MAN'S DEPENDENCE ON THE EARTH. 99 



ma:n'S dependence on the earth.* 



By M. L. GALLOUEDEC. 



EEGARDED in their relation to man, the different regions of 

 the earth maj be arranged under two general types. Some 

 seem to repel man, who does not establish cities or large states in 

 them. Their inhabitants lead a kind of vegetative existence, often 

 as nomads, always thinly scattered, and poor if not wretched, with 

 no aspirations beyond material existence. Other lands, on the con- 

 trary, seem to attract human life. Men flow to them from all quar- 

 ters, as the blood from the extremities to the heart. They collect in 

 opulent cities, and build up powerful states in which brilliant civiliza- 

 tions develop. But only a superficial glance over history is sufficient 

 to enable us to recognize that these centers of resort and centers of 

 dispersion change their places in the course of ages ; and on every side 

 we behold them undergoing alternations of grandeur and decay; 

 countries once resplendent with glory are now deserted and 

 wretched, while men are thronging toward regions which they for- 

 merly persistently avoided. The reason of these contrasts is to be 

 found in the complex relation between the land and man. If man 

 goes to one place in preference to another, it is because he finds there 

 a fuller satisfaction of his desires and wants. To obtain the largest 

 sum of enjoyment at the price of the smallest expenditure of effort is 

 essentially a law of man's life. We may, therefore, conclude that if 

 man turns away from a region to which he was once attracted it is be- 

 cause the resources of the country have become, in his eyes, rela- 

 tively less valuable. 



The study of the relations between man and the earth compre- 

 hends three parts: the determination of the factors on which the 

 value of the relation depends; the variations of the relation and 

 the inquiry whether it tends toward a limit, and, if so, toward 

 what limit. The men who people the surface of the earth do 

 not appear to have any great resemblance to one another, but 

 the different races present very dissimilar physical characteristics 

 and mental aptitudes. Yet these contrasts are purely super- 

 ficial. At bottom all men are indifferently subjected to the same 

 general conditions of existence and development. These condi- 

 tions are of various kinds: some are essential in the nature of neces- 

 sities that impose themselves on all animal life — such as the impos- 

 sibility of subsisting without a certain quantity of air, warmth, and 

 moisture, and vegetable or animal food; other conditions, still im- 

 portant but less essential, are those which, without directly influenc- 



* A paper read in the Congress of Scientific Societies, France. 



