required any wood we should still demand the forest. The German people
need the forest as a man needs wine, although for our mere necessities
it might be quite sufficient if the apothecary alone stored away ten
gallons in his cellar. If we do not require any longer the dry wood to
warm our outer man, then all the more necessary will it be for the race
to have the green wood, standing in all its life and vigor, to warm the
inner man.

In our woodland villages--and whoever has wandered through the German
mountains knows that there are still many genuine woodland villages in
the German Fatherland--the remains of primitive civilization are still
preserved to our national life, not only in their shadiness but also in
their fresh and natural splendor. Not only the woodland, but likewise
the sand dunes, the moors, the heath, the tracts of rock and glacier,
all wildernesses and desert wastes, are a necessary supplement to the
cultivated field lands. Let us rejoice that there is still so much
wilderness left in Germany. In order for a nation to develop its power
it must embrace at the same time the most varied phases of evolution. A
nation over-refined by culture and satiated with prosperity is a dead
nation, for whom nothing remains but, like Sardanapalus, to burn itself
up together with all its magnificence. The _blase_ city man, the fat
farmer of the rich corn-land, may be the men of the present; but the
poverty-stricken peasant of the moors, the rough, hardy peasant of the
forests, the lonely, self-reliant Alpine shepherd, full of legends and
songs--these are the men of the future. Civil society is founded on the
doctrine of the natural inequality of mankind. Indeed, in this
inequality of talents and of callings is rooted the highest glory of
society, for it is the source of its inexhaustible vital energy. As the
sea preserves the vigor of the people of the coast-lands by keeping them
in a hardy natural state, so does the forest produce a similar effect on
the people of the interior. Therefore since Germany has such a large
expanse of interior country, it needs just that much more forest-land
than does England. The genuine woodland villagers, the foresters,
wood-cutters, and forest laborers are the strong, rude seamen among us
landlubbers. Uproot the forests, level the mountains, and shut out the
sea, if you want to equalize society in a closet-civilization where all
will have the same polish and all be of the same color. We