“[A]t
every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like
a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside
nature – but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to
nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it
consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other
creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.
And,
in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better
understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more
immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with
the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty
advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are
more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also
the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day
production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men
not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more
impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast
between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and body.”
From The Part Played By Labour In The Transition From Apes To Man, Fred Engels (1876)
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