64 MAN ON THE LANDSCAPE 



While nature provides for potential overpopulation, she also pro- 

 vides restraint to prevent it. In Western culture, man has tried birth 

 control, not on a general, organized basis however, and not on a scale 

 sufficient to prevent war, (which is in itself another control). Ger- 

 many, according to documented reports, tried wholesale civilian 

 murder to reduce population and provide more "living room" for 

 Aryan Germans. In India and China the common controls are starva- 

 tion and disease, while Japan has malnutrition, hara-kiri, earthquakes, 

 and war. Population controls must operate, sooner or later, because of 

 nature's prodigality in seed production. 



Man is Part of Environment. Man has managed to insert himself 

 into every plant and animal association on earth which appeared to 

 offer any opportunity for benefit. In some cases, as in equatorial and 

 arctic regions, we suspect that not benefit, but escape from intolerable 

 or dangerous social conditions, led to the migration into such areas. 



Up to the point when man ceased to be savage he was simply 

 another animal in the association, perhaps dominating a habitat, 

 but subject to purely natural and adequate, if ruthless, population 

 controls. His contribution to the environment was, roughly speak- 

 ing, equal to his demands upon it. Developing some minor handi- 

 crafts and arts, we say he moved up a notch and became a barbarian. 

 In this stage he did no great damage to his habitat, not having the 

 tools with which to do it ; but upon becoming civilized, man adopted 

 the assumption that he was no longer a child of nature but its sworn 

 enemy. In the role of conquerer man proceeded with ever increas- 

 ing efficiency to wreck nearly every climax natural community that 

 was sufficiently comfortable for occupation. 



Man thus became the cataclysm which destroyed the perfection 

 and balance of climaxes. (Figs. 22, 23.) It is not the particular 

 species of the climax which we mourn, although they are in general 

 the most prized of the wildlife forms. Rather, it is the conditions 

 within the environment, which made possible the survival of climax 

 species, that are most valuable. These conditions, where they con- 

 sist of good soils with high fertility and well developed water con- 

 trol factors, are the most essential assets which man can hold. With- 

 out them no opulent and highly developed social order can exist. 



The destruction of these assets was not undertaken in malice, but 

 in ignorance. Man was driven by forces within himself and his cul- 

 ture. These forces ran from hunger and cold through economic 

 pressure to egotism, from simple human needs to vainglorious dis- 

 play of wealth. 



The Constructive View. It is perhaps a paradox that in much of 

 his production and construction man has been tearing down. It is as 

 if he wrecked a mansion, intending to build more useful structures 

 with the salvaged materials, but too often ended up with nothing but 

 an outhouse. The evidence of science indicates that, regardless of 

 man's other attributes, he is biologically an animal, though a human 

 animal 7 and must realize that in his relations to nature he must, if he 



