Hephestus by E.E. Fournier d'Albe — Read

. The liquid Ore he dreind / Into fit moulds prepar'd; from which he form'd / First his own Tooles; then, what might be wrought / Fusil or grav'n in mettle.

At the time when the first man decided to go forth into the world provided with weapons not furnished by nature (in other words, "unnatural") the lines of development adopted by nature had ended in an _impasse_. Mere size had been found ineffective, and the giant Reptilians had disappeared from the earth. The Mammoth and the great Rorqual Whale were the largest animals then in existence, and nature had retraced her steps somewhat as shipbuilding did in the nineteenth century after the building of the _Great Eastern_. Of the countless forms of animal and vegetable life, many had disappeared entirely, being no longer suited to climatic or other changes of environment. There was no prospect of higher development unless an entirely new path could be found. We may put the situation in another way by paraphrasing an ancient tribal account of the origin of things: