and keeping the cold
and the heat at bay by divers methods of artificial heating and cooling.

Western Man's success in modifying the incidence of laws of Non-
Human Nature upon human activities had been registered in reductions
in rates of insurance premium. Improvements in charts, followed up by
the installation of wireless and radar on board ship, had diminished the
risk of shipwreck through running aground or through crossing the
path of a hurricane; the installation of lightning-conductors had dimi-
nished the risk of lightning damage to ships, ricks, and buildings; the
smudge-pots of Southern California and the gauze screens of the Con-
necticut Valley had diminished the risk of frost damage to crops culti-
vated in a climate that would have been just too inclement to harbour
them without Man's deft intervention in Flora's favour; the devices of
inoculation, spraying, and baptism with pest-killers had diminished the
danger of pest-damage to crops, trees, and flocks; while, in the life of the
human husbandmen of this domesticated Flora, and shepherds of this

1 Matt. vi. 27; Luke xii. 25.