238 THE SYSTEM OF FARM-YARD JklANURIXG. 



most of tlie exterminating wars between different races 

 may not have sprung from the inexorable law of self- 

 preservation ? Nations, like men, pass from youth to 

 age, and then die out — so it may appear to the superficial 

 observer; but if we look at the matter a httle more 

 closely, we shall find that, as the conditions for the con- 

 tinuance of the human race which nature has placed m 

 the ground are very limited and readily exhausted, the 

 nations that have disappeared from the earth have dug 

 their own graves by not knowing how to preserve these 

 conditions. Nations (like China and Japan) who know 

 how to preserve these conditions of life do not die out. 



Not the fertihty of the earth, but the duration of that 

 fertihty, Ues within the power of the human will. In 

 the final result, it comes very much to the same thing, 

 whether a nation gradually decHnes upon a soil constantly 

 diminishing in fertihty, or whether, being a stronger race, 

 it maintains its own existence by exterminating and 

 taking the place of another people upon a land richer in 

 the conditions of hfe. 



It can hardly be ascribed to caprice or chance that the 

 cultivator in the huertas of Valencia obtains three crops 

 yearly fr'om the same soil, wliile in the immediate neigh- 

 bouring district the ground is tiUed only once in three 

 years ; or that the Spaniards burned down forests m sheer 

 ignorance, in order to use the ashes to restore the fertihty 

 of their fields. (See Appendix G.) 



Everj^one who is at aU acquainted with the natural 

 conditions of agricultui'e, must perceive that the method 

 of culture practised for centuries in most countries could 

 not but inevitably impoverish and exhaust even the most 

 fruitftd lands ; can it then be supposed that there will be 

 any exception in the case of cultivated lands in Europe, 

 and that hke causes will not produce hke effects ? 



