Accustomed to do battle with natural
forces, he was attracted by the commercial battle with social forces.
The masters of marts and exchanges dazzled but did not blind him, and
he studied them, and strove to grasp the secrets of their strength.
And further, in token that some good did come out of Nazareth, in the
full tide of manhood he took to himself a city-bred woman. But he
still yearned for the edge of things, and the leaven in his blood
worked till they went away, and above the Dyea Beach, on the rim of the
forest, built the big log trading-post. And here, in the mellow of
time, he got a proper focus on things and unified the phenomena of
society precisely as he had already unified the phenomena of nature.
There was naught in one which could not be expressed in terms of the
other. The same principles underlaid both; the same truths were
manifest of both. Competition was the secret of creation. Battle was
the law and the way of progress. The world was made for the strong,
and only the strong inherited it, and through it all there ran an
eternal equity. To be honest was to be strong. To sin was to weaken.
To bluff an honest man was to be dishonest. To bluff a bluffer was to
smite with the steel of justice. The primitive strength was in the
arm; the modern strength in the brain. Though it had shifted ground,
the struggle was the same old struggle.
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