Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.

Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life.

I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature.

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.