HOW OUR NEEDS DIFFER FROM THOSE OF THE FIRST MEN

We have seen that the first men, like the other animals, depended upon the food that Nature supplied them, and when this was lacking they went hungry. When men had learned the use of fire they took the first step in making Nature serve them better than she did the lower animals. Today she works for us in so many ways that we can hardly name them all.

After the use of fire the next thing that men learned was to make better homes, to tame some of the wild animals, and to raise a part of their food supplies, instead of depending entirely upon what they could pick up here and there.

As the number of people increased, the question of securing food became more and more important. Would it not seem pretty hard to have to go out and hunt for your breakfast in the woods, or fields, or along the water? If you were alone you might find enough to eat, but if there were thousands of other people doing the same thing, you would probably go hungry. For this reason people began to cultivate berries, fruits, roots, and grains, and to take better care of their herds.

Living as they did, in those parts of the world where the climate was warm, they usually found an abundance of food. But when these places became too crowded, and some of them had to move to new regions, they often found less food and a climate not always comfortable.

In this way people spread into the colder and drier parts of the earth. The need for things which they did not have there sharpened the wits of these people. It led to one discovery after another. New needs were felt and new ways of satisfying them were sought. They kept finding out more about Nature and how she works. After many years they knew much more and were also far more comfortable than those people who continued to live where Nature supplied everything.

There are now so many more people on the earth than there were long ago that to furnish them all with food is a very great task. Besides, there are now many people engaged in work other than farming, hunting, and fishing. All such people have to be provided for by those whose business it is to get food. People of the great cities are dependent upon those in the country for all that they eat! We can picture to ourselves the suffering that would follow if for only one week every one had to get his own food.

We need many things that the first people thought nothing about, because their manner of life was so much simpler than ours. Let us see now what they are.

We live in tightly closed houses, and so have less trouble in keeping warm and dry. But we do not always get the supply of fresh air that we need. Many of us are sickly and weak because of this. Our ancestors lived in the open air, which is always pure and fresh. A supply of pure air, then, is one of the things that we must now provide for.

People once gave no thought to the purity of the water that they drank. When there were few people, water did not easily become impure. One could drink water wherever one found it and there was small risk of harm. Now in many places there are so many thousands of people gathered together that they have to take the greatest care about drinking water, in order to keep in good health. To get pure water it is often necessary to bring it many miles from mountainous regions where no one lives.

Clothing is another thing that concerns us very much. Our ancestors were not troubled about their clothing. In the warm countries they went almost naked. Where it was cold the skins of animals served very well. Changes of fashion did not disturb them and cause them to throw away warm covering. To supply ourselves now with clothing we call upon Nature for many things. As she cannot, without our help, furnish what we need, we have to keep a great number of flocks, for their wool and skins, and cultivate vast fields of cotton and flax.

When Nature raised in her own way the berries, grains, and roots that the first men ate, no thought was given to the soil in which these things grew. In truth, it was not necessary to pay any attention to the soil. Nature is very careful in her way and never makes the soil poor by growing more plants than it can support. In her own gardens she always renews the foods in the soil which the plants require as fast as they take them away.

The needs of men have increased so fast that the soil has often been forced to grow more than it ought. Men have been a long time in learning that they cannot keep on growing the same crops on the same soil year after year without supplying to the soil extra foods, or fertilizers, as we call them. The care of the soil is another thing to which we have to give attention, but which did not worry our ancestors.

Nature clothes the earth with a carpet of grasses, bushes, or trees. When the rain falls on the ground, their roots hold the soil so firmly that it usually washes away only very slowly. When men first began to cultivate the soil, they paid no attention to the fact that water washes away the loose earth very easily. In this loose earth at the top of the ground is stored most of the food which the plants require. Care of the surface of the ground is, then, another thing which we have to keep in mind.

Men at first made shelters for themselves from anything that was at hand, such as bark, skins, rock, or earth. When they learned to make sharp-edged tools, they began to use trees. Where it is cold, much wood is required to build warm houses. As the numbers of men increased, they used greater and greater quantities of wood. Wood also proved to be most useful for many other purposes than house building. In order to plant larger fields the trees were cut down or burned off, without thought of doing any harm. In time trees became scarce in many parts of the world and men began to realize that care must be used or the supply of wood might fail them.

Coal was finally discovered and men said, “Now we have something that will last always, for there must be an inexhaustible amount in the earth beneath our feet. All that we shall have to do is to dig it out.” When men grew wiser they learned that coal must not be used carelessly any more than the other gifts of Nature; otherwise the supply may give out and leave them with nothing to take its place.

Hunting and fishing continued to be the business of many. They invented destructive weapons with which they were able to kill such large numbers of wild creatures that some kinds disappeared entirely. Fish, also, of which people thought the sea and the rivers contained a never failing supply, became scarcer. They did not know that fish live mostly in the shallow waters along shores, and that the great ocean depths contain very few.

Thus, as the earth became thickly settled with men and their wants increased, they discovered that they had to treat Nature in a very different way from that of their early ancestors.

Because of our great numbers we have to be careful not to use the earth in such a way as to lessen its fertility and productiveness. Where people have been careless, famine has often resulted. Poverty and suffering have come to many parts of the earth, as we shall learn farther along in this little book.

THE CITY ON THE PLAIN

Strange indeed were the sounds I heard
One day, on the side of the mountain:
Hushed was the stream and silent the bird,
The restless wind seemed to hold its breath,
And all things there were as still as death,
Save the hoarse-voiced god of the mountain.

Through the tangled growth, with a hurried stride,
I saw him pass on the mountain,
Thrusting the briers and bushes aside,
Crackling the sticks and spurning the stones,
And talking in loud and angry tones
On the side of the ancient mountain.

The tips of his goatlike ears were red,
Though the day was cool on the mountain,
And they lay close-drawn to his horned head;
His bushy brows o’er his small eyes curled,
And he stamped his hoofs, for all the world
Like Pan in a rage on the mountain.

“Where are my beautiful trees,” he cried,
“That grew on the side of the mountain?
The stately pines that were once my pride,
My shadowy, droop-limbed junipers:
And my dewy, softly whispering firs,
’Mid their emerald glooms on the mountain?

“They are all ravished away,” he said,
“And torn from the arms of the mountain,
Away from the haunts of cooling shade,
From the cloisters green which flourished here
My lodging for many a joyous year
On the side of the pleasant mountain.

“The songbird is bereft of its nest,
And voiceless now is the mountain.
My murmurous bees once took their rest,
At shut of day, and knew no fear,
In the trees whose trunks lie rotting here
On the side of the ruined mountain.

“Man has let in the passionate sun
To suck the life-blood of the mountain,
And drink up its fountains one by one:
And out of the immortal freshness made
A thing of barter, and sold in trade
The sons of the mother mountain.

“Down in the valley I see a town,
Built of his spoils from my mountain
A jewel torn from a monarch’s crown,
A grave for the lordly groves of Pan:
And for this, on the head of vandal man,
I hurl a curse from the mountain.

“His palpitant streams shall all go dry
Henceforth on the side of the mountain,
And his verdant plains as a desert lie
Until he plants again the forest fold
And restores to me my kingdom old,
As in former days on the mountain.

“Long shall the spirit of silence brood
On the side of the wasted mountain,
E’er out of the sylvan solitude
To lift the curse from off the plain,
The crystal streams pour forth again
From the gladdened heart of the mountain.”

MILLARD F. HUDSON, in American Forestry, XI