THE FACE OF THE EARTH IS A GRAVEYARD, and so it has always been. To earth each living thing restores when it dies that which has been borrowed to give form and substance to its brief day in the sun. From earth, in due course, each new living being receives back again a loan of that which sustains life. What is lent by earth has been used by countless generations of plants and animals now dead, and will be required by countless others in the future ... no plant or animal , nor any sort of either, can establish permanent right of possession to the materials that compose its physical body (Sears, 1935: 3).