XXX INTRODUCTION 



that any vital forces pulsate from the great interior bulk 

 of the earth. For all we know, the stupendous mass of 

 materials of which the planet is composed is wholly 

 dead; and only on the veriest surface does any nerve of 

 life quicken it into a living sphere. And yet, from this 

 attenuated layer have come numberless generations 

 of giants of forests and of beasts, perhaps greater in 

 their combined bulk than all the soil from which they 

 have come; and back into this soil they go, until the great 

 life principle catches up their disorganized units and 

 builds them again into beings as complex as themselves. 



The general evolution of this soil is toward greater 

 powers; and yet, so nicely balanced are these powers that 

 within his lifetime a man may ruin any part of it that 

 society allows him to hold; and in despair he throws it 

 back to nature to reinvigorate and to heal. We are ac- 

 customed to think of the power of man in gaining domin- 

 ion over the forces of nature, he bends to his use the 

 expansive powers of steam, the energy of electric cur- 

 rents, and he ranges through space in the light that he 

 concentrates in his telescope; but while he is doing all 

 this he sets at naught the powers in the soil beneath his 

 feet, wastes them, and deprives himself of vast sources 

 of energy. Man will never gain dominion until he learns 

 from nature how to maintain the augmenting powers 

 of the disintegrating crust of the earth. 



There are three great kinds of natural resources, 



