Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the deserts bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

Stevenson contrasts morally indifferent nature with morally responsible human agency. The atom—often treated as a symbol of modern menace in the nuclear age—is described as ethically neutral; it becomes destructive or beneficent only through human intention and character. By pairing “make the world a desert” with “make the deserts bloom,” the quote frames technological power as radically ambivalent: the same scientific mastery can yield annihilation (war, nuclear devastation, ecological ruin) or flourishing (energy, agriculture, development). The final sentence shifts the locus of “evil” from material forces to human motives, warning that political and ethical failures, not science itself, determine whether progress becomes catastrophe.