Excerpt from The World-Energy and Its Self-Conservation The present volume owes its origin to studies that began more than twenty year ago. The studies themselves were prompted by a desire which soon became imperative. And that desire was to find a satisfactory answer to the question: What is "Man's Place in Nature?" Many things highly interesting and suggestive were said from time to time-by the naturalists upon this theme. And yet, as I came at length to notice, the question itself seemed to be ambiguous. For, whatever answer might be given it, all must depend at last upon the answer to this further question, namely: What is that reality which we call "Nature?" Allowing that man is a product of "Nature," there still seemed no other way to learn the real nature and destiny of man than through a successful inquiry as to the essence, the inmost nature of "Nature" itself. If this term "Nature" should prove to have a wider, and even so much wider as to be a radically different, significance from that which it is usually assumed to represent, then our estimate of "man's place in Nature" must be correspondingly modified. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.