Section XXXVI External Nature — Further Divisions of Nature’s Gifts
The gifts of nature, we further divide into those which can be directly enjoyed and those which are of use only indirectly, by facilitating production. (Natural means of enjoyment,—means of acquisition.)220 An extreme superfluity of the former is as disastrous to civilization as a too great scarcity of them. How simple the economy of a tropical country! A banana field will support twenty-five times as many men as a wheat field (K. Ritter); and with infinitely less labor; for all that is needed is to cut the stems with their ripened fruit, to loosen the earth a little and very superficially, when new stems shoot up.221 At the base of the mountains of Mexico, a father needs labor only two days in the week to support his family. Hence, nothing so much excites the wonder of the traveler there as the diminutiveness of the cultivated ground surrounding each Indian hut.222 But in these earthly paradises, where, as Byron said, even bread is gathered like fruit, the powers of man slumber as certainly as they grow torpid in polar deserts.223 The sentence: “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” has been a blessing to mankind. Athens was not only the literary and political, but also the economic capital of Greece; and yet Attica was one of the most sterile countries in the world.224 Unfortunate Messina, on the other hand, was the most fertile province of Greece. In modern times, no countries of equal extent have produced as many great captains, statesmen, savants and artists as Holland, whose securest portions are as unfertile as those which are fertile are threatened by the sea. On the other hand, how lately and imperfectly has the so-called black-earth of southern Russia fallen under the influence of civilization!225