LIFE AND THE NATURAL LAWS 87 



If some abrupt force is directed against the sphere (the natural 

 community organization), it may be ruptured, or thrown back down 

 the hill, or both. These dire effects are the result of destroying the 

 state of balance, external, internal, or both. 



It is not easy to draw up an analogy illustrating balance and un- 

 balance in nature. Let us try again. Nature is not balanced like a 

 scale sitting undisturbed in a bankrupt store. It is more like a double 

 platform balance scale which has been turned over to a dozen five 

 year old children for their amusement. The scale will do its best to 

 stay balanced, but what chance will it have, with someone forever 

 stepping up and with a finger tapping one side or the other ? At the 

 same time this is going on, a master mechanic is at work on the scale, 

 trying to improve it, making it more complex, more useful to man. 

 When and if he succeeds, the disturbers are still at play. (To com- 

 plete the picture let us introduce an adult human lunatic who comes 

 in the midst of the procedure and starts kicking the scale around.) 



The old truth that "nature abhors a vacuum" can be altered to 

 "nature abhors unbalance," and while the total landscape is hardly 

 ever in exact balance, it is usually somewhere near it, and always sub- 

 ject to forces operating toward balance. There are tensions set up 

 by the ever recurring unbalances. From the viewpoint of power, 

 energy is expended by the community of plants and animals in re- 

 gaining lost balance. This energy of repair cannot be converted by 

 man to his service without prolonging the unbalance. If nature covers 

 a poor field with weeds, the result is to reduce erosion and replace 

 humus. If man burns these weeds he delays the restorative process. 



From a practical angle, man will gain in the long run by putting 

 additional energy into the unbalanced condition, with the purpose 

 of improving it. He can, if science is able to guide him in the pro- 

 cedure, accomplish two ends : the unbalance may be brought nearer to 

 equilibrium, and the climax conditions may be approached. This 

 additional energy might, for instance, consist of laying out a system of 

 strip cropping, or planting trees, or fertilizing, or growing and plow- 

 ing down a green manure crop, or constructing a compost heap and 

 later applying it to the land. 



Propagation of Damage. Physicists perform a demonstration in 

 which several solid balls are hung, by threads, in contact in a straight 

 line. An end ball is swung against one end of the line and the ball 

 on the other end hops out into space. Only the end balls move. The 

 force is transmitted through the intervening balls with little loss of 

 effect. 



When damage is done to a climax of life and environment much 

 the same thing happens. 



FIG. 43. An epic of survival. This oak, pulsing- with life, stands on its island 

 of normality in a sea of California abnormality. Its roots and its self-created 

 protective mulch have held the soil which supports it. The surrounding- waste- 

 land was once pasture. Overgrazed, the protective canopy of stems, leaves, and 

 mulch was destroyed by bad management. The weakened fingers of life let go 

 their hold. The hills poured a terrible flood of water and earth onto the farms 



and towns below. 



