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 Thinking Like a Planet

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oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd ii 10/24/2013 12:53:14 AM
 Thinking Like a Planet
The Land Ethic and the
Earth Ethic

J. Baird Callicott

oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd iii 10/24/2013 12:53:14 AM

 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Callicott, J. Baird.
Thinking like a planet : the land ethic and the earth ethic / J. Baird Callicott.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-19-932489-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-19-932488-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Environmental ethics. 2. Climatic changes—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
GE42.C353 2013
179'.1—dc23
2013016146

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd iv 10/24/2013 12:53:14 AM

 For Theo Callicott, my grandson

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oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd vi 10/24/2013 12:53:14 AM
 Contents

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

Part One: The Land Ethic

1. A Sand County Almanac 17
1.1 The Author 17
1.2 The Provenance of the Book 18
1.3 The Unity of A Sand County Almanac—An Evolutionary-Ecological
Worldview 20
1.4 The Argument of the Foreword—Toward Worldview
Remediation 21
1.5 The Argument of Part I—The Intersubjective Biotic
Community—Introduced 23
1.6 The Argument of Part I—The Intersubjective Biotic Community—
Driven Home 24
1.7 The Argument of Part II—The Evolutionary Aspect: Time and
Telos 26
1.8 The Argument of Part II—The Evolutionary Aspect: Beauty, Kinship,
and Spirituality 28
1.9 The Argument of Part II—The Ecological Aspect 29
1.10 The Argument of Part II—The Pivotal Trope: “Thinking Like a
Mountain” 30
1.11 Norton’s Narrow Interpretation of Leopold’s
Worldview-Remediation Project 33
1.12 The Argument of Part III—To “See” with the Ecologist’s
“Mental Eye” 35
1.13 The Argument of Part III—Axiological Implications of the
Evolutionary-Ecological Worldview 36
1.14 The Argument of Part III—The Normative Implications of the
Evolutionary-Ecological Worldview 37
1.15 The Persuasive Power of Leopold’s Style of Writing 38
1.16 The New Shifting Paradigm in Ecology and the
Evolutionary-Ecological Worldview 41
1.17 The Challenge Before Us 44

vii

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 2. The Land Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Philosophical and
Evolutionary Foundations 46
2.1 The Odysseus Vignette 46
2.2 Expansion of the Scope of Ethics Over Time (?) 47
2.3 Ethical Criteria/Norms/Ideals Versus (Un)Ethical Behavior/
Practice 49
2.4 Ethics Ecologically (Biologically) Speaking 50
2.5 Darwin’s Account of the Origin of Ethics by Natural Selection 51
2.6 Darwin’s Account of the Extension of Ethics 52
2.7 The Community Concept in Ecology 54
2.8 The Humean Foundations of Darwin’s Evolutionary Account of the
Moral Sense 55
2.9 Universalism and Relativism: Hume and Darwin 56
2.10 How Hume Anticipates Darwin’s Account of the Origin and
Expansion of Ethics 57
2.11 Shades of the Social-Contract Theory of Ethics in “The Land
Ethic” 58
2.12 Individualism in (Benthamic) Utilitarianism and (Kantian)
Deontology 60
2.13 Holism in Hume’s Moral Philosophy 61
2.14 Holism in “The Land Ethic” 63
2.15 The Land Ethic and the Problem of Ecofascism Resolved 65
2.16 Prioritizing Cross-Community Duties and Obligations 66
2.17 Is the Land Ethic Anthropocentric or Non-Anthropocentric? 67

3. The Land Ethic (an Ought): A Critical Account of Its Ecological

Foundations (an Is) 70
3.1 Moore’s Naturalistic Fallacy 70
3.2 Hume’s Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Land Ethic 71
3.3 How Hume Bridges the Lacuna Between Is-Statements and
Ought-Statements 73
3.4 How Kant Infers Ought-Statements from Is-Statements in
Hypothetical Imperatives 75
3.5 The Specter of Hume’s Is/Ought Dichotomy Finally Exorcised 76
3.6 The Roles of Reason and Feeling in Hume’s Ethical Theory
Generally and Leopold’s Land Ethic Particularly 78
3.7 How the General Theory of Evolution Informs the Land Ethic 80
3.8 How Ecosystem Ecology Informs the Land Ethic—Beyond the Biota 82
3.9 How Ecosystem Ecology Informs the Land Ethic—A Fountain of
Energy 83
3.10 How Organismic Ecology Informs the Land Ethic 86
3.11 How Mechanistic Ecology Informs the Land Ethic 87
3.12 How the Ecosystem Paradigm Returns Ecology to Its Organismic
Roots 88

viii Contents

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 3.13 How Leopold Anticipates Hierarchy Theory in “The Land Ethic” 90
3.14 Ecological Ontology and the Community Paradigm in Ecology 91
3.15 Ecological Ontology and the Ecosystem Paradigm in Ecology 93
3.16 The “Flux of Nature” Paradigm Shift in Contemporary Ecology and
“The Land Ethic” 94
3.17 A Revised Summary Moral Maxim for the Land Ethic 96

4. The Land Ethic and the Science of Ethics: From the Seventeenth
through the Twentieth Centuries 98
4.1 Hobbes’s Science of Ethics 98
4.2 Locke’s Science of Ethics 100
4.3 Hume’s Science of Ethics 101
4.4 Kant’s Science of Ethics 104
4.5 The Utilitarian Science of Ethics 105
4.6 How Logical Positivism Cleaved Apart Science and Ethics 106
4.7 Ayer’s Migration of a Science of Ethics from Philosophy to the
Social Sciences 108
4.8 Kohlberg’s Social Science of Ethics 109
4.9 Gilligan’s Social Science of Ethics 110
4.10 Group Selection in Darwin’s Science of Ethics 111
4.11 Group Selection in Wynne-Edwards’s Evolutionary Biology 112
4.12 Williams’s Attack on Group Selection 114
4.13 Huxley’s and Williams’s Anti-Natural (and Anti-Logical) View of
Ethics 115
4.14 Sociobiology: Wilson’s Neo-Darwinian Account of the Origin of
Ethics 116
4.15 The Fallacies of Division and Composition in the Sociobiological
Science of Ethics 118
4.16 Sociobiology and Biological Determinism 120
4.17 The Evolutionary Foundations of the Land Ethic in Light of the
Modern and the New Syntheses in Evolutionary Biology 120

5. The Land Ethic and the Science of Ethics: In the Light of

Evolutionary Moral Psychology 123
5.1 Singer’s Response to the Evolutionary Account of Ethics 124
5.2 Rachels’s Response to the Evolutionary Account of Ethics 126
5.3 Darwin’s Alternative to Animal Ethics à la Singer and Rachels 127
5.4 Midgley’s Alternative to Animal Ethics à la Singer and Rachels 128
5.5 A Community-Based Analysis of Ethical Partiality 130
5.6 A Community-Based Analysis of Ethical Impartiality 131
5.7 Dennett, Singer, and Arnhart on the Philosophical Implications of
Darwinism 133
5.8 Group Selection Revisited 135
5.9 The Analogy Between Language and Ethics 139

Contents ix

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 5.10 Hume on Nature and Nurture in Ethics 141
5.11 Post-Positivist Ethical Absolutism 142
5.12 Wherefore Post-Positivist Ethical Rationalism and
Exclusionism 144
5.13 Moral Norms in Humean Ethics Analogous to Medical Norms 145
5.14 Critically Appraising Moral Norms in Terms of Intrasocial
Functionality and Intersocial Harmony 147
5.15 A Humean-Darwinian Science of Ethics and Constrained Cultural
Relativism 148
5.16 The Philosophical Foundations of the Land Ethic Vindicated by the
Contemporary Science of Ethics, but Limited to Ecological Spatial and
Temporal Scales 149
5.17 Looking Forward to the Leopold Earth Ethic 150

Part Two: The Earth Ethic

6. The Earth Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Philosophical
Foundations 155
6.1 Leopold and Biblical Tropes 156
6.2 Ezekiel and Virtue Ethics—Both Individualistc and Holistic 157
6.3 Ezekiel and Responsibility to Future Generations 158
6.4 Ezekiel and Deontological Respect for the Earth as a Living
Thing 159
6.5 Leopold Dimly Envisions Hierarchy Theory in “Some
Fundamentals” 160
6.6 How Leopold Interprets P. D. Ouspensky and His Book Tertium
Organum 161
6.7 The Earth’s Soul or Consciousness 163
6.8 A Scalar Resolution of a “Dead” Earth Versus the Earth as a
“Living Being” 164
6.9 Respect for Life as Such 165
6.10 Leopold’s Charge that Both Religion and Science are
Anthropocentric 166
6.11 How Leopold Ridicules Metaphysical Anthropocentrism 168
6.12 Leopold’s Use of Irony as an Instrument of Ridicule 170
6.13 Norton’s Reading of Leopold as an Anthropocentric Pragmatist 171
6.14 Ouspensky, Leopold, and “Linguistic Pluralism”—According to
Norton 173
6.15 Leopold’s Return to Virtue Ethics 174
6.16 Leopold’s Non-Anthropocentric Anthropocentrism 175
6.17 The Leopold Earth Ethic: A Summary and a Preview 177

x Contents

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 7. The Earth Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Scientific Metaphysical
Foundations 179
7.1 Ouspensky’s Metaphysics and the Four-Dimensional Space-Time
Continuum 180
7.2 Vernadsky’s Metaphysics and the Four-Dimensional Space-Time
Continuum: Space 182
7.3 Vernadsky’s Metaphysics and the Four-Dimensional Space-Time
Continuum: Time 183
7.4 Vernadsky’s Doctrine of the Non-Genesis of Life on Earth 184
7.5 Vernadsky’s Anti-Vitalism 185
7.6 Vernadsky’s Lasting Contribution to Biogeochemistry and Gaian
Science 186
7.7 Teilhard’s Concept of the Noösphere 189
7.8 Vernadsky’s Concept of the Noösphere 190
7.9 Scientific Knowledge as a Planetary Phenomenon 191
7.10 The Biosphere Crosses the Atlantic 193
7.11 The Advent of the Gaia Hypothesis 194
7.12 The Biosphere and Gaia Ecologized 196
7.13 Vernadsky’s Biosphere and Lovelock’s Gaia: Similarities and
Differences 197
7.14 Leopold’s Living Thing, Vernadsky’s Biosphere, and Lovelock’s
Gaia 198
7.15 Is the Gaia Hypothesis Necessarily Teleological and
Anthropomorphic? 200
7.16 Varieties of the Earth’s Soul or Consciousness 202
7.17 Personal Speculations on the Earth’s Soul or Consciousness 204

8. The Earth Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Biocentric Deontological

Foundations 206
8.1 Leopold’s Biocentric Earth Ethic and the Living Earth 207
8.2 Gaian Ontology 208
8.3 Gaian Norms 209
8.4 Schweitzer’s Reverence-for-Life Ethic 212
8.5 Schweitzer’s Reverence-for-Life Ethic Rooted in the Metaphysics of
Schopenhauer 213
8.6 Feinberg’s Conativism 215
8.7 Feinberg’s Conativism as a Foundation for a Biocentric Earth
Ethic? 216
8.8 Goodpaster’s Biocentrism 218
8.9 Goodpaster’s Holistic Biocentrism as a Foundation for a Biocentric
Earth Ethic? 221

Contents xi

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 8.10 Feinberg—the Tie that Binds Schweitzer and Goodpaster 223
8.11 Taylor’s Individualistic Biocentrism and Regan’s Case for Animal
Rights 224
8.12 Taylor’s Deontology and Teleological Centers of Life 226
8.13 Taylor’s Biocentrism as a Foundation for a Leopold Earth Ethic? 228
8.14 Rolston’s Biocentrism as a Foundation for a Leopold Earth
Ethic? 229
8.15 Goodpaster’s Biocentrism Provides the Best Theoretical Support for
a Non-Anthropocentric Earth Ethic 231

9. The Earth Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Anthropocentric

Foundations—The Natural Contract and Environmental Virtue
Ethics 234
9.1 No Need to Patronize Gaia with Biocentric Moral
Considerability 236
9.2 The Concept of Anthropocentrism Revisited 237
9.3 War and Peace 238
9.4 The Social Contract: The Ancient and Modern Theories 240
9.5 Du Contrat Social au Contrat Naturel 242
9.6 War or Peace? 243
9.7 The French Connection: Larrère 244
9.8 The French Connection: Latour 246
9.9 The French-Canadian Connection: Dussault 249
9.10 Virtue Ethics 250
9.11 Aristotelian Virtue Ethics 253
9.12 Environmental Virtue Ethics 255
9.13 Holistic Virtue Ethics: Self-Respecting Crafts 258
9.14 Holistic Virtue Ethics: The Polis as a Social Whole 259
9.15 Holistic Virtue Ethics: Nomos Versus Phusis 261
9.16 Holistic Virtue Ethics: Self-Respecting Societies 262
9.17 The Dialectic of Social-Contract Theory and Virtue Ethics 264

10. The Earth Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Anthropocentric

Foundations—The Limits of Rational Individualism 266
10.1 The Year Was 1988 and Serres and Jamieson Were the First
Philosophical Responders 268
10.2 Jamieson Frames the Theoretical Problem: The Legacy of
Smith-and-Jones Ethical Theory 270
10.3 Jamieson Suggests an Alternative Moral Philosophy—Virtue
Ethics 272
10.4 The Moral Ontology and Logic of Smith-and-Jones Ethical
Thinking 274
10.5 The Essence-and-Accident Moral Ontology of Rational
Individualism 276

xii Contents

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 10.6 Homo Economicus and Homo Ethicus—Two Sides of the Same
Rational Coin 278
10.7 Saving Rational Individualism: Moral Mathematics 279
10.8 Saving Rational Individualism: Proximate Ethical Holism 280
10.9 The Failure of Rational Individualism: Protracted Spatial Scale 282
10.10 The Failure of Rational Individualism: Protracted Temporal
Scale 283
10.11 The Role of “Theoretical Ineptitude” in Gardiner’s Perfect Moral
Storm 286

11. The Earth Ethic: A Critical Account of Its Anthropocentric

Foundations—Responsibility to Future Generations and for Global
Human Civilization 288
11.1 Moral Ontology: Relationally Defined and Constituted Moral
Beings 289
11.2 Moral Ontology: Ethical Holism 292
11.3 Moral Psychology: The Moral Sentiments 295
11.4 Responsibility to Immediate Posterity 296
11.5 Responsibility to the Unknown Future Equals Responsibility for
Global Human Civilization 297
11.6 Summary and Conclusion 299

Appendix: “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest”—by

Aldo Leopold 303
Notes 313
Index 361

Contents xiii

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oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd xiv 10/24/2013 12:53:15 AM
 Acknowledgments

The only people to read and comment on the whole of this work in manuscript
form are the two scholars chosen to review it by Oxford University Press: David
Schmidtz, who identified himself from the outset, and David Henderson. Both
offered valuable criticisms and suggestions for improving various chapters and the
book as a whole, which is indeed better for their advice. Canadian philosopher
Antoine Dussault read and commented on Part One; and from him I learned much
and incorporated much of what I learned. Curt Meine, among other accomplish-
ments, Aldo Leopold’s biographer, and Buddy Huffaker, president and executive
director of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, offered valuable advice for improving
Chapter 1. I am grateful to Oxford University Press acquisitions editors Hallie
Stebbens, who enthusiastically endorsed this project, and to Lucy Randall, who
expertly and efficiently advised and guided me through the contract and submis-
sions processes. I thank Balamurugan Rajendran of Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt.
Ltd., the project manager, who, with great courtesy and care oversaw the turning
of my manuscript into a book. I thank Matt Story for creating the index. Patterson
Lamb and I were the copy editors. We are responsible for the surviving errors in the
minutia of punctuation and style.
An explicit tenet of my philosophy is that thoughts are publicly ambient, not pri-
vately cogitated things. Thus I regard myself not as an individually creative thinker, but
as a memeticist sequencing one segment of the evolving human memome. This book
could, therefore, only exist because the field of environmental philosophy emerged
in the 1970s and has flourished ever since. I am indebted to the whole community of
environmental philosophers, living and dead, in whose universe of discourse this book
takes its place. I thank the provosts (past and present, since my arrival in 1995) of the
University of North Texas and the deans (past and present, also since then) of the UNT
College of Arts and Sciences for subsidizing my research and providing me with the
space (literal as well as figurative) to interact with my colleagues across the campus,
with my fellow denizens of the Environmental Education, Science, and Technology
building, and with fellow members of and students (graduate and undergraduate) in
the UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies. They too have provided a
thinking community from which this book has emerged.
I am most grateful to have been the son of my late father, Burton Callicott, who
made the painting titled “New Moon 2,” a photograph of which graces the cover of

xv

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 this book; and I thank my sister, Alice Callicott, for blessing my use of the image. Last,
I thank Priscilla Solis Ybarra, with whom I have engaged in an ongoing critical con-
versation for upwards of fifteen years. More than anyone else, she has expanded the
horizons of my vision and opened up new doors of perception—as well as keeping me
abreast, to the limits of my fading capacities, with new technologies.

xvi Acknowledgments

oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd xvi 10/24/2013 12:53:15 AM

 Introduction

The idea for this book began to occur to me in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as I was par-
ticipating in a small conference titled “Buddhist Ecology and Environmental Studies”
at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions in December of 2005. There a
delegation of Buddhist scholars, from Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea, met
with a group of American scholars, mostly from the Greater Boston area, to explore the
conference theme. I had devoted a chapter and a half to Buddhism in my 1994 book,
Earth’s Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin
to the Australian Outback.1 And I suppose it was for that reason that I was invited to par-
ticipate. But I am by no means an expert on Buddhism. For Earth’s Insights I learned only
enough about it to suggest—at a level of detail appropriate to a global survey of world
religions and select indigenous traditions—how ecologically consonant environmental
ethics have been and might be developed within several prominent strains of Buddhism.
My secondhand account focused on Thervada, Hua-Yen, Tendai, Shingon, and Zen
Buddhism. For me to address the Dongguk and local specialists in attendance about the
potential for ecological ethics in Korean Buddhism would have been presumptuous, to
say nothing of embarrassing. However, just as there are many kinds of Buddhism, so also
are there many kinds of ecology. Therefore, to engage the conference theme—Buddhist
Ecology and Environmental Studies—not only must one first ask, “What Buddhism?”
one must also ask “What Ecology?” I left the first question for the other participants to
answer and dwelled instead on the second in my conference paper.2
Many of us in environmental philosophy and ethics have an impression of ecol-
ogy derived from the paradigm prevailing in the early 1970s, when our philosophi-
cal subdiscipline first emerged. That paradigm was set out with force and authority by
Eugene P. Odum in the then-leading textbook, Fundamentals of Ecology.3 According
to Odum, ecosystems were the central objects of ecological study; and, undisturbed
by human activities, “mature” ecosystems were believed to be in a highly organized
state of self-regulating dynamic equilibrium.4 Odum had given a sophisticated and
detailed formulation to a tradition of thought in ecology going back to its begin-
nings as a science.5 In Odum’s masterly hands the ecosystem concept was successor
to Frederic Clements’s claim that, just as single-celled organisms eventually evolved
to form multi-celled organisms, so multi-celled organisms eventually evolved to form
super-organisms.6 There is some historical irony in this line of conceptual development,
because Arthur Tansley had first delineated the ecosystem concept in 1935 as an alterna-
tive to the super-organism idea, of which he was sharply critical.7 However that may be,
for Clements, ecology was the physiology of homeostatic super-organisms, while for
Odum ecology studied the functional units of homeostatic ecosystems and their har-
monious integration—which is to say pretty much the same thing in different words.

oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd 1 10/24/2013 12:53:15 AM

 Clements’s paradigm was opposed by his contemporary, Henry Gleason, who
publicly doubted the existence of super-organisms.8 Gleason pointed out that such
putative entities were difficult to bound spatially with any precision—one species of
super-organism, say, an oak-hickory hardwood forest, often blended into another, say,
a long-grass prairie. Equally difficult to bound in time were the successional stages
in the putative development (ontogeny) of a super-organism from herbaceous weeds
through shrubs and brush to the supposedly self-sustaining and self-reproducing cli-
max type. Moreover, close, quantitative comparison of several alleged instances of the
same species of super-organism indicated that no two were as similar in composition
and structure as are individuals of the same species of multi-celled organisms.
Nevertheless, so suggestive and enthralling was the Clementsian super-organism
paradigm that Gleason was virtually ignored in his own era, the first quarter of the
twentieth century.9 Back then, ecology was a brand new science and Clements’s par-
adigm allowed ecological studies to be conceived as analogs of familiar biological
studies. Ecology could have its own form of taxonomy (types of forests, grasslands,
deserts), anatomy (physical structure—canopy, understory, root system), physiology
(producers, consumers, decomposers), and ontogeny (succession). Quantitative study
of vegetation, however, by John Curtis, Robert Whittaker, and their students in the
1950s, began to confirm Gleason’s rival “individualistic” paradigm: that each plant
species is “a law unto itself ”; that species which are often found together are simply
adapted to similar “gradients” of temperature, moisture, soil pH, and the like; and that
associations of similarly adapted species, far from being super-organisms, are better
thought of as mere coincidences.10 The emergence of paleoecology—the study of past
plant associations by examining their constituents’ pollens preserved in peats—further
confirmed the Gleasonian paradigm. In the course of the flow and ebb of ice over the
continents during the Pleistocene, plants had formed associations different from those
found presently and, during the Holocene, had come together from different direc-
tions at different rates of speed.11 Thus, the idea that a contemporary forest is a func-
tionally integrated unit was hard to credit in the light of these two lines of evidence to
the contrary.
From the point of view of the classic and now superseded Clements-Odum para-
digm, the delicate functional equilibria of ecosystems were upset mainly by external
disturbances of sufficient magnitude, visited on them by human activities: timber har-
vesting; strip mining; plowing; urban, suburban, and exurban development.12 In the
1980s, ecologists began to study the ecological role of “natural” disturbances—by fire,
flood, drought, frost, ice, wind, pestilence, disease, volcanic eruption—and found them
to be more common and frequent than had been supposed.13 Indeed, so common and
frequent are natural disturbances that they, rather than long-enduring homeostatic
states, are the norm rather than the exception for most landscapes. Ecologists soon
began to identify and measure various “disturbance regimes”—the periodic recur-
rences of fire, flood, drought, and other disturbances, and their ecologic effects.14
Simultaneously, demographers began to recalculate the size of the Pre-Columbian
human population in the Western hemisphere, taking into account the devastating
impact of Old World diseases on New World peoples, and revised their estimates

2 THINKING LIKE A PLANET

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 upward by a factor of ten.15 In short, landscapes the world over have been subject to
both natural and anthropogenic disturbance for thousands of years.
The implicit stochasticity at the heart of the Gleasonian idea—that groups of
plants are coincidental assemblages—and the ubiquity of disturbance in nature
undermined the Clementsian dogma that succession proceeds through determinate
steps to a climax condition (Odum’s mature ecosystem). These climax associations or
mature ecosystems were supposed to be self-maintaining and -reproducing until reset
by some exogenous, most probably anthropogenic, disturbance—only to go through
the same successional series to the same endpoint. But, as it turns out, there are no
end states, teloi, toward which nature aims. Rather, what there is is endless, direction-
less change.16
Indeed, that ecosystems exist as independent biophysical objects is dubious.
Ecologists from Clements to Odum believed that super-organisms/ecosystems had
evolved through natural selection. Those kinds that were most stable (persistent, resis-
tant, and resilient) and self-regulating out-competed those that were less so.17 That
idea was debunked by evolutionary biologist G. C. Williams, who sharply and persua-
sively criticized the concept of group selection in the 1960s.18 How could ecosystems
evolve by natural selection if they were so ephemeral, on the evolutionary temporal
scale, and lacked a genome of their own? Further, the isolation of an ecosystem as an
object of study is partially artificial.19 If, for example, an aquatic community ecologist
is studying predator-prey relationships among fishes in a lake, the shoreline of the lake
bounds the ecosystem spatially and a period of time measured in years bounds it tem-
porally; if another ecologist is studying the process of eutrophication in the same lake,
the watershed surrounding the lake bounds the ecosystem spatially and a period of
time measured in decades bounds it temporally. The object of study is in effect defined,
both spatially and temporally, by the ecological question posed. How can ecosystems
be real, independent biological objects—comparable in that regard to organisms—if
they morph from one size and shape to another and from one life span to another,
depending on how ecologists interrogate them?20
In my Buddhist-ecology conference paper I pointed out that this ground-sea para-
digm shift in ecology had serious implications for environmental ethics, and most
especially for the holistic Leopold land ethic—which I had long championed—
because the land ethic is based squarely on evolutionary biology and ecology.21 The
evolutionary foundations of the Leopold land ethic involve the unorthodox concept of
group selection (which, however, may now be returning to some modicum of respect-
ability). That’s trouble enough, but the ecological foundations of the Leopold land
ethic appear to be hopelessly obsolete. The summary moral maxim, or “golden rule,”
of the land ethic is “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stabil-
ity, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”22 Have
coincidences any integrity to preserve? Have periodically disturbed, ever-changing
landscapes any stability to preserve? That leaves only the beauty of the biotic commu-
nity as an environmental-ethical norm, but isn’t beauty, notoriously, in the eye of the
beholder? More basic still, are biotic communities actual biological entities or are they,
as Gleason suspected, figments of the overwrought ecological imagination?

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 As bearer of these sad tidings regarding fin de millennium ecology, I felt like the pro-
verbial skunk at the Buddhist-ecology garden party. After I had presented a PowerPoint
summary of my paper, Michael McElroy, a distinguished Earth-systems scientist, pre-
sented one of his.23 The contrast was stark. He began with a biography of planet Earth
from its condensation in a spinning mass of gas and dust some 4.6 billion years ago
through the gravitational and thermal sorting of materials into a core, inner and outer
mantle, crust, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. He went on to describe such geological
processes as mantle convection and plate tectonics, the uplifting of mountains, and
their eventual mechanical and chemical weathering. He speculated on the origin of life
on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago and the evolution of eukaryotic unicellular organ-
isms 1.5 billion years ago from prokaryotic bacteria and blue-green algae. He described
the first known global crisis for life on Earth, about two billion years ago, when oxygen,
a waste product of photosynthesis, began to accumulate in the atmosphere and hydro-
sphere, mortally threatening most of Earth’s organisms that had evolved in an anaero-
bic environment and relegating the survivors to anoxic microenvironments or refugia
in, among other places, deep sediments and the guts of animals. That crisis, however,
afforded the opportunity for oxygen-tolerant and oxygen-demanding respiratory
organisms to evolve and to colonize dry land—because enough ozone (O3) formed
in the stratosphere to shield the naked surface of the Earth from excessive ultraviolet
radiation from the Sun, which would otherwise have been lethal for living things.
McElroy carried his story through the great Late Permian mass extinction event
about 250 million years ago and that at the end of the Cretaceous period some
sixty-five million years ago. He went on to characterize the current state of the planet
and the changes of geologic proportions—especially altering the chemistry of the
atmosphere—that we Homo sapiens are now imposing on it.
Three things struck me about McElroy’s conference presentation. The first was the
spatial and temporal scales on which it focused: spatially the scale was planetary (if not
solar-systemic); temporally the scale was geological. The second was its ontological
focus: the Earth, an entity the actual existence of which is subject only to what might
be called metaphysical doubt—the sort of doubt that Descartes is famous for—not
to scientific doubt. The actual existence of super-strings in quantum physics and of
super-organisms (or ecosystems) in ecology is subject to scientific doubt, but not the
actual existence of planet Earth. Third, while at geological scales of time, the chemistry
of the Earth’s atmosphere and hydrosphere and its climate have fluctuated radically, at
organismic and ecological temporal scales, they have fluctuated within narrow bounds.
In short, at the planetary spatial scale and at humanly meaningful and practical tem-
poral scales, the Earth’s climate has remained relatively stable and its biogeochemistry
has remained relatively homeostatic.
The disparity between my presentation and McElroy’s troubled me and I contin-
ued to think about it after the conference was over. It soon dawned on me that what
was needed was an Earth ethic to complement the land ethic. I had already argued, in
several papers published over the previous decade, that, appropriately revised, the land
ethic could be accommodated to the currently prevailing neo-Gleasonian paradigm
in ecology.24 But the land ethic is nevertheless limited in application. It is, after all,

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 the land ethic. Leopold himself seems to have thought little about the oceans, and so
the question has been raised: Is it possible to extend the foundations of the land ethic
to the sea or do we need to develop a completely independent sea ethic? (At different
times and in different venues I have given mutually contradictory answers to that ques-
tion.)25 But even if the land ethic could be stretched (paradoxically, given its name) to
embrace the sea, it would not constitute a genuine Earth ethic.
Why? Because the land ethic is spatially and temporally scaled to the size and
dynamics of biotic communities and ecosystems—however imprecise and variable
their spatial and temporal boundaries, and whether they are terrestrial or marine. But
our most pressing environmental concerns have become global in spatial scale and
proportionately protracted in temporal scale—global climate change, the threat of
mass species extinction, and the erosion of the stratospheric ozone to the point of a
“hole” appearing in it during the austral summer over the South Pole. These concerns
came to public attention in the 1980s and together represent a second wave of the envi-
ronmental crisis, the first wave of which crested in the 1960s. The first wave of the envi-
ronmental crisis was all about pollution and resource depletion, which are spatially
circumscribed—pollution, for example, coming from tailpipes, tankers, smokestacks,
sewer outfalls, and spray nozzles. And, by implementing various conservation mea-
sures and switching to alternative technologies and resources, we can at least envi-
sion their remedies occurring over the span of a human lifetime. While global climate
change is, of course, not unrelated to both local sources of pollution and the depletion
of specific resources, the problem and its solution are orders of magnitude greater
in both spatial and temporal scale.26 The climate change that we are most concerned
about is planetary in spatial scale. Further, it may not fully kick in for several decades
into the future, when many of us—me included—will be dead and gone. But only by
decisively and collectively acting now, can we delay its onset and diminish its magni-
tude, although we can no longer hope to prevent its occurrence.27 And if we act now,
we can hope to reverse global climate change, although the global climate may not
return to Holocene norms for centuries or millennia to come. I do not mean to imply
that micro-, local-, and regional-climate changes (associated with, say, deforestation)
are not pressing concerns; I only mean to suggest that they are less fearsome and, if
they can be disentangled from global climate change, they can be reversed in decades
(by, say, afforestation).
Finally, I remembered that we have the germ of a true Earth ethic already to hand.
And it was sketched by none other than Aldo Leopold himself in a manuscript,
which had lain unpublished for more than half a century, innocuously titled “Some
Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest” and dated 1923. Eugene C. Hargrove
found it among Leopold’s papers in the archives of the University of Wisconsin
and secured permission from the Leopold family to publish it in the first volume of
Environmental Ethics (the journal) in 1979.28 In the last of its three sections, titled
“Conservation as a Moral Issue,” Leopold conceived of an ethic concerned not for
biotic communities and ecosystems, but for the whole Earth and for the whole extent
of its biography. At thirty-six years of age, this was Leopold’s first sortie into environ-
mental ethics and he sketched a sweeping moral vision in a prose poem that was as

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 remarkable for its compelling literary beauty as for its expansive scope and scientific
and philosophical sophistication.
As to scientific sophistication, in “Some Fundamentals” Leopold anticipates the
outlines of biogeochemistry—then, of course unbeknownst to him, gestating in the
mind of Vladimir Vernadsky in Russia. Biosfera, Vernadsky’s field-defining work, was
published in Russian in 1926 (and, translated into French, La Biosphère was published
in 1929).29 Vernadsky’s son, George, was a member of the Yale University faculty in
Russian history and, by that stroke of luck, the great Yale ecologist G. E. Hutchinson
became acquainted with Vladimir Vernadsky’s work and facilitated the publication of
a summary of his science of biogeochemistry in English in the mid-1940s.30 Building,
to some extent, on Hutchinson’s Vernadsky-inspired work, James Lovelock and Lynn
Margulis developed a globally scaled systems science in the 1970s and 1980s under the
rubric of the Gaia hypothesis.31 Thus Leopold seems to have entertained essentially
Gaian speculations at about the same time as Vernadsky, perhaps even earlier, although
unlike Vernadsky, Leopold never developed them at greater length.
As to philosophical sophistication, Leopold hints, in “Some Fundamentals,” at bas-
ing an Earth ethic on personal, professional, and social self-respect—which would
make it a form of multi-level virtue ethics—as well as basing such an ethic on con-
cern for future human generations. More fully, however, he explores grounding an
Earth ethic on an essentially Kantian concept of respect—for living, not necessarily
rational, beings—and in doing so he anticipates the approach to environmental ethics
more fully developed by Albert Schweitzer, at about the same time, and, more rigor-
ously as well as more fully, by “biocentric” environmental philosophers in the 1980s
and ’90s, such as Paul W. Taylor, James P. Sterba, and Gary Varner.32 Schweitzer and
the latter-day biocentrists limited their ethic of respect for life to individual living
beings—that is, to organisms in the conventional sense of the term. In sharp contrast,
Leopold suggested, in accordance with his Gaian speculations, that the Earth itself is
a living being—which, per se, should command our respect. In a foundational paper
in environmental ethics, Kenneth E. Goodpaster briefly ruminated on the possibil-
ity of extending a biocentric ethic to the “biosystem” (or biosphere, we must suppose
he meant), per se—Gaia by another name.33 Respect for ordinary (multi-celled) liv-
ing organisms—for which Schweitzer, Taylor, Sterba, and Varner exclusively pled—
Leopold may have assumed, but did not specifically mention in “Some Fundamentals.”
The spatio-temporal scale of the Leopold Earth ethic is its principal asset. Its spatial
scale is commensurate with the scale of our most pressing contemporary environmen-
tal concerns—once more: anthropogenic global climate change, mass extinction, and
damage to the ozone membrane of the upper atmosphere. But just as the land ethic is
rendered problematic by the contemporary neo-Gleasonian paradigm in ecology, so
the Earth ethic may be rendered problematic by its very scalar proportions, especially
the proportions of its temporal scale. Are there spatio-temporal scalar limits to ethics,
to moral concern? For example, can we—or should we—be ethically concerned about
life on an Earth-like planet in another solar system? Can we—or should we—be ethi-
cally concerned about events that occurred or will occur on Earth in the distant past
or in the distant future? In other words, how wide and long can our moral sensibilities

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 range? If they are limited in spatio-temporal scope, does the Leopold Earth ethic
exceed those limits? If a non-anthropocentric Earth ethic as sketched by Leopold is lit-
erally far-fetched, what about the cogency of an anthropocentric Earth ethic, at which
he also hints—one rooted in virtuous self-respect and in responsibility to future gen-
erations, to both “immediate posterity” and the “Unknown Future”? And if we do have
responsibility to distant future generations, as well as to those to whom we can relate in
some personal way, are those responsibilities to the individual members of those distant
future generations or to those generations collectively? Can intergenerational ethics,
in other words, be individualistic or must they be holistic? If necessarily holistic, then
to what human “thing,” what entity, do we of the present have duties and obligations?
This book is divided into two parts—Part One: The Land Ethic, and Part Two, the
Earth Ethic. I begin Part One with a chapter devoted to the philosophical burden of
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, Leopold’s masterpiece and the
literary context of “The Land Ethic,” its capstone essay. In Chapter 1, I argue that Sand
County has a single overarching and unifying theme—the exposition and promulga-
tion of an evolutionary-ecological worldview and its axiological (ethical and aestheti-
cal) and normative (practical moral) implications. In Chapter 2, I provide a detailed
account of the Leopold land ethic and its Humean philosophical and Darwinian evo-
lutionary foundations. In Chapter 3, I provide an account of its ecological scientific
foundations and indicate how the land ethic can be updated to meet the challenge
posed by the changes here just indicated in its scientific foundations. Because the land
ethic is informed by evolutionary biology and ecology, in Chapter 3, I also address the
prohibition of deriving value from fact and oughts from ises—sometimes carelessly
called “the Naturalistic Fallacy”—that cloistered twentieth-century moral philosophy
and prohibited it from having any legitimate intercourse with science. In Chapter 4,
I demonstrate that this sequestration of ethics from science is historically anomalous
and indeed a historical aberration and pathology. And in Chapter 5, I indicate how
the science of ethics is now flourishing in the twenty-first century and is, furthermore,
vindicating a Humean and Darwinian approach to ethics.
For those readers who are well acquainted with my earlier work, the account, justi-
fication, revision, and defense of the land ethic in Part One will be generally familiar
and new only to the extent of including new details, increased historical depth, and
new developments in the exciting contemporary science of ethics. Here I reprise my
account, justification, and defense of the land ethic and my suggested revision of it—
in light of developments in evolutionary biology and ecology that took place after
Leopold sketched it—for three reasons. First, precisely because the land ethic is famil-
iar and my treatment of it, though far less so, is also familiar, a well-established model
of what an environmental ethic is and what its foundations are can here serve as a
kind of benchmark or template for a similar account of the Leopold Earth ethic—
for which no account, justification, or defense has so far appeared by me or anyone
else. Second, an account of the land ethic can serve as a kind of foil for an account of
the Earth ethic, revealing not only the necessary formal elements of any environmen-
tal ethic, but also bringing into sharp contrast differences in the philosophical and
scientific substance that gives content to the formal structure that any well-formed

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 environmental ethic should have. Third, I do not suggest that the Earth ethic should
replace or supersede the land ethic, but that the Earth ethic should complement the
land ethic. Appropriately updated and revised, the land ethic still serves, better than
any other, to address our still very real and very grave environmental concerns at eco-
logical spatial and temporal scales.
In Chapter 6, the first chapter of Part Two, I provide a detailed account of the
Leopold Earth ethic and the several philosophical foundations for it that Leopold sug-
gests in “Conservation as a Moral Issue,” the third section of “Some Fundamentals
of Conservation in the Southwest.” In Chapter 6, as I also do in Chapter 1, I indulge
myself in a polemical digression. Bryan G. Norton has long challenged my interpreta-
tion of Aldo Leopold’s philosophy and offered up his own interpretation of it, placing
Leopold in the tradition of American Pragmatism; making of him a lifelong disciple of
Arthur Twining Hadley; and also making of him, as is Norton himself, an unregenerate
anthropocentrist. Norton’s interpretation of Leopold’s philosophy has mostly centered
on “Thinking Like a Mountain” in A Sand County Almanac, and on “Conservation
as a Moral Issue.” In Chapter 1, I dispute Norton’s interpretation of “Thinking Like a
Mountain” and, in Chapter 6, I dispute his interpretation of “Conservation as a Moral
Issue.”
In Chapter 7, I explore the scientific and metaphysical foundations of a
non-anthropocentric Earth ethic such as Leopold broaches in “Some Fundamentals
of Conservation in the Southwest.” In the third section, “Conservation as a Moral
Issue,” of that essay Leopold several times refers to and quotes “the Russian philoso-
pher [P. D.] Ouspensky” from his book Tertium Organum, published in English in
1920.34 We can overlook the fact that Ouspensky hardly qualifies as a philosopher
and also what Leopold’s enthusiasm for Ouspensky says about Leopold’s critical
faculties in 1923, let alone his intellectual tastes. Of far greater worth is exploring
the thought of another Russian philosopher, and also a contemporary of Leopold,
Vladimir Vernadsky. Ouspensky does not seem to have been influenced by Vernadsky;
nor could Leopold have been, except were he accustomed to reading French, but,
in some inexplicable and uncanny way, Leopold’s speculations about a living Earth
have a remarkable similarity to those of Vernadsky. Further, how do Leopold’s Gaian
speculations compare with other expressions of planetary holism and panpsychism
that were roughly contemporary with his own and Vernadsky’s or developed a little
later, such as those of Teilhard de Chardin?35
In Chapter 8 of Part Two, I explore the support that might be found in contemporary
environmental ethics—Kantian biocentrism—for the kind of non-anthropocentric
Earth ethic to which Leopold gives the most concentrated attention in “Conservation
as Moral Issue.” In Chapter 9, I explore the possibility that “natural-contract” ethics
(developed by Michel Serres and recently hinted at by James Lovelock) and virtue
ethics (suggested by Leopold himself in “Conservation as a Moral Issue” and recently
endorsed most notably by Dale Jamieson and Ron Sandler) might provide support
for an Earth ethic, such as Leopold envisioned in 1923. Natural-contract ethics and
virtue ethics are both essentially anthropocentric. In Chapter 10, I review and cri-
tique the prevailing ethical über-paradigm in mainstream moral philosophy, Rational

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 Individualism—which, as Jamieson demonstrates, “collapses” in the face of the spatial
and especially the temporal scales of global climate change. This discussion too is a bit
polemical as I have long championed a communitarian and holistic approach to eth-
ics rooted in the moral sentiments—in human (and Humean) emotions—in contrast
with the prevailing individualistic approach rooted in rationality. In Chapter 11, I argue
that my long-championed communitarian and holistic ethical paradigm is mandated
by the spatial and temporal scales of global climate change and vindicated by the
contemporary science of ethics. That is, I demonstrate that the Humean-Darwinian
foundations of the land ethic—now so well validated by the contemporary science of
ethics—can also coherently undergird responsibility to future human generations and
therefore can also serve as the foundations for an international and intergenerational
anthropocentric Earth ethic. Thus can the land ethic and the Earth ethic, in its anthro-
pocentric form, be reconciled and unified in theory as well as be complementary in
practice.
The word anthropocentric appears to be deceptively straightforward, simply mean-
ing human-centered. Correlatively, non-anthropocentric means not human-centered.
That anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism—the philosophical expressions of
anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric doctrines—are more complicated concepts
than the use of just these two words (and their syntactical variants) would imply will
become evident as the analysis of the land ethic and the Earth ethic unfolds in the
chapters that follow this introduction. So here at the outset, let me distinguish three
primary senses in which anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism are used, each
indicated by a distinct adjective.
Aristotle called the study of being qua being “first philosophy” because it is prior,
not necessarily in the temporal order in which a philosopher takes it up, but prior
in the very architecture of philosophical thought. The study of such foundational
concepts is called metaphysics. Accordingly, we might denominate as metaphysi-
cal anthropocentrism the doctrine that human beings occupy a privileged place in
the order of being. Aristotle himself was a metaphysical anthropocentrist because
he thought that human beings, albeit animals, were uniquely rational animals and
thus occupied a higher and more privileged place in the order of being than do
all other animals. The biblical worldview is also metaphysically anthropocentric
because Genesis declares that human beings were uniquely created in the image of
God and thus assigned an exalted and privileged place in the hierarchy of creation.
To think that human beings do not occupy a vaunted and privileged place in the
order of being is to espouse metaphysical non-anthropocentrism. One reason that the
theory of evolution is, by some, reviled and rejected is because it is metaphysically
non-anthropocentric.
Limiting membership to all and only human beings in what Richard Routley calls
the “base class” of an ethic—the set of entities to which ethical regard is appropri-
ately directed—may be called moral anthropocentrism.36 Moral non-anthropocentrism
enlarges the base class of an ethic to include some non-human beings. Animal libera-
tion and animal rights, for example, are morally non-anthropocentric, as, apparently,
is the land ethic. The base class of the land ethic is, however, far wider than those of

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 animal liberation and animal rights, because it includes plants as well as animals and
also soils and waters; the land ethic’s base class even includes the biotic community per
se or “as such.” Moral anthropocentrism is often justified by appeal to metaphysical
anthropocentrism. Kant, for example, justified limiting ethical regard to all and only
rational beings (the class of which, as far as he knew, is coextensive with the class of
human beings) by appeal to the metaphysical claim that only rational (human) beings
were ends in themselves and autonomous. But moral anthropocentrism need not be
justified by appeal to metaphysical anthropocentrism. The anthropocentric utilitarian-
ism, for example, prevailing in neoclassical economic theory is not justified by appeal
to metaphysical anthropocentrism; rather, its anthropocentrism seems to be unapolo-
getically arbitrary. Various approaches to an anthropocentric Earth ethic reviewed and
developed in Chapters 9 and 10 are not justified by appeal to metaphysical anthro-
pocentrism, but neither is their moral anthropocentrism arbitrary. Indeed quite the
opposite; they are, rather, unequivocally based on metaphysical non-anthropocentrism
and quite consistently and unparadoxically so.
A third species of anthropocentrism—that might be called tautological anthro-
pocentrism—is occasionally invoked. All human experience, including all the ways
that human beings experience value, is human experience and therefore tautologi-
cally anthropocentric. Tautological anthropocentrism is humanly inescapable. Indeed,
the term tautological non-anthropocentrism is oxymoronic and names nothing real or
possible. One may value intrinsically various non-human beings and, for that rea-
son, regard them ethically—and if so, one would be a moral non-anthropocentrist.
Nevertheless, for a human being to value non-human beings intrinsically is a human
act of valuing; and all human valuing is human valuing—and thus tautologically
anthropocentric. Militant moral anthropocentrists sometimes cryptically conflate
tautological anthropocentrism with moral anthropocentrism in order to dismiss
moral non-anthropocentrism as incoherent or self-contradictory. As noted, tauto-
logical non-anthropocentrism is indeed incoherent and self-contradictory, but moral
non-anthropocentrism is entirely coherent and self-consistent. The claim that all
human beings are tautologically anthropocentric is trivially true or analytically true
and is, therefore, a hollow claim not worth making—except for purposes of sophistical
argumentation.
Further complicating matters is the concept designated by the term anthropo-
morphic, meaning having a human form. The ancient Greek gods and goddesses
were physically anthropomorphic, portrayed in the bodily form of human beings
and thus the Olympian religion of the ancient Greeks involved anthropomorphism.
The animal characters in The Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Grahame are not
physically anthropomorphic; rather they are psychologically anthropomorphic—
they experience the world like human beings do. They are also culturally anthropo-
morphic—they wear clothes, live in houses, row boats, drive automobiles, and speak
English. As detailed and documented in Chapter 1, in A Sand County Almanac Aldo
Leopold’s characterization of animals is often anthropomorphic—psychologically
anthropomorphic, but neither physically nor culturally anthropomorphic. Making
matters more complicated still, in “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the

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 Southwest,” Leopold uses the word anthropomorphic, when he evidently means
anthropocentric.
Finally, moral anthropocentrism and moral non-anthropocentrism may be either
individualistic or holistic or both at once. Individualistic moral anthropocentrism admits
into the base class of ethics only individual human beings and excludes human col-
lectives such as families, societies, nation-states, global civilization, and Homo sapiens
(the species). Holistic moral anthropocentrism admits both individual human beings
and human collectives into the base class of ethics. Fascism is a form of holistic moral
anthropocentrism that admits human collectives, especially the nation-state, into the
base class of ethics, but effectively excludes individual human beings. The Earth ethic
that I commend in Chapter 11 as theoretically the most plausible and pragmatically
the most serviceable of conceivable alternatives is an instance of holistic moral anthro-
pocentrism. Individualistic moral non-anthropocentrism admits only individual human
and non-human beings into the ethical base class and excludes non-human collec-
tives such as non-human species, biotic communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere.
Animal liberation, animal rights, and most expressions of biocentrism are instances
of individualistic moral non-anthropocentrism. Holistic moral non-anthropocentrism
admits non-human collectives into the ethical base class. The land ethic is apparently
an instance of holistic moral non-anthropocentrism. Environmental fascism would be
a form of holistic moral non-anthropocentrism that excludes individual human and
non-human beings from the base class of ethics. The land ethic has been accused of
being an instance of environmental fascism, but, in Chapter 2, I indicate otherwise: the
land ethic is an addendum to all our familiar human-oriented ethics, not a substitute
for them. Among my principal philosophical tasks in this study is to unify, theoreti-
cally, our familiar human-oriented ethics, the land ethic, and also the Earth ethic—to
articulate a theory of ethics, in other words, that will embrace them all.
The term anthropogenic figures prominently in the previous discussion and occa-
sionally in the chapters that follow and is conceptually unproblematic. It simply means
human-caused or human-generated.
I bring this introduction to a close by posing and trying persuasively to answer two
related questions one of which is essentially existential, the other essentially strate-
gic: (1) Why the Leopold Earth ethic and (2) Why the Leopold Earth ethic?
The first question might be rephrased as follows: Isn’t the land ethic up to the job of
meeting the challenges of the second wave of the environmental crisis? If the answer to
that question is Yes, then isn’t a new Earth ethic otiose? In “The Land Ethic,” Leopold
seems expressly to address one salient challenge of the second wave of the environ-
mental crisis—species extinction. He states, for example, that “wildflowers and song-
birds . . . are entitled to continuance” and “should continue as a matter of biotic right.”37
Leopold did not, however, comprehend the full scale of species extinction that snapped
into clear focus only in the last quarter of the twentieth century with the recognition
that the planet is on the precipice of only the sixth mass extinction event in the entire
biography of the Earth.38 The extinctions that the land ethic specifically addresses are
local and regional; the sixth mass extinction is not only of planetary spatial scale, its
temporal scale is multi-millennial—only after several million years following a mass

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 extinction event does Earth’s biodiversity recover.39 Latterly, we are morally concerned
not only about species extinction but also about biodiversity loss. And the very concept
of biodiversity is more than the sum of its parts, the several species that compose it. As
the bumper sticker reminds us, “extinction is forever”—true enough for individual
species extinctions; but, as the fossil record demonstrates, biodiversity loss is not for-
ever; biodiversity comes back.40 The erosion of Earth’s protective ozone membrane
and global climate change exacerbate biodiversity loss as photo-sensitive species are
pushed over the brink of extinction by the former phenomenon and, by the latter,
those that cannot move uphill or farther north fast enough. Stratospheric ozone thin-
ning, global climate change, and biodiversity loss are more a matter of Earth ethics
than land ethics given the spatial and temporal scales of these unwelcome phenomena.
Once more, however, let me emphasize—and at the risk of being repetitive I shall
reiterate it in subsequent chapters of this book because it is so very important: the
Earth ethic complements and supplements the land ethic; it does not succeed or replace it.
No, not any more than that the land ethic succeeds or replaces our venerable human
ethics, as I explain in Chapter 2. To say that because the land ethic addresses, by impli-
cation, the challenges of the second wave of the environmental crisis, we don’t need
a new-fangled Earth ethic is like saying we don’t need a non-anthropocentric land
ethic because our venerable anthropocentric ethics address the challenges of the first
wave of the environmental crisis. Bryan Norton, for one, has long argued just that—
we don’t need a non-anthropocentric land ethic—because it is hard to think of any
environmental damage that does not adversely affect human beings, if not always in
material ways then in psycho-spiritual ways.41 Perhaps. But don’t we need as many
moral reasons as philosophers can muster up to meet the challenges of both waves
of the environmental crisis? Just as the non-anthropocentric land ethic complements
and supplements anthropocentric utilitarian and deontological environmental ethics,
so the Earth ethic in both its non-anthropocentric and anthropocentric formulations
complements and supplements the land ethic.
In a single system of moral philosophy, which I attempt to achieve in this book,
ontological pluralism and deontological pluralism must be tempered by theoretical
monism. That is, the many disparate objects of moral concern and the many disparate
duties and obligations generated by one’s relationships with those many and diverse
objects of moral concern must be theoretically unified if one’s moral philosophy is to
be coherent and self-consistent. In the concluding chapter, Chapter 11, I indicate how
the land ethic and the Earth ethic can be embraced by a single ethical theory, by a single
overarching moral philosophy.
I turn now to the second question, Why the Leopold Earth ethic? Leopold wrote a
single section of a single paper in 1923 on the possibility of a biosphere-scaled envi-
ronmental ethic that he himself never saw fit to publish. Nor did he ever subsequently
develop his faint sketch of an Earth ethic anywhere else. Why not the Vernadsky Earth
ethic or the Lovelock Earth ethic or just the plain, no-brand-name Earth ethic? Why
drag Leopold’s name into it—or anyone else’s other than my own for that matter? My
answer is fourfold: the first personal, the second and third historical, and the fourth
philosophical.

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 First, the personal answer: my work has long been associated with the Leopold
legacy. While I suppose that I could develop a biosphere-scaled environmental ethic
with only passing reference to Leopold, I want to establish continuity between such an
ethic and my older exposition of the biotic-community-scaled land ethic in numer-
ous essays, many collected in In Defense of the Land Ethic and Beyond the Land Ethic.
Otherwise it might seem as if I just saw Al Gore’s infomercial, An Inconvenient Truth,
and jumped on the latest bandwagon to pass my way.
Second, Leopold has street cred in the environmental-movement ’hood like nobody
else, not Thoreau, not Muir, not Pinchot. When Leopold talks, people listen. That’s the
second answer.
Third, Leopold deserves credit for first speculating about an Earth ethic however
fleetingly. He is often called a prophet and in most cases for good reason.42 He noticed
the environmental crisis a decade and a half before most anyone else did. His “The
Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac was published two and a half decades before
anyone else thought that working out environmental ethics was a worthwhile thing to
do. And he was a few years ahead of Vernadsky and half a century ahead of Lovelock in
thinking ethically—if they ever really did—on a biospherical scale. Leopold deserves
credit for conceiving the Earth ethic.
Fourth, the philosophical and the most important answer: the most compelling
Earth ethic is built upon the same essentially Humean theoretical foundations that
ground the land ethic. The Earth ethic that I ultimately commend in this book is, in
the last analysis, a companion and complement to the land ethic and together they are
components of a new comprehensive environmental philosophy for the twenty-first
century.
Because it is the textual basis for the Leopold Earth ethic and because it is less well
known and accessible than Sand County’s “The Land Ethic,” “Some Fundamentals of
Conservation in the Southwest” is published in its entirety as an appendix in this book.

Introduction 13

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oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd 14 10/24/2013 12:53:15 AM
 Part One
The Land Ethic

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oxfordhb-9780199324897.indd 16 10/24/2013 12:53:15 AM
 1
A Sand County Almanac

“The Land Ethic” is the capstone essay of Aldo Leopold’s enduring masterpiece, A Sand
County Almanac. That essay has been scrutinized and analyzed by environmental phi-
losophers—including by this environmental philosopher—for nearly half a century.
Relatively little philosophical attention has been paid to other essays in the book, with the
exception of “Thinking Like a Mountain,” on which much philosophical attention has
been lavished in the voluminous writings of Bryan G. Norton. But practically no philo-
sophical attention has been paid to the book as a whole. As Ashley Pryor laments, “As a
brief survey of environmental-ethics textbooks will confirm, the majority of academic
philosophers who engage with Leopold read ‘The Land Ethic’ in isolation from the rest
of Leopold’s extensive body of written work.”1 Because “The Land Ethic” is the climax,
the culmination, the denouement of A Sand County Almanac, a thorough treatment of
“The Land Ethic” (and of the land ethic)—which is what I provide in the first half of this
book—would be incomplete without a thorough understanding of the literary context
in which it is situated. Thus the first chapter of this book on the conceptual foundations
of the Leopold land ethic and the little known and so-far unanalyzed Leopold Earth ethic
begins with a brief introduction to the author and an analysis of his revered classic. In
the second half of this book, I engage with a bit of the rest of Leopold’s extensive body of
work, especially with “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest.”

1.1 THE AUTHOR

Aldo Leopold was born on January 11, 1887, into a prosperous, public-spirited com-
mercial family of German descent—a family keenly interested in the natural sciences and
the fine and liberal arts. He was born in Burlington, Iowa, a Mississippi River town. As a
boy, Leopold showed an avid interest in natural history, especially bird watching, and an
enthusiasm for hunting. His father, Carl, an impassioned hunter himself, imparted to his
sons both extraordinary venatic skills and ethical restraints in the pursuit of game. The
teenaged Leopold was sent to the elite Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, which pre-
pared him for matriculation into Yale University, where, after five years, he was graduated
from the Yale Forest School, with a master’s degree, in 1909. That year he joined the US
Department of Agriculture Forest Service and was posted to the Southwest Territories—
then they had not yet become states—of Arizona and New Mexico.2
Leopold steadily rose in the ranks of the Service, but he was less interested in its
principal remit, timber production, than with the “thifty” condition of the forest itself.3
As he would later characterize it, he was interested in the “beauty” of the national

17

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 forest lands as well as their “utility.”4 Leopold was, accordingly, alarmed at soil erosion,
caused by livestock grazing and fire suppression; and he was interested in the ani-
mals inhabiting the national forests—only in part because he was an ardent hunter.5 In
his wide-ranging Forest Service fieldwork, Leopold also developed a love for roadless
travel by horse, pack train, and canoe. Consistent with all these concerns and interests,
he was among the first civil servants to propose a system of wilderness reserves in the
US National Forests.6
In 1924, Leopold was posted to the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison,
Wisconsin. He was not happy in that post and resigned from the Service in 1928 to
become a consultant to the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute,
conducting game surveys and overseeing wildlife research in the midwestern states.
Leopold was barely able to support a wife and five children during the ensuing Great
Depression but used the involuntary leisure it afforded him to write a field-defining
text, Game Management, published in 1933. That book led to an appointment at the
University of Wisconsin as professor of game management in the Department of
Agricultural Economics. Leopold remained a college professor for the rest of his life,
eventually heading his own Department of Wildlife Management (later to become the
Department of Wildlife Ecology). From that position he assumed a leadership role
in the American conservation movement. Leopold was among the founders of the
Wilderness Society (1935) and the Wildlife Society (1936) and he served the Ecological
Society of America as president (1947), among other similar organizational offices and
services.7
In 1935, Leopold bought eighty acres (~40 hectares) of exhausted farmland on
the Wisconsin River, some fifty miles (~80 kilometers) north of Madison, which he
planned to use for waterfowl hunting. The farmhouse had burned down and the only
standing building was a chicken coop or cow shed full of manure. Leopold and his
family converted that building into a camp cabin—adding a bunkroom and a fireplace
and chimney. They dubbed it “the shack.” The Leopolds soon turned to the task of
planting pine trees and prairie vegetation. Although the concept had not been fully
articulated by then, theirs was among the first projects of ecological restoration.

1.2 THE PROVENANCE OF THE BOOK

In the early 1940s, at the behest of the New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Leopold
began work, in a desultory way, on a book of nature essays. The publisher asked him
to write “ ‘a personal book recounting adventures in the field . . . warmly, evocatively,
and vividly written . . . a book for the layman . . . [with] room for the author’s opin-
ions on ecology and conservation . . . worked into a framework of actual field experi-
ence.’ ”8 Leopold’s plan was to revise and include some very argumentative pieces that
he had already written and published in various venues during the 1930s, along with
some more descriptive, less judgmental pieces that he was writing for The Wisconsin
Agriculturist and Farmer. Despite the initial provision of “room for the author’s opin-
ions on ecology and conservation,” the editors at Knopf found that kind of essay to be

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 repetitive and tedious. They decided that what they really wanted was “a book purely of
nature observations.”9 Further, they found Leopold’s essays to be not only scattered in
subject matter, but also in place (from the Southwest to the Midwest, from Canada to
Mexico), and time (from Leopold’s boyhood to his early days in the forest service to his
latter days as a college professor). His essays, therefore, lacked the classic Aristotelian
unities of time and place, which characterized nature-writing genre exemplars, such
as The Natural History of Selborne by Gilbert White; Walden; or Life in the Woods, by
Henry David Thoreau; and The Outermost House: A Year on the Great Beach of Cape
Cod by Henry Beston. Leopold’s essays also varied radically in length—“Draba,” for
example, filling only half a page, “Good Oak,” twelve pages.
In response to these criticisms, Leopold struggled throughout the decade to produce
a book that had all the qualities that Knopf first suggested: a book that was personal,
addressed to a broad lay audience, and opinionated—all worked into a framework of
actual field experience. He declined to write a book of “mere natural history” (as he
styled it), a book “purely of nature observations” (as they did).10 And so Knopf declined
to publish the manuscript as submitted in 1947. It was also rejected by Macmillan
and the University of Minnesota Press. Bitterly disappointed, Leopold discarded the
more conventional Foreword he had written by way of an introduction in July 1947
and replaced it with a new, pithier Foreword written in March 1948.11 He then relin-
quished the task of finding a publisher to his son, Luna, who sent it to William Sloan
Associates and to Oxford University Press. Oxford immediately accepted it for publi-
cation without critical comment or demand for extensive revision. Difficulty finding
a publisher for the book on which he had worked so hard was not the only trouble
plaguing Leopold’s life at that time. He was suffering from “tic douloureux” (trigemi-
nal neuralgia), an excruciatingly painful irritation of a facial nerve and from vehement
political opposition to his management plan for reducing the size of the deer herd in
northern Wisconsin. Just a week after receiving the good news from Oxford, Leopold
died—pleased at least by this long-awaited happy outcome—at age sixty-one, on April
21, 1948.12
Because Luna Leopold had already taken on a substantial role in getting his father’s
manuscript accepted for publication, he guided it through the production process.
He proceeded on the principle that the eventual book should be as faithful as possible
to the volume that his father had crafted. Leopold’s own title, Great Possessions, was,
however, wisely discarded. He had titled the first and longest of the three parts of his
book, “A Sauk County Almanac,” because “the shack” and its environs, the setting of
Part I, were located in Sauk County, Wisconsin (named for the American Indian tribe
that had once lived there). No one now knows who suggested that “Sauk County” be
changed to “Sand County”—but whoever deserves the credit, it was stroke of genius.
There is no Sand County, Wisconsin, but the shack and its environs are located in the
sandy outwash plain of the glacier that covered half the state, bisecting it from the
northwest to the southeast, as recently as twelve thousand years ago. The region was
(and is) known in Wisconsin as “the sand counties” or “the central sands.” And so the
book was published in 1949 as A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There.13

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 1.3 THE UNITY OF A SAND COUNTY
ALMANAC —AN EVOLUTIONARY-ECOLOGICAL
WORLDVIEW
For Knopf and the other publishers who had rejected Leopold’s manuscript, the main
issue could be boiled down to one thing, “unity.” And upon first encounter, the book
does appear to be a hodgepodge of variegated materials.
Part I shifts from casually following a skunk track in the first essay; to making fire-
wood from a lightning-killed oak, in the second (all the while providing an environ-
mental history of the ground in which the good oak was rooted); to migrating geese
in the third; then on to loving descriptions of various humble plants (such as draba)
and animals (such as woodcock); to episodes of fishing and hunting; to activities of
ecological restoration, such as tree planting and culling. To mute the jarring effect of
their disparate subject matter, Leopold obligingly supplied the essays of Part I, but
only of Part I, with the Aristotelian unities of time and place. They are organized by
the months of the calendar year; and the place in which they are set is the shack land-
scape—Leopold’s Waldenesque “week-end refuge from too much modernity.” (In the
“Foreword,” Leopold informally refers to Part I as the “shack sketches.”)14
Part II, “Sketches Here and There,” gently transitions from the well-circumscribed
shack environs to Wisconsin at large. Then the setting of the essays shifts a little far-
ther away to the neighboring states of Illinois and Iowa, then it jumps to the more
distant American Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico), then turns sharply south to
Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico; then moves back north to Oregon and Utah and
finally to Manitoba in Canada. Sketches here and there indeed!—all loosely organized
by state or province and scattered across the whole North American continent. And
again, the subject matter ranges just as widely in Part II as in Part I: from threatened
cranes to the extinct passenger pigeon to canoing on a river in “Wisconsin”; from a
bus journey through corn fields to a brutal youthful hunting vignette in “Illinois and
Iowa”; from climbing mountains to exterminating bears and wolves in “Arizona and
New Mexico”; from parrots in the Sierra Madre mountains to the delta of the Colorado
River and to a mountain stream in “Chihuahua and Sonora”; from an invasive species
of grass in “Oregon and Utah” to a lonely, wild marsh in “Manitoba.”
In Part III, “The Upshot,” Leopold totally abandons any attempt to supply a trans-
parent (and artificial) literary device of unification. It consists of four longer “phil-
osophical” essays, the first two of which are strident rebukes of unethical hunting
practices, while the third is a poignant appeal for wilderness preservation. The fourth
is “The Land Ethic,” which Leopold himself had placed first in the final section, but was
moved (again wisely) to the climactic conclusion of Part III and of the book as a whole.
Were the editors at Knopf right to complain that the manuscript Leopold submitted
lacked unity? Leopold thought not. He had taken their criticisms to heart and worked
to overcome their concerns and replied of his submitted essays: “I still think that they
have a unity as they are.”15 The book has become a classic of conservation philosophy,
the bible of the contemporary environmental movement. Translated into a dozen lan-
guages, it has universal appeal. Evidently in A Sand County Almanac as in the United

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 States of America, e pluribus unum, from many one. But what is its principle of unity,
what makes of that variegated many a unified whole?
There is one underlying, persistent thematic thread that Leopold weaves through the
fabric of his masterpiece from the first pages to the last: the exposition and promulga-
tion of an evolutionary-ecological worldview and its axiological (ethical and aestheti-
cal) and normative (practical moral) implications. Leopold’s bold project in A Sand
County Almanac is nothing short of worldview remediation. And, whether consciously
or not, I think that his prospective publishers sensed that and reacted negatively—not
to the book’s lack of unity, but to its very radical and revolutionary unifying theme.
They were afraid that the book-buying public would be offended: “What we like best is
the nature observations, and the more objective narratives and essays. We like less the
subjective parts—that is, the philosophical reflections which are less fresh and which
one reader finds sometimes ‘fatuous.’ The ecological argument almost everyone finds
unconvincing.”16 Leopold’s was an unsettling book, an affront to postwar blue-skies
optimism and American self-satisfaction.
Luna Leopold edited a second book by his father titled Round River: From the
Journals of Aldo Leopold, published by Oxford in 1953. The raw and often graphic jour-
nals, most of them narratives of Leopold’s hunting adventures, were never written
for publication and proved to be an embarrassment, threatening to tarnish Leopold’s
reputation among the more tender-hearted constituents of the conservation com-
munity. Rachel Carson, in particular, found them to be unworthy of the author of A
Sand County Almanac (to put her point circumspectly). The essays on conservation in
Round River were quietly culled away from the journal material and interpolated into
A Sand County Almanac and published by Oxford in 1966 as A Sand County Almanac
with Other Essays on Conservation from Round River. There they constitute a new Part
III, and Part III of the original was reorganized to become Part IV of the expanded
edition. A Sand County Almanac needed the essays from Round River about like I need
another hole in the head. Don’t get me wrong. They are all great essays, comparable in
quality to those of the Almanac. But the carefully crafted unity that Leopold imparted
to his masterpiece was destroyed by that ill-advised and thoughtless outrage. Ballantine
Books began publishing the mutilated text in 1970 in the form of a cheap paperback—
which has now, unfortunately, become the most commonplace edition. Needless to say,
my analysis here is of the book that Leopold himself assembled.

1.4 THE ARGUMENT OF THE FOREWORD—

TOWARD WORLDVIEW REMEDIATION
Leopold plainly and guilelessly announces the nature of his project in the “Foreword,”
but with such charm and indirection that the enormous scope and scale of it might
easily be missed: “Conservation is getting nowhere,” he writes, “because it is incompat-
ible with our Abrahamic concept of land.”17 One of Leopold’s favorite rhetorical devices
is synecdoche, letting the part stand for the whole.18 Our Abrahamic concept of land is,
more forthrightly put, our inherited biblical worldview. In accordance with that world-
view, Leopold claims, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging

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 to us.”19 Toward the end of the book, in “The Land Ethic,” Leopold evokes the same
synecdoche for the biblical worldview once more: “Abraham knew what the land was
for: it was to drip milk and honey into Abraham’s mouth. At the present moment, the
assurance with which we regard this assumption is inverse to our education.”20
Leopold here anticipates the (in)famous environmental critique of the biblical
worldview by historian Lynn White Jr. at the zenith of public awareness of and con-
cern about an “environmental crisis.” White laid ultimate blame for what he called
“the ecologic crisis” on the biblical ideas that “man” is created in the “image of God,”
given “dominion” over the rest of creation, and charged to “subdue” it.21 Whether
Leopold and White correctly understand the particulars of the biblical worldview
or how it has shaped Christendom’s cultural attitudes toward the natural world is
another question, which has been much debated. My present point is that Leopold
thought that the biblical worldview is incompatible with conservation. Grafted on to
the biblical foundations of the twentieth-century Western worldview was the emer-
gence—following World War II—of mass consumerism: “our bigger and better soci-
ety is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have
lost the capacity to remain healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs
[another synecdoche] that it has lost the stability necessary to build them or even to
turn off the tap.”22
Rather than accommodate conservation to that toxic mix of biblical dominionism
and mass consumerism, Leopold instead proposed to replace it with a more coher-
ent and comprehensive alternative: “I suppose it may be said that these essays tell the
company how it may get back in step.”23 Thoreau, as everyone knows, claimed to step
to the beat of a “different drummer” and was proud to be out of step with the com-
pany—nineteenth-century American cultural attitudes and values.24 Leopold boldly
insists that the company—twentieth-century Western civilization—get in step with
the better beat of the drummer to which he had learned to march.
“When we see land as a community to which we belong,” Leopold continues, “we
may begin to use it with love and respect. . . . That land is a community is the basic
concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of eth-
ics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known but latterly often forgot-
ten.”25 To repeat, my central claim is this: A Sand County Almanac, at first blush a mere
hodgepodge of charming but disparate vignettes, has a single overarching and unifying
theme and purpose—the exposition and promulgation of an evolutionary-ecological
worldview and its axiological and normative implications. “These essays,” Leopold
goes on, “attempt to weld these three concepts”—the community-concept of ecology,
ethics, and aesthetics (the cultural harvest yielded by land).26
On February 11, 1948, Roberts Mann, the superintendent of conservation for the
Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Chicago) Illinois and a friend of Leopold,
wrote to share his chagrin and amusement over some “kick-back” he received for a
piece he had published in his organization’s Nature Bulletin. Mann’s article was titled
“Lincoln and Darwin”—who were both born on February 12, 1809. The kick-back from
some readers was motivated by religious antagonism to Darwin’s theory of evolution
apparently worked to a fever pitch by Mann’s association of Illinois’s most distinguished

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 native son with Darwin-the-devil-incarnate, in the minds of the back-kickers. Several
days later, Leopold replied to Mann. “I liked your page on Darwin and Lincoln,” he
wrote, “and was also surprised about the protest. Of course neither of us really ought to
be surprised because if one carries the ecological idea far enough, one ultimately gets
over into philosophy.”27 Leopold’s own exploration of an evolutionary-ecological phi-
losophy was fully expounded in his manuscript. And, perhaps inspired by this exchange
with Mann, he wrote a new Foreword for it sometime during the weeks following. The
1948 Foreword contrasted the evolutionary-ecological philosophy with the philosophy
of those who were threatened by it, but, apparently unlike Mann, Leopold introduced
and explored the new philosophy in a disarming style.

1.5 THE ARGUMENT OF PART I—

THE INTERSUBJECTIVE BIOTIC
COMMUNITY—INTRODUCED
“Nothing could be more salutary,” Leopold concludes the Foreword, “than a little
healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings. Perhaps such a shift of values can
be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things
natural, wild, and free.”28 Turn the page, and Leopold’s effort to induce a culture-wide
“shift of values”—a wholesale paradigm shift—begins right on the downbeat. The first
(and only) essay in “January,” the first section of Part I, “the shack sketches” is “January
Thaw.” The author is awakened by dripping water and goes outside to see what’s up.
He follows a skunk track “curious to deduce his state of mind and appetite, and destina-
tion if any.”29 The ecologist, like a natural-history version of Sherlock Holmes, deduces
hidden facts from readily perceptible clues. To be an ecologist is a mind-challenging,
adventurous occupation. (And we readers secretly want to be Dr. Watsons to his
Holmes—sharing in the fun of discovery, by following the lead of the masterly sleuth.)
Leopold first comes upon “[a] meadow mouse, startled by my approach, [who] darts
damply across the skunk track.” The eco-detective’s mind starts to work: “Why is he
abroad in daylight? Probably because he feels grieved about the thaw.”30 Leopold goes
on gently to satirize the prevailing metaphysical and moral anthropocentrism of the
Abrahamic worldview by comparing it with the microtocentrism of a mouse’s world-
view: “The mouse is a sober citizen who knows that grass grows in order that mice may
store it as underground haystacks, and that snow falls in order that mice may build
subways from stack to stack: supply, demand, and transport all neatly organized”—but
“the thawing sun has mocked the basic premises of the microtine economic system.”31
Just what is being mocked here and by whom?
Putting all such things in pluralistic post-modern perspective, Leopold follows
by treating his reader to a buteocentric worldview: The author sees “A rough-legged
hawk . . . sailing over the meadow. Now he stops, hovers like a kingfisher, and then drops
like a feathered bomb into the marsh. He does not rise again, so I am sure he has caught
and is now eating some worried mouse-engineer. . . . The rough-legged has no opinion
why grass grows, but he is well aware that snow melts in order that hawks may again
catch mice.”32

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 For most of Leopold’s contemporaries, one unwelcome implication of the theory
of evolution, of which ecology is but an extension, is that “man” is an animal no more
exalted or privileged in the larger scheme of things than any other animal. We humans
know by the most incontrovertible evidence—introspection—that we have states of
mind and appetites, feelings and passions. To impute states of mind and appetites,
feelings and passions to the other animals is therefore perfectly consistent with the
evolutionary-ecological worldview. Leopold thus freely indulges in the anthropomor-
phic personification of other animals as central to his project of worldview remedia-
tion. The community concept—“the basic concept of ecology”—has an interior, a
subjective, as well as an exterior, objective aspect. The shack sketches are full of “sci-
entific natural history,” as the British ecologist and Leopold’s friend, Charles Elton,
defined ecology—all sorts of interesting and engaging ecological observations.33 But
Leopold also subtly works at portraying the intersubjectivity, the interiority of the
biotic community.

1.6 THE ARGUMENT OF PART I—

THE INTERSUBJECTIVE BIOTIC
COMMUNITY—DRIVEN HOME
Leopold first blithely disregards the nearly universal skepticism about animal minds,
not only evinced by those under the sway of the biblical worldview, which posits a
metaphysical divide between humans and animals, but also evinced by his fellow scien-
tists under the sway of Logical Positivism. He eventually confronts it, however, in “The
Geese Return” in the “March” section of Part I. To do so, he begins by reinforcing his
conflation of the human and animal worlds with a comparison that decidedly favors
the animal:

A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance sky-

ward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew a lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who
told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim
the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly trading
awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of
feathers.34

Leopold then goes on to pique skepticism about animal minds to the point of
outrage: “The geese that proclaim the seasons to our farm are aware of many things,
including the Wisconsin statutes.”35 That, of course, is, on the face of it, ridiculous.
Geese may be “aware of many things”—or they may not be—but they are not aware
of the laws of the state of Wisconsin. Certainly not. But they are aware of the effect
on human behavior of those Wisconsin statutes governing waterfowl hunting: “The
southbound November flocks pass over us high and haughty, with scarcely a honk of
recognition for their favorite sandbars and sloughs. . . . November geese are aware that

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 every marsh and pond bristles from dawn till dark with hopeful guns.”36 And we can
believe that they are indeed. However, “March geese are a different story.”
That point scored, Leopold steps up his anthropomorphic personification of geese.
The gabbling geese “debate the merits of the day’s dinner.”37 Their gathering is a “spring
goose convention” whereat “one notices the prevalence of singles—lone geese that do
much flying about and much talking.”38 Thus, “One is apt to impute a disconsolate
tone to their honkings and to jump to the conclusion that they are broken-hearted
widowers, or mothers hunting lost children.”39 However, “[t]he seasoned ornithologist
knows that such subjective interpretation of bird behavior is . . .”40 Leopold does not say
“unscientific” or “unverifiable,” but simply “risky.” He then tells a tale of data-gathering
by his graduate students counting “for half a dozen years the number of geese com-
prising a flock,” followed by “mathematical analysis,” all indicating that “lone geese
in spring are probably just what our fond imaginings had first suggested. They are
bereaved survivors of the winter’s shooting, searching in vain for their kin. Now I am
free to grieve with and for the lone honkers.”41
Unstated but scarcely unnoticeable in this vignette is the background evolutionary
assumption that if we are entitled confidently to impute states of mind to our fellow
humans—on the basis of what we know of our own states of mind, their behavior,
and our knowledge of human social structures—we are no less entitled confidently to
impute states of mind to our fellow voyagers in the odyssey of evolution on the basis
of what we know of our own states of mind, their behavior, and our knowledge of
their social structures. To the Positivist complaint that we can never directly observe the
state of mind of another animal and verify our hypotheses concerning their thoughts
and feelings, Leopold need only reply that we can never directly observe the states of
mind of another human being. The only consciousness that one can directly observe is
one’s own—a somewhat unsettling realization, enticing a few idiosyncratic skeptics to
espouse solipsism.42 But how can one seriously doubt that the state of mind of a person
whose face reddens, fists clench, and neck veins swell, upon suffering an insult added
to an injury, would be exactly one’s own if one were standing in the other’s shoes. Of
course, we can never be as confident that we know other animal minds as well as we
think we know other human minds, but that they have minds and that they share with
us a full suite of basic animal appetites, passions, and feelings—hunger, thirst, sexual
craving, fear, and rage—is beyond doubt, from an evolutionary-ecological point of view.
Having not only blithely insisted upon the existence of non-human animal sub-
jectivity but defended the scientific legitimacy of anthropomorphically personifying
animals, Leopold is free to indulge in sympathetically imagining animal consciousness
throughout the remainder of Part I. The instances are too numerous to document and
dissect here. But they contribute immeasurably to the charm of the shack sketches and
much endear their author to his readers. As a college professor who has taught logic to
dull pupils, I will share my favorite instance and leave it at that. Recounting a partridge
hunt in “Red Lanterns,” Leopold notes that

My dog, by the way, thinks that I have much to learn about partridges, and,
being a professional naturalist, I agree. He persists in tutoring me, with the calm

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 patience of a professor of logic, in the art of drawing deductions from an edu-
cated nose. I delight in seeing him deduce a conclusion, in the form of a point,
from data that are obvious to him, but speculative to my unaided eye. Perhaps
he hopes his dull pupil will one day learn to smell.43

In Part I, Leopold’s project of worldview remediation is approached relentlessly,

but also indirectly and subliminally. Jumping right up on a soapbox and preaching a
new gospel is hardly ever effective. In Part I, he never refers to evolution or ecology by
name. Leopold is keenly aware that his readers’ wariness must be overcome by charm
and humor and that his message must be conveyed obliquely. The voice is first-person
singular—“I.” The tense is present. The author’s persona is warm, amiable, intelligent,
literate, witty, wry, ironic, entertaining, and self-confident. He seems only to observe
and describe, to share his experience and knowledge. Yes, he gently criticizes and
sometimes ridicules human foibles and follies, but never stridently or bitterly—rather,
always tastefully, understatedly, and with a touch of ironic humor.

1.7 THE ARGUMENT OF PART II—THE

EVOLUTIONARY ASPECT: TIME AND TELOS
In Part II, “Sketches Here and There,” the voice shifts from the first-person singular
to the first-person plural—to “we”—and the tense shifts from present to past. It’s not
about what I (the author) see and do, think and feel, but about what we, collectively,
as a culture, believe. And it’s about how our prevailing attitudes and values have led us
astray in our relationship with things natural, wild, and free. It’s also about how those
attitudes and values must change if they are to accord with what evolutionary biology
and ecology—now by name—have revealed to us, not only about nature but about
ourselves and our place in nature.
James Brown, “the Godfather of Soul,” introduced many innovations to American
music. Arguably his greatest was a heavy emphasis on “The One,” the first beat of every
four-beat measure (as opposed to the emphasis on the second and fourth in traditional
blues and jazz).44 Leopold was ahead of his time in this particular as in so many oth-
ers. Just as the one, “January Thaw,” of Part I, gets right on the evolutionary-ecological
groove, “Marshland Elegy,” the first essay in Part II, “Sketches Here and There,” also hits
that theme hard right from the downbeat.
In my opinion, “Marshland Elegy” is the most beautiful piece in the book, from a
purely literary point of view. It begins with a visual metaphor: a bank of fog cover-
ing a crane marsh as the “white ghost of a glacier” that covered the place thousands
of years ago—thus immediately evoking deep time.45 Several paragraphs further, the
metaphorically evoked temporal scale of evolution becomes explicit: “A sense of time
lies thick and heavy on such a place. Yearly since the ice age it has awakened each spring
to the clangor of cranes. . . . An endless caravan of generations has built of its own bones
this bridge into the future, this habitat where the oncoming host again may live and
breed and die.”46

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 For many of Leopold’s contemporaries, as for many of our own, another unwel-
come implication of the theory of evolution is its purposelessness. In Aristotelian
terms, there is no “final cause” in evolutionary processes, no telos, no goal. Evolution
proceeds by what the Greeks called chance, necessity, and fortune—chance genetic
mutation, natural selection, and a little good or bad luck is what drives evolution-
ary development. Skunks, mice, hawks, geese, cranes, and humans have all just been
spit out by the blind forces of nature, from an evolutionary point of view, happy (or
unhappy, as the case may be) accidents. For Woody Allen this cosmic purposelessness
leads to a profound (and comic) existential funk.47 If the filmmaker is at all repre-
sentative, people seem to want to feel that they have an important place in the grand
scheme of things, that their lives have meaning, that we are here for a reason. The
Abrahamic (biblical) worldview provides us with an exalted place in the cosmos, tells
us the reason we exist, and gives a meaning from on high to our lives; the Darwinian
(evolutionary-ecological) worldview does not.
Leopold squarely confronts that obstacle to the popular embrace of the
evolutionary-ecological worldview by asking “To what end?” (this age-old annual cycle
of living, breeding, and dying). And answers, cryptically, “Out on the bog a crane, gulp-
ing some luckless frog, springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun
with mighty wings. The tamaracks re-echo his bugled certitude. He seems to know.”48
So deep runs the desire for a transcendent cosmic purpose to give meaning to life
that Peter Fritzell, one of the (otherwise probative) contributors to Companion to
A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays, insisted that Leopold meant
that there is a final cause, an end, a telos—we just do not know what it is. But cranes
do. Fritzell writes, “humans do not know, perhaps cannot know, ‘to what end,’ however
much they may wish to. The crane, on the other hand, . . . ‘seems to know’—not only
where he came from but also where he and his marshes are going—a quality of knowl-
edge man can perceive perhaps, but which he cannot capture in language.”49 I think
that Fritzell badly misses Leopold’s point. There is no ultimate end. Leopold’s point
is that the question—To what end?—does not occur to the crane nor is he troubled
by the fact that there is none. Every day, I read some lines by Matthew Arnold that are
literally inscribed on stone in my study: “Is it so small a thing/To have enjoyed the sun,/
To have lived light in the spring,/To have loved, to have thought, to have done?”50 Why
must we have a preordained telos to give meaning to our existence and a raison d’etre?
Isn’t it enough that we exist at all? Shouldn’t we simply accept the mystery of our exis-
tence and pay it the homage that it deserves by giving it a meaning of our own making?
Wait a while. Perhaps there is an end: an end of another kind than that desired by
those who do ask the question and are troubled by the absence of a satisfactory sci-
entific answer. Aristotle draws a distinction that is often forgotten in contemporary
teleology/ateleology debates, the distinction between “extrinsic” or “transcendent” and
“intrinsic” or “immanent” ends. Some activities are their own ends (such as gazing at
the moon, playing tennis, or making love); other activities we do for some end other
than themselves (such as doing onerous, mind-numbing labor for the sake of earning a
wage or traveling a long time in a cramped airplane seat to reach a distant destination).
For Aristotle, intrinsic or immanent ends are superior to extrinsic or transcendent

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 ends. Life might be understood to be an intrinsic or immanent end; we might live it for
its own sake. The crane lives his to its fullest and with robustness of spirit. That’s what
the crane knows, if he knows anything—not where he came from and where he and
his marshes are going. And that’s what he has to teach Woody Allen, Peter Fritzell, and
any of Leopold’s readers who may be alienated by the extrinsic, transcendent purpose-
lessness—the holy sunyata, the emptiness—at the core of the evolutionary-ecological
worldview.

1.8 THE ARGUMENT OF PART II—THE

EVOLUTIONARY ASPECT: BEAUTY, KINSHIP,
AND SPIRITUALITY
“Marshland Elegy” has a personal significance for me. Not only did it awaken in me
the profound potential in the evolutionary-ecological worldview for a naturalistic
aesthetic and spirituality; it awakened in me a lifelong romance with cranes. “[O]ur
appreciation of the crane grows,” Leopold writes,

with the slow unraveling of earthly history. His tribe, we now know, stems out
of the remote Eocene. When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the
trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past,
of that incredible sweep of millennia that underlies and conditions the daily
affairs of birds and men. And so they live and have their being—these cranes—
not in the constricted present, but in the wider reaches of evolutionary time.51

After reading this passage for the first time, my very perceptual experience of cranes
changed. No longer were they just large birds differing from herons in flying with
neck outstretched rather than crooked into an S shape. They were flying fossils, only
an evolutionary step or two removed from the pterosaurs from which they evolved.
They were to me indeed “wildness incarnate,” a living bridge across the Quaternary
and Neogene periods into the Paleocene. Incidentally, the sentence—“We hear the
trumpet in the orchestra of evolution”—was deleted from the four-part expanded
(and apparently bowdlerized!) version of the book published by Oxford as A Sand
County Almanac with Other Essays on Conservation from Round River in 1966 and by
Ballantine in 1970. Were the Oxford and Ballantine editors of the popular paperback
as leery of Leopold’s forthright evolutionary proselytizing in 1966 as were the editors
of Knopf in 1948? As noted in 1.3, sticking the essays on conservation from Round
River into Sand County destroyed the beautiful unity of the book as Leopold had left
it. And by deleting a key sentence of the original, the cutting edge of Leopold’s overall
argument was dulled.
In Part II’s “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” Leopold meditates at the gravesite
of the extinct passenger pigeon in Wyalusing State Park at the confluence of the
Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers. In that essay, he further develops the profound

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 potential in the evolutionary-ecological worldview for a naturalistic spirituality and
environmental ethic:

It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin of spe-
cies. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of genera-
tions: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of
evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of
kinship with fellow creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over
the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.52

Leopold follows with a pot shot at the smug metaphysical anthropocentrism of the
worldview he essays to remediate: “Above all we should, in the century since Darwin,
have come to know that man, while now captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the
sole object of its quest, and that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the
simple necessity of whistling in the dark.”53

1.9 THE ARGUMENT OF PART II—THE

ECOLOGICAL ASPECT
The ecological aspect of the evolutionary-ecological worldview is developed in Part
II’s “Odyssey,” the essay following, at one remove, the evolution-themed “Marshland
Elegy.” Prior to European settlement, X, an atom of unspecified species (probably cal-
cium), is dislodged from the limestone (calcium carbonate) substrate of the western
Wisconsin prairie by a bur-oak root. He begins to cycle through the biota—first into
one of the bur oak’s acorns, which is eaten by a deer, which is eaten by an Indian. After
the death and decay of the Indian, it is taken up by bluestem (a prairie grass) and then
goes back into the soil. “Next he entered a tuft of side-oats gramma [another prairie
grass], a buffalo, a buffalo chip, and again the soil. Next a spiderwort [a prairie flower],
a rabbit, and an owl.” And so the story goes, cycle after cycle, each one as detailed as
the one before. (As an environmental-education exercise, I once observed children set
to the task of drawing and painting X’s odyssey. They were kept quiet and busy for a
whole day.) After European settlement, “Y began a succession of dizzying annual trips
through a new grass called wheat . . . his trip from rock to river completed in one short
century”; and then, in a flash, from river to “his ancient prison, the sea.”54
At the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, during the centennial cel-
ebration of Leopold’s graduation in 2009, the distinguished ecologist Gene Likens, a
founder of the famous Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, said that he had spent his
whole career just putting numbers on X and Y. And indeed, when it was first published in
1942, Leopold was expressing, in a scientifically informed literary genre, state-of-the-art
ecosystem ecology. In 1935, Arthur Tansley coined the term “ecosystem.”55 Tansley
expanded the purview of ecology from the biota (relationships among plants and ani-
mals) to the “inorganic ‘factors’”—for “there is constant interchange of the most various

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 kinds within each [eco]system, not only between the organisms but between the organic
and the inorganic.”56 Building on Tansley’s work, in 1942, Raymond Lindeman incor-
porated the concept of energy flow into the nascent ecosystem paradigm in ecology.57
Less than a decade after the introduction of the ecosystem idea, Leopold was conceptu-
ally, albeit not quantitatively, articulating both its main research components—materials
cycling, in “Odyssey” (first published in 1941) and energy flows in “A Biotic View of
Land” (first published in 1939).58 He cut, edited, and pasted extensive passages from the
latter into “The Land Ethic.” Leopold actually anticipated Lindeman’s focus on energy by
several years, but thought that energy, like materials, cycled. However, unlike materials,
such as the atoms of “Odyssey,” energy makes a one-way trip through the biota, from
solar source to entropic sink as Lindeman clearly understood. (See 3.8, 3.9, and 3.12 for a
more detailed discussion of Leopold’s place in the history of ecosystem ecology.)
In the “Chihuahua and Sonora” section of Part II, Leopold elaborates the
“harmony-of-nature” ecological trope as a two-tiered metaphor. A fast-running
mountain stream in northern Mexico, the Gavilan, produces an array of sounds, for
which there are few adequate words in English. Even Leopold, among the great masters
of the language, comes up only with “the tinkle of waters.”59 Gently moving waters
also gurgle; and rapids roar. Be all that as it may, to characterize the panoply of sounds
made by a mountain stream as a “song” is the first tier of the metaphor. “This song of
the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means
audible to all.”60 That other “music” is the second tier of the metaphor.

To hear even a few notes of it . . . you must know the speech of hills and rivers.
Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over
rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything
you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing
harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths
of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.61

This “music” is as cerebral and metaphysical as the Pythagorean harmony of the

spheres.

1.10 THE ARGUMENT OF PART II—THE

PIVOTAL TROPE: “THINKING LIKE A
MOUNTAIN”
“Thinking Like a Mountain,” is all about predator-prey population dynamics and the
relationship of those dynamics to vegetation cover and soil stability. In his early Forest-
Service days, Leopold was a zealous advocate of predator extermination because, as he
simply and candidly explains, he “thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer,
. . . no wolves would mean hunter’s paradise.”62 And so, when given “a chance to kill a
wolf,” he and his crew “were pumping lead into the pack” that had appeared unexpect-
edly below the escarpment where they were distractedly eating lunch.63 They succeeded

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 in mortally wounding the alpha female. In perhaps the most oft-quoted lines in Part II,
Leopold sounds her death knell: “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green
fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was some-
thing new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain.”64
Subsequent experience revealed just what the wolf and the mountain know:

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched
the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes
wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seed-
ling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every
edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. . . . In the end the starved
bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too much, bleach with the
bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.65

Bryan G. Norton foregrounds another important ecological insight embedded in

“Thinking Like a Mountain”: “For Leopold, learning to think like a mountain was
to recognize the importance of multiple temporal scales and the associated hidden
dynamics that drive them.”66 Norton provides no textual support for this statement
and his extensive elaboration of it in his book Sustainability, but it is supported by this
passage in the essay:

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a
mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while
a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range
pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.67

The temporal scale of wolf-deer predator-prey population dynamics is measured in

years; that of vegetational succession is measured in decades. Further, as Norton goes
on to note, “These normally slow-scaled ecological dynamics [vegetative succession, in
this case] if accelerated by violent and pervasive changes [to the faster-scaled dynam-
ics of the ecological processes embedded in them, wolf-deer predator-prey population
dynamics, in this case] can create havoc with established evolutionary opportunities
and constraints.”68
In addition to these ecological insights, “Thinking Like a Mountain” is also, much
more importantly, about a moment of epiphany in the course of Leopold’s own pro-
cess of worldview remediation. Though set in the Southwest and describing an event
that took place in 1909, it was written much later, in 1944, in response to criticism
by one of Leopold’s former students, Albert Hochbaum, who was reading Leopold’s
manuscript as it was taking shape.69 In a letter to Leopold, Hochbaum wrote, “You have
sometimes followed trails like anyone else that lead up wrong alleys. . . . Your lesson is
much stronger, then, if you try to show how your own attitude towards your environ-
ment has changed. . . . That’s why I suggested the wolf business. I hope that you will
have at least one piece on wolves alone.”70 After reading Leopold’s draft of “Thinking
Like a Mountain,” Hochbaum replied that it “fills the bill perfectly.”71

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 In the tale Leopold tells, the dying eyes of the old she-wolf mutely ask her slayer,
just as the voice of Jesus asked Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, “Why perse-
cutest thou me?” (Acts 22:7). We too can live and learn, just as did Leopold himself.
We too can change our worldview, just as he himself did. Saul of Tarsus rejected his
pagan worldview and adopted the Christian worldview and, to mark the transition
his name changed from Saul to Paul and he became Paul “the Apostle.” Leo (as he was
called by his forest-service compatriots), the zealous predator exterminator—yes, in
his Southwest days he was a very zealous advocate of predator extermination—became
one of the twentieth century’s most eloquent advocates and ardent protectors of pred-
ators. Leo’s transformations, no less than Saul’s, involved a profound paradigm shift,
a worldview change. Maybe, Leopold hoped, he was but a harbinger of the worldview
transformation that society as a whole was poised to undergo.
Gavin Van Horn points to another element in the essay that supports this epiph-
anic interpretation. “Perhaps the only time Leopold directly quoted Thoreau in his
published writing,” Van Horn notes, “was in the final paragraph of ‘Thinking Like a
Mountain,’ . . . ”—the famous line from Thoreau’s essay, “Walking”: “in wildness is the
preservation of the world.”72 But Leopold either misquoted or deliberately changed
one word: “In wildness,” Leopold writes, “is the salvation of the world.”73 Van Horn
points out that

Though only a single word, the alteration is significant. . . . It could be that

Leopold, working from memory, inadvertently slipped at this point in the essay.
More likely, however, is that the word substitution was neither a slip of the
mind or the pen. Leopold’s meticulous character and his penchant for continu-
ally re-drafting and editing his essays . . . suggest that [he] was carefully choosing
his words while quoting from such a revered source. Whether to jolt the reader
with a “mistaken” word, because of the suggestive redemptive connotations, or
both, by using “salvation” rather than “preservation,” Leopold underscored his
own conversion experience in the essay and implied that the “hidden” knowl-
edge of what has “long [been] known among mountains” . . . requires a similar
cultural conversion.74

A Sand County Almanac is crafted to nudge that process of “cultural conversion”

along. The confessional “Thinking Like a Mountain” demonstrates that worldview
remediation is possible. It also demonstrates how a worldview remediator like Leopold
can draw on the imagery and power of the very same traditional worldview that
he is hoping to replace with the scientific worldview that he is striving to explicate
and promulgate. The epiphany and conversion of Saul of Tarsus to Paul the Apostle
was immediate, the epiphany and conversion of Leo-the-predator-exterminator to
Aldo-the-predator-protector was gradual and protracted—a signal difference. But the
impact that the essay makes on the reader is, as in the biblical paradigm that Leopold
is mirroring, immediate and palpable. Thus the retold experience effects an immediate
epiphany and conversion in the reader, even though it took the author thirty years to
fully appreciate the significance of his youthful experience.

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 1.11 NORTON’S NARROW INTERPRETATION
OF LEOPOLD’S WORLDVIEW-REMEDIATION
PROJECT
Norton agrees that in “Thinking Like a Mountain,” Leopold was out to change his
readers’ worldview. But that worldview change, Norton wishes us to believe, was far
more modest than a wholesale shift from the prevailing militantly anthropocen-
tric biblical dominionism leavened with consumerism to a non-anthropocentric
evolutionary-ecological worldview. “Leopold’s most important discovery,” Norton
asserts, is “the recognition that we act, learn, and evaluate within a multiscalar world.
Leopold’s greatest contribution is not in musings about extending moral considerabil-
ity”—not, in other words, in bequeathing the land ethic to us—“but in reconstituting
the perceptual field of environmental managers. He transformed that world into the
world of the adaptive manager, measuring, testing, and evaluating within a complex
dynamic system.”75 Fortunately, Leopold’s own conception of the world of the adaptive
manager is set out in an address to fellow wildlife managers in 1940. In that address
Leopold clearly states that a seismic shift in values across Western culture is the world-
view change that he has in his managerial sights:

Our profession began with the job of producing something to shoot. However
important that may seem to us, it is not very important to the emancipated
moderns who no longer feel soil between their toes.
We find that we cannot produce much to shoot until the landowner changes
his ways of using his land, and he cannot change his ways until his teachers,
bankers, customers, editors, governors, trespassers change their ideas about
what land is for. To change ideas about what land is for is to change ideas about
what anything is for.
Thus we started to move a straw, and end up with the job of moving a
mountain.76

Norton seems keen to counter the overwhelming impact that “Thinking Like a
Mountain”—centrally located in and functioning as the pivotal essay of A Sand County
Almanac—has actually had on its readers’ sensibility and worldview. Leopold’s arrest-
ing image—“a fierce green fire”—has become an iconic symbol for the contemporary
environmental movement.77 That the tempo of the dynamics of the world we live in is
multiscalar is certainly an important element of the evolutionary-ecological worldview.
But this is what readers remember most vividly about “Thinking Like a Mountain”: that
fierce green fire dying in the eyes of the old mother wolf; the remorse that the more
mature Leopold evinces for his murderous and thoughtless act committed thirty-five
years before, as finally he publicly confesses it; and his subsequent conversion to a whole
’nother way of thinking that was indeed decidedly non-anthropocentric—both meta-
physically and morally non-anthropocentric (as distinguished in the Introduction).
The most recent piece of evidence for my claim about what is truly memorable about
“Thinking Like a Mountain” is the recent film (2011) documenting Leopold’s life and

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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
such thing at Covent Garden, or Le Français, it might look antiquated and
un-European.
The theatres of Spain are small, although called Coliseums, and ill-
contrived; the wardrobe and properties are as scanty as those of the
spectators, Madrid itself not excepted; when filled, the smells are ultra-
continental, and resemble those which prevail at Paris, when the great
people is indulged with a gratis representation; in the Spanish theatres no
neutralizing incense is used, as is done by the wise clergy in their churches.
If the atmosphere were analysed by Faraday, it would be found to contain
equal portions of stale cigar smoke and fresh garlic fume. The lighting,
except on those rare occasions when the theatre is illuminated, as it is
called, is just intended to make darkness visible, and there was no seeing
into the henroosts towards which the eyes and glasses of the foxite pittites
were vainly elevated.
Spanish tragedy, even when the Cid spouts, is
wearisome; the language is stilty, the declamation THE BOLERO.
ranting, French, and unnatural; passion is torn to rags.
The sainetes, or farces, are broad, but amusing, and are perfectly well acted;
the national ones are disappearing, but when brought out are the true
vehicles of the love for sarcasm, satire, and intrigue, the mirth and mother-
wit, for which Spaniards are so remarkable; and no people are more
essentially serio-comic and dramatic than they are, whether in Venta, Plaza,
or church; the actors in their amusing farces cease to be actors, and the
whole appears to be a scene of real life; there generally is a gracioso or
favourite wag of the Liston and Keeley species, who is on the best terms
with the pit, who says and does what he likes, interlards the dialogue with
his own witticisms, and creates a laugh before he even comes on.
The orchestra is very indifferent; the Spaniards are
fond enough of what they call music, whether vocal or NATIONAL
instrumental; but it is Oriental, and most unlike the DANCES.
exquisite melody and performances of Italy or Germany.
In the same manner, although they have footed it to their rude songs from
time immemorial, they have no idea of the grace and elegance of the French
ballet; the moment they attempt it they become ridiculous, for they are bad
imitators of their neighbours, whether in cuisine, language, or costume;
indeed a Spaniard ceases to be a Spaniard in proportion as he becomes an
Afrancesado; they take, in their jumpings and chirpings, after the
grasshopper, having a natural genius for the bota and bolero. The great
charm of the Spanish theatres is their own national dance—matchless,
unequalled, and inimitable, and only to be performed by Andalucians. This
is la salsa de la comedia, the essence, the cream, the sauce piquante of the
night’s entertainments; it is attempted to be described in every book of
travels—for who can describe sound or motion?—it must be seen. However
languid the house, laughable the tragedy, or serious the comedy, the sound
of the castanet awakens the most listless; the sharp, spirit-stirring click is
heard behind the scenes—the effect is instantaneous—it creates life under
the ribs of death—it silences the tongues of countless women—on n’écoute
que le ballet. The curtain draws up; the bounding pair dart forward from the
opposite sides, like two separated lovers, who, after long search, have found
each other again, nor do they seem to think of the public, but only of each
other; the glitter of the gossamer costume of the Majo and Maja seems
invented for this dance—the sparkle of the gold lace and silver filigree adds
to the lightness of their motions; the transparent, form designing saya of the
lady, heightens the charms of a faultless symmetry which it fain would
conceal; no cruel stays fetter her serpentine flexibility. They pause—bend
forward an instant—prove their supple limbs and arms; the band strikes up,
they turn fondly towards each other, and start into life. What exercise
displays the ever-varying charms of female grace, and the contours of
manly form, like this fascinating dance? The accompaniment of the castanet
gives employment to their upraised arms. C’est, say the French, le
pantomime d’amour. The enamoured youth persecutes the coy, coquettish
maiden; who shall describe the advance—her timid retreat, his eager
pursuit, like Apollo chasing Daphne? Now they gaze on each other, now on
the ground; now all is life, love, and action; now there is a pause—they stop
motionless at a moment, and grow into the earth. It carries all before it.
There is a truth which overpowers the fastidious judgment. Away, then, with
the studied grace of the French danseuse, beautiful but artificial, cold and
selfish as is the flicker of her love, compared to the real impassioned
abandon of the daughters of the South! There is nothing indecent in this
dance; no one is tired or the worse for it; indeed its only fault is its being
too short, for as Molière says, “Un ballet ne saurait être trop long, pourvu
que la morale soit bonne, et la métaphysique bien entendue.”
Notwithstanding this most profound remark, the Toledan clergy out of mere
jealousy wished to put the bolero down, on the pretence of immorality. The
dancers were allowed in evidence to “give a view” to the court: when they
began, the bench and bar showed symptoms of restlessness, and at last,
casting aside gowns and briefs, both joined, as if tarantula-bitten, in the
irresistible capering—Verdict, for the defendants with costs.
This Baile nacional, however adored by foreigners, is, alas! beginning to
be looked down upon by those ill-advised señoras who wear French bonnets
in the boxes, instead of Spanish mantillas. The dance is suspected of not
being European or civilized; its best chance of surviving is, the fact that it is
positively fashionable on the boards of London and Paris. These national
exercises are however firmly rooted among the peasants and lower classes.
The different provinces, as they have a different language, costume, &c.,
have also their own peculiar local dances, which, like their wines, fine arts,
relics, saints and sausages, can only be really relished on the spots
themselves.
The dances of the better classes of Spaniards in
private life are much the same as in other parts of PRIVATE
Europe, nor is either sex particularly distinguished by DANCES.
grace in this amusement, to which, however, both are
much addicted. It is not, however, yet thought to be a proof of bon ton to
dance as badly as possible, and with the greatest appearance of bore, that
appanage of the so-called gay world. These dances, as everything national
is excluded, are without a particle of interest to any one except the
performers. An extempore ball, which might be called a carpet-dance, if
there were any, forms the common conclusion of a winter’s tertulia, or
social meetings, at which no great attention is paid either to music, costume,
or Mr. Gunter. Here English country dances, French quadrilles, and German
waltzes are the order of the night; everything Spanish being excluded,
except the plentiful want of good fiddling, lighting, dressing, and eating,
which never distresses the company, for the frugal, temperate, and easily-
pleased Spaniard enters with schoolboy heart and soul into the reality of
any holiday, which being joy sufficient of itself lacks no artificial
enhancement.
Dancing at all is a novelty among Spanish ladies, which was introduced
with the Bourbons. As among the Romans and Moors, it was before thought
undignified. Performers were hired to amuse the inmates of the Christian
hareem; to mix and change hands with men was not to be thought of for an
instant; and to this day few Spanish women shake hands with men—the
shock is too electrical; they only give them with their hearts, and for good.
The lower classes, who are a trifle less particular, and
among whom, by the blessing of Santiago, the foreign MORRIS
dancing-master is not abroad, adhere to the primitive DANCES.
steps and tunes of their Oriental forefathers. Their
accompaniments are the “tabret and the harp;” the guitar, the tambourine,
and the castanet. The essence of these instruments is to give a noise on
being beaten. Simple as it may seem to play on the latter, it is only attained
by a quick ear and finger, and great practice; accordingly these delights of
the people are always in their hands; practice makes perfect, and many a
performer, dusky as a Moor, rivals Ethiopian “Bones” himself; they take to
it before their alphabet, since the very urchins in the street begin to learn by
snapping their fingers, or clicking together two shells or bits of slate, to
which they dance; in truth, next to noise, some capering seems essential, as
the safety-valve exponents of what Cervantes describes, the “bounding of
the soul, the bursting of laughter, the restlessness of the body, and the
quicksilver of the five senses.” It is the rude sport of people who dance
from the necessity of motion, the relief of the young, the healthy, and the
joyous, to whom life is of itself a blessing, and who, like skipping kids, thus
give vent to their superabundant lightness of heart and limb. Sancho, a true
Manchegan, after beholding the strange saltatory exhibitions of his master,
in somewhat an incorrect ball costume, professes his ignorance of such
elaborate dancing, but maintained that for a zapateo, a knocking of shoes,
none could beat him. Unchanged as are the instruments, so are the dancing
propensities of Spaniards. All night long, three thousand years ago, say the
historians, did they dance and sing, or rather jump and yell, to these
“howlings of Tarshish;” and so far from its being a fatigue, they kept up the
ball all night, by way of resting.
The Gallicians and Asturians retain among many of their aboriginal
dances and tunes, a wild Pyrrhic jumping, which, with their shillelah in
hand, is like the Gaelic Ghillee Callum, and is the precise Iberian armed
dance which Hannibal had performed at the impressive funeral of Gracchus.
These quadrille figures are intricate and warlike, requiring, as was said of
the Iberian performances, much leg-activity, for which the wiry sinewy
active Spaniards are still remarkable. These are the Morris dances imported
from Gallicia by our John of Gaunt, who supposed they were Moorish. The
peasants still dance them in their best costumes, to the antique castanet,
pipe, and tambourine. They are usually directed by a master of the
ceremonies, or what is equivalent, a parti-coloured fool, Μωρος; which may
be the etymology of Morris.
These comparsas, or national quadrilles, were the
hearty welcome which the peasants were paid to give to GADITANIAN
the sons of Louis Philippe at Vitoria; such, too, we have GIRLS.
often beheld gratis, and performed by eight men, with
castanets in their hands, and to the tune of a fife and drum, while a
Bastonero, or leader of the band, clad in gaudy raiment like a pantaloon,
directed the rustic ballet; around were grouped payesas y aldeanas, dressed
in tight bodices, with pañuelos on their heads, their hair hanging down
behind in trensas, and their necks covered with blue and coral beads; the
men bound up their long locks with red handkerchiefs, and danced in their
shirts, the sleeves of which were puckered up with bows of different-
coloured ribands, crossed also over the back and breast, and mixed with
scapularies and small prints of saints; their drawers were white, and full as
the bragas of the Valencians, like whom they wore alpargatas, or hemp
sandals laced with blue strings; the figure of the dance was very intricate,
consisting of much circling, turning, and jumping, and accompanied with
loud cries of viva! at each change of evolution. These comparsas are
undoubtedly a remnant of the original Iberian exhibitions, in which, as
among the Spartans and wild Indians, even in relaxations a warlike
principle was maintained. The dancers beat time with their swords on their
shields, and when one of their champions wished to show his contempt for
the Romans, he executed before them a derisive pirouette. Was this
remembered the other day at Vitoria?
But in Spain at every moment one retraces the steps of antiquity; thus
still on the banks of the Bætis may be seen those dancing-girls of profligate
Gades, which were exported to ancient Rome, with pickled tunnies, to the
delight of wicked epicures and the horror of the good fathers of the early
church, who compared them, and perhaps justly, to the capering performed
by the daughter of Herodias. They were prohibited by Theodosius, because,
according to St. Chrysostom, at such balls the devil never wanted a partner.
The well-known statue at Naples called the Venere Callipige is the
representation of Telethusa, or some other Cadiz dancing-girl. Seville is
now in these matters, what Gades was; never there is wanting some
venerable gipsy hag, who will get up a funcion as these pretty proceedings
are called, a word taken from the pontifical ceremonies; for Italy set the
fashion to Spain once, as France does now. These festivals must be paid for,
since the gitanesque race, according to Cervantes, were only sent into this
world as “fishhooks for purses.” The callees when young are very pretty—
then they have such wheedling ways, and traffic on such sure wants and
wishes, since to Spanish men they prophesy gold, to women, husbands.
The scene of the ball is generally placed in the
suburb Triana, which is the Transtevere of the town, and GIPSY DANCE.
the home of bull-fighters, smugglers, picturesque
rogues, and Egyptians, whose women are the premières danseuses on these
occasions, in which men never take a part. The house selected is usually
one of those semi-Moorish abodes and perfect pictures, where rags, poverty,
and ruin, are mixed up with marble columns, figs, fountains and grapes; the
party assembles in some stately saloon, whose gilded Arab roof—safe from
the spoiler—hangs over whitewashed walls, and the few wooden benches
on which the chaperons and invited are seated, among whom quantity is
rather preferred to quality; nor would the company or costume perhaps be
admissible at the Mansion-house; but here the past triumphs over the
present; the dance which is closely analogous to the Ghowasee of the
Egyptians, and the Nautch of the Hindoos, is called the Ole by Spaniards,
the Romalis by their gipsies; the soul and essence of it consists in the
expression of certain sentiment, one not indeed of a very sentimental or
correct character. The ladies, who seem to have no bones, resolve the
problem of perpetual motion, their feet having comparatively a sinecure, as
the whole person performs a pantomime, and trembles like an aspen leaf;
the flexible form and Terpsichore figure of a young Andalucian girl—be she
gipsy or not—is said by the learned, to have been designed by nature as the
fit frame for her voluptuous imagination.
Be that as it may, the scholar and classical
commentator will every moment quote Martial, &c., OPERA IN
when he beholds the unchanged balancing of hands, SPAIN.
raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the
feet, and the serpentine, quivering movements. A contagious excitement
seizes the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in
measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings.
The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature is all
but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and alpisteras are handed about,
and the fête, carried on to early dawn, often concludes in broken heads,
which here are called “gipsy’s fare.” These dances appear to a stranger from
the chilly north, to be more marked by energy than by grace, nor have the
legs less to do than the body, hips, and arms. The sight of this unchanged
pastime of antiquity, which excites the Spaniards to frenzy, rather disgusts
an English spectator, possibly from some national malorganization, for, as
Molière says, “l’Angleterre a produit des grands hommes dans les sciences
et les beaux arts, mais pas un grand danseur—allez lire l’histoire.” However
indecent these dances may be, yet the performers are inviolably chaste, and
as far at least as ungipsy guests are concerned, may be compared to iced
punch at a rout; young girls go through them before the applauding eyes of
their parents and brothers, who would resent to the death any attempt on
their sisters’ virtue.
During the lucid intervals between the ballet and the brandy, La caña,
the true Arabic gaunia, song, is administered as a soother by some hirsute
artiste, without frills, studs, diamonds, or kid gloves, whose staves, sad and
melancholy, always begin and end with an ay! a high-pitched sigh, or cry.
These Moorish melodies, relics of auld lang syne, are best preserved in the
hill-built villages near Ronda, where there are no roads for the members of
Queen Christina’s Conservatorio Napolitano; wherever l’académie
tyrannizes, and the Italian opera prevails, adieu, alas! to the tropes and tunes
of the people: and now-a-days the opera exotic is cultivated in Spain by the
higher classes, because, being fashionable at London and Paris, it is an
exponent of the civilization of 1846. Although the audience in their honest
hearts are as much bored there as elsewhere, yet the affair is pronounced by
them to be charming, because it is so expensive, so select, and so far above
the comprehension of the vulgar. Avoid it, however, in Spain, ye our fair
readers, for the second-rate singers are not fit to hold the score to those of
thy own dear Haymarket.
The real opera of Spain is in the shop of the Barbero
or in the court-yard of the Venta; in truth, good music, MUSIC IN
whether harmonious or scientific, vocal or instrumental, VENTAS.
is seldom heard in this land, notwithstanding the eternal
strumming and singing that is going on there. The very masses, as
performed in the cathedrals, from the introduction of the pianoforte and the
violin, have very little impressive or devotional character. The fiddle
disenchants. Even Murillo, when he clapped catgut under a cherub chin in
the clouds, thereby damaged the angelic sentiment. Let none despise the
genuine songs and instruments of the Peninsula, as excellence in music is
multiform, and much of it, both in name and substance, is conventional.
Witness a whining ballad sung by a chorus out of work, to encoring crowds
in the streets of merry old England, or a bagpipe-tune played in Ross-shire,
which enchants the Highlanders, who cry that strain again, but scares away
the gleds. Let therefore the Spaniards enjoy also what they call music,
although fastidious foreigners condemn it as Iberian and Oriental. They
love to have it so, and will have their own way, in their own time and tune,
Rossini and Paganini to the contrary notwithstanding. They—not the
Italians—are listened to by a delighted semi-Moro audience, with a most
profound Oriental and melancholy attention. Like their love, their music,
which is its food, is a serious affair; yet the sad song, the guitar, and dance,
at this moment, form the joy of careless poverty, the repose of sunburnt
labour. The poor forget their toils, sans six sous et sans souci; nay, even
their meals, like Pliny’s friend Claro, who lost his supper, Bætican olives
and gazpacho, to run after a Gaditanian dancing-girl.
In venta and court-yard, in spite of a long day’s work
and scanty fare, at the sound of the guitar and click of THE GUITAR.
the castanet, a new life is breathed into their veins. So
far from feeling past fatigue, the very fatigue of the dance seems refreshing,
and many a weary traveller will rue the midnight frolics of his noisy and
saltatory fellow-lodgers. Supper is no sooner over than “après la panse la
danse,”—some muscular masculine performer, the very antithesis of
Farinelli, screams forth his couplets, “screechin’ out his prosaic verse,”
either at the top of his voice, or drawls out his ballad, melancholy as the
drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe, and both alike to the imminent danger of
his own trachea, and of all un-Spanish acoustic organs. For verily, to repeat
Gray’s unhandsome critique of the grand Opéra Français, it consists of “des
miaulemens et des hurlemens effroyables, mêlés avec un tintamare du
diable.” As, however, in Paris, so in Spain, the audience are in raptures; all
men’s ears grow to the tunes as if they had eaten ballads; all join in chorus
at the end of each verse; this “private band,” as among the sangre su,
supplies the want of conversation, and converts a stupid silence into
scientific attention,—ainsi les extrêmes se touchent. There is always in
every company of Spaniards, whether soldiers, civilians, muleteers, or
ministers, some one who can play the guitar more or less, like Louis XIV.,
who, according to Voltaire, was taught nothing but that and dancing. Godoy,
the Prince of the Peace, one of the most worthless of the multitude of
worthless ministers by whom Spain has been misgoverned, first captivated
the royal Messalina by his talent of strumming on the guitar; so Gonzales
Bravo, editor of the Madrid Satirist, rose to be premier, and conciliated the
virtuous Christina, who, soothed by the sweet sounds of this pepper-and-
salted Amphion, forgot his libels on herself and Señor Muñoz. It may be
predicted of the Spains, that when this strumming is mute, the game will be
up, as the Hebrew expression for the ne plus ultra desolation of an Oriental
city is “the ceasing of the mirth of the guitar and tambourine.”
In Spain whenever and wherever the siren sounds are heard, a party is
forthwith got up of all ages and sexes, who are attracted by the tinkling like
swarming bees. The guitar is part and parcel of the Spaniard and his ballads;
he slings it across his shoulder with a ribbon, as was depicted on the tombs
of Egypt four thousand years ago. The performers seldom are very scientific
musicians; they content themselves with striking the chords, sweeping the
whole hand over the strings, or flourishing, and tapping the board with the
thumb, at which they are very expert. Occasionally in the towns there is
some one who has attained more power over this ungrateful instrument; but
the attempt is a failure. The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and
elaborate melody, which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts; for,
like the lyre of Anacreon, however often he might change the strings, love,
sweet love, is its only theme. The multitude suit the tune to the song, both
of which are frequently extemporaneous. They lisp in numbers, not to say
verse; but their splendid idiom lends itself to a prodigality of words,
whether prose or poetry; nor are either very difficult, where common sense
is no necessary ingredient in the composition; accordingly the language
comes in aid to the fertile mother-wit of the natives; rhymes are dispensed
with at pleasure, or mixed according to caprice with assonants which
consist of the mere recurrence of the same vowels, without reference to that
of consonants, and even these, which poorly fill a foreign ear, are not
always observed; a change in intonation, or a few thumps more or less on
the board, do the work, supersede all difficulties, and constitute a rude
prosody, and lead to music just as gestures do to dancing and to ballads,
—“que se canta ballando;” and which, when heard, reciprocally inspire a
Saint Vitus’s desire to snap fingers and kick heels, as all will admit in
whose ears the habas verdes of Leon, or the cachuca of Cadiz, yet ring.
The words destined to set all this capering in motion
are not written for cold British critics. Like sermons, THE LADIES
they are delivered orally, and are never subjected to the SINGING.
disenchanting ordeal of type: and even such as may be
professedly serious and not saltatory are listened to by those who come
attuned to the hearing vein—who anticipate and re-echo the subject—who
are operated on by the contagious bias. Thus a fascinated audience of
otherwise sensible Britons tolerates the positive presence of nonsense at an
opera—

“Where rhyme with reason does dispense,

And sound has right to govern sense.”

In order to feel the full power of the guitar and Spanish song, the
performer should be a sprightly Andaluza, taught or untaught; she wields
the instrument as her fan or mantilla; it seems to become portion of herself,
and alive; indeed the whole thing requires an abandon, a fire, a gracia,
which could not be risked by ladies of more northern climates and more
tightly-laced zones. No wonder one of the old fathers of the church said that
he would sooner face a singing basilisk than one of these performers: she is
good for nothing when pinned down to a piano, on which few Spanish
women play even tolerably, and so with her singing, when she attempts
‘Adelaide,’ or anything in the sublime, beautiful, and serious, her failure is
dead certain, while, taken in her own line, she is triumphant; the words of
her song are often struck off, like Theodore Hook’s, at the moment, and
allude to incidents and persons present; sometimes they are full of epigram
and double entendre; they often sing what may not be spoken, and steal
hearts through ears, like the Sirens, or as Cervantes has it, cuando cantan
encantan. At other times their song is little better than meaningless jingle,
with which the listeners are just as well satisfied. For, as Figaro says—“ce
qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.” A good voice, which
Italians call novanta-nove, ninety-nine parts out of the hundred, is very rare;
nothing strikes a traveller more unfavourably than the harsh voice of the
women in general; never mind, these ballad songs from the most remote
antiquity have formed the delight of the people, have tempered the
despotism of their church and state, have sustained a nation’s resistance
against foreign aggression.
There is very little music ever printed in Spain; the
songs and airs are generally sold in MS. Sometimes, for MOORISH
the very illiterate, the notes are expressed in numeral GUITARS.
figures, which correspond with the number of the
strings.
The best guitars in the world were made appropriately in Cadiz by the
Pajez family, father and son; of course an instrument in so much vogue was
always an object of most careful thought in fair Bætica; thus in the seventh
century the Sevillian guitar was shaped like the human breast, because, as
archbishops said, the chords signified the pulsations of the heart, à corde.
The instruments of the Andalucian Moors were strung after these significant
heartstrings; Zaryàb remodelled the guitar by adding a fifth string of bright
red, to represent blood, the treble or first being yellow to indicate bile; and
to this hour, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, when dusky eve calls forth
the cloaked serenader, the ruby drops of the heart female, are more surely
liquefied by a judicious manipulation of cat-gut, than ever were those of
San Januario by book or candle; nor, so it is said, when the tinkling is
continuous are all marital livers unwrung.
However that may be, the sad tunes of these Oriental ditties are still
effective in spite of their antiquity; indeed certain sounds have a mysterious
aptitude to express certain moods of the mind, in connexion with some
unexplained sympathy between the sentient and intellectual organs, and the
simplest are by far the most ancient. Ornate melody is a modern invention
from Italy; and although, in lands of greater intercourse and fastidiousness,
the conventional has ejected the national, fashion has not shamed or
silenced the old airs of Spain—those “howlings of Tarshish.” Indeed,
national tunes, like the songs of birds, are not taught in orchestras, but by
mothers to their infant progeny in the cradling nest. As the Spaniard is
warlike without being military, saltatory without being graceful, so he is
musical without being harmonious; he is just the raw man material made by
nature, and treats himself as he does the raw products of his soil, by leaving
art and final development to the foreigner.
The day that he becomes a scientific fiddler, or a
capital cotton spinner, his charm will be at an end; long ENGLISH
therefore may he turn a deaf ear to moralists and EXAMPLE.
political economists, who cannot abide the guitar, who
say that it has done more harm to Spain than hailstorms or drought, by
fostering a prodigious idleness and love-making, whereby the land is cursed
with a greater surplus of foundlings, than men of fortune; how indeed can
these calamities be avoided, when the tempter hangs up this fatal instrument
on a peg in every house? Our immelodious labourers and unsaltatory
operatives are put forth by Manchester missionaries as an example of
industry to the Majos and Manolas of Spain: “behold how they toil, twelve
and fourteen hours every day;” yet these philanthropists should remember
that from their having no other recreation beyond the public or dissenting-
house, they pine when unemployed, because not knowing what to do with
themselves when idle; this to most Spaniards is a foretaste of the bliss of
heaven, while occupation, thought in England to be happiness, is the
treadmill doom of the lost for ever. Nor can it be denied that the facility of
junketing in the Peninsula, the grapes, guitars, songs, skippings and other
incidents to fine climate, militate against that dogged, desperate, determined
hard-working, by which our labourers beat the world hollow, fiddling and
pirouetting being excepted.

PHILOSOPHY
OF THE CIGAR.
 CHAPTER XXIV.
Manufacture of Cigars—Tobacco—Smuggling viâ Gibraltar—Cigars of Ferdinand VII.—
Making a Cigarrito—Zumalacarreguy and the Schoolmaster—Time and Money Wasted
in Smoking—Postscript on Stock.

BUT whether at bull-fight or theatre, be he lay or clerical, every Spaniard

who can afford it, consoles himself continually with a cigar, sleep—not bed
—time only excepted. This is his nepenthe, his pleasure opiate, which, like
Souchong, soothes but does not inebriate; it is to him his “Te veniente die et
te decedente.”
The manufacture of the cigar is the most active one
carried on in the Peninsula. The buildings are palaces; SMUGGLED
witness those at Seville, Malaga, and Valencia. Since a CIGARS.
cigar is a sine quâ non in every Spaniard’s mouth, for
otherwise he would resemble a house without a chimney, a steamer without
a funnel, it must have its page in every Spanish book; indeed, as one of the
most learned native authors remarked, “You will think me tiresome with my
tobacconistical details, but the vast bulk of readers will be more pleased
with it, than with an account of all the pictures in the world.” They all
opine, that a good cigar—an article scarce in this land of smoking and
contradiction—keeps a Christian hidalgo cooler in summer and warmer in
winter than his wife and cloak; while at all times and seasons it diminishes
sorrow and doubles joy, as a man’s better half does in Great Britain. “The
fact is, Squire,” says Sam Slick, “the moment a man takes to a pipe he
becomes a philosopher; it is the poor man’s friend; it calms the mind,
soothes the temper, and makes a man patient under trouble.” Can it be
wondered at, that the Oriental and Spanish population should cling to this
relief from whips and scorns, and the oppressor’s wrong, or steep in sweet
oblivious stupefaction the misery of being fretted and excited by empty
larders, vicious political institutions, and a very hot climate? They believe
that it deadens their over-excitable imagination, and appeases their too
exquisite nervous sensibility; they agree with Molière, although they never
read him, “Quoique l’on puisse dire, Aristote et toute la philosophie, il n’y a
rien d’égal au tabac.” The divine Isaac Barrow resorted to this
panpharmacon whenever he wished to collect his thoughts; Sir Walter
Raleigh, the patron of Virginia, smoked a pipe just before he lost his head,
“at which some formal people were scandalized; but,” adds Aubrey, “I think
it was properly done to settle his spirits.” The pedant James, who
condemned both Raleigh and tobacco, said the bill of fare of the dinner
which he should give his Satanic majesty, would be “a pig, a poll of ling,
and mustard, with a pipe of tobacco for digestion.” So true it is that “what’s
one man’s meat is another man’s poison;” but at all events, in hungry Spain
it is both meat and drink, and the chief smoke connected with proceedings
of the mouth issues from labial, not house chimneys.
Tobacco, this anodyne for the irritability of human reason, is, like
spirituous liquors which make it drunk, a highly-taxed article in all civilized
societies. In Spain, the Bourbon dynasty (as elsewhere) is the hereditary
tobacconist-general, and the privilege of sale is generally farmed out to
some contractor: accordingly, such a trump as a really good home-made
cigar is hardly to be had for love or money in the Peninsula. Diogenes
would sooner expect to find an honest man in any of the government
offices. As there is no royal road to the science of cigar-making, the article
is badly concocted, of bad materials, and, to add insult to injury, is charged
at a most exorbitant price. In order to benefit the Havañah, tobacco is not
allowed to be grown in Spain, which it would do in perfection in the
neighbourhood of Malaga; for the experiment was made, and having turned
out quite successfully, the cultivation was immediately prohibited. The
iniquity and dearness of the royal tobacco makes the fortune of the well-
meaning smuggler, who being here, as everywhere, the great corrector of
blundering chancellors of exchequers, provides a better and cheaper thing
from Gibraltar.
The proof of the extent to which his dealings are
carried was exemplified in 1828, when many thousand SMUGGLED
additional hands were obliged to be put on to the CIGARS.
manufactories at Seville and Granada, to meet the
increased demand occasioned by the impossibility of obtaining supplies
from Gibraltar, in consequence of the yellow fever which was then raging
there. No offence is more dreadfully punished in Spain than that of tobacco-
smuggling, which robs the queen’s pocket—all other robbery is treated as
nothing, for her lieges only suffer.
 The encouragement afforded to the manufacture and smuggling of cigars
at Gibraltar is a never-failing source of ill blood and ill will between the
Spanish and English governments. This most serious evil is contrary to all
treaties, injurious to Spain and England alike, and is beneficial only to
aliens of the worst character, who form the real plague and sore of Gibraltar.
The American and every other nation import their own tobacco, good, bad,
and indifferent, into the fortress free of duty, and without repurchasing
British produce. It is made into cigars by Genoese, is smuggled into Spain
by aliens, in boats under the British flag, which is disgraced by the traffic
and exposed to insult from the revenue cutters of Spain, which it cannot in
justice expect to have redressed. The Spaniards would have winked at the
introduction of English hardware and cottons—objects of necessity, which
do not interfere with this, their chief manufacture, and one of the most
productive of royal monopolies. There is a wide difference between
encouraging real British commerce and this smuggling of foreign cigars,
nor can Spain be expected to observe treaties towards us while we infringe
them so scandalously and unprofitably on our parts.
Many tobacchose epicures, who smoke their regular
dozen or two, place the evil sufficient for the day LIGHTING
between fresh lettuce-leaves; this damps the outer leaf CIGARS.
of the article, and improves the narcotic effect; mem.,
the inside, the trail, las tripas, as the Spaniards call it, should be kept quite
dry. The disordered interior of the royal cigars is masked by a good outside
wrapper leaf, just as Spanish rags are cloaked by a decent capa, but l’habit
ne fait pas le cigarre. Few except the rich can afford to smoke good cigars.
Ferdinand VII., unlike his ancestor Louis XIV., “qui,” says La Beaumelle,
“haïssoit le tabac singulièrement, quoiqu’un de ses meilleurs revenus,” was
not only a grand compounder but consumer thereof. He indulged in the
royal extravagance of a very large thick cigar made in the Havañah
expressly for his gracious use, as he was too good a judge to smoke his own
manufacture. Even of these he seldom smoked more than the half; the
remainder was a grand perquisite, like our palace lights. The cigar was one
of his pledges of love and hatred: he would give one to his favourites when
in sweet temper; and often, when meditating a treacherous coup, would
dismiss the unconscious victim with a royal puro: and when the happy
individual got home to smoke it, he was saluted by an Alguacil with an
order to quit Madrid in twenty-four hours. The “innocent” Isabel, who does
not smoke, substitutes sugar-plums; she regaled Olozaga with a sweet
present, when she was “doing him” at the bidding of the Christinist
camarilla. It would seem that the Spanish Bourbons, when not “cretinised”
into idiots, are creatures composed of cunning and cowardice. But “those
who cannot dissimulate are unfit to reign” was the axiom of their illustrious
ancestor Louis XI.
In Spain the bulk of their happy subjects cannot
afford, either the expense of tobacco, which is dear to LIGHTING
them, or the gain of time, which is very cheap, by CIGARS.
smoking a whole cigar right away. They make one
afford occupation and recreation for half an hour. Though few Spaniards
ruin themselves in libraries, none are without a little blank book of a
particular paper, which is made at Alcoy, in Valencia. At any pause all say at
once—“pues, señores! echaremos un cigarrito—well then, my Lords, let us
make a little cigar,” and all set seriously to work; every man, besides this
book, is armed with a small case of flint, steel, and a combustible tinder. To
make a paper cigar, like putting on a cloak, is an operation of much more
difficulty than it seems, although all Spaniards, who have done nothing so
much, from their childhood upwards, perform both with extreme facility
and neatness. This is the mode:—the petaca, Arabicè Buták, or little case
worked by a fair hand, in the coloured thread of the aloe, in which the store
of cigars is kept, is taken out—a leaf is torn from the book, which is held
between the lips, or downwards from the back of the hand, between the fore
and middle finger of the left hand—a portion of the cigar, about a third, is
cut off and rubbed slowly in the palms till reduced to a powder—it is then
jerked into the paper-leaf, which is rolled up into a little squib, and the ends
doubled down, one of which is bitten off and the other end is lighted. The
cigarillo is smoked slowly, the last whiff being the bonne bouche, the
breast, la pechuga. The little ends are thrown away: they are indeed little,
for a Spanish fore-finger and thumb are quite fire-browned and fire-proof,
although some polished exquisites use silver holders; these remnants are
picked up by the beggar-boys, who make up into fresh cigars the leavings of
a thousand mouths. There is no want of fire in Spain; everywhere, what we
should call link-boys run about with a slowly-burning rope for the benefit
of the public. At many of the sheds where water and lemonade are sold, one
of the ropes, twirled like a snake round a post, and ignited, is kept ready as
the match of a besieged artilleryman; while in the houses of the affluent, a
small silver chafing-dish, with lighted charcoal, is usually on a table. Mr.
Henningsen relates that Zumalacarreguy, when about to execute some
Christinos at Villa Franca, observed one (a schoolmaster) looking about,
like Raleigh, for a light for his last dying puff in this life, upon which the
General took his own cigar from his mouth, and handed it to him. The
schoolmaster lighted his own, returned the other with a respectful bow, and
went away smoking and reconciled to be shot. This urgent necessity levels
all ranks, and it is allowable to stop any person for fire; this proves the
practical equality of all classes, and that democracy under a despotism,
which exists in smoking Spain, as in the torrid East. The cigar forms a bond
of union, an isthmus of communication between most heterogeneous
oppositions. It is the habeas corpus of Spanish liberties. The soldier takes
fire from the canon’s lip, and the dark face of the humble labourer is
whitened by the reflection of the cigar of the grandee and lounger. The
lowest orders have a coarse roll or rope of tobacco, wherewith to solace
their sorrows, and it is their calumet of peace. Some of the Spanish fair sex
are said to indulge in a quiet hidden cigarilla, una pajita, una reyna, but it
is not thought either a sign of a lady, or of one of rigid virtue, to have
recourse to these forbidden pleasures; for, says their proverb, whoever
makes one basket will make a hundred.
Nothing exposes a traveller to more difficulty than
carrying much tobacco in his luggage; yet all will TIME LOST BY
remember never to be without some cigars, and the TOBACCO.
better the better. It is a trifling outlay, for although any
cigar is acceptable, yet a real good one is a gift from a king. The greater the
enjoyment of the smoker, the greater his respect for the donor; a cigar may
be given to everybody, whether high or low: thus the petaca is offered, as a
polite Frenchman of La Vieille Cour (a race, alas! all but extinct) offered his
snuff-box, by way of a prelude to conversation and intimacy. It is an act of
civility, and implies no superiority, nor is there any humiliation in the
acceptance; it is twice blessed, “It blesseth him that gives and him that
takes.” It is the spell wherewith to charm the natives, who are its ready and
obedient slaves, and, like a small kind word spoken in time, it works
miracles. There is no country in the world where the stranger and traveller
can purchase for half-a-crown, half the love and good-will which its
investment in tobacco will ensure, therefore the man who grudges or
neglects it is neither a philanthropist nor a philosopher.
 A calculation might be made by those fond of arithmetic—which we
abhor—of the waste of time and money which is caused to the poor
Spaniards by all this prodigious cigarising. This said tobacco importation of
Raleigh is even a more doubtful good to the Peninsula than that of potatoes
to cognate Ireland, where it fosters poverty and population. Let it be
assumed that a respectable Spaniard only smokes for fifty years, allow him
the moderate allowance of six cigars a day—the Regent, it is said,
consumed forty every twenty-four hours—calculate the cost of each cigar at
two-pence, which is cheap enough anywhere for a decent one; suppose that
half of these are made into paper cigars, which require double time—how
much Spanish time and private income is wasted in smoke? That is the
question which we are unable to answer.
Here, alas! the pen must be laid down; an express
from Albemarle-street informs us, that this page must go SPANISH
to press next week, seeing that the printer’s devils STOCK.
celebrate Christmas time with a most religious
abstinence from work. Many things of Spain must therefore be left in our
inkstand, filled to the brim with good intentions. We had hoped, at our
onset, to have sketched portraits of the Provincial and General Character of
Spanish Men—to have touched upon Spanish Soldiers and Statesmen—
Journalism and Place Hunting—Mendicants, Ministers and Mosquitoes—
Charters, Cheatings, and Constitutions—Fine Arts—French and English
Politics—Legends, Relics, and Religion—Monks and Manners; and last,
not least—reserved indeed as a bonne bouche—the Eyes, Loves, Dress, and
Details of the Spanish Ladies. It cannot be—nay, even as it is, “for stories
somehow lengthen when begun,” and especially if woven with Spanish
yarn, even now the indulgence of our fair readers may be already exhausted
by this sample of the Cosas de España. Be that as it may, assuredly the
smallest hint of a desire to the flattering contrary, which they may
condescend to express, will be obeyed as a command by their grateful and
humble servant the author, who, as every true Spanish Hidalgo very
properly concludes on similar, and on every occasion, “kisses their feet.”
Postscript.—In the first number of these Gatherings, at page 38, some
particulars were given of Spanish Stock, derived, as was believed, from the
most official and authentic sources. On the very evening that the volume
was published, and too late therefore for any corrections, the following
obliging letter was received from an anonymous correspondent, which is
now printed verbatim:—
London, 30th November, 1846.
SIR,
I HAVE just perused your valuable and amusing work, ‘Gatherings from Spain;’ but must
own I felt somewhat annoyed at seeing so gross a misrepresentation in the account you
give of the national debt of that country; the amount you give is perfectly absurd. You say
it has been increased to 279,033,089l.—this is too bad. Now I can give you the exact
amount. The 5 per cents. consists of 40,000,000l. only; the coupons upon that sum to
12,000,000l.; and the present 3 per cents. to 6,000,000l.; in all, 58,000,000l., and their own
domestic debt, which is very trifling. Now this is rather different to your statement;
besides, you are doing your book great injury by writing the Spanish Stock down so; more
particularly so, as there is no doubt some final settlement will be come to before your
second Number appears [?]. The country is far from being as you misrepresent it to be—
bankrupt. She is very rich, and quite capable of meeting her engagements which are so
trifling—if you were to write down our Railroads I should think you a sensible man, for
they are the greatest bubbles, since the great South Sea bubble. But Spanish is a fortune to
whoever is so fortunate as to possess it now. I am, and have been for some years, a large
holder, and am now looking forward to the realization of all my plans, in the present
Minister of Finance, Señor Mon, and the rising of that stock to its proper price—about 60
or 70.
I should, as a friend, advise you to correct your book before you strike any more copies,
if you wish to sell it, as a true representation of the present existing state of the country.
Your book might have done ten years ago, but people will not be gulled now; we are too
well aware that almost all our own papers are bribed (and, perhaps, books), to write down
Spanish, and Spanish finance, by raising all manner of reports—of Carlist bands appearing
in all directions, &c. &c. &c. &c., which is most absurd—the Carlists’ cause is dead.
I hope, Sir, you will not be offended with these lines, but rather
take them as a friendly hint, as I admire your book much; and I hope THE AUTHOR’S
POSTSCRIPT.
you will yourself see the falsity of what has been inserted in a work
of amusement, and correct it at once.
I remain, Sir,
Your obedient and humble Servant,
A FRIEND OF TRUTH.
To —— Ford, Esq.

It is a trifle “too bad” to be thus set down by our complimentary

correspondent as the inventor of these startling facts, figures, and
“fallacies,” since the full, true, and exact particulars are to be found at pages
85 and 89 of Mr. Macgregor’s Commercial Tariffs of Spain, presented to
both Houses of Parliament in 1844 by the command of Her Majesty. And as
there was some variance in amount, the author all through quoted from
other men’s sums, and spoke doubtingly and approximatively, being little
desirous of having anything connected with Spanish debts laid at his door,
or charged to his account. He has no interest whatever in these matters,
having never been the fortunate holder of one farthing either in Spanish
funds or even English railroads. Equally a friend of truth as his kind
monitor, he simply wished to caution fair readers, who might otherwise
mis-invest, as he erroneously it appears conceived, the savings in their pin-
money. If he has unwittingly stated that which is not, he can but give up his
authority, be very much ashamed, and insert the antidote to his errors. He
sincerely hopes that all and every one of the bright visions of his
anonymous friend may be realized. Had he himself, which Heaven forfend!
been sent on the errand of discovery whether the Madrid ministers be made,
or not, of squeezable materials, considering that Astræa has not yet returned
to Spain, with good governments, the golden age, or even a tariff, his first
step would have been to grease the wheels with sovereign ointment; and
with a view of not being told by ministers and cashiers to call again to-
morrow, he would have opened the negocio by offering somebody 20 per
cent. on all the hard dollars paid down; thus possibly some breath and time
might be economised, and trifling disappointments prevented.
London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street

FOOTNOTES:
[1] The word Gabacho, which is the most offensive vituperative of the Spaniard
against the Frenchman, and has by some been thought to mean “those who dwell on
Gaves,” is the Arabic Cabach, detestable, filthy, or “qui prava indole est,
moribusque.” In fact the real meaning cannot be further alluded to beyond referring to
the clever tale of El Frances y Español by Quevedo. The antipathy to the Gaul is
natural and national, and dates far beyond history. This nickname was first given in
the eighth century, when Charlemagne, the Buonaparte of his day, invaded Spain, on
the abdication and cession of the crown by the chaste Alonso, the prototype of the
wittol Charles IV.; then the Spanish Moors and Christians, foes and friends, forgot
their hatreds of creeds in the greater loathing for the abhorred intruder, whose
“peerage fell” in the memorable passes of Roncesvalles. The true derivation of the
word Gabacho, which now resounds from these Pyrenees to the Straits, is blinked in
the royal academical dictionary, such was the servile adulation of the members to
their French patron Philip V. Mueran los Gabachos, “Death to the miscreants,” was
the rally cry of Spain after the inhuman butcheries of the terrorist Murat; nor have the
echoes died away; a spark may kindle the prepared mine: of what an unspeakable
value is a national war-cry which at once gives to a whole people a shibboleth, a
rallying watch-word to a common cause! Vox populi vox Dei.
[2] Razzia is derived from the Arabic Al ghazia, a word which expresses these
raids of a ferocious, barbarous age. It has been introduced to European dictionaries by
the Pelissiers, who thus civilize Algeria. They make a solitude, and call it peace.
[3] Faja; the Hhezum of Cairo. Atrides tightens his sash when preparing for action
—Iliad xi. 15. The Roman soldiers kept their money in it. Ibit qui zonam perdidit.—
Hor. ii. Ep. 2. 40. The Jews used it for the same purpose—Matthew x. 9; Mark vi. 8.
It is loosened at night. “None shall slumber or sleep, neither shall the girdle of their
loins be loosed.”—Isaiah v. 27.
[4] The dread of the fascination of the evil eye, from which Solomon was not
exempt (Proverbs xxiii. 6), prevails all over the East; it has not been extirpated from
Spain or from Naples, which so long belonged to Spain. The lower classes in the
Peninsula hang round the necks of their children and cattle a horn tipped with silver;
this is sold as an amulet in the silver-smiths’ shops; the cord by which it is attached
ought to be braided from a black mare’s tail. The Spanish gipsies, of whom Borrow
has given us so complete an account, thrive by disarming the mal de ojo, “querelar
nasula,” as they term it. The dread of the “Ain ara” exists among all classes of the
Moors. The better classes of Spaniards make a joke of it; and often, when you remark
that a person has put on or wears something strange about him, the answer is, “Es
para que no me hagan mal de ojo.” Naples is the head-quarters for charms and coral
amulets: all the learning has been collected by the Canon Jorio and the Marques
Arditi.
[5] The garañon is also called “burro padre” ass father, not “padre burro.”
“Padre,” the prefix of paternity, is the common title given in Spain to the clergy and
the monks. “Father jackass” might in many instances, when applied to the latter, be
too morally and physically appropriate, to be consistent with the respect due to the
celibate cowl and cassock.
[6] When George IV. once complained that he had lost his royal appetite, “What a
scrape, sir, a poor man would be in if he found it!” said his Rochester companion.
[7] The very word Novelty has become in common parlance synonymous with
danger, change, by the fear of which all Spaniards are perplexed; as in religion it is a
heresy. Bitter experience has taught all classes that every change, every promise of a
new era of blessing and prosperity has ended in a failure, and that matters have got
worse: hence they not only bear the evils to which they are accustomed, rather than
try a speculative amelioration, but actually prefer a bad state of things, of which they
know the worst, to the possibility of an untried good. Mas vale el mal conocido, que
el bien por conocer. “How is my lady the wife of your grace?” says a Spanish
gentleman to his friend. “Como está mi Señora la Esposa de Usted?” “She goes on
without Novelty”—“Sigue sin Novedad,” is the reply, if the fair one be much the
same. “Vaya Usted con Dios, y que no haya Novedad!” “Go with God, your grace!
and may nothing new happen,” says another, on starting his friend off on a journey.
[8] Forks are an Italian invention: old Coryate, who introduced this “neatnesse”
into Somersetshire, about 1600, was called furcifer by his friends. Alexander Barclay
thus describes the previous English mode of eating, which sounds very ventaish,
although worse mannered:—

“If the dishe be pleasaunt, eyther flesche or fische,

Ten hands at once swarm in the dishe.”

[9] The kings of Spain seldom use any other royal signature, except the ancient
Gothic rubrica, or mark. This monogram is something like a Runic knot. Spaniards
exercise much ingenuity in these intricate flourishes, which they tack on to their
names, as a collateral security of authenticity. It is said that a rubrica without a name
is of more value than a name without a rubrica. Sancho Panza tells Don Quixote that
his rubrica alone is worth, not one, but three hundred jackasses. Those who cannot
write rubricate; “No saber firmar,”—not to know how to sign one’s name,—is
jokingly held in Spain to be one of the attributes of grandeeship.
[10] “Chacun fuit à le voir naître, chacun court à le voir mourir!”—Montaigne.
[11] Hallarse en Cinta is the Spanish equivalent for our “being in the family way."
[12] Recopilacion. Lib. iii. Tit. xvi. Ley 3.
[13] The love for killing oxen still prevails at Rome, where the ambition of the
lower orders to be a butcher, is, like their white costume, a remnant of the honourable
office of killing at the Pagan sacrifices. In Spain butchers are of the lowest caste, and
cannot prove “purity of blood.” Francis I. never forgave the “Becajo de Parigi”
applied by Dante to his ancestor.

Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:

which recal the memory of those=> which recall the memory of those {pg
250}
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