Both the engineer and John were nature worshippers. What is this nature worship which in our days is regarded as so hostile to culture? A relapse into barbarism, say some; a healthy reaction against over-culture, say others. When a man has discovered society to be an institution based on error and injustice, when he perceives that, in exchange for petty advantages society suppresses too forcibly every natural impulse and desire, when he has seen through the illusion that he is a demi-god and a child of God, and regards himself more as a kind of animal—then he flees from society, which is built on the assumption of the divine origin of man, and takes refuge with nature. Here he feels in his proper environment as an animal, sees himself as a detail in the picture, and beholds his origin—the earth and the meadow. He sees the interdependence of all creation as if in a summary—the mountains becoming earth, the sea becoming rain, the plain which is a mountain crumbled, the woods which are the children of the mountains and the water. He sees the ocean of air which man and all creatures breathe, he hears the birds which live on the insects, he sees the insects which fertilise the plants, he sees the mammalia which supply man with nourishment, and he feels at home. And in our time, when all things are seen from the scientific point of view, a lonely hour with nature, where we can see the whole evolution-history in living pictures, can be the only substitute for divine worship.

But our optimistic evolutionists prefer a meeting in a large hall where they can launch their denunciations against this same society which they admire and despise. They praise it as the highest stage of development, but wish to overthrow it, because it is irreconcilable with the true happiness of the animal. They wish to reconstruct and develop it, say some. But their reconstruction involves the destruction of all existing arrangements. Do not these people recognise that society as it exists is a case of miscarriage in evolution, and is itself simultaneously hostile to culture and to nature?

Society, like everything else, is a natural product, they say, and civilisation is nature. Yes, but it is degenerate nature, nature on the down-grade, since it works against its own object—happiness. It was, however, the engineer, John's leader, and a nature-worshipper like himself, who revealed to him the defects of civilised society, and prepared the way for his reception of the new views of man's origin. Darwin's Origin of Species had appeared as early as 1859, but its influence had not yet penetrated far, much less had it been able to fertilise other minds.[8] Moleschott's influence was then in the ascendant, and materialism was the watchword of the day. Armed with this and with his geology, the engineer pulled to pieces the Mosaic story of the Creation. He still spoke of the Creator, for he was a theist and saw God's wisdom and goodness reflected in His works.