CHAPTER NINE
The Zodiacal Earth-Field - 6

The Geomorphic Approach
In 1945-46 I wrote a book (long out of print) which its New York publisher, the Philosophical Library, insisted on printing under the inadequate title Modern Man's Conflicts: The Creative Challenge of a Global Civilization. The sub-title was all right, but the title will be, when republished, Harmony Through Conflicts.
      In the second Part of the book there is a chapter entitled "The Road to Global Harmony"; and I would like to quote at length from the sub-section "Elements of Global Morphology," for the facts stated in it and the interpretation of these facts are the foundation for the system of geo-zodiacal correspondences I shall be presenting.

"Let us look at the earth-globe. We should have learned to see it as a globe pivoting around the polar axis; its continental masses of land and oceans dotted with islands, big and small, spreading over its surface in characteristic shapes. Here mankind lives. Within this global field men produce and strive to reach harmony within themselves and with one another — strive, alas, so far most unsuccessfully as a rule. How can they hope to reach harmony as men, if they do not understand the harmony that chords all lands and seas as a dynamic whole, as an integral field of operation? The earth surface is a whole, and it is dynamic in, as much as it is constantly in motion and in a state of morphological change. The earth whirls in space in a complex combination of motions which constantly modify the 'geomorphic' and 'geostatic ' equilibrium of its lands, seas and air-currents. Mountains and continents rise and fall. Ice ages come in waves. There may be even greater changes in the polarization and axial inclination of our globe as a whole, whence vast cataclysms that imprint deep-seated remembrances in the collective unconscious of all civilizations."
      "The earth may not be strictly speaking 'alive'; but it is the matrix — or matricial field — from which all living organisms emerge and within which they operate in unity or diversity, as material organisms and as participants in a cosmic-planetary drama of evolution. Most living organisms remain unconscious of this participation, live and die in a, to them, meaningless sequence. A few human beings at all times reach full and direct consciousness of this great evolution; give to their less aware comrades visions and symbols to foreshadow what the latter in turn may come to experience; and, passing on, remain as indivisible units of consciousness and power within the great oneness of Man."
      "From the thin layers of this earth-surface, all life springs forth. Surely, if we can only visualize and understand our global world as a whole of organically (or quasi-organically) inter-related parts and functions, we may end by sensing and perhaps clearly understanding what each of these continental and oceanic parts represents in the economy of the whole. What we need is a sense of gestalt -that is, of integral form — and of symbolic values; to which the records of history (and even of persistent world-wide traditions) should add much meaning, if they too are understood in terms of 'wholes of time', i.e. of cycles. We need a new approach to geography and to the geographical basis of history and civilization; we need, both, an integrative approach and an engineer's approach — thus we need branches of knowledge which we have called respectively 'geomorphics' and 'geotechnics'."
      "Our planet is a whole; human civilization is a whole. In the Age of plenitude, of which we speak throughout this book, creative fulfillment can only come to man as these wholes are taken as foundations for living, feeling and thinking. What we named 'geotechnics' is the science of management of the total resources of the earth as an all-inclusive field of operation. And by 'geomorphics' we mean the understanding of the structure of this field, not primarily in terms of the amount of materials, energy and human beings available for production on each and all lands or seas, but rather in terms of the geomorphic structure and shape of continents and oceans. These global structures, after all, condition climates and population, migrations and the course of civilization. They are as significant to anyone attempting to understand the past, present and future of humanity as a whole, as the study of the shape of a person's body and features is to the endocrinologist and psychologist (or even criminologist) whose business it is to understand the temperament, character and behavior of men. We might thus speak of geomorphics as a kind of geognomy similar in intent to physiognomy; a modern and scientific version of the latter having been provided by Dr. Sheldon's studies in The Varieties of Human Physique (Harper, 1940) and his classification of human bodies and temperaments into viscerotonic, somatotonic, and cerebrotonic."