Man and Earth (Part One)

Ludwig Klages

Translated from Ludwig Klages, Mensch und Erde.

Every age, and especially our own, has its slogans with which it proclaims its tendencies like rolling drums, silencing the voice of doubt in the ranks of its adherents and drawing ever new crowds around its banner from among the impartial. The three strongest of today’s slogans are “Progress,” “Culture,” and “Individualism” [Persönlichkeit], though in such a way that the idea of progress, being uniquely characteristic of the present, supports the other two and lends them their distinctive color in prevailing thought. It thus believes itself to be superior both to primitive peoples and to the historical epochs that preceded it, and to the question of what grounds this belief rests upon, it has the answer ready: science stands at a height never before attained; technology masters nature, before which all earlier peoples retreated helplessly; from the inexhaustible stores of the earth, it methodically sustains the general welfare; space and time are penetrated by the spirit’s ethereal wave of telecommunication; and even the boundless ocean of air has now finally been “conquered” by its inventive genius. Not for convinced believers in this faith, who will die with it, but rather for a younger generation that still questions, we want to attempt to lift the veil at least in one place and uncover the threatening self-deception that it conceals.

Even one who remains unfamiliar with the terrible consequences that the guiding idea of “progress” has brought forth must become wary in the face of these justifications. For the ancient Hellene, the highest object of desire was kalokagathia, that is, the inner and outer beauty of man which he saw in the image of the Olympians; for the Middle Ages it was the “salvation of the soul,” by which it understood the spiritual elevation to God; for the Goethean man it was the perfection of bearing, “mastery” in the vicissitudes of fate; and however different such goals might be, we understand without further ado the deep happiness in the attainment of each. But what the progressive is proud of are mere successes, increases in mankind’s power, which he thoughtlessly confuses with increases in value, and we must doubt whether he is capable of appreciating happiness at all and does not rather know only the empty satisfaction granted by the awareness of his dominion. Power by itself is blind to all values, blind to truth and justice and, where it must still permit these latter, certainly blind to beauty and life. In our rebuttal, we will begin with what is well known.

Let us grant the heights of science, however little it may be secure against every challenge; those of technology are beyond doubt. But what are their fruits, by which, according to a wise word of Scripture, we should measure the worth of all human endeavor? Let us begin with those manifestations of life whose vitality has never been disputed: plants and animals. The ancient peoples dreamed of a lost “golden age” or paradise, where the lion dwelt peacefully with the lamb, where the serpent lived as a prophetic guardian spirit with man. These were not mere dreams, as that false doctrine would have us believe — the doctrine that reads from nature only one thing: the unlimited “struggle for existence.”

Polar explorers tell us of the fearless trustfulness of penguins, reindeer, sea lions, seals, and even seagulls upon man’s first appearance. Pioneers of the tropics never tire of describing to us with amazement the scenes of barely-trodden savannas, where in peaceful fellowship there swarm together wild geese, cranes, ibises, flamingoes, herons, storks, marabous, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, antelopes, and gazelles. Of genuine symbioses we know that they are spread throughout the entire animal kingdom and across the whole earth. But where Progress-minded man has assumed the dominion of which he boasts, he has sown death and horror all around. What remains with us, for example, of the wildlife of Germania? Bear and wolf, lynx and wildcat, the European bison, the elk and aurochs, eagle and vulture, crane and falcon, swan and eagle-owl had already become mere fable even before the modern war of extermination began. But that war has cleared things away more thoroughly. Under the most feeble-minded of all pretexts, that countless animal species are “harmful,” it has nearly exterminated everything that is not called hare, partridge, deer, pheasant, or at most, wild boar.¹

Boar, ibex, fox, marten, weasel, badger and otter — animals to which legend has attached ancient memories — have dwindled where they are not already completely gone; river gull, tern, cormorant, diver, heron, kingfisher, royal kite, owl have been given over to ruthless persecution, the seal colonies of the Baltic and North Sea to extermination. One knows more than two hundred names of German cities and villages that derive from the beaver, evidence of the spread of the industrious rodent in earlier times; today there remain only a few remnant colonies: in the Elbe between Torgau and Wittenberg, which would also have vanished already without legal protection! And who does not notice with secret anxiety the ever-faster decrease from year to year of our lovely songbirds, the migratory birds! Just barely a generation ago, even in the cities during summertime the blue air was full of the whirring of swallows and swifts, a sound through which distance itself and all wandering instinct seem to pass. At that time one counted in a suburb of Munich some three hundred inhabited nests; today there are only four or five.

Even in the countryside it has become uncannily quiet, and no longer do “countless larks” sing in the dewy morning as they did in Eichendorff’s jubilant poetry. One must now count it among strokes of luck if, on a remote forest path, one hears once again the bright and portentous call of the quail coming from a sunny meadow — a bird which formerly filled German lands by thousands upon thousands, and lives on in both folksong and poetry. Magpie, woodpecker, oriole, tit, redstart, warbler, nightingale — they all seem to be vanishing inexorably.²

The majority of our contemporaries, crammed together in large cities and from youth accustomed to smoking chimneys, the din of street noise, and nights bright as day, no longer possess any standard by which to measure the beauty of the landscape; already they believe they see nature at the sight of a potato field, and find even higher demands satisfied when a few starlings and sparrows twitter in the meager roadside trees. But if indeed once in a while from the resounding song and fragrance of the German countryside, as it still was about seventy years ago, a breath from the words and images of those days touches their desolate souls, then there are immediately enough weatherproof phrases about “economic development,” requirements of “utility,” unavoidable necessities of the cultural process, to ward off the admonishing reproach. Thus it becomes necessary that we widen somewhat the circle of our observation.

We leave aside the question of whence arid utility derives its right to make itself the supreme principle of all action and to justify the most dismal devastations. We also do not wish to repeat what is soon to become common knowledge: that in no case, indeed truly no case, has man been able to correct nature successfully. Where songbirds dwindle, blood-sucking insects and harmful caterpillars multiply without limit, often stripping vineyards and forests bare in just a few days; where buzzards are shot and vipers exterminated, the plague of mice appears and ruins through destruction of bumblebee nests the clover that depends on this insect species for its pollination; the larger predators managed the selection among game animals, which through reproduction of sick specimens degenerates where its natural enemies are lacking; and so it continues up to the more severe reprisals of wounded nature in exotic lands in the form of those terrible epidemics that dog the steps of the “civilizing” European. The East Asian plague, for instance, arose essentially due to the mass distribution of germ-bearing parts of local rodents, like the Siberian marmot. Let us set all this aside in order to illuminate with just a few examples the single and decisive point: that the utility one boasts of has not the slightest connection with material necessity.

What the German Imperial citizen calls “ancient forest” is merely young plantation timber arranged in poles; but the true ancient forest, which among us has become a pious legend, approaches its end across the entire globe. North America, the most forest-rich of all continents in the time of the Indians, must today cover its wood requirements through imports; and the only remaining exporting countries — Hungary, Russia, Scandinavia, and Canada — will soon be rid of their surplus. The “advanced” peoples, taken as a whole, use around three hundred and fifty thousand tons of wood annually for paper production, so that on average every two minutes a book and at least every second a newspaper appears — this being approximately the rate of production of these articles within the circle of “civilization.” Let someone prove to us the necessity that mankind be flooded with billions of bad newspapers, defamatory writings, and pulp novels; and if one cannot, then the clearing of primeval forests is naked sacrilege.³

The Italians annually capture and kill millions of migratory birds, exhausted as they land on their coasts; what they do not consume themselves fills their coffers through exports to England and France. To illustrate with numbers: in 1909, for example, a single shipment brought sixty-two thousand live quails crammed into tight cages to England, where the poor creatures, in pitiful condition, were slaughtered for enthusiasts. On the Sorrentine Peninsula, up to five hundred thousand are captured alive each year. The average annual number of birds destroyed in Egypt amounts to approximately three million, not counting the countless larks, ortolans, warblers, swallows, and nightingales.⁴ These feathered singers fall victim not to hunger but to luxury and commerce.

Even more dreadful devastations are wrought by fashion — the greed of a few milliners and merchants, whose meager creativity seems to have been inspired by Satan himself. Here is an excerpt from Cri de Paris: “Each year, Parisian hatmakers process up to forty thousand terns and gulls. Last year, a London merchant sold thirty-two thousand hummingbirds, eighty thousand various seabirds, and eight hundred thousand pairs of bird wings of various species. It is estimated that no fewer than three hundred million birds are sacrificed annually for women’s fashion. Certain regions have entirely lost specific bird species that once defined their landscapes. To preserve the luster of the flight or down feathers, birds must be plucked alive; thus, the poor creatures are not hunted with guns but trapped with nets. The inhumane ‘hunter’ tears the feathers from the living birds’ bodies, and these innocent victims of fashion endure the greatest torments before finally dying in spasms of agony.”⁵

Such horrors are tolerated by humanity, which calls itself civilized, in mindless silence, while an unparalleled slaughter spreads around the globe, and women thoughtlessly parade adorned with these tragic trophies. Needless to say, all the listed species—and many others, including the radiant bird of paradise and the mighty albatross—are nearing extinction. The same fate threatens, sooner or later, all animal species that have not been domesticated or bred by humans. The billions of fur-bearing animals in North America, the countless arctic foxes, sables, and ermines of Siberia, all fall victim to the excesses of fashion. Since the establishment in 1908 of a company in Copenhagen for large-scale whaling using a new method — floating factories that process captured whales immediately — some five hundred thousand of Earth’s largest mammals have been slaughtered over the following two years. The day is near when the whale will belong solely to history and museums.

For millennia, millions of American buffalo, the favorite game of the indigenous peoples, roamed the prairies. But barely had the “advanced” Europeans arrived when a senseless and horrific slaughter began, and today the bison is gone, its story ended. The same tragic drama is now unfolding in Africa. To supply so-called civilized humanity with billiard balls, walking-stick handles, fine combs, fans, and similarly “useful” objects, recent calculations by the French researcher Tournier show that eight hundred thousand kilograms of ivory are processed annually. This equates to the killing of fifty thousand of the world’s largest land animals. According to the latest reports, from the moment the Congo State relinquished administration of the Lade region, an English hunting company surrounded and massacred a herd of eight thousand elephants, including females and young.⁶

In the same relentless manner, antelopes, rhinoceroses, wild horses, kangaroos, giraffes, ostriches, and wildebeest are being slaughtered in the tropics, while polar bears, musk oxen, arctic foxes, walruses, and seals are hunted in the arctic zones. Humanity, seized by an orgy of unparalleled devastation, carries out its “civilization” with the features of unrestrained bloodlust, and the Earth’s abundance withers under its poisonous breath. These, then, are the fruits of “progress”!

These things are, as stated, well known. Well-meaning and warm-hearted men have in the last ten years again and again raised their warning voices and seek through Nature and Homeland Protection Leagues⁷ to stem the evil; but what is not known is the deepest cause and the full scope of the disaster. Before we address that, however, we continue with our indictment.

We need not decide whether life extends beyond the realm of individual beings or not, whether the earth, as the belief of the ancients would have it, is a living being or (according to the view of the moderns) an unfeeling lump of “dead matter”; for this much is certain: that terrain, cloud-play, waters, plant-cover, and the busy activities of animals work together in every landscape to create a whole which moves us deeply, which embraces individual living things as in an ark, weaving them into the great happening of the All. Essential harmonies in the planet’s symphonic storm are the sublime desolation of the desert, the solemnity of high mountains, the drifting melancholy of wide heaths, the mysterious weaving of the ancient forest, the pulsing of sea-glinting coastlines. Into these were embedded, or remained fused with them as in a dream, the original works of man. Whether we direct our gaze to the imposing solemnity of Egypt’s pyramids, sphinx rows, and lotus-crowned columns, to the seeming delicacy of Chinese bell towers; to the articulated clarity of Hellenic temples; or to the warm intimacy of the Low German farmhouse; to the steppe-freedom of the Tatar tent — each one breathes and reveals the soul of the landscape from which it has grown. Just as earlier peoples gladly called themselves “earth-sprung,” so too is everything they created earth-sprung in form and color, from dwellings to weapons and household implements, to daggers, spears, arrows, axes, swords, to chains, clasps and rings, to the shapely and richly adorned vessels, to gourd bowls and copper dishes, to the thousandfold wickerwork and weaving. More terrible still than what we have heard so far, though perhaps not quite to the same degree irreparable, are the effects of “progress” on the image [Bild]⁸ of settled regions. The bond between human creations and the Earth has been severed, destroyed for centuries, if not forever. The original harmony of the landscape is annihilated. The same railway tracks, telegraph wires, and power lines slash rudely through forests and mountain profiles, whether in India, Egypt, Australia, or America. The same gray, multi-story tenements align monotonously wherever modern civilization unfolds its “blessings.” Everywhere, landscapes are “parcelled out,” divided into rectangular and square plots; ditches are filled, flowering hedgerows shaved down, reed-encircled ponds drained. The flourishing wilderness of the moors has been replaced by uniform plantations lined up like soldiers, stripped of the “harmful” undergrowth. Rivers that once meandered through lush slopes are transformed into straight canals; rapids and waterfalls — even Niagara — are tapped to feed electrical stations. Smokestacks rise along their banks, and factory waste poisons the Earth’s pure waters. The face of the continents is gradually turning into a landscape riddled with agriculture and resembling a sprawling Chicago.

“Oh my God,” cried the chivalrous Achim von Arnim a hundred years ago, “where are the ancient trees under which we played just yesterday, the ageless markers of firm boundaries? What has happened to them? What is happening?” And Lenau summed up the impressions of our homeland in these words: “Nature has been seized by the throat, and blood flows from every pore.” What would these men say today? They might prefer, like Heinrich von Kleist, to leave an Earth so desecrated by its degenerate offspring, humanity. “The devastations of the Thirty Years’ War did not so thoroughly sweep away the heritage of the past in cities and countryside as have the excesses of modern life with its ruthless pursuit of practical ends.”⁹ And as for the hypocritical “love of nature” boasted by tourism, we hardly need to mention the devastation wrought by the “opening up” of unspoilt coasts and mountain valleys. All this has been said time and again — albeit in vain — already articulated in exemplary fashion in 1880 by the excellent Rudorff, whose essay “On the Relationship of Modern Life to Nature” (reprinted in the 1910 Zeitschrift für Heimatschutz, Issue 1) we strongly recommend to everyone.¹⁰

But that is not all; the frenzy of annihilation has also carved its bloody furrow through humanity itself. Entire peoples, or nearly so, have disappeared — either slaughtered, starved to death, or condemned to hopeless decline by the “gifts” of progress: alcohol, opium, and syphilis. The Indians are gone, as are the native inhabitants of Australia and all the best of the Polynesian tribes; the bravest of the African nations resist but succumb to “civilization.” And just recently, we witnessed Europe indifferently watching as its last primeval people, the Albanians — “sons of the eagle,” whose lineage traces back to the legendary Pelasgians — were systematically slaughtered by the Serbs in their thousands and tens of thousands.¹¹

We were not mistaken when we suspected “progress” of being driven by an empty lust for power, and we see that there is method in this mad destruction. Under the pretexts of “utility,” “economic development,” and “culture,” it aims in truth at the annihilation of life itself. It strikes at life in all its forms: razing forests, erasing animal species, exterminating indigenous peoples, defacing and disfiguring the landscape with the veneer of industry, and degrading the living beings it leaves behind to mere commodities, as though they were nothing more than slaughtered livestock, subject to the boundless hunger for exploitation. Serving this destructive endeavor is all of technology, and serving technology, in turn, is the largest domain of modern science.

Here we pause for a moment. In some way, humanity also belongs to nature; some even claim that humanity belongs to it entirely, which, as we shall see, is a misunderstanding. Nevertheless, humanity, too, is alive, and if something within it is in conflict with life, it is ultimately in conflict with itself. Our chain of evidence would lack its most crucial link if we did not also provide examples of humanity’s self-destruction.

The list of the dead, which would need to be written here just to name the most significant losses, would far exceed that of the animals; thus, it may suffice to randomly highlight a few main facts. Where are the folk festivals and sacred customs that, for millennia, served as an inexhaustible source for myth and poetry: the field rides to bless the crops, the procession of the Pentecost bride, the torch races through the cornfields? Where is the bewildering richness of traditional costumes in which each people expressed its essence, harmonized with the image of its landscape?

In place of the rich necklaces, colorful bodices, embroidered vests, metal-laden belts, light sandals, toga-like cloaks, pleated turbans, and flowing kimonos, “civilization” has given men the gray of the suit jacket and women the latest Parisian fashion. And where has the folk song gone, that ancient, eternally renewed treasure of songs, which gently veiled all of human becoming and passing like a silver web? Weddings and funerals, revenge, war and downfall, exuberance and wanderlust, the daring of riders, the tenderness of children, and the joys of motherhood were breathed and flowed through these inexhaustible songs — sometimes igniting passionate deeds, sometimes lulling into the slumber of forgetfulness.

People composed and sang at dances, over full cups, at farewells and reunions, during consecrations and magical rituals, in the dim light of spinning rooms, before battles, at the biers of the fallen. They spurred themselves on with mocking songs, resolved disputes through competitive singing, and wove dark and bright poetry around mountains, springs, and shores, domestic animals, wildlife, and plants, the movements of clouds, and the pouring rain. And what we today can hardly begin to imagine: even work became a celebration. Not only while wandering or during festive feasts — songs were also sung while hauling anchors, in the rhythm of rowing strokes, while carrying heavy loads and towing ships, binding barrels, to the beat of the blacksmith’s hammer, scattering seeds, mowing, threshing, grinding grain, breaking flax, weaving, and braiding.

“Progress” not only turned labor gray but also made it silent. Or rather, we failed to recognize that it replaced the primal song of life with cheap street tunes, operetta melodies, and the saccharine strains of the cabaret; that it supplanted organically evolved instruments like the Spanish guitar, the Italian mandolin, the Finnish kantele, the South Slavic gusli, and the Russian balalaika with the piano and the gramophone.¹²

Thus, we have gathered the fruits of “progress”! Like a consuming fire, it has swept over the Earth, and wherever it has burned a place thoroughly bare, nothing will grow again for as long as humanity endures! Annihilated animal and plant species do not renew themselves, the secret warmth of humanity’s heart is drained, the inner wellspring, which nourished songs and sacred festivals, has dried up, and what remains is a monotonous, cold workday adorned with the false glitter of noisy “amusements.”

There is no doubt: we stand in the age of the soul’s decline [Unterganges der Seele].

1. Editor’s Note: According to a note in his personal copy, Klages planned to insert a footnote here and on page 618 [see note below] for a 6th edition planned in 1951 but never published. The text of the two footnotes is not available, but there exists a draft text for a foreword to the new edition. In it, he says: “Since the essays from the years 1913, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1925 have remained completely untouched by time, any change would have meant an impairment of their content. As for the leading essay Man and Earth, conditions have meanwhile not improved but worsened, about which two annotations provide information above.”

2. See note above.

3. Editor's Note: In the printing of this essay in the small volume Man and Life (Jena: Diederichs 1937), a footnote at this point referred to the appendix.

4. See Guenther, Der Naturschutz, p. 103.

5. Quoted from Ankenbrand, Naturschutz und Naturschutzparke.

6. Deutsche Tageszeitung.

7. Translator’s Note: The Natur- und Heimatschutzbünde (Nature and Homeland Protection Societies) were a series of organizations in 19th and early 20th-century Germany focused on preserving the natural environment, local landscapes, and traditional ways of life against the encroachment of industrialization and urbanization. The roots of these movements can be traced to the broader European romantic and nationalist movements that emphasized a connection to the land, nature, and local traditions. In Germany, these ideals were closely tied to a growing concern over industrialization, urbanization, and the loss of rural landscapes. These societies advocated for the preservation of natural landscapes, historic buildings, and local customs, believing that the destruction of these elements posed a threat to the nation's cultural and physical well-being.

8. Translator’s Note: In Ludwig Klages’ mature thought, the concept of Bild (image) holds central significance, as it encapsulates the unity and immediacy of life, soul, and nature. For Klages, the Bild represents the primordial, symbolic reality that connects humans with the deeper currents of existence and the living world. It is through Bilder that the soul perceives and expresses itself, embodying an organic, holistic understanding of existence in contrast to the abstract, mechanistic tendencies of modernity. Klages contrasts the Bild with the rational, dissecting intellect and will, which he sees as forces of alienation and destruction. The dominance of modern rationalism and technology fractures the unity embodied in the Bild, severing humanity from its connection to the Earth and its vital essence. Thus, for Klages, the loss of the Bild in modern life symbolizes the spiritual and ecological crises of the age, and the recovery of an intuitive, image-centered relation to the world is essential for restoring harmony between humanity and nature.

9. From the founding proclamation of the Bund für Heimatschutz.

10. Translator’s Note: Rudorff, Ernst. „Über das Verhältnis des modernen Lebens zur Natur.“ Zeitschrift für Heimatschutz, Jahrgang 10, Heft 1, 1910.

11. Translator’s Note: The passage refers to the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), a period of intense conflict in which the Balkan states fought against the Ottoman Empire and later among themselves to expand their territories. During this time, atrocities were committed against civilian populations, including Albanians, who were predominantly Muslim and often perceived as aligned with the Ottoman Empire. Serbian military and paramilitary forces targeted Albanian villages in Kosovo and surrounding regions, carrying out massacres, forced expulsions, and destruction of property. These actions were part of efforts to solidify Serbian control over territories with significant Albanian populations. Contemporary accounts and later historical research highlight the scale of violence, with estimates of thousands of Albanians killed or displaced during these campaigns, which sought to ethnically cleanse areas considered strategically or politically vital for Serbia. This historical episode of course provides essential context for understanding the Balkan conflicts that occurred in the late 20th century after the collapse of Communist Yugoslavia.

12. To anyone who still has an appreciation for folk songs, we warmly recommend the heartfelt book by Böckel, Psychologie der Volksdichtung (Psychology of Folk Poetry).