538 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1962 



the income from its natural resources. Our present civilization has 

 carried this destruction of the landscape further than any of its pred- 

 ecessors, and this poses one of the most urgent questions of today: 

 Can we repair the ravages of the past and so manipulate the land- 

 scape that it will yield an income on which the people of the world 

 can live? In terms of food production there is little doubt that this 

 could be done. Wliether sufficient world resources will be made 

 available to achieve this end is another question. 



Throughout history, men's attitude to the landscape has shown 

 sometimes a negative and sometimes a positive approach. The nega- 

 tive approach regards the landscape either as a storehouse to be 

 plundered, or an enemy to be subdued. The positive one recognizes 

 it as an organism of which man is a part, the only thinking part, and 

 therefore the landscape becomes something to be manipulated and 

 cared for, as if it were his own body. The negative approach has 

 resulted in the dust bowls of America and the black country of 

 Britain. The positive approach has produced, among others, the 

 landscapes of Tuscany, of Holland, and of agricultural Britain. 



These landscapes show us that good husbandry is the foundation of 

 good landscape, but it is not the whole of it. Parallel to the prob- 

 lem of physical survival runs the more elusive problem of the 

 growth of true civilization, of the widening of our consciousness and 

 awareness, our enjoyment of the whole created world, for witliout 

 this conscious enjoyment we are little better than ants or machines. 



Very early in all civilizations men have wanted to shape their sur- 

 roundings to their desires. The first manifestation of this desire 

 is the creation of a garden, a private paradise set apart from the hos- 

 tile world. But in time, with extending consciousness, men look fur- 

 ther afield and extend this creative urge to the wider landscape. The 

 chief concern of landscape architecture today is to explore the forms 

 which this creative urge should take, for never before in history has 

 so great an area of the earth's surface been under the influence of the 

 human species. 



To understand our present attitude to our surroundings, we must 

 look back to the dawn of western civilization. How did the Greeks 

 regard their landscape ? Certainly they venerated it, for they peopled 

 its most sublime aspects with their gods, who gave divine protection 

 to the mountaintops and springs. When they built upon it, the clear 

 thought and exact mathematics of their temples were imposed directly 

 upon the untouched and sublime background. The two were distinct 

 and contrasted. The clear lines of human thought were drawn onto 

 the background of nature's organic growth, forming perhaps the 

 most beautiful of all juxtapositions. Yet though the contrast was 

 strong and clear, it was not insensitive. The mathematics was 



