land

68:6.1Man is a crea­ture of the soil, a child of na­ture; no mat­ter how earnestly he may try to es­cape from the land, in the last reck­on­ing he is cer­tain to fail. “Dust you are and to dust shall you re­turn” is lit­er­ally true of all man­kind. The ba­sic strug­gle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land. The first so­cial as­so­ci­a­tions of prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings were for the pur­pose of win­ning these land strug­gles. The land-man ra­tio un­der­lies all so­cial civ­i­liza­tion.

69:9.15Even­tu­ally the state as­signed prop­erty to the in­di­vid­ual, re­serv­ing the right of tax­a­tion. Hav­ing made se­cure their ti­tles, land­lords could col­lect rents, and land be­came a source of in­come—cap­i­tal. Fi­nally land be­came truly ne­go­tiable, with sales, trans­fers, mort­gages, and fore­clo­sures.

69:9.13Pri­vate prop­erty was early marked by fam­ily in­signia, and this is the early ori­gin of fam­ily crests. Real es­tate could also be put un­der the watch­care of spir­its. The priests would “con­se­crate” a piece of land, and it would then rest un­der the pro­tec­tion of the magic taboos erected thereon. Own­ers thereof were said to have a “priest’s ti­tle.” The He­brews had great re­spect for these fam­ily land­marks: “Cursed be he who re­moves his neigh­bor’s land­mark.” These stone mark­ers bore the priest’s ini­tials. Even trees, when ini­tialed, be­came pri­vate prop­erty.

• mores always dependent on

68:5.1Land is the stage of so­ci­ety; men are the ac­tors. And man must ever ad­just his per­for­mances to con­form to the land sit­u­a­tion. The evo­lu­tion of the mores is al­ways de­pen­dent on the land-man ra­tio. This is true not­with­stand­ing the dif­fi­culty of its dis­cern­ment. Man’s land tech­nique, or main­te­nance arts, plus his stan­dards of liv­ing, equal the sum to­tal of the folk­ways, the mores. And the sum of man’s ad­just­ment to the life de­mands equals his cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion.

• agriculture quadruples

68:5.10Agri­cul­ture more than quadru­pled the land-man ra­tio of the world. It may be com­bined with the pas­toral pur­suits of the for­mer cul­tural stage. When the three stages over­lap, men hunt and women till the soil.

68:6.2Man’s in­tel­li­gence, by means of the arts and sci­ences, in­creased the land yield; at the same time the nat­u­ral in­crease in off­spring was some­what brought un­der con­trol, and thus was pro­vided the sus­te­nance and leisure to build a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion.

68:6.3Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­trolled by a law which de­crees that the pop­u­la­tion must vary di­rectly in ac­cor­dance with the land arts and in­versely with a given stan­dard of liv­ing. Through­out these early ages, even more than at pres­ent, the law of sup­ply and de­mand as con­cerned men and land de­ter­mined the es­ti­mated value of both. Dur­ing the times of plen­ti­ful land—un­oc­cu­pied ter­ri­tory—the need for men was great, and there­fore the value of hu­man life was much en­hanced; hence the loss of life was more hor­ri­fy­ing. Dur­ing pe­ri­ods of land scarcity and as­so­ci­ated over­pop­u­la­tion, hu­man life be­came com­par­a­tively cheap­ened so that war, famine, and pesti­lence were re­garded with less con­cern.

68:6.4When the land yield is re­duced or the pop­u­la­tion is in­creased, the in­ev­i­ta­ble strug­gle is re­newed; the very worst traits of hu­man na­ture are brought to the sur­face. The im­prove­ment of the land yield, the ex­ten­sion of the me­chan­i­cal arts, and the re­duc­tion of pop­u­la­tion all tend to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of the bet­ter side of hu­man na­ture.

• effect of increasing beyond optimum

81:6.114. Hu­man re­sources. Man power is in­dis­pens­able to the spread of civ­i­liza­tion. All things equal, a nu­mer­ous peo­ple will dom­i­nate the civ­i­liza­tion of a smaller race. Hence fail­ure to in­crease in num­bers up to a cer­tain point pre­vents the full re­al­iza­tion of na­tional des­tiny, but there comes a point in pop­u­la­tion in­crease where fur­ther growth is sui­ci­dal. Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of num­bers be­yond the op­ti­mum of the nor­mal man-land ra­tio means ei­ther a low­er­ing of the stan­dards of liv­ing or an im­me­di­ate ex­pan­sion of ter­ri­to­rial bound­aries by peace­ful pen­e­tra­tion or by mil­i­tary con­quest, forcible oc­cu­pa­tion.

68:5.2The ear­li­est hu­man cul­tures arose along the rivers of the East­ern Hemi­sphere, and there were four great steps in the for­ward march of civ­i­liza­tion. They were:

68:5.31. The col­lec­tion stage. Food co­er­cion, hunger, led to the first form of in­dus­trial or­ga­ni­za­tion, the prim­i­tive food-gath­er­ing lines. Some­times such a line of hunger march would be ten miles long as it passed over the land glean­ing food. This was the prim­i­tive no­madic stage of cul­ture and is the mode of life now fol­lowed by the African Bush­men.

68:5.42. The hunt­ing stage. The in­ven­tion of weapon tools en­abled man to be­come a hunter and thus to gain con­sid­er­able free­dom from food slav­ery. A thought­ful An­don­ite who had severely bruised his fist in a se­ri­ous com­bat re­dis­cov­ered the idea of us­ing a long stick for his arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist. Many tribes made in­de­pen­dent dis­cov­er­ies of this sort, and these var­i­ous forms of ham­mers rep­re­sented one of the great for­ward steps in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. To­day some Aus­tralian na­tives have pro­gressed lit­tle be­yond this stage.

68:5.5The blue men be­came ex­pert hunters and trap­pers; by fenc­ing the rivers they caught fish in great num­bers, dry­ing the sur­plus for win­ter use. Many forms of in­ge­nious snares and traps were em­ployed in catch­ing game, but the more prim­i­tive races did not hunt the larger an­i­mals.

68:5.63. The pas­toral stage. This phase of civ­i­liza­tion was made pos­si­ble by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals. The Arabs and the na­tives of Africa are among the more re­cent pas­toral peo­ples.

68:5.7Pas­toral liv­ing af­forded fur­ther re­lief from food slav­ery; man learned to live on the in­ter­est of his cap­i­tal, the in­crease in his flocks; and this pro­vided more leisure for cul­ture and prog­ress.

68:5.8Prepas­toral so­ci­ety was one of sex co-op­er­a­tion, but the spread of an­i­mal hus­bandry re­duced women to the depths of so­cial slav­ery. In ear­lier times it was man’s duty to se­cure the an­i­mal food, woman’s busi­ness to pro­vide the veg­etable ed­i­bles. There­fore, when man en­tered the pas­toral era of his ex­is­tence, woman’s dig­nity fell greatly. She must still toil to pro­duce the veg­etable ne­ces­si­ties of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to pro­vide an abun­dance of an­i­mal food. Man thus be­came rel­a­tively in­de­pen­dent of woman; through­out the en­tire pas­toral age woman’s sta­tus steadily de­clined. By the close of this era she had be­come scarcely more than a hu­man an­i­mal, con­signed to work and to bear hu­man off­spring, much as the an­i­mals of the herd were ex­pected to la­bor and bring forth young. The men of the pas­toral ages had great love for their cat­tle; all the more pity they could not have de­vel­oped a deeper af­fec­tion for their wives.

68:5.94. The ag­ri­cul­tural stage. This era was brought about by the do­mes­ti­ca­tion of plants, and it rep­re­sents the high­est type of ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion. Both Cali­gas­tia and Adam en­deav­ored to teach hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture. Adam and Eve were gar­den­ers, not shep­herds, and gar­den­ing was an ad­vanced cul­ture in those days. The grow­ing of plants ex­erts an en­nobling in­flu­ence on all races of man­kind.

68:5.11There has al­ways been fric­tion be­tween the herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were mil­i­tant, war­like; the agri­cul­tur­ist is a more peace-lov­ing type. As­so­ci­a­tion with an­i­mals sug­gests strug­gle and force; as­so­ci­a­tion with plants in­stills pa­tience, quiet, and peace. Agri­cul­ture and in­dus­tri­al­ism are the ac­tiv­i­ties of peace. But the weak­ness of both, as world so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties, is that they lack ex­cite­ment and ad­ven­ture.

68:5.12Hu­man so­ci­ety has evolved from the hunt­ing stage through that of the herders to the ter­ri­to­rial stage of agri­cul­ture. And each stage of this pro­gres­sive civ­i­liza­tion was ac­com­pa­nied by less and less of no­madism; more and more man be­gan to live at home.

68:5.13And now is in­dus­try sup­ple­ment­ing agri­cul­ture, with con­se­quently in­creased ur­ban­iza­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of nona­gri­cul­tural groups of cit­i­zen­ship classes. But an in­dus­trial era can­not hope to sur­vive if its lead­ers fail to rec­og­nize that even the high­est so­cial de­vel­op­ments must ever rest upon a sound ag­ri­cul­tural ba­sis.

72:7.6There is lit­tle or no uni­for­mity among the tax­a­tion schemes of the one hun­dred com­par­a­tively free and sov­er­eign states as eco­nomic and other con­di­tions vary greatly in dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the con­ti­nent. Ev­ery state has ten ba­sic con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sions which can­not be mod­i­fied ex­cept by con­sent of the fed­eral su­preme court, and one of these ar­ti­cles pre­vents levy­ing a tax of more than one per cent on the value of any prop­erty in any one year, home­sites, whether in city or coun­try, be­ing ex­empted.

70:1.81. Hunger, which led to food raids. Scar­city of land has al­ways brought on war, and dur­ing these strug­gles the early peace tribes were prac­ti­cally ex­ter­mi­nated.