Читать книгу The Holy Earth - Liberty Hyde Bailey - Страница 8

Retrospect

Many years have passed since The Holy Earth was written. I think I have not read the book since the proofs left my hands nearly thirty years ago. Others have read it in more recent time, and I have agreed to their request for a reprint.

The book was my expression of an experience in life. I was born against the primeval forest. My youth was on the farm cut from that forest. I grew up with woodsmen and settlers and pioneers. Indians still inhabited the region. Wild animals were numerous. Passenger pigeons had a vast colony. It was a rigorous and wholesome discipline. Then I taught with and for country folk. All these experiences were against the background of simple and natural conditions.

I had been impressed with the fact that nature repairs and reconstructs itself. It provides its own healing. If the farm is wholly abandoned, nature takes it over and in time rears a new forest and builds new land. The city and the factory do not rebuild themselves when neglected or abandoned: they, too, in the processes of time return to forest or desert or plain. The circumstances of the native earth are the essential background of the race of men. What should be the spiritual and emotional reaction of the race of men to these circumstances? The book attempted to express an attitude.

The Holy Earth was written mostly on ship in the South Seas. I had been impressed again on long journeys with the majesty and fertility of the waters. I was not thinking of land alone. The sea is the larger part of the earth. I had in mind the planet on which men live. The planet is part of a program we do not comprehend but in which we may partake. We manipulate the surface of the earth for good or for ill. We must keep and protect the heritage for the millions who are to come after us. This is a moral obligation.

We did not make the earth. We have received it and its bounties. If it is beyond us, so is it divine. We have inescapable responsibilities. It is our privilege so to comprehend the use of the earth as to develop a spiritual stature. When the epoch of mere exploitation of the earth shall have worn itself out, we shall realize the heritage that remains and enter new realms of satisfaction.

L. H. BAILEY

Ithaca, N. Y.

Oct. 26, 1942.