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not necessarily imply complete rule, and to subdue does
not necessarily mean to destroy.
Others have written ably on the subject of the
changing relationship of man to his environment, of his
development from hunter to herdsman, from gatherer to
cultivator, from a user of shaped rocks and simple tools
to a maker of computers, from a thrower of stones to
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a dropper of giant bombs. History is replete with
examples of how man has shaped and organized nature to
his own ends. Through migration and conflict he has
filled a seemingly boundless earth and through organ
ization, effort, and strength of will, exploited it.
For a time and in a few places, production came
to represent a worthwhile and achievable end in itself;
and a second thought followed close on the heels of the
first: that increasing levels of consumption might
represent an even more desirable, and apparently just
as possible end. The twin ideas of increasing production
and consumption, reflected in modern income accounting
terms as continued increases in national product, came
and therefore will be taken, but the range of rational
alternative actions is limited by the environment.
Eskimos do not grow bananas, nor is coal mined where
there is no coal.
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See especially a series of articles by Carl
Sauer, Clarence Glacken, Alexander Spoehr, and Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin in Mans Role in Changing the
Face of the Earth, ed. by Thomas, op. cit..