LANDSCAPE CHARACTERS 



7S 



readily acquire and so easily preserve. All land at present unoccupied 

 cannot of course be preserved in this way. Nearly all of it must and 

 should be devoted to man's uses, and must therefore forever after ex- 

 press man's will, more than nature's character. But in every state of 

 our union * there are considerable areas of land of such a character 

 and so situated that the greatest service they can render to the com- 

 munity for as far in the future as we can predict, is to furnish to the 

 people an opportunity for satisfying, as far as may be, a fundamental 

 need which exists at least in some degree in every human being. 



Man, as a city-dweller, man living among dominantly man-made Man's Need 

 surroundings, is comparatively a new thing In the long history of the of Free 

 earth. The great racial Inheritances of modern man come to him " ^^ 

 from beings who have lived as tenants on sufferance In a world ruled by 

 the powers of untouched nature. Moreover, man is himself only one 

 manifestation of the powers which give form and substance also to 

 animals, to trees, to mountains. It Is not remarkable, then, that even 

 modern city-bred men should find something In wild nature which 

 seems to fulfill and complete their being. So long as man leads an out- 

 door existence which gives him some contact with nature, even though 

 not with wild nature, this fundamental need may be sufficiently met. 

 But the modern city-dwelling race of men. If It Is to exist at all for any 

 length of time, must obtain in unspoiled landscape some relief from 

 insistent man-made conditions. And such men as have any ability to 

 feel their kinship with the outdoor world must get from nature more 

 than this simple relief from physical oppression. They must have the 

 opportunity of allowing their Imagination to lose itself in the infinitely 

 complicated, magnificent, and ordered whole of which they are a part, 

 and the glory of which Is their rightful heritage. 



♦ Cf. State and National Parks and Reservations in Chapter XI, p. 321. 



