Читать книгу The Road - Hilaire Belloc - Страница 10

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So much for the first principle of all: that the Road, like all other human institutions, is best made with brains, and for that second immensely valuable, but too often forgotten, political principle: that if you begin by making your thing wrong it is likely to take root and to remain wrong.

A catalogue of the more important physical factors modifying the formula of the Road (I will come to the political and economic in a moment) is as follows:

Marsh to be traversed; water courses to be traversed; differences of surface other than marsh and water courses; gradients to be dealt with; the obstacle of vegetation to be dealt with.

To these five one may add a factor common to all, and to the making of every road, even in its most primitive stages: (6) the proximity of material (meaning by “proximity” the congeries of all the factors which make for the cheapness of material, for the advantage of using it in a particular place).

Let us take these physical points in their order.