Mankind and Mother Earth

8/6/2019 Mankind and Mother Earth

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Mankindand Mother EarthA NARRATIVE I-IISTORY OF

THE WORLD

Arnold Toynbee

1976OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSNEW YORK AND LONDON


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."!SI!_

MAPS(a t end oj book )

The pliysWHSHtltig of the CivilizationsSum~ii~d A R K a c lSoutli-'Wes.tAsl~h_E..gyP'~;nd the Aegean ih the Eighteenthd~htury B.C.The Ancien t Gre~k:W6HdThe Achaemenian Empire at the Time of DariusThe ContendingStates ofthe Sinic Worlairit~~ Post-Confucian AgeThe Mauryan EmpireThe Han, Kushan, Parthian, and Roman trri.pires, A.D. 100The Emergence of the East Roman Empireout of the Roman EmpireThe Rise of ISlam 622-- '733The Carolingians Boo-qooThe Distribution of the Judaic Religions ih Europe and South-WestAsia on the Eve of the Mongol ExplosionThe Mongol Empire c.1310The Meso-American and Andean Civilizations.c.1500The Great Powers of' the Western World in IB#

PREFACE

celebration of Qp.een Victoria's Diamond Jubileeih189Vcca}led to"'...._...~.~.the history of the preceding sixty years, and this retrospect opened. . view of the whole of history which looked del$r~!!n(tshnpie.H " " , h " " P T O 1837 and 1897 the Westhad completed, the establish-went ofhsover all the rest of the World ..this -was the censurhrnation

ri....r ....e that had been started, f0urhunclred 'years

win her.war with Russia till Ig04~5' ' ...,though the establishment of the West's-aseendanuy w a s recent,Is.if itWeregoing to be permanent. In 1897 the World ~ppeareddo,wnund,er .aWest~rndispehsatiol1J Apparently .history,U'-"LL:''''~ denouement in:ihe polit ical unif icat ion of i taLy and.'. i8j:t, if 'histot; w~s synonymous, as, 'lit r 8 g7 . m any people

.itwas; with, .alarums and excursions.of thc,Westerna~""~,,CU'..Withirr Iiving merh6ry~had happilyyear 18g71leetnecl to bea crate .atback on the courseof historyand-see it[rum ,;1point of timeatw hieh the-observer himselfgmc.nqu:rra'er .in history's flux.


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V ii i ,'. ..Hist?ry s.yi~we1!h_ r H t Q ~ ~ e t ( i i t , t , h ~ t t i i . < ? m g H t ; < t p p e a f e a t b ; have}: ...resiilted ..inheathi1hIliei itdfi'sfible sbitethai: teskd~.[ ji ithery est' s-.world-wide asceiida~cy (Ahd .britliiSvj_ew;'thet~ad:drl-Hstbty;scoUrst;seemed, to bemariifest, Histcirycorisisted, soh thetis~ehied-ot tnbsep~~Hclilar past events tnath;idled U p to theWes1:'s pfestrit as~endahcy,Other I;>astevents wer!?ii~ieleYaht,i


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x Mankind a n d Mother Earthyear.they h~d ~evoltedfrom the Ottoman Empire with the intention ofseekingadmissionto membership in theWestern society.)The tre~t~ent ofthe history ofthe Roman Empire in the fifth century

ofthe Chnstl~n Era had been the most bizarre of all. In that century theRoman EmpIre had survived in the Levant, which had always been itsdem?graphic and economic centre ofgravity, but it had collapsed in itsrel~tIvelybackwardwestern provinces.Yet, as fromthe year A.D. 476, inwhich 111.C last of the impotent Roman Emperors in the western part ofthe Em~lre had ?cen deposed, the chart ofthe courseof history that wascurre.ntIn189~Ignore? the Roman Empire, though, in the Levant, theEmpne wa~still a gomg concern, and though it continued to playamajor part in human affairs till the closeof the twelfth century. Indeed,at the year A:D: ~76, the chart that was in vogue in 1897ignored thewh?le of the civilizedworld ofthat date, fromGreece to China and fromChina to Meso-America and Peru. This fantastic chart concentratedattention, asfromA.D. 476onwards, on the barbarian successor-statesofthe Roman ~mpire in the Empire's derelict western provinces.By 1973It had become manifest that none of the enormous mass of

jetti~oned history could be written off any longer as being irrelevant.For instance, the Meso-American civilization which had seemedto havebeen ~blit~rated ?y Cortes and his men, wa~now showing signs of re-emergmg l~ ~exico and Guatemala, frombeneath a crumbling veneerofWe.stermzatwn. Asfor the history ofEastern Asia, anyone who lookedat Chma andJapan in 1973wasbound to conclude that the antecedentsofthese two countries, asfar back as the East Asian Neolithic Age wereno lessim_port_anthan the antecedents of the contemporary W;st. In1973an hl~tonan could not afford to abandon the major part ofhistorythat. he ~11lghthave bee~ willing to jettison in 1897. He had now toretne:e It all, and to re-mtegrate it with the residue, leading up to theWes.tIIIthe year 1897,which the chart that was in vogue in 1897hadretamed.In 1973an .integral survey of history was imperative, but this task

presented formidable problems ofboth selection andpresentation.Any account of anything isbound to be selective.The human intellect

has not t!le c.apacity for.c0.u:prehending the sum of things in a singlepan_oramicVIew. Selection IS unavoidable, but it is also inevitablyarbitrary; and, the greater the mass of information fromwhich a selec-tiOI~has to .be made, the more disputable will be the investigator'schoice, For instance, the selection of historical events that had seemedplausi?le in 1897 looked grotesque already in 1973. In the presentnarrative, I have refrained fromgiving to the Western civilization andits antece.del~.tshe excessive prominence that has been given to themcustomanlym Western surveys ofworldhistory, but I have also tried to

Preface Xlavoid falling into the opposite mistake ofgiving lessto the West and itsantecedents than their due. However, a Chinese reader of my narrativemayjudge that I have allowed the West still to loomtoo large, while aWestern reader may judge that I have 'leaned over backwards' in myeffortto put his and my ancestral civilizationin its place.In a narrative written in 1973,the opening and the closing phases of

mankind's history were less difficult to handle than the interveningphase. In the Lower Palaeolithic Age (about fifteen-sixteenths of thetime-span of human history, to date), life was uniform because, slowthough communications were, the pace of change was slower still.Within the last fivecenturies, mankind's habitat has become a unity onthe technological and economic, though not yet on the political, planebecause the acceleration in the pace ofchange has been surpassed by anacceleration in the speed of communications. During the interveningphase, and especiallyduring the four millennia and a half c. 3000 B.C.~A.D. 1500, change was more rapid than the means of communication,and consequently during this period the differentiation between regionalwaysoflife was at itsmaximum., There were moments, evenwithin thisperiod, at which large parts ofman's habitat were linked together, and I have taken such moments asopportunities fortrying to present a panoramic view. Examples ofwiderhorizonsin the Old World are the newdeparture in spiritual life in thesixth century B.C., the dissemination of the Hellenic civilization as a.result ofAlexander the Great's career, and the political unification of all. b u t the extremities of the Old World by the Mongols' conquests in the~hirt~enth century of the Christian Era. Corresponding moments inAndean history are represented by the Chavin and Tiahuanaco 'hori-

... i" .:-'".. zons'.However, for most of the time between c. 3000B.C. and A.D. 1500,> e a c h of the regions into which mankind's habitat was divided went its . . .dw t l way, Insulation and differentiation prevailed over intercourse and.. ,.:~sili.illilation.he regional civilizationsco-existedwithout coalescing...;\ ;This is an historical fact that has to be reflected in an historical"narrati,{e; and the narrator is confronted with the problem ofhaving to. ... half-a-dozen simultaneous series of events. I have copied the

uror's trick ofkeeping several ballsin the air simultaneously. I have. throwing up and letting drop the history ofeach region in turn.

X Atthecostot thus foregoingconsecutivenessinmy treatment ofparticularhave been able to present in approximately chronological

.the history oftheWorld as a whole.. formofpresentation and the analytical and compara-have their own distinctive advantages and drawbacks. To

bird's-eye viewofmankind's historyin narrationalmy objectivein the present book.

AJ.T. , 1Q7tf .


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RIDDLES IN THE PHENOMENA

AFTER a human being has been conceived and has then been horn, thebaby may die before it has awakened to consciousness. Until thetwentieth century a cruelly high percentage of babies did die at the pre-conscious stage of life. Infant mortality used to be appallingly common,

.'.'."evenin human communities that were relatively secure and affluent,and that were also relatively well-informed and well-equipped medically.Fot pre-modern humans, the rate of infant mortality was of the same.order ofmagnitude as for rabbits. Moreover, if a child does survive longenough to experience the dawn of consciousness, its l ife may still be cutshort at any stage deliberately or by .some accident or by some disease or.S(jhie injury that cannot be cured by the medical and surgical skill andeqll_ipment that are accessible at the particular time and place .

. ,' However, the length of the expectation of life has now increasedsehsationally in communities that are medically and socially precocious,

it-has begun to increase appreciably in the relatively backwardty of communities as well. Nowadays a human being's conscious-be awake continuously for seventy or eighty years before it is

by death or is dimmed, before physical death, by mental~".u.L~yDuring those seventy or eighty years of consciousness, the.U~~UL


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2 M an kin d a nd M oth er E arthruns counter to deeply-ingrained, though unverified and unverifiabletraditional beliefs. It is now hardly possible any longer to believe thatthe phenomena of which a human being is conscious have been calledinto existence by the fiat of a human-like creator god. This traditionalway of accounting for the phenomena was based on an unwarrantableanalogy with human activities. Human beings do shape already existinginanimatel:aw materials' into tools, machines, clothes, houses, andother artefacts, and they give their artefacts a function and a style thatare not inherent in the


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4 M a nk in d a nd M o th er E ar ththe phenomena of which he is conscious. Science mayor may not co:r:-tinue to advance. Whether science is going to progress or to stagnate ISnot a question of intellectual capacity. There does not seem to be anylimit to Man's intellectual ability to add to his scientific knowledge andto apply this knowledge to the further advancement of his technol~gy.The future ofscience and technology partly depends on whether societycontinues to value these activities as highly, and to reward them ashandsomely, ashas been society's practice in recent times. Ita~? partlydepends on whether individuals of the highest intellectual ability con-tinue toconcern themselves with science and technology. This cannot betaken for granted. In all fields of human activity, fashions change. Itisconceivable that religion or art might become again the paramountinterest of the ablest minds, as they have been in the past at varioustimes and places. However, even ifscience were to con~inue to advanceat its prcsent pace, it seems likely that its further achievements wouldnot carry itbeyond its past and prese,nt confines. Ou~ kno;Vledge of theway in which the phenomenal Universe works nught rncrease, b~tscience does not seem likely in the future to succeed, any better than Ithas succeeded in the past, in enabling us to understand the reason whythe Universe works as it docs, or indeed the reason why the Universeexists.However a human being has to live and to act during his psycho-

somatic lifein the biosphere, and the demands of life and action forcehim to provide himself with provisional answers to the riddles presentedto him by the phenomena, even ifhe cannot obtain these answers fromscience and even if he believes that scientific knowledge is the only truekind ofknowledge. TIlls belief'is not impregnable. Nev.ertheless, itis~cthat answers which are found outside the confines of science are unverifi-able acts of faith. They are not intellectual demonstrations; they arereligious intuitions. Therefore it seems probable that in the future, asinthe past, life will compel human beings to ~:r:swerthe ultrr:nate questionsin the intuitive unverifiable terms of religion, Superficially the post-scientific and the pre-scientific expressions of religion may seem to bepoles apart from each other. Every past e~pres8ion of religion ~as beenattuned to the intellectual outlook of the tune and place at which eachparticular expression was formulated. But the underlying e8se~e of .religion is, no doubt, as constant as the essence of human nature itselfReligion ill, in fact, an intrinsic and distinctive trait of human natw:e. Itisa human being's necessary response to the challenge ofthe mysterious-ness of the phenomena that he encounters in virtue of his uniquelyhuman faculty of consciousness,

THE BIOSPHERE

THE word 'biosphere' was coined by Teilhard de Chardin. It is a newword, required by our arrival at a new stage in the progress of Ourscientific knowledge and our material power. The biosphere is a film of .dry land, water, and air enveloping the globe (or virtual globe) of ourplanet Earth. It isthe solepresent habitat-and. as far as we can foreseetoday, also the sale habitat that- will ever be accessible-for all thespecies of'Iiving beings, including mankind, that are known to us.The biosphere isrigidly limited inits volume, and therefore contains

only a limited stock of those resources on which the 'various species ofliving beings have to draw in order to maintain themselves. Some ofthese resources are renewable; others are irreplaceable. Any species thatoverdraws on its renewable resources or exhausts its irreplaceableresources condemns itself to extinction. The number of extinct speciesthat ha:re le~ traces in the geological record is startlingly great bycomparison WIth the number ofthose that are still extant.The most significant characteristic of the biosphere is the relative

smallness of its size and the exiguousness of the resources that it offers.In terrestrial terms the biosphere is fantastically thin. Its upper limitmay be equated with the maximum altitude in the stratosphere at whicha plane can remain air-borne; its lower l imit is the depth, below thesurface of its solid portion, to which engineers can mine and bore. Thethickness of the biosphere, between these two limits, is minute by com-parison with the length of the radius of the globe which it coats l ike adelic.a~eskin. This glob~ isfar from being the largest ofOursun's planets,and1is alsofar from bemg the most distant ofthese planets from the sunround which they all


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6 M a n k in d a n d M o th e~ 'E a rt hgalaxies increases with each inc,rease ,in the range of our te,lescopes),Thus, by comparison with th? dimeIlSlons ~f the known porh.on .ofthephysical cosmos, the dimensions of our biosphere are mfimtesmtallyminute. I .The biosphere is not as old asthe pla~et that. it now envelops. t 18 anexcrescence---one might call it alternatively either a halo or a rust~that came into existence long after the crust of the planet had cooleddown sufficiently for parts of its origin~y gaseous c~mponents toliquify and to solidify. It is almost cer~aJ.?ly th~ only blOsp~e~e no:vexisting withln our solar system, and It . IS pos~lble that, wlthl~ thissystem, no other biosphere ever has come mto eXIstence o~ev~r w,i1l.Ofcourse our solar system, like our biosphere, is only an lfln.lteslm~nyminute part of the known portion of the physical cosmos. It IS pOSSIblethat other suns-perhaps numerous others-besides ours have planets,and that, among these possibly existing other planets, there ~ay be so~ewhich, like ours, circle round their suns at .a distance at w~lch they, h~eour planet, can grow bio~pheres ro~nd then surfaces. But if there are, IIItruth, other potential biospheres, It .canno~ ~e takr::n for granted t~atthese are actually inhabited, as ours IS,by living beings. In a potentialhabitat for life, this potentiality isnot b~und to be actualized,The physical configuration of organically structured matter has nowbeen discovered but, as has been observed already, life's and cons~ous-ness's and purp~sefulness's physical container is not the same thing aslife and consciousness and purposefulness themselves. We do not Ju:towhow or why life and consciousness and purposefulness have come Intoexistence round the surface of our planet. We do now know, ,ho;vever,that the material constituents of our biosphere have been re-distributedspatially and have been re-comp.ounded chemically as a result of theinteraction between living orgamsms and morgamc matter. We knowthat one effect ofthe genesis of


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8 Mankind and Mothe: Earthwho had antic ipated the Europeans in reaching and occupying theAmericas was evidence that these other parts of the Earth's dry land werehabitable.The Moon is not habitable for any form of l ife. The only lunar matterthat could be a resource for human beings would be inanimate matterthat has never been even temporarily organic. In order to be madeuseful this lunar matter would have to be transported from the Moon tothe Earth by human beings camping and working on the Moon underthe handicap of extremely trying con~tions. This would not p~y, as .itdid pay to convey tobacco from America to Europe and to cultivate mEurope and in Asia other p lants-for instance maize and potatoes-thathad been domesticated in America by the Europeans' predecessors whohad reached America from the opposite side.Though neither the Moon nor the Earth's sister planets, which are farmore remote from the Earth than the Moon is, are habitable for in-habitants of our biosphere, it is conceivable that some other sun thanours, perhaps a sun in some other galaxy, might have a plane: thatwould be habitable for us; but , even ifwe could locate another habitableplanet, it would hardly be feasible for travellers from our biosph_ere toreach it. Suppose we were to discover how to steer the course Withoutbeing attracted, en route, into one of-the burning fiery furnace~ of theinnumerable suns that are on the move through space; the Journeymight take a hundred years. We should therefore have to devise a space-ship on board of which the passengers could beget childr~n who wou~dbe able to live on board and beget children and grandchildren there 10their turn, before the conveyance could land and disembark the third orfourth generation. And, even if this arriving and landing generationcould count on f inding breathable air and drinkable water and ediblefood and tolerable air pressure and gravitational pull in this hypotheticalreplica of om biosphere, the conveyance (a modernized Noah's Ark) inwhich they had made the voyage from one habitable biosphere toanother would have had to be stocked with rations of air and food anddrink that would keep successive generations on board alive for acentury. I t seems most unlikely that this fabulous voyage will ever reallybe made.Thus our present knowledge and experience point to the conclusionthat the habitat of the denizens of the biosphere on the face of the planetEarth is going to continue to be confined ,to this capsule within w~ic~life in the form known to us, has made Its appearance, Though It ISpossible that other biospheres, habitable for denizens of our bio~phere,may exist, it is so improbable that we could, ever reach an~ colonize anyof them that the possibility cannot reasonably be taken into account,This fantasy is , in fact, Utopian.

Th e B io s ph e re 9I~we do con: lude that our prese~t b iosp~ere, which has been our onlyhabitat ~ofar, 13 a!so th~ only ph~SIcal habitat that we are ever likely to

have, this CO,ncl?SlOnWIll admonish us to concentrate our thoughts andefforts on this blos.phere: to survey its history, to forecast its prospects,and to do everything that human action can do to ensure that this=-which, for us, is tht--biosphere shall remain habitable until it is madeuninhabitable eventually by cosmic forces beyond human control.Mankind's mat.erial power has now increased to a degree at which itco~~dmake the ~l~sphere uninhabitable and will, in fact, produce thiss;l1cIdal result WIthin a foreseeable period of time if the human popula-tlO~ of the globe does not now take prompt and vigorous concertedaction to.check the pollution and the spolia tion that are being inflictedon the biosphere by short-sighted human greed. On the other handmankind's. mate~al power will not avail to ensure that the biospher~shall remain hab:table so ~ong ~s w_e?urselves refrain from wrecking it;for, though the biosphere IS finite, It III not self-sufficient. Mother Earthhas n?t engendered life by parthenogenesis . Li fe has been begotten onthe biosphere through the fertilization of Mother Earth by a father: thePha;a?h Akh:nat~n's Aton, the sun-disk, who is 'the UnconquerableSun, Sol Invictus , of the Illyrian Roman Emperors from Aurelian toConstantine the Great.~he biosphere's fund ofphysical energy-which is the material sourceof life and also the source of the physical power present in inanimate

n~ture th~t Man ~as now harnessed-does not originate within thebw~phere. Itself. ThIS physical energy has been, and is constantly being,radiated rnto the .biosphere from our sun, and also from other cosmicsources, .and the biosphere's role in this vita l reception of radiat ion frombeyond It~ confines IS merely selective. It has been mentioned alreadyt~at ~h~biosphere fil ters the radiation that impinges on it. It admits thehfe-gl~m~ rays and r,:pels those that are lethal. But this beneficent playof radiation on the biosphere from external sources will continue to bebeneficent only so]o~g ,as the filt~r is not put out of action and so long asthese . 'I .ourcesof radia tion remain unvarying; and Our sun, like everyother ,m the stellar cosmos, is undergoing change all the time. It isconceivahl- that, at some future date some of these cosmic cha. h . , nges,eit ,er.1O our ~un or in other stars, might so alter the incidence of thera~lat lO~ received b~ our biosphere as to make whatis now a biosphereur_unha?lta?le, an~, ifand when our biosphere comes to be threatened~th this disaster, It seems improbable that mankind's material powerWIl l be J?reat enough to be able to counteract a deadly change in the playof COSmIC forces.~et us ~ow co~sider the biosphere's components and the nature of

their relations WI t h each other. There are three components of the


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Mankind and Mother Earth10biosphere: first, matter that has never yet co:ne to life thr~ugh.acq~iringan organic structure; second, living orgarnc matter; ~lrd, l~arumatematter that has once been alive and organic and that st ill retains someorganic qualities and powers. We know that the bi~sp~ere is youngerthan the planet that it envelops; we also know that, Within the blO~phereitself life and consciousness have not been present for as long a time asthe matter with which they have come to be associated. The film ofmatter that is now a biosphere was once wholly inanimate and uncon-scious, as the major part of the globe'S matter still i~.We do not knowhow or why a part ofthe material substa~ce ofthe biosphere even:ua.llybecame animate, nor how or why, at a still later stage, a part of this livematter became conscious. We can put the same question conversely:How and why did life and consciousness become incarnate? But, in thisconverse form too, the answer to the riddle still eludes us.The ex-organic component of the biosphere is surprisingly large, and

it has provided mankind with some of the most important resources forthe maintenance of human life. By now it is common knowledge thatcoral reefs and islands have been produced by myriads of animalculae,each adding its tiny increment ofsolid and enduring artificial rock. Inthe course of aeons the work done by these animalculae has addedappreciably to the area ofdry land in the biosphere .tha: is habitab~e fornon-aquatic forms of life. Thes.e minute but multitudinous and .mde-fatigable living beings have built a larger aggregate area of ~ablt~bIeinsular terra firma than the mighty inanimate force ofvolcamc action,which has emulated the coral-making animalculae in pil ing up solidmatter under water till all island has emerged above the surface of thesea,It isalso now common knowledge that coal isa product of the carcasesof once live trees and that fertile soil derives part of its fer tility ii?mhaving been passed through the bodies of wor~s, and th~ough ~e~gpopulated by bacteria ofkinds that enhanc~ th~ SOl I s c~pac~ty for g 1V~sustenance to vegetation; but the layman IS still surprised :f a ge?1oglStsuggests to him that the limestone that now strikes.the eye ~ the Jaggedsky-lines of some of the biosphere's present moun,tam r~nges IS a productof age-long deposits of the shells or bones ofmar~e animals ~n the be~sof vanished seas and that these horizontal deposits of once Iive organicmatter have been buckled-recently, interms of the geologists' time-scale-by a contract ion of the Earth's crust till the stuff has ruckled upinto its present contorted shapes. The layman. isstill ~ore su:pnsedifitis suggested that the vast subterra~ean deposits o~mineral 01 1 may alsobe ex-organic matter-may, that is to say, be akin to coal and not toiron-ore or granite: substances that have never passed through anorganic stage in the configuration of their constituent molecules.

Th e B io s ph e re IIThe surprising magnitude of the amount of ex-organic matter in the

biosphere calls our attention to some disconcerting aspects of the historyoflife (misnamed 'evolution', a word that means, not genuine change,but merely the


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12 Mankind and Mather Earthnon-human animals in order to rob them of their produco=-milk orhoney-s-while they are alive and to kill them ruthlessly in order-to usetheir flesh for food and their bones and sinews and hides and fur as rawmaterials for making tools and clothes,Human beings have also preyed on each other. ,Canrtibalistn andenslavement have been practised in highly sophisticatedsccieties-s-boththese enormities in pre-Oolumbian Meso-Amer i ca ) fbr lI1sb~.fice,andslavery in the Graeco-Rcman and Islamic and.-Mqtl&rhWesternsodeties.A slave is a human being who is treated -a s 1 hewete a non-humandomestic animal, and the shockh1gnessofMan's tfMttrterlt ofrion -humananimals has been confessed implicit ly in the Ih'oyementdudng the lasttwo centuries for-abolishing the practice-of :ensl?lVitightlmah beings.Moreover) the Juridkal emancipation of ;sl.aveSJ~ity-;ilot;liberate themactually; for a ji1fidiGa.1 freeman can be exploitilusiinvilhaspee1i.W o n . >J-:Sovere ign states have Eteenmai'iKihcl'Kpataihoiliit oB j t i . cMof WGtshipduring th e Iast5;obO y ea ts ; .a .u ff t h e s e are gtiddesses :wh. i t l ih l fv~ l1&fuaTidcdand received hecatombs ofhtiih3.hsattifitcs.Shvereigitstal:esgb towar with each other; and in W a r they eachrequireIhe chnidesi oftheitycitingrriale subjects to murder the subjects of the 'enertrf state at the

The Bi o sph er ei)fthemselvesbeing murdered by.their intended victims. Till withinmemory, all human beings except a few smali minorrties=for

H",~a"UL.'J the members of the Society of Friends-c-have looked upon. .and-being .kl lledin war as being not only legit imate 'bit t meri tori-"glorioUs. Killing in war; as well as killing in the exeeubiori of a~-"-\.H.


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M an kin d a nd M oth er E arthspecies.On a panoramic view, we can alsosee that the interplay be~~enthe various species of life does not solely take the form of .competItlOnand conflict; While the relation between the Vegetable Kingdom andthe Animal Kingdom is in one aspect a relation betwee~ an exploitedhost and a predatory parasite, in another aspect the two kmgdomsact .aspartners working in t~e com~on int~restof~eep~ng.the biosphe~e h~blt-.able for plants and animals alike. This cooperatlVc interplay secur.e~;~01instance, the distribution and circulation ofoxygen and carbon dioxidein a rhythmic movement that makes life possible; . .Thus the progression oflife in the biosphere appears to reveallll,ltselftwo tendencies that are antithetical and contrary to each other. Whcn ahuman being surveys the history of the biosphere as far as its p~esentpoint, he finds that it has produced both evilan~.~??d and both wicked-nessand virtuousness. These are, of course, exclusively human concept~,Only a bcing that possesses consciousness can distinS"uis~be~een eviland good and can choosebetween acting wickedlya~~ aCtih?virtuously,These concepts are non-existent for non-human h V l n _ g creatures, andthey are deemed to be evil or good by human. acts of.Jildg:nen~....Does this mean that ethical standards are Imposed arhltranly by ahuman fiat and that thisfiat isirrelevant to the facts of1ifeandis there-fore utopiiii? We might be constrained to draw this conc~u.sionif M~nwere simply a spectator and a censor, viewing and appraisingthe bio-sphere ftom outside. Certainly Man is both aspect~tor andia c,enso~';These roles ofhis are corollaries of his faculty of consCIOusnessand ofhISconsequent unavoidable power and need to makeethicalchbicesti.n~ topass ethical judgments; But mankind is alsoa.branch oft~letree 0fh~e;we are one of the products of life's progress~on; and .this.me~ns tha:Man's ethical standards and judgments are mherent in the biosphereand therefore in me total reality ofwhich the biosphere is apart; Thuslifeand consciousness and good and evil are no lessreal than the matterwith which, in the biosphere, they are mysteriously ~ssociated. If weguess that matter is a primordialconstitu~nt of ~eahty? we ha~e ~oground for supposing that these non-material manifestations of realityare not primordial likewise. . . . . .However, in the progressionofhfe in the biosphere, consC1ousnes~,hasmade its appearance here at the relatively recent date oftheappe~ran.ceof Man, and in our time we have become aware; belatedly .an~~~r\:tptlY5that Man's presence ishow presenting a threat to.th~l;i.ablt.a~lhtv ?fthebiosphere for all forms oflife,inchiding humanhfcits,e1f',Hlthert?, .~hecompetition and conflict that have been one asp:ct of t? ~prog.~esslOnoflife have caused the extinction ofnumerous speclesoflivmg b~mgs, andhave also inflicted premature, violent, and paihfuldeaths oUlllnun:er-able specimens ofall species.Mankind has taken a toll ofhuman sacrifice

Th e B io sph e refrom itself, besides dealing death to rival species ofpredators and wipingout a number ofspecies ofplants. Even sharks and bacteria and itirusesate no longer a match for their human antagonists. HoWever ; tinti16titbvifntime; this destruction of particular species and ofliidWidtiaHped-mens of species has not seemed to carry with it a threat to ffi6'sufvlvalbf1iH~itself. Hitherto, the extinction of some species onire has'epenedupopportunities fbrother species to flourish. ' ,1.i' Man has been the most successful of all the species 'inmastethWi theoUiet constituents of the biosphere, both animate and ihatiihlateJ,Ad: the.dawn of'his consciousness, Man found himself at the mercyofnoriLhilill:anJUfttiteq heset himself to make himseifnori-human nature's iiiasterrandhe has advanced progressively towards the attainment ofthisbbjelilive.

': Within the last 10;000 years, he lias challenged rtatural>MHttHbn:'bysubstituting human selection for it, in so far as h e h a s Haathe1J~wer : , ' Hehas fostered the survival ofplants and animals that he has di:nnestieatedfo r his ow n requirements, and he has set out to extermihat some titherspecies that he has found-obnoxious. He has labell~d these'unwitnted. . . s j jedes 'weeds' and 'vermin'; and; in giving them thesep~bfative-1abels,

< he has&etved notice that he is going to do his utmosttbextefihinate.thehi.Ii1~soar as Man has succeeded in sUbstittifirighumatiseIectionfor. ... -. selection; Man has reduced the number of'surv'ivihgsp~des; ,

rHdWcver; during the first stage of hiscareer, whieh.hasbeen by far.....lorigest stage'sti far, Man did not make as great amatk:tlrFthe -bio-

aswis beifig made byi;oiiIe of his fellow l iving beirlgsbfbthet:sljet:les.'The pyramids at Gizah andat Teotihuacan, andthe man-made

. at Cholula and at Sakai, dwarf the temples afidcatheclfalshk!o('lhi,pr'" of later ages, yet Man'smost maSsive moituments arecbilipatisoh With the work of the animalculae thathavehuilt'islands. By the date of the dawn of dvilizatiotl; about '.5;000.. ago, 'Man had become conscious of the pre~erfiiheniJeofthe powerhe had acquired in the biosphere; befotelhe beginning of theEtahe had discovered that the biosphete is a fihitc,fivdopesurface ofa star that ill a globe; sincethefif teenth century of

,UUU~LQl1Era, Europeahs have been approptiatingand populatingrtt. sparsely populated pOl'tibnsof the hiosphere's hihd~siltface.ti l the' present generatibn, mankind hasoontinued 10behave ina s 'itt h~ S ti RP ly oftltebiosphere's nofi.:.feplabelihleresoU1-ces;minerals, W:lS ifiexhaustihle, and as if thasea rartd'air Were. H I e , ,''-c .': .

nsti ttitents of thtlmtisphete seemedj in: fattjHh tillatelyto he,UJHH ..LLwhen' tnhsuted in terms ofMiln'sabilitytblilie themjJV"~uo,,,, .them; Iii my childlicod (I was bbrhih t889) it would. seemed fantastic to 'imagine that Mail Wdtild ever have the


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16 Ma~kifldihdMdtAer Earthpower to pollute tbe whole ofthe biosphere's circurnambientattrtosphere,though in Landon, where t grew lip, and also in Marichestef and in St.Louis and in an increasing number of other cities by then, thesmokegenerated by the domestic and industr ial burning ofcoal was producingfogsthat Intercepted the sun's l ight and choked human lungs for severaldays on encl. This menace to the purity of the. atmosphere was dis-counted as being no more than a local and occasional nuisance. As forthe possibil ity that human activities might pollute the sea, this wouldhave been considered a ridiculous fantasy.The truth is that, until the third quarter of the twentieth century A.D.mankind had underest imated the modern increase in its power to affectthe biosphere. This increase has been produced by two new departures:first, the deliberate systematic pursuit of scientific research and theapplication of this to the advancement of technology; second, the har-nessing, for application to human purposes, ofthe physical energy patentor latent in the inanimate consti tuents ofthe biosphere: for instance, theenergy of the water that is perpetually flowing downwards towards sea-level after having been drawn up froth sea-level into theatrnosphere.Since the outbreak ofthe Industrial Revolution in Britain two hundredyears ago, this gravitational water-power, which previously had beenapplied to little else than the grindingof corn, has been harnessed todrive machinery for the manufacture of many kinds of material com-modities. Water-power has also been raised to higher degrees of potencyby being converted into steam-power and into electric power; Electricitycan be generated from the physical force of natural Of artificial Watet~falls, but water cannot be converted into steam without being heated bythe combustion offuels , and these have been used, not only for convert-ing water-power into steam-power and electric power, but for supersed-ing the Use of water-power even in its most potent form: Moreover,charcoal, a replenishable fuel derived from wood, has been supersededby non-replaceable fuels: coal , mineral oil ; and eventually uranium.Uranium; the most recently exploited fuel, releases atomic energy; but,in venturing to manipulate this titanic force, Man; since 1945, hasembarked on the adventure that ended fatally for the mythical detr iigodPhaethon when he usurped the chariot of his divine father the Sun. Thesteeds ofHelios ' chariot kicked over the traces when they fbund that thereins had been taken Over by a weak mortal's hands; th~yplunged outof their proper course, and the biosphere woU ld havebeeh burn]; tocinders if ZeuShad hot saved it from destruction by sufnmar.ily thunder-bolting the Sun's presumptuous moi"talremplafli1it. ThelrtythofPhacthonis an allegory of the risk to which Mart has exposed liihiselfby playingwith atomic energy. Itremains to be seen whether Man Will be able touti lize this mighty material force with impunity. I ts power is unprece-

.; dehtediygreat,))llt sOit6or:istliepbisoh6usneiKofits~afteimathOfradi()_a~ti'lewaste! Mati has now interfered with the process by which thehi~sphere-~"4ife'sM6thet 'EartlF'chas b e e n : ifupteghatedwith sdlari"adiationohterms tl_tatare'life;;:givirlg;hdt lethal. 'this portehtousfeat ofhuman scientific tecHnology; in conjunction with the effects dftln\ltisserpi"eviousachieveiherttsbr the Ihdustrial Revolution, ishOWthreatehingto rnakethe'biosphefe unlfthabitable. . . ".'I'lius w e rldWs;and at a tuftiihg~polht in the history of the bib~phei"eand in the shorter history ofone of i ts products and denizens, mankind.

Manhasbeen the first of Mother Earth's children to,subdueHfe's matHeraridtd Wfest6li ldfthe hands ofl ife's father, the Sun, the fearful forheofsolarj:iowe~. Man has now let this power loose in the biospherejnaked< indtiii:H~tnperedjfor the first time since the biosphere became habitableforlif~;Ttjd.ayw~ do not know whetherMan' is gcling to hewllliugorable to aVOId brmging Phaethon's fate on himsdlf < t H d o u ; liis: fellowliVing beings. . . ,.M~n is the first species of living being in our biosphere that hasacquired the power to wreck the biosphere anti, in wrecking it, toliquidate himself. As a psychosomatic organism, Man is subject; like.. every other form oflife, to an inexorable law of Nature. Mi\: i l ike his

.fel1o~ living. beings of other kinds, is an integral partof the bIosphere,and, If the biosphere were to be made uninhabitable, Man, as well as al l. .. other species, would become extinct . ~., >........,;.:The. biosphere has been able to harbour life because the.b.i~spherehas beenaself-regulating association of mutually complementary com-. . and, before .ilie emergence of Man, no single conp6ri~hfof the

' ex-organid, or hiorganic-ever fu,:quH'edWepdwe t..,the ~dl~ate1y adjusted l:i~lance ?f th e plaY6ff6rte.~ ~y mb l h s 'ofthe biosphere has become a hospitable home fbr life.Pre;;.1itlrnanofliving beings that Wereeither too incompetent or too aggi'~ssive. .. in tune with the biosphere's rhythm were liquidated by the play. this rhythm long before their incompetence 'Or ti.ggressiveness camev, .. hear to threatening to derange the rhythm on which their life. the lifeof all bt~er species, depended. The Biosphere was vastly more.. than any ofIts pre-human denizens., . ... is the ,fir~to f tHe biosphere's denizens that Is more potent than.hiosphere itself Mati's acquisition of consciousness lias enabled him. choices arid therefdre to deviseandtn 'carryoutplans that can" ..v.\..


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Mankind and Mother Earthas all other forms of psychosomatic life on the face of life's mother, theEarth.From this point. therefore, we can make a retrospective survey ofthe history, todate, ofthe encounter between Mother Earth and Man, themightiest and most enigmatic of all her children. The enigma lies in themysterious fact that Man, alone among the inhabitants ofthe biosphere,is also an inhabitant of another realm as well-a spiritual realm that isnon-material and invisible. In the biosphere Man is a psychosomaticbeing, acting within a world that is material and finite. On this plane ofhuman activity, Man's objective. ever since he became conscious, hasbeen to make himself master ofhis non-human environment] and in ourday he has come within sight of success in this endeavour-possibly tohis own undoing. But Man's other home, the spiritual world, is also anintegral part of total reality; it differs from the biosphere in being bothnon-material and infinite; and, in his life in the spiritual world Manfinds that his mission is to seek, not for a material mastery over his non-human environment, but for a spiritual mastery over himself.These two antithet ical objectives, and the two different ideals by

which they are inspired have been expounded in famous texts. Theclassical directive to Man to make himself master of the biosphere isgiven in verse 28 of the first chapter ofthe Book ofGenesis:Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth and subdue it, and havedominion over the fishof the sea and over the fowl of the air and over everyliving thing that moveth upon the Earth.This directive is clear and emphatic, but so, too, are the rejections of

it. 'Lead us not into ternptation but deliver us from evil' reads like adirect reply to the directive in the Book of Genesis, and the New Testa-ment has been anticipated by the Tao te Ching in declaring that Man'stechnological and organizational achievements are a snare.

The more 'Bharp weapons' there are,The more benighted will the whole land grow.The more cunning craftsmen there are,The more pernicious contrivances will be invented.The more laws are promulgated,The more thieves and bandits. there will be.!

Stretch a bowto the very full,And you will wish that you had stopped in tim.e.1!He could bring it about that, though there should be among the peoplecontrivances requiring ten times, a hundred times, less labour, they would

~ Tao 12Chillg, ch, 57, in Arthur Waley's translation, The Way andits Power (London, 1934,AIlen and Unwin), p. 2Il.?Op. cit., ch, 9, onp.1511.

Th e B io s ph e r e 19not use them. . . . There might still be boats and carriages, but no onewould go inthem; there might still be weapons ofwar, hut no one would drillwith them.!These paS!lagesof the Ta o td Ch ing have their counterpart in the Gospel

according to St.Matthew:Consider the lilies ofthe field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do theyspin ; and yet I say unto you that evenSolomon in all his glory was not arrayedlike one of these. 2These are repudiations ofthe call to dedicate ourselves to the acqnisi-

tion of power and wealth. They clear the air for a call to embrace anopposite ideal.VVhOlloeverwill come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross andfollowme. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it;but whosoever shalllosehis lifeformy sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shallit profit a man ifhe shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Orwhat shall a man give-inexchange for ills soul?3 . .If a human being were to lose his soul, he would cease to be human;

for the essence of being human is an awareness of a spiritual presencebehind the phenomena, and it is as a soul, not as a psychosomaticorganism, that a human being 1S incommunication with this spiritualpresence, or is even identical with itin the experience of the mystics.Living, as he does Jive, in the biosphere and in the spiritual world

simultaneously, Man is truly an amphibian, as he has aptly been calledby Sir Thomas Browne, and, in each of the two elements inwhich he isat home, Man has an objective. But he cannot pursue each of twoobjectives, or serve each oftwo masters, whole-heartedly. One of his twoobjectives and one ofhis two allegiances must be given paramountcy, ormust even be given exclusive devotion ifthe two turn out to be incom-patible and irreconcilable. Which of the two alternatives isto be chosen?The debate over this question had become explicit in India in theBuddha's generation, about half way through the last millennium B.C.It was explicit in the West in the generation of'St, Francis ofAssisi in thethirteenth century A.D. On both these occasions, a taking of oppositechoices led to a parting of the ways between a father and a son, Theissue has probably been implicitly under debate since the dawn ofconsciousness; for one of the home truths that is revealed to a humanbeing by consciousness isthe moral ambivalence ofhuman nature. How-ever, at most times and places down to the present day, people haveavoided bringing into the open the question that moved the Buddha andLOp. cit., ch, S(}, on p. ~41. gMatt. 6: 28-29_a Mark 8: 34-37. Cp, Matt. 16: ':l4---!;t6;Luke 9: 23-25-


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M an kin d a nd Mather Ear t hSt. Francis in turn to break away from their natural ties -with theirfamilies. Itis only in our own generation that the choice has becomeinescapable for mankind as awhole.In our generation, Man's completion of his mastery over the whole ofthe biosphere is threatening to defeat Man's intentions by wrecking thebiosphere and extinguishing life, including human life itself. Since thethirteenth century Western Man has professedly honoured FrancescoBernardone, the saint who renounced the inheritance of a lucrativefamily business and who was rewarded with Christ's stigmata for hisespousal of the Lady Poverty. But the example that Western Man hasactually followed has not been St. Francis's; Western Man has emulatedthe saint's father, Pietro Eernardone, the successful wholesale cloth-merchant. Since the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution, ModernMan has dedicated himself, more obsessively than any of his forebears,to the pursuit of the objective set heforc him in the first chapter of theBook o f Genesis-It looks as ifMan will not be able to save himself from the nemesis ofhis demonic material power and greed unless he allows himself to under-go a change ofheart that will move him to abandon his present objectiveand to espouse the contTaly ideal. His present self-inflicted plight hasconfronted him with a peremptory challenge. Can he bring himself toaccept, as necessary practical ru1es of conduct for people of ordinarymoral stature, those precepts, preached and practised by saint~, thathitherto have been regarded as being Utopian counsels of perfect JOnforl 'h o mm t J m o ye n s eu su e i] The long-drawn-out debate over this issue thatseems to be approaching a climax in OUT day is the theme of the presentchronicle ofMankind's encounter with Mother Earth.

THE DESCENT OF MAN

THERE ~e at le~st three different senses in which the word 'descent' can~e taken InrelatIOn to the w~rd 'Man'. Our ancestors descended, in thel iteral physical sense, from living up aloft in the trees to l iving-on theground. They are descended genetically from pre-human forms oflife. Ithas also been held (though this is a controversial thesis) that theydescended morally when they awoke to consciousness.The thi~d of th~


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22 M an kin d a nd M othe r Ea rthnature inwhich, sofar, love and strifehave been at issuewith each otherinconclusively. It is conceivable that, instead ofwrecking the biosphere,Man may use his power over the biosphere to replace the state ofnatureby a state of grace inwhich lovewill prevaiL This would transfigure lifefroma pandemonium into a communion ofsaints. .When we take the word descent in its genetic meaning, it confronts uswith the question of the age of g en us h o mo . Manifestly there is a validsense in which Man is coeval with all other surviving species of livingbeings and, in fact, with life itself; for, though evolution has proceededby differentiation, the different species that evolution has produced areall related to each other likethe branches ofa tree. They an derive froma common root. Ifwe seekto date the genesisofMan more distinctively,we shall single out the date at which the family ofhominids branched offfrom other families within the order of primates among the mammals.This parting of the genetic ways marks a point of no return. For homi-nids, it cut offthe possibility of their becoming hy l oba t i dae (e.g. gibbons)or pong i dae (e.g. orang-outangs, chimpanzees, gorillas). When once theprogenitor ofthe hominids had passedthis forking-point, andhad passedit by taking the hominid road, the hominids were left with only twoalternative possibilities.They could become human or alternatively theywould fail to survive. Actually the only genus that has survivedwithinthe hominid familyis h omo , and, within g en us h om o , the only species thatstill survives is h om o s a pi en s (an undeservedly flattering label "'{hichthissale surviving species of hominid has affixed to itself with naive self-conceit). lfwe reckonMan to be asoldasthe date atwhich ithad ceasedto be possiblefor our ancestors, if they were to survive, to become any-thing other than human, then Man must be held to have originated, asa distinctive formoflife, in the miocene age or even possibly aslong agoasthe latest phase of the oligocene; and, on this reckoning, Man wouldhave been in existence for about twenty million to twenty-five millionyears by now.Can we date the age ofmankind still more closelyby equating it withone or other of Man's distinctive anatomical features or distinctivehabits and accomplishments? Can we say that our ancestors becamehuman when they descended from the trees to the ground? Or whenthey acqUired the capacity to walk and run by using only one pair oflimbs for locomotion, thus liberating the other pair for manipUlatingtools? Or when they developed brains that were not only much largerthan those of any other hominid, but alsomuch more highly organizedin the sense that the number of possible alternative patterns of interscommunication between the brain-cells wasvery much greater? Or canwe date the genesisofhuman nature by its achievement ofsueh accom--nl,~hlYlf'"nt!\ as sociality or as language (i.e. a code of sounds conveying


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~ ' ~ ' : . _ ' . -. . . ; - : ~ .~ > :" . ' _ " .- ' . :: : - ;... " , , :- .... ,.,.M a h k ii i d -a nd y t lQ tJ i l f f E # H /{ _ , - . , ~ :. ' - . ' -afraid o f sptintartcohlsiybndleafif~-W~d{~~~is@V~fM~6,r_ .H>"k~~~~talight and to tnakeuse bflt aiid;everitliallY'1:okihdle-irartifici~lly.-7;'"Gan we date the dawn tif consCiousness, itlief"ifi terirl{tifgeof6g'ical

ages or, still more audaCiously, in terms bf years B . c. P Tbtj_y t


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sSdnfi ABU! dM 'sd1uoIo:) ;)lU9pBlU V;}.lD dS;}lP JO PUBP;).j.UIlj" IB.j.udUI.j.uOJdlj".J.SBM .J.Blj".].ddais i ll ':~suln3: ;)IP SSO.! :)Ufiu~uunl {!RI.J.U ~!A 'B;}S 1::lUUI::Ilj".].O .j.SUO:)rp.rou ;)lIl fiuoyu S::I1U.].S-Al!::lp~~uoym ~;) ;UD ;}lj"l lj"l~M .j. :) ll .] .-t roo u~ SllM lUl j"l uOPllzTI fAP ,UllRld u~ .].nq-gf lo ~-,(pp0M. :Jl{.J.]0.].lBd) P;}l!qul{u1 dq.]., 51!sUfUll;)UI p~.l::l.].ns:J.I lUd.11n:J ::IlU"8:J::Iq1:)U;}UIn0:l[!O,lUJ~"I:).)l{: U;;Il{M ;;IlUp dql SEM A.10.].S!l{:J!U;)TPH JO ;;Ifiy ;m~.IpuBx;)TY-1Sod;)l{.J.pun ::IJ!dlU3 Ull~S.1dd .].S.1!...r:}l{lJo MOll{P::IAO pua asonbnoo s,lt!::I.1D ;np.l!MIl llUl lq Aq ;)I: .IqdsoN dtpJO fiuf:l[":J;}.lM::Il[:).{ilnml{l ;:)J!110 UOPBI!lj"!UUB ::Il{:).:Iq llyll!lU X'{!UI!P s~l{,I"

'xlllliIP B Sp.IBMOlllu!p'P.;}l{ S!.].Bql dl"p.uy:putll'sB ::Ilj"![SB siunoo lBl{l lIB ::I)PI I pnlU os aou 1001 m N , 'Alll;)U::l ;)!lliOlll JO fiu!-SS;}u.:mq ;)q:).0:).uopnloA::IlI. Tn~.:qsnpu1 :J!lfl~Iodq'P.d J::Iddn ::Il{lJO 1J:"P.:-I.lQlllO::Il{llUO.IJ fiU!llUIl.I 'SlB;)A ooo'of .10 ooo'oL rnonbosqns ;}q.].Jo A:).d~JBApUB:.I::JU;}Ul;}q;)ApUB pccds fiU~SBd.I:JU~::Il{:).udlj"cl 'gfiy ::>!lPH0::lBIBd .I;)MO'1 ::lql JO.10dlO.]. ::IA~.].Bp.rdlj".J.uI qoodo S! l{lJO lUlPAl{l IBll iJOU dIp puy ABUI ;}M sdnq-J:Jd '1[:J0d;) ::I[fiUfS::lUOfiu~::Iq Ill'. UMBp ;)l{:).::l:JU!SA.101S!l{UBlUnlJ JO ::IloqM;)l{l pJBfi::lJ ;}MJ! pUll 'UMBP ;}lj"l01 1li p O . l S P l-o.rd, dl{ l l "Eq1 lJ"8J : .Il{l Aq mo Pil lfi .I Ap. .rnS s~ . ]. ! pun '{B:)!XOP1l:1-8U


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Mankind and Mother Eafthlay, not 'beyond the North Wind", but to the east of the steppe, and t~atthey were in truth the Chinese, who were known to the post-AlexandrineGreeks and Romans as 'Seres' or 'Sinae'.By the time most of the Graeco-Roman World had been united

politically in the Roman Empire, silk was being imported into theGraeco-Roman World both overland and by sea; but the so-called'civilized' peoples at the east and the west ends of the Old World werestill only faintly aware of each other's existence. The Chinese equivalentof the Greek 'OikoumenC' is 'All that is under Heaven', but, for theChinese, Ta Ch'in, the big replica of the Chinese Empire at the west endof the Continent, was as hazy asthe Sinae or Seres or Hypcrboreans werefor the Greeks and Romans. The two extremities of the Continent wereonly belatedly brought into direct contact with each other-first tempor-arily, in the thirteenth century, by the incorporation of al l the s~lOresofthe Eurasian steppe in the huge but ephemeral Mongol Empire, andthen permanently, since before the dose of the fifteenth cent~ry~ by. theWest European peoples' conquest of the Ocean. As for the civilizationsof Meso-America and of the Andean strip of South America, these wereunknown to any ofthe inhabitants of the Old World until after Colum-bus had made his first landfall on the American side of the Atlantic. Yetthe civilizations of Meso-America and Peru had blossomed into their'classic' ful l flower perhaps as early as the beginning of the ChristianEra while the antecedent 'formative' period of these American higher, /cultures may have begun-in Meso-America, at any rate-as early asthe beginning of any ofthe Old-World civilizations except the Sumero-Akkadian and the Pharaonic Egyptian.If we use the term Oikoumene in its literal meaning of the habitat ofmankind, we can see that the true extent of the Oikournene is muchlarger th~h the .irea of the 'civilized' :-vorid known ~o the. Greeks ~ n ?Romans, but we can also see that this comprehensive Oikoumene ISnevertheless much smaller than the biosphere. The major part of thebiosphere'S surface is occupied by the sea, and the biosphere's air-envelope accounts for the major part of the bios~here's v?l~me: T~e s?ais believed to have been the original habitat of life, and It ts stIll rich 111both flora and fauna; but, since the date at which Man's ancesto.rsbecame terrene animals, they have not made themselves at h~me agamin the sea as their fellow-mammals the whales and porpoises have.Human b:ings have not even become amphibians like their other fellow~mammals the seals and otters. They have discovered how to traverse thesurface of rivers and seas in boats and ships, and how to dive-not verydeep and not for very long at a time---below the sea's surface? but, .on orin the water, human beings are only wayfarers; they are not inhabitants-thev are. in fact, not an aquatic species.

The Oikoumene 29~n the twent~eth century A.D., Man has also invented aircraft. but in

t~king to the air, Man has been anticipated, ages ago, by ins~cts ~ndb:rds and bats, and no bat , bird, insect or human being can live in thearr, as th.e f ish and the marine species of mammals can live in the tIn th . f li wa er,. te air, no species 0 IVlllg being can be more than a wavf A_. d ,.arer.wIn~e species ~ay depe.nd on being air-borne [or winning its livelihoodbut It ~annot dispense WIth having either a terrene or an aquatic bae oflPert;ations. ~venhs;val1ows perch on telegraph-wires and build nests ofe ay O r reanng t err young. .

"',,-Mankind's Oikoumcns lie~wholly on the land-surface ofthe biosphe' t_hough the Olkoumene:s h~man inhabitants traverse the biospher:~~

' . > ' ~ater-su.rface, an? now Its aIr-envelope too, in travelling from one art, ~f"the .Olkoumen~to anot~er. But the Oikournens is far from beinico-.',,~xtensr~re ~ven WIth the bIOsphere's land-surface, and the extent of its, f l . r ea, within the coasts of the dry land, has fluctuated, as is illustrated b"'. the current lethal drought in the Sahel ie the belt of Sa' h y,'.'..' '.Afr' - ' . . vanna country'. .. .1C.3. between the former southern edge of the Sahara and th;" ._t ipt th.eirn edge of the. tropical rain-forest . The fluctuations have bee~,_"


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.M an kin d a nd M othe r E arth3theory, it postulates, not a re-orientation ofthe whole ofthe globe, butonly a change in the configuration ofthe glo~e's c1US~..However, the enigmatic presence of tropical fossilsm what are nownon-tropical zones isthe problem ofa geo~o~icalage that a~teda:es t~efirst appearance of hominids by many millions of years.1e climaticphenomenon that has been con~emporan~ous ",:,iththe pre~ence. ofhominids in the biosphere is the aeries ofglaCialperiods, alternating withthaws, during the pleistocene age-that is to say, during the last tW?million years. The latest glaciation (it would be rash to assume that thisis the last glaciation that there is ever going to be) gave way to thepresent thaw about 12,000 or 10,000 years ago.During the glacial periods the ice-caps seemnever to have co~eredmore than a small part ofthe land-surface ofthe.biospher:. The glaCIatedareas lay mostly within the two polar zones, with some Isolated patchesofglaciation on high mountains lessdista~t fromthe Equ.ator. Ho:::vever,this partial glaciation excluded temporarIly from the Oikoumene son:efertile soils (for instance in SHmc, m the msular. part of ])en~ar~, mMidlothian, and in Caithness) which have been hIghly proriuctive sI~cethey have been brought under cultivation. Moreover: the local glaCl~-tions changed the ratio between sea and dry la~d m. the dry lar:d sfavour. So great a volume ofwater was temporanly plIed up .and Im-mobilized in the ice-caps that the sea-level droPI?ed appreCIably allround the globe. The beds ofshallowseaswere lef: high an~ dry; narrowseas became narrower; some straits were even bridged by Isthmus.es.Interms ofthe sea's mean depth and ofthe ratio of sea to dry land.m. theconfiguration of the planet'S surface, this global effe~toflocal glaoat1?nswas small' but it was great in terms ofthe opportumty for the expans:onfMan's Oikoumene in an age inwhich Man's onlymeans OflOcoIDo~lOnonland were his own feet and in which the shipwright's and the naviga-tor's arts wer"estill in their infancy. .Even whenwe have allowedfor the facilitation ofmi~r~tl~n thanks ~othe temporary lowering of the sea-level, the early hommids prowess mexpanding the Oikoumene is amazing in the eyes of present:day Man.This isbecause, within the last century and a hal~,we ~ave mvent~d aseries of mechanized means of conveyance, start~ng WIthm:chamzedships and railway-trains and following these up wIt~ mechamzed ~o~d~vehiclesand with aerop1anes.We shall feel less surpnsc at the hOmlI~l~Sexpansion when we recall the corresponding feats of the no.n-homIDldprimates. These have colonized th~ Americas, as well as ASIatogetherwith itspeninsulas and its off-shore Islands. On the othe~hand, no genusof the hominid family except g en us h om o, and no species of g en us h or :wexcept homo sapiens, has ever reached theAmericas by se~fro.meq~atonaland southern East Africa, which seems to be the region m which the

T h _ > e i J . i k i i u _ . " _ " m _ " - e ' - n ' ! - .3 1Iiominids fi~s~becamedifferentiaied: from their cousins the great apes.

-- AU the surviving pre-Columbian human inhabitants of'th Atnericasared~scendedfromre~resentatives of h om o s a pi e n s who made their way-over-land to the Americas from the Continent during the latest bourofglaciation. The pre-Columbian Americans arrived from the Horth-eastcorner ofAsia via a temporary isthmus that has subsequently be e n sub-merged ben~ath the Behring Straits; only the post-Columbian Allied..ca~s-and their Norse precursors from the European north-west cornerofASIa traversed the Atlantic. -.'~f homo s~piens, ~ke his now extinct fellow-horninids, made hisfirstappearance m tropical East Afrie.a,the geographical distance coveted byhIS,tre~ on foot from ~here t? T_Ierradel Fuego was certainly long. Sotoo, however, was this trek s time-span. Moreover Man like otherfauna, is mobile; he is not rooted to the Earth, like most' of the bio-sphere's flora; yet the flo~ahas disseminated itselfas widely as thefauna,though most ofthe flora ISdependent for its dissemination on the actionof insects and o r winds. yet,. when all this has been said, the range ofStone~AgeMan s expansion ISremarkable. Man had reached Tierra-del.'.~Iiego.and also Australia by.at.least as early as circa 6000 B;C;though,...even when sea-level was at Its lowest, the overland route fromAsia to'{\ustralia was interrupted by a thirty-mile-wide stretch of sea'between...~orn~o a~d Celebes. St~ne:Age ~an's most amazing t o ur d e f o rc e was the/ '.''?OlOUlzatlOnf Polynesia, mcludmg Easter Island. Within the last five... hutidred years, West Europeans and their colonists overseas have"explored the whole surface ofthe biosphere. They have reached both of

. Poles. Yet, except for the two polar regions, they have found few" that have not already been occupied by pre-European humanbitants,: 1 v i a n is peculiar among the primates in having lost his coat of fur

;' for a fewpatches covering only a small part of the surface of his.. For living in tropical regions where there was no screen offoliage

'hi"ttl,/f.'PTI the naked.hum~n ?ody and the sun, human beings needed to.themselves IIIartificial fur; and they also needed clothing for

.' ...?n tem~erate or sub-arctic regions where they were exposed to'.' The Eskimo seal-hunter and the Arab pastoral nomad both clothe" .... thickly, the Eskimo in skins and the badu in woollen gar-

,n)l(;!J.l~' Man's mastery offire enabled him to expand his Oikoumene still,.~a;JlUl'CI'. At the present day, modern technology is being used to extend

....ofexploitation, ifnot the area of habitation into the far northoviet Union and Canada. '

. " ice-caps that cover the interiors of Greenland and of the much..... continent stilllie beyond the bounds ofthe Oikoumenetlbsome enclavesof tropical rain-forest, of snow-coveredmountain


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M U 1 i k i 1 Z d a n d M o t h e r E a r t hcountry, and of bone-dry desert. But 1vIanseeirts to be able to live ina wider range of climates than any of the other primates. !fyou traverseone of the canons that have been carved deep into the soft volcanic soilof Ethiopia, you descend from the temperate surface of the plateau to alevel at which the canon IS habitable for monkeys; but, before you reachthe bottom, you leave the monkey's habitat behind. You descend to adepth at which the canon is too hot to hold monkeys; but there is noaltitude, from temperate plateau to tropical river-bed, at which Ethiopiais not habitable for Man.The extent and the configuration ofthe Oikoumene have not changedgreatly since the recession ofthe latest glaciation about 12,000 or IO,OOOyears ago. The habitable dry land surface of the biosphere consists of asingle continent, Asia, together with its peninsulas and its off-shoreislands. Asia's most prominent peninsulas are Europe, Arabia, India,and Indo-China. This last would have been the largest of the four if ithad extended continuously from Malaya to Australia and New Zealand.Actually, its middle section has sagged and has partly foundered, andAustralia is now sundered from the mainland of Asia by the narrow seaof the Indonesian archipelago~a maze of straits and islands. The threelargest of Asia's off-shore islands are Africa and the two Americas. Themost distant of the islands is Antarctica. Africa is linked to Asia by theisthmus of Suez, and South America to North America by the isthmus ofPanama. These two isthmuses have been transformed into artificialstraits since they have been pierced by man-made canals. The mostimportant ofthe natural straits are the Straits ofMalacca, which providea sea passage between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.The best channels of communication for conveying passengers orfreight from one part of the Oikoumenf to another are outside thebounds of the Oikoumene: for the most conductive elements are air andwater, and these are elements which human beings can traverse butcannot inhabit. Till the invention, in the nineteenth century, of steam-driven locomotives hauling trains along rails, water-transport, by navi-gable river and by sea, was both quicker and cheaper than overlandtransport. In the pre-railway age, the only motive-power at Man'scommand for overland travel and transport was the muscle-power ofhuman beings and animals. On the other hand, on the water, humanmuscle-power, plying punting-poles and oars, had been supplemented,before the dawn ofcivilization, by the harnessing ofwind-power in sails.Wind-power was the first inanimate physical force to be harnessed byMan; it has also been the first to be discarded. Itbecame superfluouswhen other inanimate physical forces were harnessed for operatingmachines.In the age ofwater-transport, the main lines of communication were

. ' T i re _ iJ J ko u m e n l- d . . 3 3. c.erinI.ned by .th.e config.ira.tio.rl. of the water-surface ofthe hiosphe .The most pre' _ . . . reo.'. .. ..' " ClaUSmaritime-watefways Were straits (e.g; besides theStrai ts of Malac~a; the ~arrow waters linking the Black Sea with theAegean, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Dover and tl .wat rs linki th B 1 . . ' te narrow. e ng e a tICWIth the North Sea). The usef l' 1 d v -ways w 1 flowi . U 111 an water-_ . . ere sow- .OWIngnavigable rivers. The classic example was theNIle below the FIrst Cataract. On this stretch of the Nile c . . '1 '" . hcould float downstream with the current and cou'ld t' a SIal lng~ 'i. o.atd '1' rave upstreamun er sal, since the north wind is the prevailing wind in Eg . t M' '..over, af~er t?e opening-up ofEgypt, no human settlement orf!efd'or e~ee~~uarr~ IIIEgypt was very far from a navigable waterway. Before theinvention ofrailways Egypt's means of comm . t' b.'.h . _f' urnca Ion were etter.than-t osea any other country of that size. .

,:}~ the a~e ofwater-transport, the key pieces of t he land-surface of the'. Oikoumene were those that offered portages from E - ...... '.' bl . one sea or rom one< - .11~VIga e river .to another. ~gyPt itself was a portage area, since the...... NIle debouches lr:to the Mediterranean, and, from the Nile to the Red............eacoast, ther.e IS a sho~t por~age from the easternmost arm of the.......... J)eltt~:o Sug Via th: WadI Turnilat, and another via the Wadi Hamrna-> rna. rom aptos, In Upper Egypt, to ,Old Qusayr (Leukos Limen).. . . . .. .. . I ri d e e d, ~he portage .acrossthe Isthmus ofSuez between the Red Sea and..... the Mediterranean ISpart of a wider portage area that includes E' . t

tothe west and Iraq to the east. In this area the Mediterranean hgr.. ..a. backwater of the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea d th' w p IC. ISGiilf hi ' an e ersian.....U;W rich are backwaters of the Indian Ocean, are separated fromeach other by the nar,rowest extent of intervening dry land, and the

> passage from the Medlterrane~n to the Red Sea via the Nile is du li-.........ed by the passage ~~~hePersian Gulf via the Euphrates. p........... ~hese. umq~e faCll~t~es~or communication made Egypt and South-. : 8 t ASIath~ geopohtIc.al hub of the Oikournene in the Old World. It

. surely not Just an accident that this region was also the hi th I'f th N u hi r pace.,0. e eo It ICculture, and then of the two earliest civilizations.

..... other portages have. been of outstanding historical importance: the.bet~een the n~ers debouching into the Baltic and those

. ....... m.to the ?asplan and the Black Sea, and the portage across. North Cluna pla~n between the l~wer courses of the Yangtse, the:+fi''''''',,;.1 " ~he.Yellow RIVer, and the Pel Ho~a portage that has beenlUto a waterw~y by the digging of the Grand Canal. However,

and RUSSIan portages are on the fringe of the Old-World. ; they are surpassed in historical importance by the central

ICIV: t.er.... r-; between the Mediterranean and the Indian Oceanthis dominant Egyptian and South-West Asian portagebeen focused on two 'roundabouts'. One ofthese is in norther~


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34 M an kin d a nd M oth er E arthSyria, between the westward bulge of the River Eupl~rates and thenorth-east corner of the Mediterranean Sea; the other ISill pr:se~t-dayAfghanistan, astride a section of the Hindu Kush Range that IS ple.rcedby passes connecting the upper basins of the Ox~s ~n~Jaxartes Riverswith the upper basin ofthe Indus, Northern Syna IS linked both ove~-land and by sea with Egypt; by sea with all the .shores .of the Me?l-terranean and its backwaters and, through the Straits ofGIbraltar, Withthe Atlantic; overland, through the Cilician Gates and across theDardanelles and the Bosphorus, with Europe; overland, up the vaI~eyof the more northerly of the two headwaters, of the Euphrates, withthe Caspian Gates and the Oxus-j axartes .basm and India;. and downthe Euphrates to the Persian Gul~, the Indtar: Oce.an"and, t~ough theStraits of Malacca, with the Pacific, Afghall1:tan ISImke~ With Meso-potamia and with northern Syria via the Caspian Gate:: WIththe Volgabasin down the River .Jaxartes and across the Eurasian steppe; WIthChina via Sinkiang; with India through the passes that pierce theSuleyman Range. ,Before the successive inventions of railways and of aeroplanes the

traffic converging on, and radiating out of, the two 'r~undabouts'. madeuse ofwater-transport, by river or by sea,wherever this was pr.acttcable.Where passengers and freight had perforce to travel overland in the agebefore the beginning of mechanization, Man was at the mercy of theterrain. Mountains could be circumvented or surmounted; forests,temperate aswell as tropical, were particularly obstructlv,e; steppeswereexceptionally conductive, Indeed? the three)argest contll:uous areas ofsteppe-the Eurasian, the Ara~lan, and the North-Mr:can-bec~mealmost as conductive as the sea Itself when Man domestl~ated ser:Ice-able animals: donkeys, horses, and, above aU, camels, WIth the aI~ ofriding-animals,pack-carrying-animals, and draft-animals, human beingscould cross the steppe almost as rapidly as,they cou~d,cr~ssthe sea; butthe use ofboth elements required organization and discipline, Acaravan,like a ship, had to have a captain, and his orders had to beo?eyed, .Even when the steppes, as well as the seas and the navigable,nv~rs,had been brought into use for providing channe!s ~f com~umc,atlOn

between different parts of the Oikoumene, mankind s ~edIa of inter-course remained inadequate until the dawn of the Machine Age. Evenwith these inadequate means, empires were,p~t tog.ether and were heldtogether successfully,and religions whose IlllsslOnar~esset out to convertaUmankind didwin and retain adherents over a wlde~ range t~an wasever attained by any secular empire. The First ~ersIan Empire, theChinese Empire, the Roman Empire, t.heArab .C~llI~hate,and the threeprincipal missionary religions~-Buddhls~, Christianity, and,Isla.m-ar,emonuments to the triumph of human WIll-powerover physical impedi-

T he O ik o um e n e3 5merits, But the limits of their succcss also reveal the limits of the s 1

that waspracticable ~or~uman societieswithout the aid ofthe mech~~i~calmea.nsofcommuDlcatlOnthat have beeninvented since the beginninofthe runeteenth century. g. The most strikin?, ev:idenceof the inadequacy ofmeans of communica-non before the begmmng of the machine age is the number of differentlanguages, current locally in different parts ofthe OikoumeneA that hadi ibl l' . , veno iscerrn e re anon WIth each other. Speech is a universal humanfaculty, A speechlesshuman community is unheard-o These two factstaken together, ~uggest that, before h om o s a pi en s spread over the Iand-sur~ace.of th.e blO:phere from equatorial East Africa (if that was thereglOr~.l11which this speciesof the genus h omo made its first appearance),mankt?-d as ~ whole must already have been on the way towardsbe~omlUgartI~ulatc, but had not yet fully developed this potentiality,ThIS h~o.thesls would explain how it has come about that all humanco~mumtIes have languages, but that languages, unlike the humanbemgs who speak them, are not all manifestly akin to each other. Ofcourse, the only human beings that are known to us through any relics~the: than bones and tools are all representatives of tile sole survivingspeeies. We do~ot know, and Wehave nomeans of discovering, whetheranY,ot.her speCIesof ge nu s h om o or any other genera of the family ofIiominids ever lear~t to talk, or whether this accomplishment has been1-'''''U'-U.~


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Mankind and Mother EttHhhasconveyedlanguages almost asfar asthe sea. FlrsEth2 Ifitld~Euh;peanlanguages and then the Turkish languages have traversed the Eurasiansteppe and have spread beyond its shores in opposite directions. TheArabic language has travelled from the Arabian peninsula across theNorth-African steppe to the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.The dissemination oflanguages via conductive non-human media has

been reinforced by deliberate human action in the forms of religiousmissionary activity,military conquest, political organization, and trade.The Aramaean tribes and principalities were impotent politically; theywere subjugated by the Assyrians; yet the Aramaic language was dis-seminated throughout South-West Asia, and the Aramaic alphabet asfar afieldas Mongolia and Manchuria, as a result of the administrativeuse of Aramaic in the Assyrian and the First Persian Empires and itsliturgical use by the Nestorian Christian and Manichaean churches. Onthe other hand, the Greek language's successin supplanting Aramaic asthe lingua franca of South-West Asia and Egypt was a result of themilitary conquest of the First Persian Empire by Alexander the Great,and military conquest has alsobeen the agency by which the Romancelanguages have been propagated eastward to Roumania and south-westwardto Chile fromthe Latin language's tiny original domain astridethe lower course ofthe Italian River Tiber.In the history of the Oikoumene, different regimes have played theleading role at different times. Ifequatorial and southern East Afr~cawasin truth the cradle of the hominids and, among them, ofthe sapunsspecies of genus homo, East Africa and the Oikoumene were origi~al~yconterminouswith each ather. Beforethe close/ofthe Upper PalaeolithicAge the Oikoumene had expanded from East Afri:a. over the gre.aterpart ofthe Continent, and human beings were colonizing the Americas,At this stage the leading role appears to have passed to the sout~er.nfringes of the North-European ice-cap, where Upper Palaeohthichunters found an abundance ofbig game before the onset ofthe presentthaw. However, the apparent primacy of Europe in this age may be anillusion arising fromthe inadequacy ofour information. Ifthe trac~s leftbyUpper Palaeolithic Man are eventually explored asthoroughly IIItherest of the World as they have been explored already in Europe, thepicture may cometo lookdifferent.We can feelmore sure that, in the Neolithic Age, the leading role was

played by South-West Asia and by the margins of t~e n?rthernmostsection of the Nile Valley, and that Sumer-the alluvium m the .lowerbasin ofthe Tigris and Euphrates-was the birthplace of the earliest ofthe civilizations, though, in the foregoing Neolithic Age, this piece ofSouth-West Asia had been uninhabitable. The thirteenth century A.D.in which this alluvial cornucopia ceased, at last, to be productive, saw

The Oikoument 3 7Ihe leading role in the Oikoumenc played, during the brief time-span oftwo generations, byMongolia, thanks to the conductivity of the Eurasiansteppeand to the mobility and prowess and discipline of the Eurasianpastoral nomads. These, temporarily united under Mongol command,shbjugated the whole heartland of the Continent; only the Continent'speiiinsidas arid its off-shore islands remained immune. Then ...n the- . . ,. -fifteenth century A.D., the leading role in the Oikoumene was taken overb 'y Western Europe when her mariners had mastered the Ocean-a stillva~terconductive medium than the Eurasian steppe.. When, in the twentieth century, Western Europe forfeited her ecu-menical hegemony by waging two fratricidal wars, the leading rolepassed to the United States. At the time ofwriting, it looked as if theAmerican ascendancy in the Oikoumene would be as short-lived as theMongol ascendancy had been. The future was enigmatic, but it seemedpos s ib le that, in the next chapter of the Oikoumene's history, the leadmight pass fromAmerica to Eastern Asia.


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millennia. i'-hesewere mighty. deeds, but Britain's mightiest deed of allin this period was the launching of the Industrial Revolution. In doingthis, Britain tipped the balance of power between the biosphere andMan inMan's favour, and this eventually put it in Man's power tomakethe biosphere uninhabitable [or all forms of life, including mankinditself. THE BIOSPHERE, 187I~I973

By the 19708 it looked as If the biosphere was in danger ofheihg over-whelmed, polluted, and perhaps ultimately made uninhabitable for anyform oflife by one ofthe biosphere's own creatures and d e n iz e n s, Ma t i.Retrospectively it could be seen that Man's power over the biospherehad been increasing progressively. By the time that Man had becomehuman, he had been stripped of all built-in physical weapons an darmour, but he had acquired a consciousintellect which could think andplan, and two physical organs, his brain and his hands, which were thematerial instruments for his thinking, his planning, and his attempts toachievehis purposesby physical action.Ithas been noted already that tools are coevalwith human conscious-ness. The capacity to make and usetools enabled Man to hold his ownin the competitive arena ofthe biosphere during the Lower PalaeolithicAge, which embraces by far the greater part of human history to date.Since the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic Age, perhaps 70,000/40,000 years ago, Man has been taking the offensive against the rest ofthe biosphere; but it is only since the beginning of the IndustrialRevolution, nomore than two hundred years ago, that Man has becomedecisively dominant. Within the last two centuries, Man has increasedhis material power to a degree at which he has become a menace to thebiosphere's survival; but he has not increased his spiritual potentiality;the gap between this and his material power has consequently beenwidening; and this growing discrepancyis disconcerting; for an increaseinMan's spiritual potentiality isnowthe only conceivable change in theconstitution of the biosphere that can insure the biosphere----and,in thebiosphere, Man himself-against being destroyed by a greed that isnowarmedwith the ability to defeat itsown intentions.In the 1970S thedevastating effectofMan's impact on the biosphere is

being demonstrated by a number of symptoms. The biosphere's human


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population is increasing at an accelerating rate, and this growingpopulation is concentrating itselfin gigantic cities. Since the majority ofmankind is still indigent, the growth ofthe cities mainly takes the formof a proliferation of parasitic shanty-towns, inhabited by unemployed,and perhaps unemployable, migrants from the rural areas in which themajority of mankind has lived and worked since the invention ofagriculture at the beginning ofthe Neolithic Age. The cities are spread-ing tentacles round the globe in the formof speed-ways for mechanizedoverland vehicles and air-lanes for planes. The minority producingindustrial commodities, or food-stuff'sand organic raw materials, bymore andmore sophisticated and high-powered mechanical processesispolluting the biosphere's water-envelope and air-envelope with thewaste-products ofits pacific activities, even when it was not defoliatingthe flora and killing the fauna (human and non-human alike) byintentionally destructive military operations.In 1871and perhaps even asrecently as 1944,before the achievement

of the technological feat of splitting atoms, it would have seemed in-credible that the biosphere's ocean and atmosphere as a whole couldever be polluted lethally by the action of such a puny product of thebiosphere as Man. Man's capacity to make the whole biosphere un-inhabitable is apparent in the extermination ofa number ofundomesti-cated non-human species of living beings, but Man himself and hisdomesticated animals are not immune. Some of these, too, are beingpoisonedby unintended consequencesofdeliberate human activities.The physical growth of cities has been enormous within the lifetime

ofsomeonewhowasborn, aswas the writer ofthe present book, in 1889.I have seen Ankara and Athens transformed from small towns intomegalopolises since 1922.Since 1929the once lovelyJapanese country-side adjoining the Shimonoseki Straits hasbeen obliterated under a loadof streets and houses. Since the Second World War the locality inLondon in which I was born and brought up has been transformed, likesome localitiesin lapan, out of all recognition. After this sitein Londonwascleared ofhouses byGerman bombs, it wasoccupied by an elevatedthroughway for mechanized traffic, and this was a piece of Englishhandiwork.For a Londoner born in 1889in a middle-class family, the month ofAugust 1914 made a traumatic break in the century 1871-1973. Incontrast to the years 1871-1913, the years 1914-73were a time of self-inflicted tribulation for all mankind. There were two world wars, inwhich war-itself a crime-was unprecedentedly lethal anddevastating.Genocide was committed by Turks against Armenians, by Germansagainst Jews, by Hindus and Indian Muslims against each other. ThePalestinian Arabs, the Tibetans, and the native African majority of the

57 7population of southern Africa were victimized. One of the so..called'wars ofreligion' isstill being waged savagelyin Northern Ireland. TheWestern middle class,like the non-Western migrants from the country-side into the shanty-towns, has suffered a conspicuous relative deteriora-tion in its way ofIife. By contrast with the baneful years 1914~73,theyears 1871-1913 may wear the appearance of a golden age in thememories of middle-class Westerners who were already adult in ig14and who survived till the 1970s.However, when the whole century1871-1973is reviewedin retrospect, it isevident that the optimismwhichwasthe prevailing moodduring the years 1871-1913wasunwarranted,Amiddle-class Englishman born in 1889supposed-from the dateat

which hebecame consciousof theworldaround him, until August igU-that the Earthly Paradise lay onlyjust round the corner. Theirtdusttialworkerswould be given their fair share in mankind's grossprocllict' the'installation of responsible parliamentary government .wQU idbe . .bOriFpleted in Germany and would be achievedin Russia; the ChristiariS'sdllleft under Ottoman Turkish rule would win their politicalliberatitlhtand then the millennium would have arrived. In this new Goiden-cAgethe non-Christian subjects of Christian empires would remainunderChristian rule, but this was better for them than the chaotic conditionsoftheir life before they had forfeitedtheir political independence,Westernersdid not expect to seethe abolition ofwar; someWesterners-for example, some in Germany and some in the Balkan states-not

only expected a recurrence of war but positively lookedforward to it.But the wars that even the most bellicose-minded German envisagedwere short wars of the Bismarckian kind, not counterparts of the long-drawn-out Napoleonic wars or of the devastating Thirty Years ''\lar of1618-48 in Germany or of the more recent devastating civil war of1861-5in the United States.The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, the Spanish-American War of1898, the South-African War of I89g-1902, and the Balkan Wars of

1912-13 were, in fact, local and short, and even the Russo-Turkish Warof 1877-8 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 were only regionalconflicts that did not embrace the rest of the World. The immensedevastation and destruction of life caused by the outbreaks and thesuppressions (185-73) of the T'ai-p'ing and other rebellions in Chinaagainst the discredited Manchu regime were discounted by contemp-orary Westerners as being characteristic of the misery of the life ofOriental peopleswhere and when these peopleshad notyet been reducedto order by the imposition on them of Christian rule. To a middle-dassEnglish child of the present writer's generation it seemedin r897, theyear in which the British were celebrating Queen Victoria's diamondjubilee, as if the world into which he had been born had transcended


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Mankind and Mother Emthhistory, since history signified a past age of injustice, violence, andsuffering which the 'civilized' nations had left behind, never to recur,so it Wasnaively assumed.vVesterncivilization was 'Civilization'. It wasunique. Its rise and its world-wide dominance were the inevitable andwell-deservedrewards ofits merits. 'Civilization' had come to stay.Thatwaswhyhistorywasnowobsolete.The achievements that Were the grounds for this optimism were in

truth impressive; yet each of these achievements was imperfect andcontained within itself the seeds of future trouble. In the 1970S theflawsseempatent; but between 1871 and 1914 they were not soeasy todiscern.For instance, the emancipation of the serfsin Russia in 186r and the

abolition ofslaveryin the United States in 1863, and the beginning, in1871, of the abolition of slavery in its last remaining domain, Brazil,lookedlike gloriousmilestoneson the road towards the millennium. Butthe emancipation of the Russian serfshad not satisfiedtheir hunger forthe ownership of'Iand,and thejuridical emancipation ofBlackslaveshadnot abolished racial prejudice, discrimination, and conflict. Asfor thejuridically free industrial workers, these had not yet made a Marxistsocial revolution anywhere, but in Western countries their relativeeconomic position was gradually improving, and this improvement intheir conditions of life had been accompanied by an improvement intheir physical conditions ofwork. Yet mechanized work was becomingmore and more unsatisfying spiritually with every fresh advance intechnology. The invention of the conveyor-belt and the assembly-linehad increased productivity and had reduced financial costs at thespiritual price of turning men and women into 'scientifically managed'components ofmachines. The industrial workerswere nowbetter offinmaterial terms, but, now that they were bribed to serve asgalley-slaves,they still remained alienated spiritually from the society that had calledthis newsocial classinto existenceto servethe middle class'spurposes.The completion, in 1870~1, ofthe creation ofa German and an Italian

national state appeared to have stabilized the political structure of theOikoumene. The local sovereign national state was now recognized tohave become the standard political unit, and, since 1871, there had beennowar, except the Russo-Japanese War of1904~5, inwhich two or moregreat powershad come into conflictwith each other. Russia's war withTurkey in 1877~8 and her war with Japan in 1904~5 had each beenbrought to an end without involving Britain. The Oxus=]axartes basinand Turkmenistan, up to the north-western borders ofAfghanistan, hadbeen annexed byRussia in I865~85, and this time, too, a Russo-Britishwar had been averted. Between 1881 and 1904, all but two of theAfrican countries that had still been exempt from West-European rule

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The Biosphere, 187I~I973 579in 1871 were brought under the direct or indirect control of Britain,France, Germany, Belgium, or Portugal without anywar between theseWest-European competitors for the acquisition of African territory.Abyssinia (having assumed the name Ethiopia, which originally signi-fied the present-day eastern Sudan) took part in the scramble forAfrican territory, and she inflicted a humiliating defeat on Italy in 1896.Liberia, a colonial settlement of liberated American Black slavessurvived thanks to her being virtually a protectorate of the UnitedStates. All other African states and peoples lost their independence.After the signal defeat of China byJapan in 1894~5, Britain, Russia,Germany, and France began to partition China among themselves, astheywere already partitioning Africa. In Eastern Asia, asin Africa, theyavoidedfallinginto war with each other over the divisionofthe spoils.These seemed to b

Mankind and Mother Earth

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