AND THE INFLUENCE OF NATURE
THE BIRTH & GROWTH OF NATIONS
BY PROFESSOR RATZEL
I
IN order that the cosmic conception of the life of man may be more than a mere isolated idea, incapable of being applied and developed, it is necessary to indicate the relation which human life bears to the collective life of the earth.
Man is Bound up with the Earth
Human existence is based upon the entire development of vegetable and animal life; or, as Alexander von Humboldt said, in reality the human race partakes of the entire life on earth. Just as plants and animals, vegetable and animal remains and products, occupy an intermediate position between man and the inanimate substance of the earth, so almost without exception the life of man depends not directly upon the earth, but upon the animals and plants, which in turn are immediately bound to the earth by the necessities of existence. It is the dependence of later and more evolved types upon the earlier and less evolved. In 1845 Robert Mayer, the German scientist, published his epoch-making thesis on “The Relations of Organic Motion to Metabolism,” in which he described the vegetable world as a reservoir wherein the rays of the sun are transformed into life-supporting material and are stored up for use. According to his view the physical existence of the human race is inseparably linked together with this “economic providence”; and he even went so far as to connect it with the instinctive pleasure felt by every eye at the sight of luxuriant vegetation.
Man’s Fight with Plants and Animals
The history of mankind shows how various are the elements contained in this reservoir, and how manifold their action. Originally plants and animals share the soil with man, who must struggle with them for its possession. The plains favour and the forests obstruct historical movement; the inhabitant of the tropics is hardly able to overcome the growth of weeds that covers his field; for the Esquimau the vegetable world exists but two months in the year, and then only in stunted, feeble species. The unequal distribution of edible plants has in a large measure been the cause of divergence in the developments of different races. Australia and the Arctic countries have received almost nothing; the Old World has had abundance of the richest gifts showered upon it, Asia receiving more than Africa or Europe. The most valuable of domestic animals are of Asiatic origin. America’s pre-European history is incomparably more uniform than that of the Old World, and this is owing to her moderate endowment of useful plants and almost complete lack of domestic animals. The transplanting of vegetable species from one part of the earth to another, carried on by man, is one of the greatest movements in the collective life of the world. Its possibilities of extension cannot be conjectured; for the successful diffusion of single cultivated plants—the banana, for example—over a number of widely separated countries is yet problematical. This process can never be considered to have come to an end so long as necessity forces man to get a firmer and firmer hold on the store of earthly life.