TOWARDS A THEORY OF LIFE 1397 



many kinds, from poorest grasses and sedges in wet places to bril- 

 liant flowers, as so many have seen in a Swiss valley in spring and 

 early summer. So also the succession of trees of the woodman ; from 

 struggling birches, down to the "Black Forest" of Conifers, and 

 thence to the "good greenwood" of deciduous trees. We note the 

 spaces of pasture; from narrowest footholds for the chamois, to 

 rich alp-pasture slopes for cows; or, as in Scotland, through moorland 

 pastures giving but scantier sustenance to fewer hill sheep. Then 

 slopes just reclaimable for poorest crofters, and at length below to 

 the good deep soils, with their varied natural flora, left only in corners 

 by the farmer. The forests have largely been destroyed by man, 

 from Scotland to the Mediterranean, and Spain to Syria; yet on the 

 poorer soils especially we yet find survivals, as at Epping or 

 Fontainebleau. As we descend along our section, we find, in more 

 sun-favoured lands than our own, the vine upon the sunward slopes ; 

 and next, as we reach the Mediterranean region, the olive appears, 

 and this as most indispensable of factors for that region's historic 

 civilisation; so that no development of work and people, even up 

 to peace and wisdom, to arts and learning, to literature and mytho- 

 poesy has been more clear than with the olive. Yet grass and corn 

 and vine have each such interesting relations. Indeed, all else in 

 man's working associations, wath plants, and with animals too, 

 have each their characteristic occupational and social effects, their 

 distinctive civilisation- values ; as witness, for vivid instance, the 

 old and wide respect for bread and wine, and raised to highest 

 sacredness for Christianity. 



THE FUNDAMENTAL OCCUPATIONS.— Our valley section has 

 thus passed beyond our naturalistic outline, since man's occupational 

 association with it throughout his history has been an increasing 

 one, and by turns for good and ill. In fact, it is hard to find "Nature", 

 untouched by man, between mountain- snows and sea-shores, since 

 our own wild and unused moorlands and barren hill-sides, or the 

 vast Mediterranean heath-lands, from Spain to Syria and beyond, 

 have been disforested by human agency; where their soil, with 

 that of much of long-cultivated areas as well, has been washed down 

 into the plains or the sea below; at best, with more or less of delta 

 formation accordingly, and this of all degrees of fertility, from 

 richest, for Nile, to poorest, for Rhone. 



Thus our vallej^-section, broadly outlined for Nature, admits of 

 similar outlines for occupations; since in the forest man must hunt 

 or starve, on the pasture graze his flock or starve, and on the plain 

 plough or starve; and by the sea, fish or starve. From the pre- 

 historic invention of cookery, the woodman appears; and beyond 

 picking up flints, these were seen to be worth mining for; and in 

 time the like for the copper and tin of the bronze- age, and then 



