Lebensraum

“ Russia has barely 60 million Great Russians. And even today the unified racial core in Germany remains the largest by far; not only in value, in itself highly significant, but also in numbers, it is the greatest. By contrast, if we compare the percentage of Lebensraum occupied by the German Volk to that of the earth as such, then we must remark that our Volk is one of the most disadvantaged peoples of the world. Barely 600,000 square kilometers, in fact about 140 persons per square kilometer. 46 million Englishmen rule, control, and organize about 40 million square kilometers. ”

“ If the German Wehrmacht and the allied states have managed in the past year to drive back even further the Bolshevik fronts threatening Europe, then the German homeland, with its men and women in the cities and in the countryside, has by the same token accomplished something unique under the most difficult circumstances. The German and allied soldiers, as well as our German economy, have not only enormously expanded the Lebensraum of fighting Europe, but they have also already opened it up for themselves to a great extent. ”

“ I am afraid so, and I think it is due in large part to this negative theory of progress which has possessed man since the Renaissance. The intended cures of evils have been too often sought purely as an escape from the evil itself and not with a view to ultimate good.
Serfdom and slavery were evil, so men broke away and became free; but free for what? That was of little consequence as long as they were free. The Germans felt the pressure of other nations around them so they needs must make more Lebensraum—room in which to be free. And what nation has ever become so enslaved in the process? ”

“ The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man, flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. ”

“ The final effect of this wide, green space with signs of human life and labour on it, and sight of animals—sheep and cattle—at various distances, is that we are not aliens here, intruders or invaders on the earth, living in it but apart, perhaps hating and spoiling it, but with the other animals are children of Nature, like them living and seeking our subsistence under her sky, familiar with her sun and wind and rain. ”

“ It is probable that we that are country born and bred are affected in more ways and more profoundly than we know by our surroundings. The nature of the soil we live on, the absence or presence of running water, of hills, rocks, woods, open spaces; every feature in the landscape, the vegetative and animal life—everything in fact that we see, hear, smell and feel, enters not into the body only, but the soul, and helps to shape and colour it. Equally important in its action on us are the conditions created by man himself:—situation, size, form and the arrangements of the houses in the village ”

“ The rich alluvial silt of mighty river systems, the immemorial manuring of the virgin soil, the fierce energy of an almost equatorial sun, and the universal presence of abundant water, combine to make life in that marvellous region unusually wealthy, varied, and crowded, so that the struggle for existence is there perhaps more directly visible to the seeing eye than in any other known portion of God's universe. ”

“ I am conscious of a slowly moving landscape with people and birds and beasts of burden and windy vegetation, of prospects in which there are no broad smooth farm fields with fences dividing them, of scenery full of herbage, in which every lineament and action incite me and stimulate my desire for more, of days that end suddenly in the blackness of night. ”

“ And all of that Underground Land was lit, where needed, by the Earth-Current, and that same life-stream fructified the soil, and gave life and blood to the plants and to the trees, and to every bush and natural thing. ”

“ Some walk upright, others crawl upon the ground; others burrow into the earth, and form their habitation under the surface; others fly aloft, and traverse the air in every direction; others swim in the waters. Throughout the whole of creation, every part is the habitation of some animal, or reptile, or insect. Even in the woods, among the leaves of the trees, in the fruits they bear, in the earth from whence they grow, nay, even among the stones, there are some living things. ”

“ That extensive tract of the earth, containing so great a variety of situation, climate, and soil, should, in the manners of its inhabitants, exhibit all the diversities which arise from the unequal influence of the sun, joined to a different nourishment and manner of life. Every question, however, on this subject, is premature, till we have first endeavoured to form some general conception of our species in its rude state, and have learned to distinguish mere ignorance from dulness, and the want of arts from the want of capacity. ”

“ The structures of organic beings have come about as a result of the action and reaction of environment upon these structures. Every being—and not only every being, but every species, the whole organic world—has come to be what it is as a result of the incessant hammerings of its surroundings, the hammerings not only of the present, but of the long-stretching past. By surroundings is meant, of course, the rest of the universe. ”

“ Such a tree, such a rock, such a hamlet, we know for certain is in one or other of these countries. But there is no such boundary in Nature. Where does the vegetable realm end and the animal kingdom begin? ”

“ He could tell you, moreover, of creatures of his own kind,—if they deserve the name of man,—who dwell continuously in the flooded forest, making their home on scaffolds among the tree-tops, passing from place to place in floating rafts or canoes, finding their subsistence on fish, on the flesh of the manatee, on birds, beasts, reptiles, and insects, on the stalks of huge water-plants and the fruits of undescribed trees, on monkeys, and sometimes upon man! ”

“ In fact, the path of life, so frequently compared to some steadily-rising mountain-slope, is far more like a footway worn by leisurely wanderers in an undulating country. Excelsior biology is a popular and poetic creation—the real form of a phylum, or line of descent, is far more like the course of a busy man moving about a great city. ”

“ At this time, somewhere in the warm temperate zone, in an oasis or island of fertility, appeared a new thing on the earth, a man and woman walking erect in the forest glades, bathing in the waters, gathering and tasting every edible fruit, watching with curious and inquiring eyes the various animals around them, and giving them names which might eventually serve not merely to designate their kinds, but to express actions and emotions as well. ”

“ We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means of maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows, and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters the earth. ”

“ Section II.—On Fowls. Number of Species — Superiority and peculiar Construction — Skill in building their Nests — Power and season of Propagation — Dexterity in providing Food — Instinct — Migrations — Insects — Religious Improvement.
Not any part of nature is destitute of inhabitants. The woods, the waters, the depths of the earth, have their respective tenants; while the transparent and elastic air, and those regions where man can never soar, but with much art and at considerable risk, are occupied with the most beautiful creatures. Every order of animals is fitted for its situation in life ”

“ Each house has its center of human life with life of bird and beast, and the centers were in touch with one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their hands; all together forming one organism, instinct with one life, moved by one mind, like a many-colored serpent lying at rest, extended at full length upon the ground. ”

“ What civilization has accomplished in the physical is also being achieved in the mental world. The sterile and inaccessible wilderness is transformed into the well-tilled garden, abounding in luxurious fruits and fragrant flowers. ”

“ But that which wind and sea are to a sandy beach, the sum of influences, which we term the "conditions of existence," is to living organisms. The weak are sifted out from the strong. A frosty night "selects" the hardy plants in a plantation from among the tender ones as effectually as if it were the wind, and they, the sand and pebbles, of our illustration; or, on the other hand, as if the intelligence of a gardener had been operative in cutting the weaker organisms down. ”

“ We see each individual plant and animal striving to the best of his ability to adjust himself to the conditions in which he finds himself, trying to adapt himself to his surroundings—to his physical surroundings, such as the climate and soil, and to his social surroundings, consisting of his plant and animal neighbours and rivals. ”

“ We now picture to ourselves the complex living being, animal or plant, with its configuration which distinguishes it from every other being, just as a populous city is distinguished by a thousand characteristics from its neighbour. The elements of this city are independent and autonomous for the same reason as the anatomical elements of the [Pg 171] organism. Both have in themselves the means of life, which they neither borrow nor take from their neighbours nor from the whole. ”

“ Let us consider, in the first place, the chances for the preservation of remains of the present fauna and flora of a country. The surface of the land may be densely clothed with forest and abundantly peopled with animal life. But the trees die and moulder into soil. The animals, too, disappear, generation after generation, and leave few or no perceptible traces of their existence. ”

“ While the earth was left to its natural fertility and covered with immense forests, whose trees were never mutilated by the axe, it would present on every side both sustenance and shelter for every species of animal. ”

“ A similar process can be identified in our present relation to the physical environment. Many things mediate between us and the natural environment: our homes, clothes, the food processing industry. Even natural artifacts, such as gardens, lakes, or water channels, are a buffer against nature, an insertion between us and nature. Constituted in our language are experiences of survival and adaptation: the vocabulary of hunting, fishing, agriculture, animal husbandry, coping with changes in weather and climate, and coping with natural catastrophes such as floods and earthquakes. ”

“ Other provisions and adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature. Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests, underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is preparing. ”

“ Save on the seaward terraces of stark rock, with their tide-marked base of weed-covered boulders, the densest vegetation known to mankind imposed everywhere a first barrier to human progress far more unconquerable than the awesome regions beyond. ”

“ And then, what is to be said for the multitude of species to be found in the same localities, the same forests, the same jungles, the same lakes, the same streamlets, where there is literally no room for any difference in the environments at all? ”

“ I must ease my conscience once for all on this point, and say what I feel about atavism and environment. Environment in the shape of friends, of locality, and other material circumstances, has certainly influenced my life very much, and I could never see why such a hybrid word as environment should be used instead of surroundings or circumstances. Creatures of circumstances would be far better understood than creatures of environment; but environment, I suppose, would sound more scientific. ”

“ And some of the harmless animals would be permitted to live that the future population might know them. It was to be the fulfilment of a millennium-old dream—a warm, sunlight world, a kindly, young world where nature supplied the air, and the water, and the warmth in great abundance. ”

“ The route which they follow is a succession of habitats, in which they linger and domicile themselves for a while, though not long enough to lose wholly the habits of life and thought acquired in their previous dwelling place. ”

“ On this ground we may consider as an organism everything we choose. I take the first thing which comes to my mind,—a forest, as it is planted in a field and grows up: first beginning as a small aggregate and imperceptibly increasing in mass. ”

“ Science attains the laws of Nature by the study of animal and human history. But this record is a history of continually closer conformity to environment on the part of all advancing forms. The animal kingdom is the clay which is turned, as Job says, to the seal of environment, and it makes little difference whether we study the seal or the impression; we shall read the same sentence. Environment has stamped its laws on the very structure of man's body and mind. ”