Text box 8.1 – Baas Becking notes made prior to writing the manuscript

R.G. Stapledon. A Survey of the Agriculture and Waste Land of Wales, 1936, p. 9: “The toxic above all others which this nation with its large population of unemployed, its excessive wasting of energy in non-creative enterprises, and in morbid pursuits needs, is the stimulation of well organised and well planned land improvement carried into every parish of Great Britain.”

W. Davies (in the above), Wales huge wood destruction by man and cattle.1

1874, Marsh G.P. Influence of the forest on floods (The Earth as modified by Human Action, N.Y. 1874): “The vengeance of nature for the violation of harmonies, though slow, is sure.”2

8.1.1 Introduction

Isaiah 24:5 The earth is also defiled by the inhabitants thereof.

Man is such a powerful shaper of the milieu, such a prominent agent in the moulding of the earth’s surface, that his influence should merit a study apart. This study would be exceptionally sordid, which, leaving after a short time, a misanthropic student. Man is a shaper of the milieu, fortunately he cannot transcend this milieu and he is equally influenced by it. In the first place because he is an important member of a coenobiosis, which coenobiosis has to prepare his vitamins, part of his hormones and enzymes and even his visual purple. Furthermore, although he may be as pale as a cavern axolotl, he needs ultraviolet light to activate his sterol to vitamin D. Without extraneous help, other than clothing, he cannot persist at a very high temperature. He needs a certain oxygen pressure and a certain total pressure. Also, a certain humidity. He needs caloric food, mineral food and rare elements. The water, which he drinks, he has to titrate with his gastric juice and he gets accustomed to his own type of drinking water. He is very susceptible to disease by infection. He is parasite ridden. And there are unknown factors in the milieu, still threatening. What we can ascribe to dental caries, baldness, inflamed nostrils, small toes, or to such rare serious threats such as cancer? Males and females, unlike other mammals remain alive for a considerable period after sexual activity, without becoming too socially disagreeable.

We need, a number of ergones of which we know only a few, which we call vitamins. Probably we need a vast number of ergones, and if we knew them all, man could get their brain back, and there would be no dental caries. We have probably an unlimited belief in ourselves and have built our surroundings claiming that they completely furnished us with all the comfort we needed. But we overlooked some of the primary essentials, apparently.

We want;

8.1.2 Deforestation and burning

(Lane-Poole (1911), van Steenis).3

Joshua 17:18 The mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down; and the outgoings of it shall be thine.

Woods are abhorred by primitive man.

8.1.3 House building

Clothes extend the function of the skin in active man, the inactive cell needs a heavy cyst wall, this is the house.

8.1.4 City building

Man’s social instinct is too weak to allow for a voluntary socium. Always there should be a Mount Sinai and tables of the law.

8.1.5 Road building

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.1.6 Industrialisation

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.1.7 Overgrazing, overfarming

(The Rape of the Earth, Mankind at the Crosswoods, East, Lowdermilk).4

(Homo ludens, J. Huizinga).5

8.2.1 Introduction

Man is, like certain birds, a player of games. The greatest game is “make believe.” If reality hurts, let us play that game. Let us plan that we, in our paper tent, are safe from the storm. Let us embellish this tent with pictures. Do not look out, that is against the rules. One might see the dark storm cloud. They are not there. We are safe inside our little tent. There is a picture in it of Santa Claus and J.P. Morgan.6 Let us see what science brings in. All marvellous toys but too difficult for us to understand, but beautiful toys to play with. We only know that we want plenty of glittering toys to play with. What they do and how they are made? It does not interest us much, we only know that we are infinitely important, that the earth is our apple, that science is our toy and that we are jolly well capable of destroying the whole earth. We are little tin heroes.

8.2.2 The paper world and its properties7

In the paper world natural law is made not by act of parliament. These laws form a closed entity, without much disharmony, as a mathematical system they would be, therefore, acceptable. Unfortunately, they show very little semblance to reality. In the paper world people have no mother. It is an animalcule’s world like Leeuwenhoek’s or Aristotle’s.8 In the paper world people sit forever in committee meetings, settling dividends or laws or treatises or codicils or wills or affidavits, for there is nothing but paper. The paper world is an invention of the city. Wheat is not Tritium vulgare, a wonderful thing growing on a rich field. It means shares, posts, bulls, bears, brokers, tape ticking men, tape rooms of paper. Paper itself is no more a thing that came from a forest or a fibre plant, it may be shares or reports or papers. It is the essence of the large make believe masquerade into which Man has thrown itself going from paper to paper with paper communicating on paper about paper.

Having caged himself in, built himself in brick walls, concrete and iron and glass, man has shut himself out from the earth. Now there are certain individuals happy in such an atmosphere. They are urban, they believe in the paper world, the reality being, to them, a nasty necessity. As long as others exploit the world in a way, which increases their Babel, they leave the earth alone. They have cut themselves off from nature, not from ignorance, but by choice. No sentimental Rousseau, no healthy outdoor person, could persuade them that man is essentially an inhabitant of glass and brick cages, overheated. That nourishment, amusement, pursuit in general should have as little as possible to do with the natural world. They play make believe with their papers. They make Kings and Presidents and Ministers and Councillors, while the farmer ploughs. They, like the Athenians, rave on market places, while the Boeotiers harvest the wheat.9 And in their boundless ignorance of natural conditions, they incorporate the others in their game, and order them (and the earth) about and – to perdition.

8.2.3 The exalted position of mankind

Genesis 1:26 Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it.

This is the first reason why the paper world was invented. Man should be at the head of the procession. Maybe the inferiority feeling due to our more than ugly exterior needed compensation, and we have found this compensation in exalting ourselves, nobody else being present to exalt us. Now it must be granted that Homo sapiens, and especially Homo ludens, have a great many remarkable qualities. That even there is no doubt that in most things he far transgresses anything else in creation. But to use the judge’s mantle for the entire earth; are we up to this? Do we really want to be steward of the earth? We owe it nothing, it has been given to us, we are capable to destroy it, let us try it, just for fun. For life down below is a delusion anyway, let us contribute our shame to vandalise this earth a little further, for, not only that we are the best thing on earth. The earth is a centre of the universe, and we are monsters of the earth. Consequently, we are grand exalted “masters of the universe.” Poor grand exalted monsters; ridden by disease, ridden by their passion and by their hormones. Yes, we know, because we sinned in the beginning, we are this dualistic thing! It is so easy to satisfy our maniac depressive nature; today the great master of galaxy, tomorrow the miserable worm! The truth is that if we only wanted to, we could make our scurvy pack into a small group of almost angelic beings – men like God – if we only had the courage. If we only had the courage, we could make the earth into one wonderful garden – if we had the belief and the courage, we could use the efforts of every individual towards these ends. We slap ourselves on the back when we have created another desert, increased the humble Babel which is this world.

8.2.4 The precious nature of man

What is the value of man? If we think as human beings, we have a predilection for man and we think that more people would be more fun and we say; “the value of man is infinite.”

8.2.5 Mothers

Mothers have, apart from their rational maternity, a hormonal dictator within themselves, a great propagandist for (quantitative) mankind. “Human” is the highest epithet and this means usually “more human protoplasm.” Therefore, with mothers one mustn’t talk, only sympathise.

[Vignette of mother and child, see Fig. 8.1.]

8.2.6 Priests

For him the value of man is revealed. Revelation is a thing one cannot talk about. With priests, therefore, one shouldn’t talk, only pray. But still, they influence the world, chiefly in a negative way. They oppose. If our conclusion would be to take a certain sociological measure, in order to secure mankind for a few generations to come, we know that, whatever this measure, the priests would oppose us. For in that what is revealed there is but little subject matter, and most of this subject matter is not concerned with the awful problem which faces us now. The problems of a sparse population in a wide world are slightly different from a semi-dissipated earth half choked in human blood and in humane protoplasm. This era does not concern the priest. It is all very beautifully said by Christian Morgenstern.

[Vignette of priest, see Fig. 8.1.]

Ein Hecht, vom heiligen Antōn bekehrt,

Beschloß, samt Weib und Kind,

am vegetarischen Gedanken Moralisch sich empor zu ranken.

Drum frass er nur seit dies:

Seegras, Seerose und Seegrieß.

Der ganze Teich ward angesteckt.

Fünftausend Fische sind verreckt.

Doch heilige Antōn, gerufen eilig,

sagte nur: Heilig! heilig! heilig!10

I do not believe that churches have enough potentialities to meet the conditions of today. They have been singularly silent in the great social and industrial evolution; they have been almost silent against war; they shall be silent in any other new calamity that shall visit the earth. Up till now the greatest was the economic theory of living, and the church has cooperated heartily with those that enthusiastically upheld this vulture and hyena theory of mankind. For you can have it just as you want it for, like Janus. Biblical Man has two faces, speaks with two tongues, blows hot and cold simultaneously. A church which not only hopes for a better world hereafter but actively builds for a better world today, would be an unheard off innovation. And still, I cannot but help to think that God only helps those that try to help themselves and others.

8.2.7 Doctors11

[Vignette of doctor, see Fig. 8.1.]

8.2.8 Lawyers

They are the mothers of the papers.

[Vignette of lawyer, see Fig. 8.1.]

8.2.9 Statesmen12

They are the priests of the paper world.

[Vignette of statesman, see Fig. 8.1.]

8.3.1 Introduction

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.3.2 Exploration

“The cornucopia,” the horn of plenty.

8.3.3 Exploitation

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.3.4 Production

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.3.5 Distribution

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.3.6 Supply and demand

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.3.7 Malthus again13

“Fortunately,” (books on Economics say), Malthus was “wrong.” Consider our wonderful world, in which supply even exceeds demand! And with an inexhaustible plenty, mother earth from her wrinkled crust supplies us, like the widow of Sarepta from her small course, unendingly.14 Evil tidings there have been a plenty, of the ending of our oil, our coal. But these rumours notwithstanding here we are, ever increasing, ever demanding more and here is the earth, ever supplying. Surely Malthus must have been wrong.

8.3.8 The socium15

Should be a “stationary state”, a “harmony”, a “harmonic equipotential system” (Section 4.1.5.f).

But they rather say “carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.”16

8.4.1 Introduction

Jean Brunhes, 1926, “Politique est un mot dérivé de qui signifie [Greek] oiko, la ville, la cité, la cité état.” Pages 1-10 very interesting city plans! In particular for pages 8-9.18

8.4.2 Trophon

Is what not only going from the hand to the mouth, it is also that what we have to wait for before we may eat. It is also that, which supplies our immediate deficiency. The lack of pelt creates the want of clothing for example.

Brunhes (1926, p. 137-139, p. 143), Kino, “Qui aime la ville construit la route.”

8.4.3 Forests

When man came of age, woodlands covered most of the earth. Woodland, from which man came, a world full of promise as well as of horrors. It seems trivial to reiterate the series hunter-herdsman-peasant, but we think of the hunter as primarily belonging to the biocoenosis of the forest. Ruminants made the grassy clearings and formed the hunter as a herdsman. The ruminants became the slaves of man. And man lived in the clearing and he decided that it was good to live with his cows and that the forest was still the place full of danger. And when agriculture came upon man, apart from the need for grass, there arose a need for more soil, more clearings. And with fire and with axe he began to attack the wood, also to build his huts and stalls and granaries. And this semi-immaculate sense towards forests, which were vegetation climax and from which emanated all we needed, persists up to our time when Jean Brunhes speaks of forests as things to be cut down. Well, maybe 3,000 years before the Christian era we started to cut down the protective covering forests in Turkestan, Afghanistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia. About 3,000 years later we started, with equal enthusiasm to pluck the covering from Northern and Western Europe, Greece. Italy and the Iberic peninsula having preceded us in this demolition rage. A beautiful pioneering life was led for a few generations anyhow.

8.4.4 Meadows

Holland is holtland means woodland. There is no woodland now. Before the fourteenth century it was devastated, and only the local village names, like Hazerwoude, Berkenwoude etc. still witness, together with some subsoil material, the erstwhile luscious vegetation. [In the margin Baas Becking added: Scharwoude, Rijnsaterwoude, Hoogwoud, Berkel, Zoeterwoude.] If the clearing (a rode, Rhoden, Ruurlo, Rolduc) obtained a grass mat, its relation with cattle might develop into a stationary state – a meadow. Only in the last decades the scientific study of grassland is being developed (in our country by Dr. O. de Vries of the General Experimental Station at Groningen).19 One thing is certain that steppe, pampas, prairies and other natural grassy-climax-vegetations are foreign to most parts of the world, and are only kept into being by cattle. As mentioned at another place in this treatise, a meadow, when left alone, will quickly revert to alder coppice, preliminary to a birch-oak mixed forest! In the same way heather without sheep does not persist, if, at least not burned or mown every year. Scotch pine will settle first, then climax being again birch and oak.

8.4.5 Field

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.4.6 Agriculture and horticulture

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.4.7 Plant products

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.2.]

8.4.8 Animal products

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.3.]

8.4.9 Mineral products

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.10 The house20

The conies have their holes, and many animals have forms of “cysts” to enclose them, when they need extra protection from external influences. The clothes supply a lack of pelt, a house a lack of communal cyst, like a spider cocoon.

[Vignette of house, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.11 The community

Companion with the organisation autosymbiosis and metabolism.

The animal cell with its nerves, veinlet and arteriole.

[Vignette of the community, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.12 The town21

There are still smiths and bakers and butchers. There are, in the immediate neighbourhood, semi-authentic farmers. This isn’t bad. The paper world has not very much hold yet on this community. But there is loss of style and loss of much beauty and character every decade by the import of new goods, by creation of artificial demand, by the destruction of the old.

[Vignette of small town, church and mill, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.13 The city22

“Ich liebe die Städte nicht, dort gibt es zu Vielen von den Brünstigen” (Nietsche).23

“Les villes tentaculaires” (E. Verhaeren).24

“Politique est un mot dérivé de [Greek] oikos qui signifie la ville” (Jean Brunhes).

In a tissue culture a cell deprived of its specific organs, reverts to the type of the adhesive tissue, a shapeless characteristic sort of cell. Where specialisation becomes too far developed and too intricate it breeds shapelessness.

[Vignette of city, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.14 Factories

[Vignette of factory, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.15 Highways25

[Vignette of highways, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.16 Roads highways

“The stars are setting and the caravan starts for the dawn of nothing – oh make haste,”

Omar Khayyan.

8.4.17 Canals

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.4.18 Railroad

[Vignette of railroad, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.19 Locks, harbours, ships

[Vignette of ship in harbour, see Fig. 8.4.]

8.4.20 Summary and conclusions

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

Brunhes (1926, p. 231).

8.5.1 Introduction

We have met man as creator, we saw him to his ‘Shiva aspect,’ as destroyer – changing crystal springs into reeking pools. Maybe the word express (excrement) is too good for the description of human waste, as the copros contains many ergones, capable of stimulating other life, human waste is usually toxic and barren.

8.5.2 Cyclic and dissipatory copros

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.5.3 The household wastes

[Vignette of household waste, see Fig. 8.5.]

8.5.4 The industrial wastes

[Vignette of industrial waste, see Fig. 8.5.]

8.5.5 Water pollution

City refuse. [Vignette of water pollution, see Fig. 8.5.]

Leo Minder in his treatise on the Zürichsee,27 has shown that this lake has changed in the last decades, from an oligotrophic to an eutrophic body of water. It is not only waste, according to him, that causes pollution, but also the completely mineralised effluent, containing phosphate and nitrate, that causes the enormous water blooms of Tabellaria fenestrata (diatom) and Oscillatoria rubescens. Therefore, the usual procedure of sand filter and septic tank is not sufficient to ward off water calamities.

8.5.6 Air pollution

(Blacktin (1934), “Dust”).28

[Vignette of factory pipe, see Fig. 8.5.]

8.5.7 Marine and submarine pollution

(W. Beebe).29

8.5.8 Soil pollution

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.5.9 Fallowing30

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.5.10 The origin of deserts

(Lowdermilk, Deserts on the March, The Rape of the Earth).31

Kansas

1. Mesopotania

2. Turkestan

3. Gobi

4. Sahara

5. Syria and Palestine

6. Trans Jordania

7. Thar

8. Arabia and Beluchistan

9. The red heart of Australia

10. Kalahari

11. American deserts, N. Mexico, Big Basin.

---

Wind erosion in Holland.

8.5.11 Erosion and Deforestation

What is more wonderful than arable soil, it is a witness of countless plant generations; of countless solar quanta being wed to ennoble the atmosphere, it is a witness of enormous chemical effort by a host of organisms, to produce this mellow, fragrant, dark, crumbly mass. Mother-of-plants, mother-of-men, topsoil. Below it the earth, although perhaps sedimentary, has not lived yet. This exciting cycle – it has not renewed itself in ceaseless giving in, ceaseless yielding, in continuous passage of the new which became old.

8.5.12 Reclamation

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.5.13 Man as landscape architect

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.5.14 Man as dissipating agent

In the concentration and wide dissipation of materials.

8.5.15 Man as negative selecting agent

It seems almost trivial.

Isaiah 60:13 The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee.32

“Man’s happiness, that honey’d flower of soul, is his loving response in nature.”

Robert Bridge, The Testament of Beauty.33

8.6.1 Introduction

Bunker (1936, p. 344).

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.6.]

8.6.2 Integration or conservation34

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.7.]35

8.6.3 The soil

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.6.4 The plants

[Small drawing of a tree.]

8.6.5 The animals

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.6.6 Man36

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.6.7 Interrelation of soil, plant and man

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.7.1 Introduction

Isaiah 7:11 “Then I said, Lord, how long? And then he answered: until the cities be wanted without inhabitants, and houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate.”38

8.7.2 Procedures in agriculture

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.8.]39

Soil dissipation. Soil theft (Boskoop).40

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.9.]

8.7.3 Procedure in mining41

“So haben wir die relative Seltenheit der meisten Kulturmetalle aufzufassen als das Ergebnis einer groszartigen metalurgischen Schmeltz operation auf deren Schlacke wir leben”.42

Rilke, “Das Erz hat heimweh.”43

8.7.4 Efforts at concentration

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.10.]

Fixation of atmospheric nitrogen.

8.7.5 Dissipation and consumption

Iron and tin.

Paper.

Bones and other phosphates.

Copper.

Coal.

8.7.6 Remedy

Soil-less culture.

Brunhes (1926, p. 610), Les causes de la dénaturalité.

v. Bemmelen, (1942), Criminologie.45

It’s all a chequer board and of nights and days

Where destiny with men for pieces plays

Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays

And one by one back in the closet lays

Omar Khayyam.46

8.8.1 Introduction

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.8.2 Nature and nurture

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.8.3 Biological law

y=y0σ2π⋅e−x22σ2

8.8.4 Population laws

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.11, without description. See also Section 5.1]

8.8.5 Elements of predestination

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.8.6 Elements of free will

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

8.8.7 A new heaven and a new earth

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

A. de Candolle, L’Origine des Plantes Cultivées.47

8.9.1 Relation with plants48

Outline of Economic Botany:

8.9.1.a Food and food accessories

Maize, rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley.

  • a. Grains sorglucose [= sorbose].

  • b. Legumes. radish, pulse, lentil, beans, pear, soy bean, lime bean, peanut, alfalfa, clover, lupins.

  • c. Starch materials, potato, cassava, sweet potato, topinamboer, caladium, taro, sago, inulin.

  • d. Sugar, cane, beet, fruits, etc.

  • e. Fats, copra, oil palm, olive, peanut, cotton seed, rape-seed, bubassa, tallow, whale oil, etc.

  • f. Condiments, tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa, cola, maté, guarana, mustard, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, etheriid oils, labiates, umbellifers, bay, ginger, curcuma.

[Baas Becking inserted Fig. 8.12.]

8.9.1.b Drugs

Papaver alcaloids, solanaceous alcaloids, serotonine, ephedrine, berberine etc.

Ipecacuanha.49

Senna, rhubarb, aloes, rhum, quillaja, shatavari, liquorice.50

Rad van avontuur. [Dutch ‘Wheel of adventure’.]

8.9.1.c Dyes

Alisarin, rubia, word, indigo, pastel, blue-word, red-word, fuchsine, yellow-berries, heather.

8.9.1.d Tanning materials

Oak galls, oak basts, divi-divi, quebracho, wattle, cutch.

8.9.1.e Fibre materials

Coir, jute, renal, flax, hemp, roselle, java-jute, manila hemp, sisal, henequen [Agave fourcroydes], New Zealand flax, bow string hemp, piassava, cotton, capok, midouri [?],51 substitutes, artificial cellulose.

8.9.1.f Paper materials

Soft wood, hard wood, esparto, rags, straw, rice straw, paper mulberry.

8.9.1.g Timber

Fir, cedar, pine, oak, mahogany, teak, eucalyptus, redwood.

8.9.1.h Cork

8.9.1.i Wax’s, gums, resins

Canada balsum, terpentine, clamman, grains, expol, gum Arabic, pectins, agar.

8.9.1.j Animal products

Dairy, leather, horn, wool, honey, whalebone, bone, feathers, cochinillo, shells, pearls, mother of pearl (Troche).52

8.9.1.k Secondary technical changes

Milk wool, wood cellulose, cattle foods from strand.

8.9.1.l Causobioliths

Coal, peat, lignite, oil, asphalt, bitumen, ichthyol.

[Baas Becking left this section blank.]

 

1
   Sir Reginald George Stapledon (1882-1960), agricultural scientist. In 1919 appointed as the first director of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station. William Davies (1899-1968), botanist and grassland specialist. He was member of the staff of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station since 1923, between 1933 and 1940 he was Head of the Department of Grassland Agronomy. A survey by Davies of the grassland and waste lands of Wales was published under the editorship of R.G. Stapledon in 1936.
2
   George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882), American diplomat and philologist, who recognised as one of the first the irreversible impact of man on the earth. Baas Becking referred to Marsh (1874) published book, The Earth as Modified by Human Action, which was a largely rewritten version of his 1864 published Man and Nature.
3
   Reference to Lane-Poole (1911), Report on the Forest of Sierra Leone. C.E. Lane-Poole was employed by the British colonial government of Sierra Leone to evaluate the state of the country’s forests. In his report he noted areas of forest destruction on the Peninsula, placing blame directly on the ‘inefficient’ and ‘destructive’ activities of the native population; with a particular emphasis on the Temne sawyers and canoe makers. In contrast, the logging activities of Europeans along the Peninsula were not criticised. Lane-Poole was also virulent in his criticism of the natives shifting cultivation farming methods, which he deemed to be wasteful. Fundamentally the rhetoric in these reports was about control, that the colonial government should imbue a more direct management system of the country’s resources.
See Munro (2009).
The reference to ‘van Steenis’ is to C.G.G.J. van Steenis (1901-1986), at that time plant taxonomist of the Herbarium at Buitenzorg.
In his oration to commemorate the 136th anniversary of the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens (Baas Becking, 1947c), Baas Becking remarked:
Now clear cutting may cause erosion. And not only clear cutting, but also the abandonment of the arable land. When the sucking force of the towns in the United States became too strong by events not to be foreseen of the so called economic society and the arable land was abandoned, desert formation, the dissipation which we will call Diaspora set in on a large scale. Not for nothing archaeologists rush to the deserts, because these are the interred towns, the former trophegaia of Turkestan, Mesopotamia, the Gobi, the glory of what once was Greece and, Rome, the Holy Land. Our footmark is the desert. A policy which in the progress of the conversion from Eugaia to Trophegaia, takes into account the possibility of formation of this Diaspora, in other words a policy which considers the dynamic equilibrium between mankind, soil and plant cover, this ls what is called conservation, but which perhaps should better be named integration.
In the 1953 version of Geobiology Baas Becking remarked: (p. 573):
With the absence of vegetation, we enter into “pure” geology. It is interesting to note that the karst landscape in Istria has developed only after extensive, and rather recent, deforestation. Another classical karst region, the plateau of the Causses, the region of the Tarn River, in the Central Massive of France, has been a classical region of intensive ‘wood butchery.’ In these regions the limestone is disappearing at a rapid rate, partly in underground rivers. This soil was preserved for millennia under the efficient cover of a beautiful oak forest.
See also Baas Becking’s open letter to Samkalden about deforestation at Java in De Groene Amsterdammer (Baas Becking, 1947d).
4
   Jacks and Whyte (1939), The Rape of the Earth. A World Survey of Soil Erosion. On p. 249 Jacks and Whyte, experts in soil sciences and pastures suggested about soil degradation in Africa that “white man’s burden in the future will be to come to terms with the soil and plant world, and for many reasons it promises to be a heavier burden than coming to terms with the natives.”
East (1923), Mankind at the Crossroads. Edward Murray East (1879-1938), American geneticist, botanist, strong supporter of the eugenics movement in the USA. In Mankind at the Crossroad, he compared groups of people based upon racial categorisations of the time.
Walter C. Lowdermilk (1888-1974), forester and hydrologist. In June 1939 he made a speech on Jerusalem radio entitled “The Eleventh Commandment.” According to Nash:
He reasoned that if God could have foreseen the ravages that centuries of thoughtless forestry and agriculture would bring to his creation, he would have been moved to add to the Ten Commandments. The eleventh, according to Lowdermilk, would “complete the trinity of man’s responsibilities – to his Creator, to his fellow men, and to Mother Earth.” […] Lowdermilk succeeded in making conservation a moral matter.
Nash (1989), The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics.
5
   Baas Becking referred to the Huizinga (1938) [A Study of the Play Element of Culture]. In the Section Man and Man in the 1953 version of Geobiology, Baas Becking (1953a) remarked (p. 703-704):
This symbiosis is the subject of the science of sociology. Only the sexes show somatic differences, while in the social insects we recognise, also structurally differentiated workers and soldiers. To analyse the various forms of human symbiosis would fall outside the scope of this essay. One thing, however, is of importance to us here. Apart from sexual differences, the potentialities of an individual man are almost equivalent to the potentialities of mankind. When we do not carry this statement to extreme (where it most certainly would lose its validity) we might say that any man may function as “homo ludens”, “homo faber” as well as “homo cogens.” This fact gives us great hopes. Artificial environment may specialise men to a great degree, yet their offspring will be able to carry out all human functions. This elasticity of man, this storehouse of an untold number of potentialities must have saved the species from extinction several times.
6
   John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) American banker.
7
   In the 1953 manuscript of Geobiology, Baas Becking remarked under the heading The Idols of the Theatre (p. 795):
Les hommes ont créé une planète nouvelle:
la planète de la misère et du malheur des corps.
Ils ont déserté la terre…
Ils ont des morceaux de papier qu’ils appellent argent.
Jean Giono. Les vrais Richesses.
In the “paper world” we meet with a powerful group of officials who seem to have created a complicated world of make believe. While borrowing elements of reality to regulate human intercourse their measures are often remote from reality. Natural law and Human law shall remain strangers to one another as long as the directives and motives for the latter are not based upon the former.
[…]
To those who like to do things it often seems that we are governed by those that have but little contact with reality. But the doers of things forget in their impatience that the rulers are governed also by formidable Idola Theatri of which the most formidable is the paper world. Against this copy world (a world of desks and telephones and stacks of print or typescript and, fortunately, waste baskets) we stand helpless. For whenever one wants to perform, they start to throw with paper. Like termite larvae, they subsist upon it and expect us to join in their enthusiasm most good deeds are choked in paper. The God given energy, the God given products seem merely phantoms to this world.
L’immense terreur collective ébranle la société;
nos morceaux de papier, nos morceaux de papier:
gouvernements, ministres, députes, rois,
empereurs, lois, lois, lois humaines au secours!
Jean Giono.
8
   Baas Becking referred to Anthonie van Leeuwenhoeck’s ‘animacule’.
9
   Reference to Baas Becking (1928a). See also van Berkel (1996, p.183-187).
10
   Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) Der Hecht [Northern pike]. Baas Becking’s version lacks lines 7 and 8 from the original. Also, the number of fishes (5,000) differs from the original version (“fünfhundert”). Lines 7 and 8 in the Morgenstern original read: “Seegras, Seerose und Seegrieß/Doch Grieß, Gras, Rose floß, o Graus.”
A pike, converted by St. Anthony decided,
together with his wife and child,
to become vegetarian and climb himself the moral ladder.
Therefore, he only ate since then, Seaweed, water lily and sea grits.
The whole pond was infected. Five hundred fish perished. St. Antony, summoned in haste, only said: Holy! Holy! Holy!
11
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking wrote (p. 28-30):
The chief propagandists of the doctrine of the sanctity of the human protoplasm are the mothers, the priests and the doctors. One might add the politicians and the statesmen, but their motives are so mixed and so uncertain that we could easily win them over if they had a chance at a vaster Babel and mere oratory. The three first named categories are certainly noble in their purpose. Their purpose, however, while seemingly constructive and beautiful lead, in reality, to disaster. Amongst the three I shall only speak of doctors. With mothers we cannot speak, only sympathise, with priests we cannot speak, only pray. Like my friend van der Hoog has said, the symbols of the doctor are the caduceus and the stethoscope, a strange blend of witchcraft and science. In their mind there is an equal mixture of natural law and lawyer’s nature. They straddle the gap between science and the human sciences. Sometimes they fuel between these two chains, sometimes they claim to ride both horses at once, in most cases they start in science and end up in social science, but social science of a rather emotional and uneasy brand.
Afraid to insult (for there is also the daily bread) afraid to injure (because they are trained to heal) incompetent to do the obvious (because legal power is contrary or lacking) they cover their actions with a veneer of secrecy. Vested with an enormous potential social power they do very little except stabilise the present structure. They refuse to accept the applicability of biological law in its broadest sense, about the issues of sterilisation, pre-marriage examination, and eugenics in general, and also about euthanasia, all subjects the value of which is plain and obvious to any mind not stuffed with fairy tales, they hear, they hem and saw. They comment (rightly) many of the ensuring measures with most undesirable forms of government, and because of this connection they refute the validity of the issues. There is a possibility, however, in the medical men. Most of them, when not too old, are sufficiently interested in science to see the validity of scientific argument. Emotionalism, which sways them to such an extent later, has not taken that deep root in their mind.
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233
12
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking wrote (p. 25-27):
Only by probing into foibles, only by looking at ourselves as so many patients, may we ever hope to be worthy of a rejuvenated earth. For man’s hope does not lie in his instincts but in his plasticity which, grinded by the intelligence, offers almost boundless possibilities.
Possibilities destructive and constructive, of evil and of good, easily swayed, greedy, afraid and superstitious. It shall need steady hands to steer the course. Is there, as yet, a course to steer? I believe that there are pilots to steer this course, man of great experience who have exploited every creek and watercourse, who have charted the beaches and marked the tides, who know the direction of prevailing wind, the signs of changing weather. These pilots have never been allowed aboard. The ship has never been steered by navigators but by lawyers, schoolmasters and parsons. Trained orators but, like King Carnut, unable to impress the ocean by their vocal constructions. Or, in plain language, the forces constructive and destructive are physical and biological forces. The people who devoted their lives to the study of these forces, physicists, chemists and biologists are not allowed to take social responsibility over their own brainchildren.
The foster fathers of the scientist’s brainchildren are the wordmongers, the demagogues, in one word the Statesman. We shall have occasion to revert to this problem later in this essay. Surely, the scientists themselves are not without guilt. They have stood off and sneered, while grammar school teachers tried their hand at engineering, bankers ventured into applied biology and corporation lawyers presided a meeting on industrial chemistry. Surely, we are a plastic species, but even if the specialisation in our symbiontic socium is not hereditary, specialists should be used in their specialty. If a person is only fit to produce carbon dioxide, let him do so, but do not ask him to lead nine million people to destruction.
Reference to Carnut, ‘Prince of the North’, in Jacques Henri Bernadin de Saint Pierre’s Études de la Nature (Studies of Nature).
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
13
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking did not give an ironical impression of his opinion of economics (p. 1 and 2):
The war has for me as a living being, only one issue (the other being death). The thing I am most curious about is whether the Homo economicus has survived. If he has, all that I shall dream about in this essay, will come to naught, for I want to dream about the Homo felix, the happy man. Economic systems certainly did not primarily aim at happiness, they seem in the majority of cases, even inimical to it. But why live, if there is no happiness? Many religious systems have adroitly dodged this question. They postpone the happiness to the hereafter. The Kingdom is not of this world, not of this earth. After the hopeless mess people make of their lives (and of their neighbour’s lives) they may hope for a harmony after they leave the arena of their incompetence.
On p. 42 to 50 he further specified his personal opinions on ‘Economic theory:’
“Economic motive”, is the foundation stone of theoretical economics. The concept implies “the least sacrifice to reach a given end.” In this, economists assert, there is no egotistical element, no one could object, they say, to a rational proceeding. And it is rational to follow the line of “maximum gain”, of “minimum sacrifice.” Economic progress goes parallel with the wider application of this economic motive. Economics is the (causal) science of prosperity. By prosperity is meant purchasing power. A liver on a platter is (apart from culinary associations) a ridiculous object. The liver within the organism is a most wonderful piece of architecture. One might therefore, object, that the few definitions quoted above, sound ridiculous (as they sound ridiculous to me), because they segregate topics from their organic nexus, topics which may only be understood in the correlative. For nothing to me, seems more irrational, as to measure prosperity by purchasing power or gains. That this is actually meant follows from the definition of the “economic organisation.” This body originates from the cooperation of the entrepreneurs directed towards the obtaining of commerce profit.
Wherever we sound economic theory, we find similar definitions. Therefore, the assumption seems not illogical, that gain, profit and purchasing power lie at the base of economics and that these concepts are axiomatic and, to economists at least, self evident. I grant that economic theory, without subjective, ethical implications, is possible. It is, however, purely a paper structure. It seems impossible to me to separate economics from the socium. ‘The rules of the house’ are nothing but economics. The pertinent question may therefore be raised, whether “economic motive” comes natural to mankind and whether the man “that goes out to buy cheap and sell dear” (vide economic motive), is a true representative of his species.
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
14
   For ‘Sarepta’ see 1 Kings 17.
15
   ‘Socium’ is a term of Baas Becking roughly meaning ‘human coexistence’ or ‘community’.
In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943, p. 22), Baas Becking remarked:
The natural unit of human symbiosis is the family. The instinctive social feeling usually does not transgress this socium. However, in the higher communal units intellect makes up for the lack of instinct, resulting in a society with quasi-vital properties. Here we find coordination of organs, specialisation, exchange, in short, a complete metabolism. In the social insects, family and state merge into one another. Here the specialisation within the socium sometimes finds its expression in a polymorphism. We find queens, workers, soldiers. Not always this specialisation is genetically fixed, in many cases the nature of the nutrition determines appearance and function of the individual.
On p. 44 and 45 he wrote:
The individual is in constant interchange with its social environment. This interchange consists of both centripetal and centrifugal elements. A centrifugal (“egofugal”) element is self assertion, to live as many lives as possible in the three score and ten years allotted to us. Centripedal (“egopetal”) elements are “greed and breed,” “Hunger und Liebe”, the latter being Eros rather than Caritas. Caritas is a centrifugal social factor. Greed, breed and self assertion are animal rather than human functions, still “economic decline seems to be based upon them. The “healthy, normal child” shows a strong sense of possession; “This is mine, that thing is not yours,” “give it to me,” “I want to have it.” These are, honest and firm assertions, belonging to a young animal that wants to maintain itself in a (fragmentarily understood) environment. In secondary school the number of children that show this propensity is already considerably diminished. We all know of the one boy in our grade who sells toys, toffees, stamps or butterflies. When we pass puberty the normal sense of possession is further weakened. Perhaps it goes with the atrophy of the thymus gland. We know, from our war experience that almost everybody is not really interested in possessions, we have been driven out of house and home too often, we know of other things more important.
But still, there are people in which the economic motive, as an infantile, a neotenic [= juvenilisation] character, persists throughout this mental life. Do they suffer from endocrine disturbance? There are reasons to believe that those people are abnormal. Their suggestive power, however, is very great. They promote babel in general, envy, politics and war, because it serves their ends. Because they collect money, they can hire and fire, purchase and enslave to their heart’s content. Their propaganda we shall meet everywhere in this essay, for they are the great vandals and, although individually often very likeable fellows, powers of evil in nearly every aspect.
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
16
   Latin aphorism, usually translated “seize the day”, from Book 1 of the Roman poet Horace’s work Odes (23 BC).
17
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking wrote (p. 38-40):
Before we analyze these various relations of Man and Earth it is well to classify them provisory, while, of course, every system condemns itself, and for any form of thought-matter there are many systems of classification possible. In this essay a practical system will be followed which is, unfortunately, not entirely homogeneous. Partly it is based upon our primary needs for food, clothing, housing and communication. Partly it refers to the forms of mutilation with the earth underwent by our effort. What is left after all these relations have been dealt with, I shall call the “Engea,” the real earth, that once was (a thing to dream about). We collect our food, in the widest sense of the word, from the forest, the field, the river and lake, from the mines, from the ocean. This I shall call the Trophogea. It represents a great variety of relations, some are self-perpetuating, some lead to irreversible situations. Most of the mere structures that are anthropogenic and revert to other forms of earth after shorter or longer period of disuse.
It is hard to say whether the hoarding places of the trophon, such as warehouses, silo’s and haystacks should be classified under the Trophogea or under the next primary form of earth: the Oikogea, where we have our home. This home may be a house or a palace, a hamlet or a town. They almost invariably belong to the dysgenic factors in relation to the earth. It will be shown that the towns nearest relative is the desert. This lenticular organis, sucking dry its surroundings, is in itself arid and forbidding. The oikogea itself is inter-penetrated by the ‘traffic earth,’ the Kinogea which comprises streets, alleys, roads, highways and sea lanes and the traffic carriers upon them. This is the Kopcogea where the excretions, the excrement of humanity, accumulates. The sludge heaps, the garbage, the refuse and offal, Kopcogea is increasing.
There is Kakogea, the wasted earth, the deserts, mainly anthropogenic, that are Man’s own trail, the hopeless sign-boards along our roads also belonging to Kakogea. Our efforts at beautification have created Kalogea, there are our gardens and our parks, subconscious microcosmic efforts to imitate the Archegea, the earth as we believe it to have been before we oversaw it. Machegea, the war earth is a special form of Kakogea, inasmuch as war has its own particular excretion-products into the milieu externe. Finally, there is Engea, the ‘Good Earth,’ a thing to dream about. This is the, a park-like thing in which Man lives in harmony, and not at odds with the rest of creation.
Now, inasmuch as communism in a way, is an inverted capitalism and therefore takes cognisance of this phenomenon for more than its worth, the above classification is related to economic theory, inasmuch as it takes into account the so-called “primary human wants,” trophon and oikos. It takes into account, in the Kinogea, the problem of distribution. But instead of leaving the problem in the factory, in the office, in the stock exchange, it is here projected upon the earth, its influence upon our planet is traced. Economic system in itself being chaos, it cannot create but chaos, and that is actually what we reap now.
Before examining our relations to the earth in detail, we have to consider briefly what economics has contributed towards our problem. It describes the “official”, the ‘High-Church’ attitude of Man towards the earth, the attitude of the businessman and the ‘inverted business man’ (nevertheless still the same in its make up); the worker. They all draw upon the terrestrial capital. Therefore, we also should consider this terrestrial capital in detail. To use an obvious word, “the natural resources,” the implication being that it is all ours to devour, to mangle, to spoil and devastate.
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
18
   Jean Brunhes (1869-1930). French geographer. Baas Becking referred to the third edition that was published in two volumes in 1925. His references however, cannot be traced in the Geographie humaine. In La Géographie humaine (Brunhes, 1925) he classified the ‘essential facts’ of human geography into three main groups:
1. Facts of unproductive occupation: houses and roads.
2. Facts of plant and animal conquest: cultivation of plants and raising of animals.
3. Facts of destructive exploitation: plant and animal devastation; mineral exploitation.
Brunhes explained man not as completely dependent on geography. He saw in nature “not a tyrannical fatalism, but an infinite wealth of possibilities among which man has the power to choose” (S. Charléty, 1932), Notes sur la vie et de traveaux de M.J. Brunhes. Paris).
In his 1953 version of Geobiology, Baas Becking described Brunhes’s approach in a section The Exploitation of the Earth (p. 775-776):
Our manifold activities leave their imprint upon the landscape. This imprint may be in the nature of a proud hallmark, it may be a tool mark, but often it appears as a wound, a scar or a skin disease. It may be useful to classify these influences. The method of approach followed is inspired by Jean Brunhes (1926). There is the unexploited earth which we call Eugaia (the food). When Man arrives, he exploits the range and fells the forest. Oil is struck in the prairie, copper is mined. To satisfy his wants, he creates Trophogaia. He makes a dwelling place, in the farm, the village and in the city and we meet with Oikogaia (the dwelling) From dwelling to dwelling, from town to town, we travel and develop highways, railroads, aerodromes, harbours, to further our communication. We create Kinogaia (I move). Thus far it may be for “better or worse.” There may be town planning and landscape planning included as well as soil-conservation and rational exploitation.
19
   Professor dr. Otto de Vries (1881-1948), director Rijkslandbouwproefstation voor de Akker- en Weidebouw Haren (1930-1945). De Vries had been director of Centraal Rubberstation in Buitenzorg (1915-1930). De Vries was the son of the famous professor Hugo de Vries.
20
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking wrote (p. 78):
In Urbo the house is reduced to a mere dwelling space. I know that suburbia (green grows my garden) hankers after a more complete existence. Their fulfilment again lies in a “micro-existence,” like a Japanese garden, all on a soup plate. They have gardens, often with pools. They have garden houses, garages and other things even a badminton court. Just like their houses have real bathrooms, kitchenettes. If they ever visit a generous colonial or Georgian house, do they even feel, on their return home, a great urge to kick their fence through their garden house, and throw their bath tube in their fishpond?
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
21
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking wrote (p. 77):
I cannot share the enthusiasm of a Corbusier, of a Geddes for town planning. I cannot see the virtue of the sharing of pale and statistical joys with the millions. What I share with others is the feeling that I am an individual and that my blossoms, such as they are, are all of my own. The average man, if he existed, the healthy normal child, if it existed, would be an unspeakable horror. Why behave if we want to be such horrors? I cannot see any virtue in a modern city. I cannot see any merit in acres of small villas, where solitary beech trees still witness the former existence of a noble estate.
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
Baas Becking referred to Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (known as Le Corbusier) (1887-1965), Swiss-French architect and one of the pioneers of ‘modern building’, and to Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), Scottish biologist and pioneering town planner.
22
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World (1942-1943), Baas Becking wrote (p. 79):
Cities are “tentacular” [Eric Verhaeren has witnessed their enormous sucking power in his series of beautiful poems] “Les villes tentaculaires” [inserted by Baas Becking ”Je suis un fils de cette race tenace dont les yeux plus que les dents sont voraces.”]. Half urbane, he rings the praise of the city, he, who himself fell victim to its turmoil (he was overrun by a traincar).
Manuscript The Kingdom of this World, Leiden University Library BPL 3233.
In Geobiology (1953a), Baas Becking gave a further explication (p. 780-781):
Brunhes (1926) describes the origin of small, local industries near forests, near deposits of pottery clay, or of surface coal. These products had to find a market. And the town, like the higher organism created a specialisation, a diversity, a division of labour which contrasts with the omnipotent single cell or with the small, rural, autarchic community. The biocoenosis of a town reminds us strongly of the autosymbiosis in a higher organism Cities have often a great centripetal tendency. The Belgian poet Emile Verhaaren speaks of “les villes tentaculaires.” […]
Cities such as these have drained the country. This drain, in many cases, has literally been a thirst for water, as is shown by large population centres, like Los Angeles, in semi-arid regions. There is also a thirst for produce and a thirst for men and this is the real function of the city. The city has parasitic tendencies. It is forever asking for more and usually it has little understanding, and less interest for the rural problems. It often shows dictatorial tendencies and Bruhes reminds us moreover that “politique est un mot, dérivé de oikos signifie la ville, la cite, la cite état.” It is here that politics and political systems are made. Urbanisation, in most countries on the increase has profoundly changed the mentality of the community as a whole. For the city breeds a special, a more artificial type of mam and many are the changes that the rural immigrant has to undergo before he is completely urbanised. The urban has set the norm. it is in the cities that the artificial increase in wants has originated. The stony desert, the hamada, the senseless jumble of buildings, surrounding the city dweller has had a profound influence on his mentality. Condemned to be pressed in by numberless fellow creatures all day his sense of values must become warped. But we are actually in need of cultural centres, such as Universities, Libraries, Concert Halls, Art Galleries, Laboratories and Musea which should be the hearts of our cities.
23
   Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Von der Keuzheit’ in Also sprach Zarathustra (1883):
Ich liebe den Wald. In den Städten ist schlecht zu leben: da giebt es zu Viele der Brünstigen.
24
   Les Villes Tentaculaires book with twenty poems written by Émile Verhaeren, published in 1895.
25
   In his unfinished essay The Kingdom of this World, Baas Becking wrote about ‘Kinogea, the traffic-earth’ (p. 82-88):
In diesem Dorfe steht das letzte Haus
So einsam wie das letzte Haus der Welt.
Die Strasze, die das kleine Dorf nicht hält,
Geht einsam weiter in die Nacht hinaus.
Das kleine Dorf ist nu rein Uebergang
Zwischen zwei Weiten – ahnungsvoll und bang,
Ein Weg langs Haüsern hin, statt eines Stegs.
Und die das Dorf verlassen wander lang,
Und viele sterben vielleicht unterwegs.
[Rainer-Maria] Rilke [1901]
Rolling wheels, at first slabs of oak or joined planks, the heavy ox cart draws its tiresome way through the sodden or the dusty furrows, leading from stronghold to stronghold. Rolling wheels, with spokes and reins and lubricated axles of the diligence, the mail coach leading through mire and dust from church spire, to church spire, wheels of iron with heavy flanges, straddling the rails of the straight railroad track, leading from the station to the station. Rolling wheels, rubber rimmed of fast and last horse drawn vehicles, wheels, tyre rimmed, mastering the endless motor track that leads from nowhere to nowhere. With the wheel, the symbol of Kinogaia, we master distance.
The wheel is one of the few typically human tools. In living nature, we meet with almost everything that man has wrought later. The paper nautilus [= Argonaut, pelagic octopus with paper-this egg case that females secrete], the Portuguese man of war has sails, birds and insects have wings, but neither wing motion nor leg motion, so common in living nature, have been used by man. But we have used the wheel, the wheel that was never realised in living nature, because it implies protoplasmic continuity between cells, tissues and organs [that] no organism can persist. The propeller and the screw we find back in living forms, but never the wheel. Engines that run on legs we did not construct. Maybe in the future there will be engineers sufficiently versed in animal physiology, or physiologists, sufficiently versed in engineering, to realise this form of locomotion into technical sense.
26
   In the 1953 version of Geobiology, Baas Becking gave a vivid description of Koprogaia (p. 783-784):
In spite of education, vandalism is still rampant among mankind, and the amount of wanton destruction should not be underestimated. The transition between vandalism and motivated destruction is often rather vague. This is, in part the case in such procedures as fishing with dynamite, or certain forms of shooting, where the proud riflemen are photographed with an enormous “tableau.” Destruction is often motivated by a satisfaction of a craving for power. It must be a glorious feeling to pull out many trees at once with one manipulation or to scrape an enormous gash out of a hill by means of a modern strip-mining bulldozer! War damage includes inundations, deforestation, demolition of buildings, trenching and the erection of many concrete structures, further the utilisation of houses, cropland, forest, and range in military preparations. The effect of military operations includes shelling, bombing and the total sterilisation of entire areas by atomic warfare. Western Europe, a battlefield for well-nigh two thousand years contains so much highly valued agricultural land that war wounds are quickly healed. Often an extraordinary effort has to be made to reclaim the war damaged area, chiefly when, after inundation with seawater, and the damage done to the dykes, the operation does not allow of delay, lest the land be lost. Cases in point are the Wieringermeerpolder and the Island of Walcheren, both in Holland, where a speedy effort saved vast tracts of land which was further improved by means of an artificial “metabiosis,” starting with the salt tolerant rape seed, followed by barley and thus preparing the soil in but a few seasons for wheat, clover and grass. But not in all cases such a speedy rehabilitation may be effected. The sea and the land have to be swept for mines and ammunition dumps, huge concrete structures (meant to withstand heavy attack) have to be demolished, and bomb craters have to be filled and often whole cities have to be rebuilt.
“The earth is also defiled by the inhabitants thereof,” Isaiah 24:5
Geopathology, suppose it were to be written, would devote much attention to the rocking pool (once a crystal spring), to the wholesale water and air pollution that seems an inevitable function of our modern civilisation. It would point to the mountainous slag heaps near our mines, and it would study the submarine refuse dumps, so well described by William Beebe. Man is a dirty feeder we have to thank the cellulose bacteria for the habitability of much-frequented landscapes, which otherwise would remain cluttered with our refuse. It is, strictly speaking, only the unutilised waste which is koprogaia for as soon as economic use is found for a waste product, it ceases to be a menace. At the other hand, while the value of many waste products is recognised, these products are often too much dissipated or too difficult to segregate to allow of rational use. And so, they remain to ell process where particles are separated in an electric field, has done much to improve the situation.
27
   In the 1953 version of Geobiology, Baas Becking referred to Leo Minder on p. 785:
Even if no “objectionable matter” is present in the effluent, it may, by its mineral content, influence the biocoenosis, especially in closed basins. Leo Minder (1943) has called attention to the change of the Züricher See from an oligotrophic to a eutrophic community. The increasing knowledge of microbiology has done much to convert organic waste into useful products. In some starch and carboard factories, the objectionable waste is converted, by a biological process, into methane. Biological purification of water is often very efficient, but certain substances, like the sulphite waste of paper mills, are refractive to biological attack and remain a source of contamination. A peculiar aspect of the problem is shown by the waste oil in much frequented oceans, like the North Sea. This oil forms a sticky film over the feathers of birds, which prevents the birds from flying. In certain seasons there are literally hundreds of these doomed creatures to be found on the beaches.
Baas Becking referred to Minder (1943). Der Zürichsee im Lichte der Seetypenlehre.
28
   Reference to Samuel Cyril Blacktin (1934), Dust. According to a review of Dust in Nature (1935, 135, p. 894):
The author has considered every conceivable aspect of smokes and dusts, even explaining how they help in the scientific detection of crime. (Under the heading of ‘dusts’ he includes such widely diverse systems as sandstorms, volcanic eruptions and ice particles.)
A quote from this book: The dust hazards in flour milling, bakeries, bronzing or bronze manufacture, building trades, asbestos industries, and basic slag industries are probably better known. Thus, the asbestosis of the asbestos industries is now attracting much study, its effects being roughly analogous to silicosis, though it exhibits definite characteristics such as the ‘peculiar bodies,’ and the most dangerous operations are spinning and weaving. Fibrosis and tuberculosis often result.
29
   Reference to Charles William Beebe (1877-1962), American naturalist, and marine biologist, well known by his deep dives with the Bathysphere off the coast of Nosuch Island in the 1930s.
30
   In the 1953 version of Geobiology, Baas Becking specified his anguish about fallowing in the Dutch dunes (p. 788):
Deserts are, for a part, disturbed successions. We may witness the formation of desert, in a wind blown dune near the coast, but these dunes are only a phase in the succession of landscapes. But if the beautiful soil of the inner dunes, used for bulb culture, lies fallow too long, the wind will blow away the topsoil and new dunes may originate. The dunes at the sites of ancient villages in central Holland, which must have been there for many centuries have failed to regenerate into a continuous soil cover, in spite of the favourable climate. Several square miles of “blowing” dune may be the result of the amblings of a single horseman. A wound in the earth may be made in as short time, but it often takes centuries to heal, especially in semi-arid regions. Especially if the disturbance is repeated, great losses may be the result.
31
   Reference to Paul Bigelow Sears (1891-1990), American ecologist and author of Deserts on the March (1935). Baas Becking also referred to Jacks and White (1939), The Rape of the Earth in Section 8.1.7.
32
   Apparently, Baas Becking used the American Standard Version as source for his quote from Isaiah 60:13.
33
   More exact the quote from Robert Bridge is:
“Man’s happiness, his flaunting, honeyed flower of soul
Is his loving response to the wealth of nature.”
34
   In July 1945 Baas Becking contributed a short essay [The Dutch Indies a Poor Country?] to the periodical De Opdracht, in which he described the potential productivity of the “half explored, hardly exploited enormous land. […] We want to see the population of that land happy. We shall succeed in that. We shall revive the latent resources into living richness.” In August 1945 he wrote in De Opdracht an essay [Three Phases in the Approach of Agricultural Problems], in which he referred to his discussion with the Government of the Dutch Indies in 1939 about the traditional system of rice culture, which he characterised as “the classical example of an integrative culture in which a dynamic equilibrium is maintained between soil, plants and man.” He proposed a “rational exploitation instead of a plan-economical” approach:
The luxuriant man, the opulent man is the greatest parasite the earth has ever known. And with the destruction of the earth the welfare of this man can increase temporarily. However, this welfare bears in itself the germ of destruction. Not the economic problem as such, not the agricultural or hygienical questions must be placed in the centre, but from all these problems one integrated whole must be constructed.
See Baas Becking (1945a and 1945b).
According to Baas Becking this “integrated approach adds one factor to the existing building, tightness and sustainability.”
35
   The five small drawings in the Geobiology manuscript were described by Baas Becking in De Opdracht (Baas Becking, 1945b):
Java, the land of contour terrasses, where the soil is held as much as possible, stands in a stark contrast to the tin and rubber deserts of Malacca; both operations have contributed to major land destruction. Burma is still in pristine condition, but between Calcutta and Allahabad one gradually enters the dry area, finally flying over the great Thar Desert in the Allahabad-Jodphore-Karachi region. It is extremely curious to see from the air that the typical “agricultural grid” of the British Indian village in this desert is still visible from the air. One can still see the foundations of many villages, over which the drift dunes have passed. In Arabia and Afghanistan, the construction jar has long since been washed into the sea. These countries seem irreversibly devastated.
Between Baghdad and Lydda across the Trans-Jordanian desert, the ancient Assyrian, straightforward farming pattern is seen on the whole road. Sometimes as many as three systems above each other and the harsh sandy plain is the silent witness to our violation of the earth. The route to Alexandria, the route from Athens to Naples is equally desolate. Where Menelaos’s nephew Telemachos proudly showed his large horse pastures and farms, where the shepherds sat down in the pawnshop, is now a decomposed and dethawed landscape. And finally, one sees Italy’s harsh de-fleshed spine: the Appenines.
36
   In the 1953 manuscript of Geobiology under the heading Chief Contributions of Organisms to the Earth, Baas Becking remarked (p. 155-156):
The pivotal position of Man in the Universe, sadly shaken by Newton and the subsequent development of celestial mechanics (Laplace) was further attacked by evolution. Undue emphasis was therefore placed on the anthropogenesis, the descent of man as a logical consequence of evolutionary thought. And up to this day it has remained a dangerous business to talk about Man, particularly in his ‘Caliban’ aspects. The ire of Caliban is easily roused. According to Oscar Wilde, Caliban is equally enraged when he sees his face in the glass or when he fails to see his face in the glass And Victorian industrial progress, inevitably leading to an exaggerated confidence in our prowess could ill support such an uncertain pedigree for such an exalted being. Even without Man raising his ugly face, organic evolution still remains as a great cultural contribution, the portent of which we cannot, as yet (a century later), evaluate properly. And while the theories of evolution may be stained by pride and prejudice, there are certain fundamental facts that remain.
37
   See Baas Becking (1942a); Baas Becking (1946b), in which the fourth section deals with ‘Dissipation’. See for ‘dissipation’ also Section 6.1.1.
38
   Baas Becking quotes Isaiah 6:11, from the New American standard version.
39
   Description taken from Geobiology (1953a).
The farmer has in his possession, the seed grain, a high concentration of organic material. This he scatters over the field. The seed germinated, even before its endosperm is exhausted, it starts to accumulate carbon from the air and minerals from the soil, and water from both. In the growth process, it accumulates not only tenfold in grain, but also the chaff, the straw and the stubble. It has been actively fighting dissipation, such wheat plant has become a veritable centre of accumulation. This concentration further increases during harvest and finally, after threshing, there is again a concentrated mass of organic matter. This matter is dissipated in various ways before it is consumed, the seed grain excepted. A number of organisms pray on it, and during milling and processing, during distribution and storage, there is loss. Only part of it is recovered into human protoplasm and into human energy. Some of it is temporally immobilised in objects less perishable, such as fibres and plastics, cardboard and other articles. In these products the wear and tear will also increase dissipation, but at a much slower rate.
40
   Dr. Frans Beekman, The Hague Netherlands, wrote me:
“The Handboek Geografie van NederlandIV (1954) mentions clink and loss of soil when selling crops in Boskoop. ‘Landing’ of soil is regularly required (dredging, peat from elsewhere, duckweed and cow dung). This also prevents soil fatigue. Apparently in 1944 this was a problem that was discovered.” (April 23, 2020).
41
   In a manuscript Seawater as a Chemical Milieu, Baas Becking (1945-1946) remarked:
In ore-smelting, for example, the dissipation of the iron decreases. It is minimal just before the pig iron is made into plates. The tissued plates are made into tins. The tins are filled with products and via wholesaler and retailer they reach the consumer. Finally, the tins land on the rubbish heaps and corrode to oxides. Now dissipation is almost infinite and the process by which iron may be regenerated becomes increasingly laborious and increasingly less economic when dissipation increases.
Manuscript in private collection. See also description of dissipation by mining in Baas Becking (1942a).
42
   The quote is from Beno Gutenberg (1889-1960), Lehrbuch der Geophysik (Gutenberg, 1929, p. 30).
43
   Quoted from R.M. Rilke (1901), Die Könige der Welt sind alt:
Das Erz hat Heimweh. Und verlassen will es die Münzen und die Räder, die es ein kleines Leben lehren. Und aus Fabriken und aus Kassen wird es zurück in das Geäder der aufgetanen Berge kehren, die sich verschließen hinter ihm.
44
   See Baas Becking (1946b), in which the first section deals with ‘Predestination and free will.’
45
   Reference to Jacob Maarten van Bemmelen (1898-1982), Professor in Criminal Law and Criminal Proceedings University Leiden. In 1942 his main work, Criminologie: Leerboek der Misdaadkunde (van Bemmelen, 1942), was published. Van Bemmelen resigned in 1942. Later that year he was arrested as a hostage by the occupiers and imprisoned in St. Michielsgestel. He was released again in 1943 and went into hiding (Otterspeer, 2019).
After WWII, he argued that despite the horrific acts of the Germans, it is still legitimate to remain an opponent of the death penalty. He therefore argued that fundamental objections to the death penalty should not suddenly be dismissed because someone had done something disgusting. He believed that the integrity of life should be respected and that anyone who takes a life loses a piece of their own humanity. These fundamental objections were therefore the reason that he never wanted to sit in any college of special administration of justice. Van Bemmelen also had serious objections to the circumstances in which political offenders were held imprisoned after the war (around 100,000) and argued for the release of people suspected of lighter offenses (around 40,000).
46
   The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain XLIX.
47
   Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle (1806-1893), French-Swiss botanist. Baas Becking referred to Candolle (1882/1883), Origine des Plantes Cultivées, or a later edition of the book. The book of Candolle is a landmark for plant history, and it remains a model in its method and rich in data.
48
   In the 1953 version of Geobiology, Baas Becking (1953a) remarked in Section Man and Plants (p. 711):
Plant and man are therefore in close symbiosis. Even if we could synthesise all necessary substances by means of a cheap source of energy (like sunlight) and thus acquired an “autotrophic” status independent of the organic environment, this great achievement might become a veritable ‘Pyrrhic victory.’ Outside the than completely urbanised world, there would be the desert, or the enormous patches of the ‘green desert.’ Man, thus estranged from nature, would sooner or later revise his directives and return to the green places which were once the veritable reasons for his existence, the city having created a mental desert in himself.
49
   Ipecacuanha, extract of the root of Psychotria ipecacuanha, a Rubiaceae, it contains emetic alkaloids cephaeline and emitine. Used as a home remedy for various purposes. The drug was already used in Europe in the 18th century. Misuse of ipecacuanha by patients with anorexia nervosa and bulimia has resulted in severe myopathy, lethargy, erythema, dysphagia, cardiotoxicity, and even death. In 1775, Joan Gideon Loten described the drug as “a poison, as Jalappa or Rhubarb, which taken in excess is also able to send someone ad patres”. See Raat (2010, p. 380).
50
   Anthracene glycosides: Aloes, dried latex of leaves of various Aloes; rhubarb, rhizome and roots of Rheum officinale; senna, dried leaves of Cassia senna. Saponin glycosides: shatavari, roots of Asparagus racemosus; liquorice, derived from Glycyrrhiza glabra; quillaja, derived from Quillaja Saponaria.
51
   Possibly a reference to Elephant Ears Midori Sour (Colocasia esculenta), popular as annuals due to their rapid growth. Colocasia makes a dramatic impact to the landscape within just one growing season.
See https://www.elephantearsplants.com/elephantearsmidorisour.htm
52
   Troche is a univalve shell.