heat, its air and water will be absorbed into the rocks or will enter into new combinations. As man's existence was not possible under primitive conditions, so the time will come when the earth will no longer furnish him even a minimum of the necessaries of life. Even now life is not as exuberant as it was, although it is more varied.
The first care of a rational being whose resources are limited should be to husband them. Instead of doing this, we are spending lavishly, and seemingly wasting them all we can, and are destroying, without thought of the far future, the stores which the earth has laid up in the vast ages of the past. Even what we call improvement or development of a region is often its ultimate devastation, an improvident exploitation, removing from the earth what can not be restored to it, exhausting present supplies at the cost of the future. The grand discoveries on which we pride ourselves are often a contribution to this process, furnishing new means of expediting the waste and thus helping to bring on the final ruin.
Without indulging in too gloomy visions, it is a real truth that our exploitation of the earth's resources is pursued too recklessly. Consequently, we find that formerly fertile regions have become sterile; the productive deposits of our soils are undergoing exhaustion; the earth that should ripen our crops is allowed to flow into the rivers, making them turbid, and to be carried to the sea; fountains dry up, streams lose their way, and climates deteriorate.
The remedy by which these processes shall be prevented from ultimately making the planet unfit for habitation is to be found, instead of the present haphazard course, in applying rational and scientific methods in the exploitation of the earth's resources. The principle which, because it controls his development, man should never forget, is that he is a terrestrial being, that he is nothing without the earth, from which he can not disengage himself; and that the only true civilization is that which is developed in harmony and conformity with the laws that rule the planet.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.
