Some Basic Historical Sketches

ATAVISTIC FEAR characterizes the earliest response of human beings to nature beyond civilization. It goes far back into the time when geological changes reduced the forests of Africa and our primate ancestors left the trees. The sense of vision assumed primary importance, over smell and hearing, and caused the darkness of the wilderness to become frightening. The etymology of the word wilderness is connected with will, self-willed, willful: ungoverned. Wilderness is best defined as at one end of a spectrum: beginning with wilderness, moving toward the pastoral, and concluding with civilization.

In the OLD WORLD, in PERSIA, the idea of paradise is connected with a luxurious garden. Wilderness is connected with the greatest evil. People dreamed of life free of wilderness [JEB: Gilgamesh slays Humbaba.] In GREECE AND ROME "good" nature was pastoral nature. The folk tradition associated wilderness with the supernatural and the monstrous. The god Pan was a terrifying god, as were satyrs, centaurs, fauns. [It is important to recognize the sense of the terrible, awe-inspiring, frightening, since mythology tends to have become trivialized.] In SCANDINAVIA, the trolls that inhabit nature are evil. Remember Beowulf's fight against Grendel, a wilderness demon. In the BIBLE, in the psalms and the prophets, wilderness is terrible, cursed, without water, presided over by Azazel, the arch-devil. The WILDERNESS IDEAL of the Bible, however, is the one exception in this old world picture of the wilderness as evil. It involves nostalgia for the religious experience of the desert. The wilderness is a sanctuary from a sinful society, the place where one could find God again, a place of purification (JEB: harking back to the idealization of the wilderness experience of God's guidance) CHRISTIANITY reproduces the Bible's ambivalence. Wilderness is the place of the sacred groves of the pagans, but also a place of refuge for religious hermits. FRANCIS of ASSISI "stood alone in a posture of humility and respect before the natural world. Assuming that birds, wolves, and other wild creatures had souls, St. Francis preached to them as equals. This challenge to the idea of man as above, rather than of, the natural world might have altered the prevailing conception of wilderness. But the Church stamped St. Francis' beliefs as heretical...."(19) In the FAR EAST, in India, man is a part of nature; in China, wise men sought out wild places to sense the unity and rhythm of the universe; in Japan, the Shinto religion involved nature worship.

In AMERICA the PIONEER VISION was hostile, utilitarian, insensible to beauty. The forest hid savages and wild beasts. As in the Bible, the wilderness was a stage on the way to the promised land. Images were military: one must conquer, subdue, vanquish nature. It was also a psychological threat, a place that threatened to break down one's own self-control. The Bible commanded men to replenish the whole earth and subdue it. Uncultivated land was useless.

But there was another vision of wilderness, the NATIONALIST WILDERNESS. The old world's historical monuments were set off against America's dominant and overwhelming wilderness: "What are the temples which Roman robbers have reared,--what are the towers in which feudal oppression has fortified itself,--what are the blood-stained associations of the one, or the despotic superstitions of the other, to the deep forests which the eye of God has alone pervaded, and where Nature, which the eye of God has alone pervaded, and where Nature, in her unviolated sanctuary, has for ages laid her fruits and followers on His altar! What is the echo of roofs that a few centuries since rung with barbaric revels, or of aisles that pealed the anthems of painted pomp, to the silence that has reigned in these dim groves since the first fiat of Creation was spoken" (Charles Fenno Hoffman, Winter in the West, 1835).

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER felt an attraction to the wilderness and sadness at its disappearance. But it was a necessary tragedy; civilization is the greater good, to lift man above the beast.

For THOREAU, natural objects reflect universal truths. Wildness is the source of vigor, inspiration, strength; this corresponds to great literature's wildness of thought: Bible, Hamlet, Iliad. Wildness symbolizes the unexplored capacities of each of us; going to the wilderness is going on an inward journey. But Mount Katahdin shocked Thoreau into awareness of horror of unrelieved wilderness: he sought a to STRADDLE THE EXTREMES OF WILDERNESS AND CULTURE.

PRESERVATION: The idea of deliberate preservation arose from romantic and nationalist notions of wilderness. Concern for the loss of wilderness (Audubon, Irving, Parkman) shifted to preservation (a park) with George Catlin, painter of Indians. Greeley, Thoreau both appealed for preservation. GEORGE PERKINS MARSH saw the usefulness of preservation: it was an alternative to the Genesis command to conquer the earth; to be concerned for the earth's ability to support mankind. He saw the decline of past civilizations from reckless exploitation. YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK (1872) was the preservation of "otherwise useless" wilderness for the sake of its curiosities. But this was followed by a gradual awareness of the "transcendental" value of a wilderness preserve. ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE (1885): preservation in order to protect the water supply. John MUIR was a transcendentalist in his thinking. He sought redemption in the wilderness, but eventually he began to think in terms of the rights of nature. With the YOSEMITE PARK controversy, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot mark the beginning of the dispute among wilderness lovers between wise use and absolute wilderness. This climaxes in the victory of the wise use policy over wilderness in the HETCH HETCHY dam dispute. This dispute was the expression of the rivalry between National Parks (Muir and wilderness preservation) and National Forests (Pinchot and wise use). The backlash of wilderness lovers is the beginning of the modern ecology/environment/wilderness movements.

By the 1890s the wilderness was conquered; the cities had become as bad as the wilderness was before: disorienting, alien. Frederick Jackson TURNER devised his famous [JEB: now discredited] FRONTIER theory of American history: that the richness of American culture arose from the challenge of the frontier, and now the frontier was closing. Because of the popularity of this theory, the idea of wilderness seemed important. The frontier and pioneering not only made Americans what they were, but made them better than others, regenerated them after European despotism, made them able to live in a democracy. TEDDY ROOSEVELT felt the savagery of hunting was a source of manhood. The encounter with nature assured man of his deserved place at the top of the Darwinian tree of life.

The GREEKS knew of but ignored man's capacity to alter the environment; they explained the decline of fertility in terms of cycles.

17th-18th CENTURY CHRISTIANS (Deists) believed in an orderly design of nature. Agriculture is the basis of natural wealth; farmers are the chosen of God (Crevecoeur, Jefferson). The actual drive to dominate nature broke up this ideology.

The people of the 19th CENTURY were certain of human progress and beneficial control of the environment. Romantic sentimentalism over nature and over the Indian was purely a concern of the artistic world; most Americans were utterly unaware of nature. The Transcendentalists made the most profound statement of the ideal of harmony: God revealed his love in man and nature. Emerson approached nature through science, that is, man studying nature's design, since nature links man to God. Man appears to master nature, but actually nature masters man. Thoreau considered man and his institutions transient; nature permanent. This belief in harmony was the most important social criticism of the belief in material progress. After this romantic idea of balance, technological progress became the hope of the future.

George Perkins Marsh was closer to the transcendentalists; he believed in a balance of man and nature. He was not a primitivist but a scholarly humanist; he was, in fact a racist, believing in the civilizing mission of the Anglo-Saxons. The savage is destructive of nature; civilization is the mother of peace and restores the land. His diplomatic experience in Turkey and Italy showed him the impact of man on nature. His importance was that he REVERSED THE ORDINARY VISION OF THINGS. Most people were concerned with HOW THE ENVIRONMENT IMPACTS ON MAN. He insisted on considering HOW MAN IMPACTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT. He was concerned especially with forests.

Conservationism: westerners considered all talk of conservation crackpot nature-loving or socialist. Major Powell had no use for the idea of Darwinian progress through submission to nature. Conservationism was not against big business, but favored large-scale cooperation against the waste caused by competition; IT WAS THE SMALL FARMER AND BUSINESSMAN WHO HATED CONSERVATION. Gifford Pinchot, founder of the Yale school of forestry, a favorite of Teddy Roosevelt, was the first to understand the use of public opinion in achieving not a balance with nature, but planned use of nature's resources in light of nationalist and patriotic progress.

In the 20th CENTURY: we in fact control nature. We cannot hope for natural balance; scientific planning is necessary. World War II made it clear that it was not the selfish misuse of nature by private individuals or corporations, but rather nations were the massive destroyers of nature. Nations are machines for making war and a perpetual war-economy is the most destructive possible way to use resources and makes all hope of a balance seem unreal; it also makes pacifists seem the ultimate realists. RUSSIA's contribution to this traces to Lysenko's idea of Lamarckian evolution--the transmission of acquired characteristics. This supports the idea of man changing the social environment, thereby transforming himself, then passing these benign changes on biologically. AMERICA's contribution was in pushing world-wide rapid economic development creating a too rapid pace of change (Kennan) and dooming itself to failure.

A waste and howling wilderness
Where none inhabited
But hellish fiends, and brutish men
That Devils worshipped. (p. 6)

What is the character of nature undisturbed?
How does nature influence human beings?
How do human beings influence nature?
What is the proper role for human beings in nature?

Ehrenfeld completely despairs of our doing anything to preserve our environment and predicts the complete breakdown of civilization as a result. A healthy environment is not stable; there is no balance of nature; nature includes disturbance.

Who, then, is the best judge of the health of an ecosystem? Clearly the one who knows that ecosystem best -- by virtue of close observation over many years. This person may be an ecologist, but equally well may be an amateur naturalist or a resident of the area, possibly a resident without any scientific training (p. 145). [JEB: Note the Berry thesis at work here.]