Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520343054

Citation preview

TRACES ON THE RHODIAN SHORE

It is said of the Socratic philosopher, Aristippus, so Vitruvius wrote in the preface to the sixth book of his De architecture that being shipwrecked and cast on the shore of Rhodes and seeing there geometrical figures on the sand, he cried out to his companions, "Let us be of good hope, for indeed I see the traces of men." After making his observation, Aristippus departed for the city of Rhodes (another unique creation of man) and there in its gymnasium talked philosophy.

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

Frontispiece of David Gregory's edition of Euclid's Opera (Oxford, 1703) illustrating the shipwreck of Aristippus as related by Vitruvius in the Preface to Book V I of his De architectura.

CLARENCE J. GLACKEN

Traces on the Rhodian Shore NATURE AND CULTURE IN WESTERN THOUGHT FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley, Los Angeles, London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright © 1967, by T h e Regents of the University of California California Library Reprint Series Edition 1973 First Paperback Edition, 1976 ISBN: 0-520-03216-0 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-95298 Printed in the United States of America

To my wife, Mildred, and my children, Karen and Michael

Preface In the history of Western thought, men have persistently asked three questions concerning the habitable earth and their relationships to it. Is the earth, which is obviously a fit environment for man and other organic life, a purposefully made creation? Have its climates, its relief, the configuration of its continents influenced the moral and social nature of individuals, and have they had an influence in molding the character and nature of human culture? In his long tenure of the earth, in what manner has man changed it from its hypothetical pristine condition? From the time of the Greeks to our own, answers to these questions have been and are being given so frequently and so continually that we may restate them in the form of general ideas: the idea of a designed earth; the idea of environmental influence; and the idea of man as a geographic agent. These ideas have come from the general thought and experience of men, but the first owes much to mythology, theology, and philosophy; the second, to pharmaceutical lore, medicine, and weather observation; the third, to the plans, activities, and skills of everyday life such as cultivation, carpentry, and weaving. The first two ideas were expressed frequently in antiquity, the third less so, although it was implicit in many discussions which recognized the obvious fact that men through their arts, sciences, and techniques had changed the physical environment about them. In the first idea, it is assumed that the planet is designed for man alone, as the highest being of the creation, or for the hierarchy of life with man at the apex. The conception presupposes the earth or certain known parts of it to be a fit environment not only for life but for high civilization. The second idea originated in medical theory. In essence, conclusions were drawn by comparing various environmental factors such as atmospheric conditions (most often temperature), waters, and geographical situation with the different individuals and peoples characteristic of these environments, the comparisons taking the form of correlations between environments and individual and cultural characteristics. Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to refer to these early speculations as theories of climatic influence, for there was no welldeveloped theory of weather and climate; it would be more correct to refer to them as theories of airs, waters, and places in the sense in which these terms are used in the Hippocratic corpus. Although environmentalist«: ideas arose independently of the argument of divine design, they have been used frequently as part of the design argument in the sense that all life is seen as adapting itself to the purposefully created harmonious conditions.

viii

Preface

The third idea was less well formulated in antiquity than were the other two; in fact, its full implications were not realized until Buffon wrote of them, and they were not explored in detail until Marsh published Man and Nature in 1864. Like the environmental theory, it could be accommodated within the design argument, for man through his arts and inventions was seen as a partner of God, improving upon and cultivating an earth created for him. Although the idea of environmental influences and that of man as a geographic agent may not be contradictory—many geographers in modern times have tried to work out theories of reciprocal influences—the adoption by thinkers of one of these ideas to the exclusion of the other has been characteristic of both ancient and modern times; it was not perceived, however, until the nineteenth century that the adoption of one in preference to the other led to entirely different emphases. One finds therefore in ancient writers, and in modern ones as well, ideas both of geographic influence and of man's agency in widely scattered parts of their work without any attempt at reconciling them; since Greek times the two ideas have had a curious history, sometimes meeting, sometimes being far apart. The main theme of this work is that, in Western thought until the end of the eighteenth century, concepts of the relationship of human culture to the natural environment were dominated—but not exclusively so—by these three ideas, sometimes by only one of them, sometimes by two or even the three in combination: Man, for example, lives on a divinely created earth harmoniously devised for his needs; his physical qualities such as skin and hair, his physical activity and mental stimulation are determined by climate; and he fulfills his God-given mission of finishing the creation, bringing order into nature, which God, in giving him mind, the eye, and the hand, had intended that he do. This group of ideas and certain subsidiary ideas which gathered around them were part of the matrix from which in modern times the social sciences have emerged; the latter of course have deep roots as well in the history of theology, ethics, political and social theory, and philosophy. In Western civilization these three ideas have played an important role in the attempt to understand man, his culture, and the natural environment in which he lives. From the questions they have posed have come the modern study of the geography of man. One does not easily isolate ideas for study out of that mass of facts, lore, musings, and speculations which we call the thought of an age or of a cultural tradition; one literally tears and wrenches them out. There is nothing disembodied about them, and the cut is not clean. They are living small parts of complex wholes; they are given prominence by the attention of the student. These simple truths introduce a more difficult problem. Where and when does one stop? Let me give some examples. Everyone recognizes that a striking shift in the attitude toward nature occurred in the Latin Middle Ages during

Preface

ix

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The designed world of that era was more complex than was that of the early Church Fathers, and it bore a lighter load of symbolism. More attention was given to everyday matters and to secondary causes. But in exploring this theme one quickly becomes involved in realism versus nominalism, in modern ideas concerning the origins of science, in changes in religious art such as the portrayal of the Crucifixion, the Ascension, and the Virgin and Child, in the role of the Franciscan order in nature study, in the implications of Etienne Tempier's condemnation of 1277, and in the more realistic approaches to the study of botany—and indeed of the human form. These subjects comprise another work; yet they are suggested by themes in this one. Galileo—to take a second illustration—pushed aside secondary qualities in his methodology. It proved to be the correct way to make discoveries in theoretical science. This procedure, which could have cleared the way for a purposive control over nature through applied science, contributed less to the development of natural history, whose students found it hard to simplify the variety and individuality of life which were clearly apparent to the senses. Smells and colors were important. In the eighteenth century BufFon in his criticism of Descartes realized the limitations of abstract thought. Natural history requires description, study of detail, of color, smell, environmental changes, of the influence of man whether his acts are or are not purposive. Modern ecology and conservation also need this kind of examination, for many of their roots lie in the old natural history. So we have another book contrasting the history of methodology in physics with that of natural history and biology, noting the obvious fact that teleology continued as a working scientific principle far longer in the latter than it did in physics. W e should contrast also the purposive control over nature through applied science with the unlooked for, perhaps unconscious and unperceived, changes that men perpetually make in their surroundings. Large related bodies of thought thus appear, at first like distant riders stirring up modest dust clouds, who, when they arrive, reproach one for his slowness in recognizing their numbers, strength, and vitality. One thinks of the history of ideas concerned with gardens, sacred landscapes, and nature symbolism. Only rarely can one look at a landscape modified in some way by man and say with assurance that what one sees embodies and illustrates an attitude toward nature and man's place in it. Landscape painting presents similar difficulties. What indeed are we to make of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Fall of Icarus? An exception, in my opinion, is the history of the garden, whether it is English, Chinese, or Italian. In gardens, one can almost see the embodiment of ideas in landscapes. Is art imitating nature, or is nature opposed to art? Is the garden like a lesson in geometry, are its lawns well raked, or does it suggest

X

Preface

soft rolling meadows? And what does it say about the attitudes men should have not only to their surroundings but to themselves? But this theme would require yet another book; one can see the possibilities in the writings of Siren and in Clifford's A History of Garden Design. In the world as a whole, there are few more inviting themes for the historian of attitudes toward the earth than the role of the sacred. Today the best illustrations come from non-Western cultures, but the history of Western civilization is rich in them too. One thinks of Scully's study of Greek sacred architecture and its landscapes, the possible origins of Roman centuriation in cosmic speculation, the celestial city and the heavenly Jerusalem, cathedral siting in the Middle Ages, sacred groves, and nature symbolism. Indeed, gardens, sacred landscapes, religious and esthetic attitudes toward environmental change by man, entice one into studies with profound human meaning which are not easily exhausted. There are many illustrations in this work of that separation between man and nature which occurs so frequently in Western thought, and conversely of the union of the two as parts of live and indivisible wholes. The dichotomy has plagued the history of geographical thought (for example, the distinction, which many would now abandon, between the natural and the cultural landscape) and contemporary ecological discussions concerned with man's disturbance of the balance of nature. Essays confidently begin with assertions that man is part of nature—how could he be otherwise?—but their argument makes sense and gains cogency only when human cultures are set off from the rest of natural phenomena. I cannot claim to have clarified this difficult subject. In Western thought, it is too involved in other histories of ideas—in the philosophy of man, in theology, in the problem of physical and moral evil. Did the distinction between man and nature begin in primordial times when man saw himself, so clearly like the animals in many respects, but able nevertheless to assert his will over some of them? Was it enshrined in Western thought by the Jewish teaching that man, sinful and wicked as he is, is part of the creation but distinct from it too because he is the one living being created in the image of God? Was it in the ancient consciousness of artisanship that men felt themselves superior to other living and nonliving matter? Prometheus was considered to be a supreme craftsman and was worshipped as such, particularly in Attica. Is another phase of the problem the distinction between the ways in which men have lived their lives, some in the country, some in the town or the city, the former closely identified with what is natural, the latter with the artificial, the creation of man? Did not Varro say that "divine nature made the country, but man's skill the towns," illustrating the old distinction between nature and art? Did this deep-lying conviction gain added strength and incontrovertible proof through the theoretical accomplishments of seventeenth century science and the practical mastery to which they led, awarenesses so vividly expressed

Preface

xi

in the writings of Leibniz? What the Arab scientists, the medieval alchemists, Bacon, Paracelsus, Descartes, Leibniz himself had hoped for was now being realized: man had reached the point at which he could be confident of his progressive ability to control nature. My first awareness of the existence and importance of the history of ideas came to me as a young Berkeley undergraduate when, over thirty years ago, I took Professor Teggart's course on the Idea of Progress. Today I still remember these lectures vividly and possess the classroom notes. Frederick J. Teggart was a man of enormous learning and a superlative lecturer. The Prolegomena to History, the Processes of History, the Theory of History, his review of Spengler's Decline of the West, opened up fields of scholarship I scarcely knew existed. T o the reader it must seem that the present work is exclusively a product of the library. Actually, the early stimulus to study these ideas came also from personal experience and from observations which pointed to the role of ideas and values in understanding the relationships of culture to the environment. During the depression years, as I worked with resident and transient families on relief, with migratory farm workers who had come from the Dust Bowl, I became aware—as did countless thousands of others—of the interrelationships existing between the Depression, soil erosion, and the vast migration to California. In 1937 I spent eleven months traveling in many parts of the world. The yellow dust clouds high over Peking, the dredging of pond mud along the Yangtze, the monkeys swinging from tree to tree at Angkor Vat, a primitive water-lifting apparatus near Cairo, the Mediterranean promenade, the goat curd and the carob of Cyprus, the site of Athens and the dryness of Greece, the shrubs, the coves, the hamlets, and the deforestation of the Eastern Mediterranean, the shepherds of the Caucasus, the swinging swords of Central Asians in the markets of Ordzhonikidze, the quiet farms of Swedish Skane— these and many other observations made me realize as part of my being the commonplace truth that there is a great diversity both of human cultures and of the physical environments in which they live. It is the difference between knowing about the midnight sun and spending a summer night on the Arctic circle. One is continually asking questions about the circumstances which stimulate human creativity, about the effect of religious belief, about the custom and tradition which men have soaked into their soils. And although I have used abstract words like "man" and "nature" as a convenience, it is really human culture, natural history, the relief of the land that I mean. Phrases like "man and nature" are useful as titles, as a shorthand to express far more complex sets of ideas. In 1951, living in three small Okinawan villages and studying their way of life, I could see the profound importance of the Chinese family system, altered of course by the Japanese and the Okinawans themselves, and the influence of

xii

Preface

the system of inheritance on the use and the appearance of the land. In such circumstances, it seems natural to see differences in traditions concerning culture and the environment, to see the ideas developed in Western civilization merely as a few of many possibilities. Finally during a year spent in Norway in 1957, visiting its old towns, especially those of the Gudbrandsdal, its farms, an occasional seter, and reading about the history of its forests, I saw more clearly and vividly how deep is the European interest in the history of landscapes, the Norwegian interest in the history of farms, the seter, place names—in all aspects of rural life. The waterdriven saws from the eighteenth century at the open-air museums at Bygd0y in Oslo and at Elverum on the Glomma made me read the literature on environmental change in the Middle Ages with new attentiveness because this important invention was first illustrated in the Album of Villard de Honnecourt in the thirteenth century. In many places one can see evidences of a relationship between religious attitudes toward the earth and the appearance of a landscape, of limitations imposed by a local environment, of the historical depth of changes made in the physical environment by human culture. When I started on this work in the mid-19jo's, I had merely intended to write an introduction to a work based on a doctoral thesis, "The Ideas of the Habitable World," which covered the period from the eighteenth century to the present. Later I decided to give fuller consideration to classical antiquity and to the Middle Ages. Finally, what was originally intended to be a short sally became a major expedition because I became convinced that the origins and earlier histories of these ideas were important and made modern attitudes toward the earth more meaningful; they could also suggest possible comparative studies with Indian, Chinese, and Muslim thought. I had intended, moreover, to bring the history down to the present, feeling there was a great advantage in showing the sweep of these ideas over two millennia. It was a bitter disappointment, therefore, to make the decision about two years ago to stop at the end of the eighteenth century. The task I felt was now beyond my individual powers. The thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries requires a different kind of treatment and properly should be a separate work. The volume of material is too great, but more than volume is involved. The materials are more complex, they are more specialized, and they are widely scattered through many disciplines. In another work I hope to write on certain nineteenth and twentieth century themes in a way consistent with the capacity of a single individual, for despite the indispensability of symposia and other types of cooperative scholarship I still feel there is a place for individual interpretation of broad trends in the history of thought. Furthermore, I was convinced—allowing for the artificiality of dividing thought by centuries or periods—that in the time span from classical antiquity roughly to the end of the eighteenth century there was a coherent body of

Preface

xiii

thought gathered about these ideas. Buffon, Kant, or Montesquieu, I think, would have found the classical world strange, but the gulf between their times and classical times would have been less than that between 1800 and 1900. A historian of ideas must go where his nose leads him, and it often leads him into chilly but not inhospitable regions whose borders are patrolled by men who know every square foot of it. Although I can lay no claim to being a specialist in a particular century or in the classical or medieval periods, my own specialization in the history of geographic thought has forced me to study many periods because their contributions are so great they cannot be ignored. Problems like this must be faced by anyone who wishes to go beyond the narrowest limits. A historian of geographic ideas (especially in the earlier periods) who stays within the limits of his discipline sips a thin gruel because these ideas almost invariably are derived from broader inquiries like the origin and nature of life, the nature of man, the physical and biological characteristics of the earth. Of necessity they are spread widely over many areas of thought. Whenever possible I have read the original sources, and only in exceptional cases have I referred to the huge volume of secondary literature. I intend here no condescension to these secondary sources, because we often owe newer insights to their scholarship. M y general rule has been to cite those to which I am indebted and others which are of interest to, but somewhat peripheral to, my themes. For the most part, therefore, I have made my own interpretations; in some cases the aid of expert knowledge of the text, expositions of the meaning of certain words at a particular time, and the Quellenuntersuchungen of the classical period are indispensable; examples are Reinhardt on Posidonius and Panaetius, Lovejoy and Armstrong on Plotinus, Klauk on the geography of Albert the Great. In some cases, especially in chapter 7 , 1 have quoted documents published in secondary works mainly because the originals—often in French or German town and provincial archives, in rare books, or in charters —were unavailable to me. Because of the great number of thinkers who have discussed the ideas whose history I am concerned with here, a few words should be said about the problem of selection. My general rule has been to select those works which made an important contribution to the idea in question and those which, while showing little or no originality, introduced the idea into other fields or revealed either continuity in thought or the continuing importance of the idea. The Airs, Waters, Places of the Hippocratic corpus makes an original contribution to environmental theory; Aristotle does not, but he used environmental ideas in political and social theory. Failure to make a selection would have made my work tedious beyond endurance, for in these fields there are many repetitious scrolls written with different quills. I have also given generous space to a significant thinker at the expense of lesser contemporaries. In the Middle Ages the problem of selection in discussing the idea of design is particularly difficult because it is mentioned by virtually all thinkers; I am con-

xiv

Preface

vinced that my emphasis on St. Basil, Origen, St. Augustine, Albert the Great, St. Thomas, and Raymond Sibiude is reasonable. In the Renaissance, Bodin's handling of environmental theories is far more thorough than that of any of his contemporaries; in fact, he is often their source. In the eighteenth century Buffon speaks with greatest authority on the agency of man in changing nature, Hume and Kant on teleology in nature, Montesquieu on environmental questions. This work is concerned only with the development of these ideas in Western civilization; it is thus parochial in the sense that this civilization has furnished unique molds for them. There is no ecumenical thought, although the literature on the scientific method may be an exception. Various great traditionsIndian, Chinese, Muslim among them—haveflourished,often in isolation, often interacting with and influencing one another. The Western tradition—its science, technology, critical scholarship, its deep-seated interest in theology, philosophy, political and social theory, and geography—is the most varied and cosmopolitan, partly because it has received and absorbed so much from the others. A few remarks are in order concerning the frequent use of certain words. "Nature," "physical environment," "design," "final causes," "climate," and other words and expressions which appear in this work have a long history, accumulating different and often vague meanings in the course of time. In the literature, therefore, one cannot find precision where it is not. Often the meaning of words is assumed as being obvious and needing no explanation. The word "nature," as everyone knows, has many meanings in Greek and Latin and in modern languages. With all of its failings it is a grand old word. When Huxley wrote Evidence as to Man1s Place in Nature (1863), he discussed man's place in the evolutionary scale of being. When Marsh wrote Man and Nature in 1864 he described the earth as modified by human action. Sometimes the word is synonymous with the physical or natural environment; sometimes it has a more philosophic, religious, theological aura than these more matter-of-fact terms express. Occasionally it attains grandeur as in Buffon's reference to it as "le trône extérieur de la magnificence Divine." In the literature, the words "natural" and "physical" environment have often been used interchangeably. They correspond to Unrwelt and milieu, their use being confined to physical and biological phenomena. They are general terms for the organic and inorganic realms of earth including those changed by man. They are never used in the sense social scientists often use the word "environment," that is, the cultural milieu (upper-class quarter, slums, neighborhoods). In general "man" is used as a convenient word meaning "mankind"; "culture," "society," however, are the more exact terms. "Man" is so abstract that it conceals the complexities and intricacies which the other words suggest. For long periods, "climate," "clime," were used in the original Greek sense

Preface

xv

as a translation of xXi^o; Montesquieu in the Spirit of Laws uses it in this sense. In his work on the climate and soil of the United States (English translation, 1804), Count Volney remarks upon the shift in meaning of "climate" which was then taking place. The literal meaning, he said somewhat inaccurately, is a degree of latitude. Since, however, generally speaking, countries are hot or cold according to latitude, the second idea became intimately associated with the first, and "the term climate is now synonymous with the habitual temperature of the air." Many terms lose precision because of long usage. Generally speaking, "argument from design" has been used interchangeably with a theologically based teleology and with the "doctrine of final causes," although such usages are hard to defend. It has frequently been pointed out that the word "causes" in "final causes" means something entirely different from the usual meaning of "cause" as in "efficient cause." Similarly, physico-theology and natural theology have often been used synonymously with the theologically based teleological view of nature; both terms have also served to distinguish their subject matter and concepts from those of revealed religion. Still others have distinguished between physico-theology and natural theology, including in the latter more discussion of man, leaving to the former illustrations of design in the physical and biological world. William Derham, however, contrasted physico-theology with astro-theology, the former being concerned with proofs of the divine wisdom based on earthly processes, and the latter, from the cosmic order. Historically these expressions are closely related to formulations of proofs for the existence of God by St. Thomas Aquinas, Kant, and others. It must be admitted that there is no escape from these terms; the confusion exists in the literature. Over eighty years ago L. E. Hicks marched bravely into the swamps; he disapproved of using the terms "argument from design" and the "teleological view of nature" synonymously, because teleology was not the only possible course open to the Creator; he could also establish an order by design. Hicks did not claim that the older teleological view of nature declined pari passu with the expansion of the newer scientific view, but he did identify teleology with the older theology, and order with science. The distinction here is one between teleology with emphasis on purpose (not only of every entity in nature but of nature itself) and an order based on natural law without considering the question of purpose. For the latter concept, he proposed the term eutaxiology after the Greek word evragia, meaning good order and discipline. The teleological view led to an emphasis on end or purpose, adaptation of means to ends; the eutaxiological, on order and plan. So far as I know eutaxiology died in infancy for lack of care. The expressions "web of life" and "balance" or "equilibrium in nature" have often been used interchangeably. They are metaphors suggesting the existence of intricate interrelationships in nature and delicate adjustment

xvi

Preface

among its constituent parts. One sees likenesses with the spinners of webs, the other is derived from classical physics. Perhaps the " w e b " calls attention to interrelationships more than does "balance" or "equilibrium," which places the emphasis on delicacy of adjustment, but I have never seen such distinctions expressed. Finally, I should like to say a word about the introduction to Part I, which may seem disproportionately long. It is intended to serve two purposes: to provide the immediate background for the parallel histories of the three ideas in the classical period and to make more intelligible the thought of later periods which, with all the changes enforced by new conditions and circumstances, still rests solidly, at least in part, on classical foundations.

Acknowledgments I wish to express my deep appreciation to the Institute of Social Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, for its long support of this work and to acknowledge with particular gratitude the many kindnesses of its director, Professor Herbert Blumer. It has been my good fortune to be a member of a department during the tenure of three chairmen, Carl Sauer, John Leighly, and James Parsons, whose own commitments to and sympathies for humanistic studies have been a continuing encouragement to me; these remarks also apply to my colleague, Paul Wheatley, who in addition has read parts of the manuscript and generously helped me in the interpretation and translation of several passages from classical and medieval Latin. Professor Lesley Simpson's translation of the Laws of Burgos opened up new vistas to me; his deep knowledge of the writings of the Conquest period made me realize how important many of the ideas discussed in this work were in the post-Columbian New World, even if these themes are too vast for exploration here. Since I first took undergraduate courses from her over thirty years ago, I have enjoyed the warm friendship of Margaret Hodgen; her incisiveness and her sensitivity to the history of ideas are once more in evidence in her Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, a masterly exposition of early modern conceptions of man and his culture. Her courageous scholarly career has been an inspiration to many of her students. I am most grateful to my colleagues at the University, Professor John K. Anderson of the Classics Department for reading and criticizing the draft chapters on the classical period; Professor Bryce Lyon, formerly of the Department of History at Berkeley and now at Brown University, for the medieval period; Professor Kenneth Bock, Department of Sociology, for the modern period; and also to Mr. John Elston for the medieval period. The errors which remain are my own. The interest which Professor Clarence E. Palmer, Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California at Los Angeles, showed in this work was a source of great encouragement to me. I wish to acknowledge the helpful advice of Grace Buzaljko, of the University of California Press, and the suggestions by Gladys Castor in her careful copyediting of the text. For several years I have had the valuable assistance of Florence Myer; I cannot speak too highly of the conscientiousness, skill, and patience she has shown in typing the drafts and final copy of a long and difficult manuscript. My wife Mildred through the years has

xviii

A cknouoledgments

helped me in innumerable ways and has assisted in preparing the manuscript for the Press. Furthermore, I wish to express my appreciation to Mr. Steve Johnson for doing the line drawings and for his skill and patience in suggesting through pictorial representation the abstract ideas with which the book is concerned. The reader may also be interested in learning that many of the drawings are broad adaptations of or have been suggested by the works of others. The drawing for chap, i was suggested by Isabelle's reconstruction of the interior of the Pantheon and reproduced in Rodenwaldt's Die Kunst der Antike-, chap. 3, by Zeno Diemer's pictorial reconstruction of the intersection of five aqueducts southeast of Rome; chap. 4, by a miniature from the Geroevangelistary, Darmstadt Landesbibliotek, from Max Hauttmann, Die Kunst des frühen Mittelalters-, for the introduction to Part II, by the view of the minster of Ste-Foy in Conques (Aveyron) from the same work; chap. 5, by a reproduction, "God as architect of the universe," from a Bible moralisée, Vienna, in von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral-, chap. 6, by a figure in a pen drawing ca. 1200, depicting the air as an element of cosmic harmony, reproduced in the same work; chap. 7, by a drawing of a Benedictine, from R. P. Helyot, Histoire des ordres religieux et militaires (1792), Vol. j ; for the right panel of the drawing for the introduction to Part III, a detail from Theodor de Bry, Americae pars quarta, 1594, reproduced in Albert Bettex's The Discovery of the World, 131-132; chap. 8, by Joseph Anton Koch's painting, Waterfalls near Subiaco, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, reproduced in Marcel Brion, Romantic Art-, chap. 9, from a diagram showing relationships of the four elements to the four qualities (source unknown to me) ; for the introduction to Part IV, by an engraving showing Bernard de Jussieu returning from a voyage to England in 1734 and bringing back two cedars of Lebanon in his tri-cornered hat, from Cap, Le Muséum d'histoire naturelle-, chap, u , by illustrations of microscopes and telescopes in Singer's A History of Technology, Vol. 3, pp. 634-635; chap. 12, by a frequently reproduced portrait of Montesquieu; chap. 14, by a page from the original edition of Buffon's Des Époques de la Nature, 1778; conclusion, by a detail from the frontispiece. Books and articles relating to specific periods are cited in the notes of the appropriate chapter. I wish to acknowledge here, however, my indebtedness to certain works which cover longer time periods. Zöckler's two-volume Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft mit besondrer Rücksicht auf Schöpf ungsgeschichte (1877-1879) is a monumental study. Sympathetic himself to theologico-teleology, Zöckler's indefatigable thoroughness places all students of this general field in his debt. Hicks's little known and peppery work A Critique of Design-Arguments (with many quotations from original sources) reveals how lively, even in the eighties of the last century, were the advocates and critics of design. Franklin Thomas's Environmental Basis of Society (1925) I read many years ago, gaining from

Acknowledgments

xix

it my first insight into the sweep of environmental ideas from the classical period to the early twenties of this century. A great deal of work has been done in this century on the history of population theory, but it is largely confined to specific periods. Stangeland's work, "Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Population" (1904), is still stimulating; he had many insights into the relationships between population theory and political and social theory, theology, and other disciplines. Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being (1948) has made an important segment of Western thought intelligible; especially valuable to me, inter alia, are his discussions of a hierarchy in nature, interpretations of man's place in it, and most of all, the principle of plenitude. Lastly, I wish to express my appreciation to the following publishers who have granted permission to quote from works published by them. I am particularly grateful to the Harvard University Press and William Heinemann, Ltd., for their generosity in permitting extensive quotation from authors whose works are published in the Loeb Classical Library: Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica; Aristotle, Parts of Animals-, Cicero, Academica, De fato, De oratore, De natura deorum, De republican Columella, De re rustica; Diodorus of Sicily; Galen, On the'NaturalFaculties; Greek Bucolic Poets; Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica; Hippocrates, Vol. I, Airs, Waters, Places and Ancient Medicine, Vol. IV, Nature of Man-, Horace, The Odes and Epodes, Satires and Epistles; Philo, On the Creation-, Plato, Timaeus, Critias; Pliny, Natural History -, Plutarch, Moralia, Vol. 4, "On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander," and Vol. 12, "Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon"; Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos; Seneca, Epistolae Morales; Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants; Tibullus, in Catullus, Tibullus, and Pervigilium Veneris; Xenophon, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus. Selections from Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, copyright 1936 and 1964 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, and from Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, are reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Selections from £?mle; or, Education by Jean Jacques Rousseau, translated by Barbara Foxley, Everyman's Library, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, and Dent & Sons, Ltd., London, are reprinted with permission of the publishers. Passages from The Critique of Judgment by Immanual Kant, translated from the German by James Creed Meredith, and from Lucretius, De rerum natura libri sex, translated from the Latin by Cyril Bailey, are reprinted with permission of the publishers, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Selections from D. Winton Thomas, editor, Documents from Old Testament Times, Harper Torchbooks, The Cloister Library, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1961, and originally published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., London, 1958, are reprinted with permission of the publishers. Selections are reprinted with permission from the publishers from Saint

A cknowledgments

XX

Benedict by Abbot Justin McCann, O.S.B., © 1958 Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York. Lines from Mediaeval Latin Lyrics translated by Helen Waddell, Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, 1962, are reprinted by permission of Constable Publishers, London. Quotations from Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, © 1955 by Étienne Gilson, are reprinted with permission of Random House, Inc., New York. Lines from Leibniz, Selections, edited by Philip P. Wiener, 1951, are reprinted with permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Selections from The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, translated by Harry W . Robbins, copyright, © , 1962, by Florence L. Robbins, are reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. The Scripture quotations in this publication are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946 and 1952, and from the Apocrypha, copyrighted 1957, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches, and are used by permission. C l a r e n c e J.

Berkeley, California, 1966

Glacken

Contents PREFACE

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xvii

ABBREVIATIONS

xxv

PART

ONE

The Ancient World INTRODUCTORY ESSAY i. General Ideas, 3 2. The Hellenistic Age and Its Characteristic Attitudes Toward Nature, 18

3

I

ORDER A N D PURPOSE IN T H E COSMOS A N D O N E A R T H 1. Theology and Geography, 3 ; 2. Beginnings of the Teleological View of Nature, 39 3. Xenophon on Design, 42 4, The Artisanship of God and of Nature, 44 j. Aristotle's Teleology of Nature, 46 6. Misgivings of Theophrastus, 49 7. Stoic Views of Nature, 51 8. On the Nature of of the Gods, $4 9. The Development of Antiteleological Ideas in the Epicurean Philosophy, 62 10. Plutarch, the Hermetical Writings, and Plotinus, 14

35

2

AIRS, WATERS, PLACES i. Greek Sources of the Environmental Theory, 80 2. The Hippocratic Treatise "Airs, Waters, Places," 82 3. Herodotus' Interest in Custom and Environment, 88 4. Location Theories and Hippocratic Influences, 91 5. The Problem of Cultural Diversity, 95 6. Ethnology and Environment in Selected Roman Writings, too 7. Strabo's Eclecticism, 103 8. Vitruvius on Architecture, 106 9. Critiques of Philo and Josephus, no 10. Environmental and Astrological Ethnology, / / / 11. Servius on Virgil, 114

80

3

CREATING A SECOND N A T U R E i. On Artisanship and Nature, 116 2. Antigone and Critias, 119 3. Environmental Change in the Hellenistic Period, 122 4. General Descriptions of Environmental Change, 127 j. Theophrastus on Domestication and Climatic Change, 129 6. Rural Life and the Golden Age, 130 7. Is the Earth Mortal?, 134 8. Interpreting Environmental Changes Within a Broader Philosophy of Civilization, 138 9. Conclusion, 141

116

4

GOD, MAN, A N D N A T U R E IN JUDEO-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 1. Introduction, i;o 2. The Creation, Sin, and Dominion, i$t 3. Man in the Order of Nature, i$4 4. Earthly Environment, ¡SS 5- Attitudes

xxii

Contents Toward Nature and the Wisdom Literature, i$i 6. Romans 1:20, 161 7. Contemptus Mundi, 162 8. K e y Ideas and the Nature of Their Influence, 163

P A R T

T W O

The Christian Middle Ages I N T R O D U C T O R Y ESSAY

171

s

T H E E A R T H AS A P L A N N E D ABODE FOR M A N i. T h e Early Patristic Period, 176 2. Origen, 183 3. Philo and the Hexaemeral Literature, 187 4. St. Basil and the Hexaemeral Literature, 189 j . St. Augustine, 196 6. The Legacy of the Early Exegetical Writings, 202 7. Continuities from Boethius to the Theophany of John the Scot, 208 8. St. Bernard, St. Francis, and Alan of Lille, 213 9. Ferments from the Mediterranean, 218 10. Averroes and Maimonides, 220 11. Frederick II on Falcons, 224 12. Albert the Great, 227 13. St. Thomas Aquinas, 229 14. St. Bonaventura and Ramon Sibiude, 257 i j . Secular Views of Nature, 240 16. The Condemnations of 1 2 7 7 , 2 4 8 17. Conclusion, 2¡o

6

E N V I R O N M E N T A L INFLUENCES W I T H I N A DIVINELY CREATED WORLD

176

1. Introduction, 254 2. Classical Echoes, 257 3. Remarks Introducing a More Systematic Thought, 262 4. Albert the Great, 26$ 5. The Encyclopedist, Bartholomew of England, 27; PP- 273—278. The first quotation is on p. 274, the second on p. 273.

39

Kramer, History Begins at Sitmer, pp. 78-79, 99-100.

Part One: Introductory Essay

17

good arrangement, the term implies a systematic unity in which diverse elements are combined or composed.40 B y the fifth century, the word not only meant universal order; it was also applied to the structure, form, and functioning of the human body. T h e unity of the microcosm, the human body with all its diversity, may well have inspired the idea of an all-embracing unity in the macrocosm. 41 There was also the theory of the Pythagoreans, the harmonic analogy, the connection between planetary movements, which were like vibrations, and angular velocities, which were like harmonic ratios producing the music of the spheres. In this conception, the universe is pervaded (says Kahn) by geometric principles of harmony and equilibrium.42 T h e biological analogy also had great force, the unity amidst diversity being characteristic of life; in it were strong inducements toward a teleology. From Anaximander to Plato "the origin of the universe is compared to the formation and birth of a living being. This ancient pairing of cosmogony and embryology explains why the elemental bodies are referred to by Anaxagoras and Empedocles as the 'seeds' or 'roots' of all things." 43 Lucretius, as we shall see later, applied the biological analogy to the earth. It was ideas like these, I think, that made men believe that diversity was not an illusion, nor unity imaginary.44 T h e idea that there is a unity and a harmony in nature is probably the most important idea, in its effect on geographical thought, that we have received from the Greeks, even if among them there was no unanimity regarding the nature of this unity and harmony. T h e idea of terrestrial unity of which human beings were a part called attention to the fitness of the earth itself as an environment for human beings and for the sustenance of all other forms of life; to the inequality of environments and the differences among them; and, b y implication, to the unequal distribution of peoples and to the boundaries that might divide off a densely inhabited from a desolate region. T h e Greek concept of the olKov(Uvy\ is part of this tradition; in antiquity it had at least six different meanings, but the most common was the "inhabited world," the world known to be peopled and to be capable of supporting life. T h e concept of the oiKovfievr) was a concrete one, and back of it was the realization that peoples lived in different environments, sometimes similar, more often differing from one another, and 40

Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, pp. 220-230; quotations on pp. 220, 223. 41 "Nat. Horn." 7, Works of Hippocrates (Loeb Classical Library), Vol. IV. Cited by Kahn, op. cit., p. 189. 42 See Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, pp. 53-55; Kahn, op. cit., p. 206, and Spitzer, "Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony," Traditio, 2 (1944), pp. 414-421. 43 Kahn, op. cit., p. 213. 44 See Sambursky, op. cit., p. 129.

18

Part One: Introductory Essay

if the two are considered together—the peoples and the environments—the relationship might be a purely circumstantial one, or a theoretical one carrying a heavy burden of dogmatism and deduction." 2.

T H E H E L L E N I S T I C A G E AND I T S C H A R A C T E R I S T I C ATTITUDES TOWARD N A T U R E

It is difficult in a f e w paragraphs to say anything meaningful about such a long and complex period as the Hellenistic age; yet an attempt should be made to show how crucial it was to the history of ideas being considered in this work. In fact, it is more crucial than the times of Herodotus or even of Plato and Aristotle, and one can sympathize with Tarn's statement that "so f a r as modern civilisation is based on Greek it is primarily on Hellenism that it is based." 46 There is agreement in general but not in detail in defining the age. Droysen coined the term "Hellenistic," and the Hellenistic centuries are usually defined as the period from the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. to the founding of the Roman Empire by Augustus in 30 B.C. Since this discussion is confined to those aspects of the age which throw light on the ideas being studied, it does not demand the precision in defining it which an independent work would demand. I will keep to the accepted definition without, however, feeling the need to apologize f o r including materials outside the inclusive dates. It seems obvious, for example, that the nature descriptions and bucolic poetry of Virgil, Tibullus, and Horace have much in common with those of Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion. Plutarch, who spans the first and second centuries, seems at home in the culture of the Hellenistic age (he is an important source of its history), while Varro and Columella, one an Italian, the other a Spaniard, write about plant introductions, plant and animal breeding, and reactions to rural life, which were characteristic of the Mediterranean world after Alexander's time. T h e Hellenistic age is of unusual interest to a student of cultural geography. I will resist the temptation to compare it with the Renaissance or the age of discovery 47 (the similarities are superficial, the differences profound), but it is clearly one of those periods of extraordinary culture contact in the history of Western civilization in which men became aware of new and different environments and of the people living in them. Impressive as are the examples in Herodotus, they cannot campare in this regard with the compilations of Strabo, and the gulf would be greater if more works from the Hellenistic period had survived. 45 On ancient concepts of the otxov/icvtj, See Gisinger, "Oikumene," in PW, Vol. 17:2, cols. 2123-2174; Kaerst, Die antike Idee der Oikumene; and Partsch, "Die Grenzen der Menschheit. I Teil: Die antike Oikumene," Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Königl. Sächsisch. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Leipzig, Phil-hist. kl., 68 (1916), pp. 1-62. 44 Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization, 3rd ed., rev. by Tarn and Griffith, p. 1. 47 For a discussion of this point, see HW, Vol. 1, pp. 127-129.

Part One: Introductory Essay

19

One should not, however, dwell on differences alone. Comparisons were important too. Much of what the Greeks participating in Alexander's conquests saw was indeed new; even the old or familiar appeared in a new light. From long acquaintance with Egypt they knew well the contrast between the fertility of the Nile Valley and the harsh, barren Libyan desert bordering it. The plant life of Persia, known from the March of the Ten Thousand, was not too strange. The flora of Anatolia resembled that of the Mediterranean; the sun-drenched plains of Mesopotamia were reminders of African wastelands, and the Greeks had long been at home on the Pontus. The campaign in India brought out striking parallels: in the west, the Nile; in the east, the Punjab, partly in an evergreen tropical zone with its rich and abundant vegetation. In the west on journeys to the oasis of Siwa in the Libyan desert they had seen the luxurious vegetation of the great oasis of Ammon. But in the east they traversed, in an excruciating campaign, the bare sea of sands of Baluchistan. Entirely new, however, were the rich, forested, cool slopes of the Himalaya and the mangrove forests of the northwest coast of the Arabian Sea which reached from the Indus delta far into the Persian Gulf.48 Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants is a product of this increased knowledge of the world's vegetation. Who can read the fourth book, "Of the Trees and Plants Special to Particular Districts and Positions," without being aware that such knowledge was based on gatherings from the Mediterranean and Egypt to the Indus? Theophrastus writes as if he had been on the islands near the mouth of the Indus where the great mangrove trees, big as planes or the tallest poplars, stood in the water; when the tide came in, all was covered but the projecting branches of the tallest trees and to them were fastened the ships' cables, as they were to the roots at ebb tide. Theophrastus has heard that, on the east side of the island of Tylos in the Persian Gulf, the trees are so numerous that they make a regular fence when the tide goes out, and that the island also produces the wool-bearing tree (cotton) in abundance. One can agree with Bretzl that plant geography starts with Theophrastus. And Theophrastus starts with Alexander; he has before him observations of the scientific travelers on the campaign reporting new ethnographic, geographic, geologic, and botanical facts.49 There were not only the Himalayas and the mangroves; the Greeks of the period had a far more thorough knowledge of the Mediterranean world than had their forbears. The Near East, as Rostovtzeff has pointed out, appears in the sixteenth and seventeenth books of Strabo's Geography as a well-known and well-trodden land.50 The campaigns of Alexander carried Hellenic culture to the Indus and to Chinese Turkestan. Ptolemaic monarchs by the third century B.C. had occupied Zanzibar, parts of the coasts of East Africa, and the 48

Based on Bretzl, Botanische Forschungen des Alexanderzuges, pp. 1-3. Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants, IV, vii, 4-7; Bretzl, op. cit., pp. 4-5. 10 HW, Vol. 2, p. 1040. 49

2o

Part One: Introductory Essay

Sudan. That the tropics were habitable was probably known long before Eratosthenes said so, for Dalion had gone south beyond Meroé. Eratosthenes himself is an admirable exemplar of the period. In his work are the beginnings of scientific geography. He includes not only the theories of his predecessors but recent accumulations of knowledge as well. Strabo says of him that he wished to revise the map of the earth (II, i, 2). Although he is most famous for his brilliance in devising a method for measuring the circumference of the earth with astonishing accuracy (if a certain value for the stade be accepted), he was also keenly interested in the contrast between the inhabited world (olKovuéw) and the terrestrial, wishing to set the former accurately within the latter. In his cultural geography, he was capable, judging by a passage on the deforestation of Cyprus, of seeing clearly the relation of governmental policy to changes in the land.51 (See chap. 3, sec. 4.) The discovery of the seaway to India ( 1 1 7 - 1 1 6 B . C . ) , the Roman conquest and colonization of Spain, North Africa, the Balkan peninsula, and Gaul enlarged immeasurably the awareness of peoples and environments. A central region of refined civilization (from Babylonia to Italy and Sicily), says Heichelheim, "was surrounded by a larger, outer zone (from the Ganges to the Atlantic) of assimilated barbarian kingdoms, Greek colonial states, and Roman outer provinces and subject allies, in which there were islands of polis economy or Roman municipal settlements"; from them native villagers gradually appropriated Hellenistic and Roman agricultural skills. In this Greco-Roman development, over such a large area of the earth's surface, planned colonization, economic planning, capital formation, transfer and investment, bills of exchange, and world currencies made possible "a changed appearance of the cities and even more of the countryside from Spain and Gaul to India and Turkestan." 52 Fully as remarkable was the enlarged knowledge of primitive peoples. What wonders the members of Alexander's party saw, who sailed from the mouth of the Indus to the Shatt-al-Arab along the shores of Gedrosia and Carmania (that is, along the shares of Baluchistan to the Persian shores of the Gulf of Oman)! They and later observers as well were in the lands of the fish eaters. According to Diodorus on the authority of Agatharchides of Cnidos, the third 61 Tarn, " T h e Date of Iambulus: a Note," Classical Quarterly, Vol. 33 (1939). PP192-193. On the habitability of the zones between the tropics, see Tittel, "Geminos, 1," PW, Vol. 7:1, col. 1034; Gisinger, "Geographie (Eratosthenes)," PW Supp. Bd., 4, cols. 606-607. On E.'s measurements, see Sarton, Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C., pp. 103-106; Bunbury, Vol. I, chap. 16; Thomson, History of Ancient Geography, pp. 158-166. 62 Heichelheim, "Effects of Classical Antiquity on the Land," MR, pp. 168-169. This is an admirable short statement on the Hellenistic period (upon which these remarks are based), pp. 168-172. See also his article, "Monopole (hellenistisch)," PW, 16:1, esp. cols. 157-192. I am indebted to Professor Heichelheim for stimulating discussions and the suggestions he gave me at the Wenner-Gren symposium in 1 9 j j .

Part One: Introductory Essay

21

Ptolemy, Euergetes I, who reigned from 246-221 B.C., sent one of his friends, Simmias, to spy out the land, and he made an investigation of the peoples along the Red Sea and presumably to the shores of Baluchistan [III, 18, 4]. Indeed the third book of Diodorus, which contains only ethnological fragments, mostly from Agatharchides (early second century B . C . ) , has some of the most interesting descriptive ethnography ever written. Not the least interesting is the account [III, 2-10] in part from Agatharchides, in part from other sources, in which the confident Ethiopians are depicted as believing themselves to be the first men, their civilization to be unique and creative, and the Egyptian, in part at least, being derived from their own. The themes of the food quest, habitation, death and burial customs, and cultural isolation appear frequently in these remarkable passages. It is clear that the Greeks who studied them were much impressed by food as a criterion of culture, for most of the people are named according to the dominant item of their diet: the ichthyophagi (the fish eaters), the chelonophagi (turtle eaters), the rhizophagi (root eaters), the hyolophagi (wood eaters), the spermatophagi (the seed eaters), and so on in the descriptions of peoples bordering on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and the interior lands of Ethiopia. There are absorbing antiphonal themes—the persistence of the old native cultures even with Hellenization, and the extension of Greek culture under the aegis of new rulers in sympathy with it, with the help too of the new common language, the «011/77, the language of the Septuagint and of the Greek New Testament. These themes are so complex that they would require a long monograph reinterpreting the ethnology of the ancient world. I must content myself with mentioning these facts, with an illustration or two, because they show that alternatives other than environmental explanations were available to account for cultural differences.53 The pattern is not one of deep and broad Hellenization of the cultures comprising this world, but is one in which non-Greek cultures persist, possibly with some Greek penetration, while the Greek enclaves, epitomes of that culture, all bear the stamp of the typical Greek settlement. Students of the age thus have emphasized both the unity of the Hellenistic world and the respect of its rulers for the customs and religion of native peoples. The Ptolemies were "chary of modifying the immemorial customs of the temples." They "were loathe to abandon the existing traditions, to break with the deeply rooted habits and customs of the country." A votive stele of Anubis of Attic type was found at Philadelphia in the Fayüm, an eloquent illustration of Greek respect for Egyptian religion.44 In a letter to Zenon (employed by the finance minister Apollonius, a pow53 For materials of great interest to Hellenistic cultural geography, see HW, Vol. 2, pp. 1053-1134, and Partsch, "Die Grenzen der Menschheit. I Teil: Die antike Oikumene," Berichte über die Verhandl. der Königl. Sächsischen Ges. d. Wiss. zu Leipzig. Philbist. kl., Vol. 68 (1916), 2 Heft. 14 HW, Vol. 1, p. 281, 291; the votive stele is shown in Plate 39, Vol. 1, facing p. 319.

22

Part One: Introductory

Essay

erful Greek estate-holder in the Egyptian Fayum) from the third century B.C., two feeders of cats, who were attached to the cult of Boubastis in the village of Sophthis, state that the king and Apollonius had ordered that persons of their profession be exempted from compulsory labor throughout the country. However, Leontiskos, the chief policeman, sent them to work at the harvest; they complied with the order, not wishing to trouble Zenon. Leontiskos then sent them off to make bricks, leaving in peace for their own ends two professional brickmakers in the same village. The cat feeders appeal to Zenon to conform to the order of the king and of the chief financial official (StOlKTJTTJs).85

Among the decrees of Euergetes II (B.C. 118) is one defining the jurisdiction of courts; disputes involving contracts written in Greek between Greeks and Egyptians go before the Greek judges (xpwaTUrTa't)'> those written in Egyptian between Greeks and Egyptians go before native courts in accordance with national laws, as do those between Egyptians.58 On the other hand, the study of areas of Greek colonization such as the Fayum and of Zenon's archives gives the impression, as we shall see in Chapter 3, of innovation, of dynamic Greek enclaves in a traditional Egyptian setting. "But the Greek superstructure of Egypt, important as it was, was no more than a superstructure."57 The Greeks in Egypt were newcomers in a land of ancient culture with long experience in living and religious feeling. The apparent persistence and unchanging nature of life in the Near East probably also struck the Greeks because it was in such contrast with the movement and change of their own. A particularly striking passage in Diodorus throws some light on this contrast. He is discussing the antiquity of the Chaldeans of Babylon. Since they are assigned to the service of the gods, their lives are spent in study, "their greatest renown being in the field of astrology." Using various methods, they are also occupied with soothsaying and divination. Their training is quite unlike that of Greeks engaged in the same endeavors. Among the Chaldeans the study goes from father (who is relieved of all other duties to the state) to son. The parents are ungrudging teachers, their sons trusting pupils, and training from early childhood allows them to attain great skill. Among the Greeks, the student who takes up a large number of subjects without preparation turns quite late to these higher studies; he labors on them, gives them up, distracted by the need to earn a livelihood. Only a few go on to the higher studies and continue in them to make profits and they "are always trying to make innovations in connection with the most important doctrines instead of following in the path of their predecessors." The barbarians, "by sticking to the same things always, keep a firm hold on 55 P. Cairo Zen., 59451. Apollonius' concern for religious cults, both Greek and Egyptian, is frequently met up with in the Zenon papyri. No date is given. 58 The Tebtunis Papyri, 5, 207-220 = Vol. 1, pp. 54-55. 37 HW, Vol. 1, pp. 265-266, quotation on p. 205; cf. p. 55.

Part One: Introductory Essay

»3

every detail," while the profit-seeking Greeks "keep founding new schools and, wrangling with each other over the most important matters of speculation, bring it about that their pupils hold conflicting views, and that their minds, vacillating throughout their lives and able to believe anything at all with firm conviction, simply wander in confusion."58 The early Seleucids, like the Ptolemies, were careful not to offend the religious feelings of their subjects. Although there is considerable evidence for this, one example will suffice: Uruk-Warka, the holy city of Babylonia, became once more "in the times of the Seleucids an important centre of Babylonian religion, learning, and science."®9 These illustrations show a cultural diversity which even the simplest observer could see owed something to history and to tradition. This observation can be stated in a different way: in the Hellenistic age there was a notable broadening of the concept of the oiKovnevr). In earlier times "the inhabited world" was predominantly a geographic concept; in the Hellenistic world it assumed also a cultural connotation. Plutarch praises Alexander's accomplishments in educating other peoples and on occasion in changing their customs. When Alexander was civilizing Asia, "Homer was commonly read, and the children of the Persians, of the Susianians, and of the Gedrosians learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripedes." Socrates, tried on a charge of introducing foreign deities, fell victim to Athenian informers, while "through Alexander Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks." Plutarch emphasizes more than modern scholars would the uncivilized and brutish in the lands Alexander conquered, and he ignores the long urban tradition of the Near East: Alexander "established more than seventy cities among savage tribes and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies, and thus overcame its uncivilized and brutish manner of living. Although few of us read Plato's Laws, yet hundreds of thousands have made use of Alexander's laws, and continue to use them." It was better to have been vanquished by Alexander than to have escaped him, for the vanquished could become civilized: "Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Ssleuceia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city hard b y . . . ." 60 This broadened concept is related to the effects of Alexander's conquests, to the koivrj, to the Hellenization of this part of the world, and to Stoicism. Plutarch paraphrases approvingly the thoughts expressed by Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, whose main principle was "that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should 58 Diodorus, II, 29, 3-6. See also Kaerst, Gesch. d. Hellenismus, Vol. 2, pp. 149-150, to whom I owe the reference. W H W , Vol. 1, p. 435. Plutarch, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander, I 328D, 328D-E, 329A.

24

Part One: Introductory

Essay

consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field." According to Plutarch, Alexander sought always to bring men together, "uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup as it were, men's lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life." Plutarch says he felt no envy in not having had the opportunity of seeing Alexander on the throne of Darius, but "methinks I would gladly have been a witness of that fair and holy marriage-rite, when he brought together in one golden-canopied tent an hundred Persian brides and an hundred Macedonian and Greek bridegrooms, united at a common hearth and board." Alexander desired that all men be subject to "one law of reason, and one form of government and to reveal all men as one people, and to this purpose he made himself conform." The deity recalled his soul too soon, else this unity would have come about.61 Stoicism too, with its emphasis on universal sympathy, and on the interrelation of man and nature as part of a design, on God's care for the world, and on the universal participation of men in the divine, encouraged a cosmopolitanism in outlook already foreshadowed in the hopes of Alexander.62 There may indeed, therefore, have been a wide diffusion of the idea of a cultural as well as a geographic olKovfiemalthough admittedly the documentation is not thorough. Poseidippus in the third century B.C. said, "There are many cities, but they are one Hellas."63 Plutarch's remarks about Alexander and his times, and his ideas about a man's home being the world, which are expressed in On Exile, communicate some of this feeling as wellin an age notable also for misery, slavery, cruelty in war.64 There was not only a sharper awareness of the natural and the cultural environment in the Hellenistic period, but, despite the scanty evidence for such a long time, it would seem that there was a transformation as well in esthetic, philosophical, poetic, and artistic attitudes toward nature. The feeling for nature in the ancient world—nature imagery, comparisons between natural phenomena and human emotions, appreciation of individual aspects of nature such as a flower or a breeze or of the ensemble of the individual components that manifests itself in a landscape—needs reexamination in the light of modern knowledge. It is not that the basic sources have changed much nor that we are lacking in studies; it is doubtful whether additional epigraphic and numismatic materials, paintings on vases, and the like would seriously undermine the main trends apparent in the surviving written sources and the modern monographic literature. T o my knowledge, however, there is no thorough 61

Ibid. The quotations are from I, 329A-B, 329C, 329D-E, and 330D. Kaerst, Die antike Idee der Oikumene, p. 13; Tarn, Hellenistic Civiliz., pp. 79-81. Kock, ed., Comicorwn Atticorum Fragmenta, Fr. 28, vol. 3, p. 345; quoted by Tarn, op. cit., p. 86. M Plutarch, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander, I 329A-D, On Exile, 600D602D. On human misery during this period see esp. HW, chaps. 4, 6; Tarn, op. cit., chap. 3. 82 83

Part One: Introductory Essay

25

recent study of the subject; the most detailed ones were written in the nineteenth century, mainly by historians of literature and of art. Bearing in mind, then, this need for reexamination of the sources and that it is beyond the scope of this work to undertake it, there are substantial reasons for believing that the roots of modern attitudes toward nature are to be found in the Hellenistic age rather than in earlier periods. Admittedly these are difficult to substantiate both for the reasons already cited and because so much has been lost. More so than in the past, the subject becomes widely diffused in different fields: poetry, belles lettres, philosophy, religion, landscape painting, agricultural writing. Tentatively one might say that realistic and vivid nature description is distinct from religious themes and certainly from the polytheism of Homer. If it is religious it is likely to be nature description in service of the design argument, as in the Stoic writings. The Epicurean philosophy—its world was also a unity whose creator was not God but naturecould inspire the vivid nature writings of Lucretius. The awareness of the oriental garden in the Hellenistic period, the tree-lined promenade, the interest in creating natural enclaves in cities, inspirations from cultures farther east, played their role in making a feeling for nature far more prominent than it had been in the earlier Greek world. N o earlier period in the history of Western civilization revealed such strong, self-consciously expressed contrasts between the urban and rural as did the Hellenistic, probably a result of unique conditions of urban life of the age not only in city building but in the increased size of cities. None of these observations are new; similar ones were made in 1871 by Karl Woermann in his work on nature-feeling of the Greeks and Romans and in 1873 by Wolfgang Helbig in his researches into the early history of landscaping painting.65 Helbig argued that before the Hellenistic age nature was an ever-present good—and never far removed. The alienation of man from nature he attributed to the rise of the great Hellenistic cities. So strong is man's dependence on nature, he further argued, that any artificial divorcement from it leads to attempts to reestablish the communion, and then to self-conscious sentiments about nature and a distinct method of artistic expression. Both Helbig and Woermann stressed the influence of the Oriental garden when it became known; the growth in the size and splendor of cities (culture becomes concentrated in them) created an awareness of the contrast between city and country, engendering a literature on nature in this and in the immediately following Roman period. Stimulating and vigorous as these works still are, their confident conclusions are only interesting possibilities, for the ideas in question probably apply only to the most self-conscious and 65 Woermann, Ueber den landschaftlichen Natursinn der Griechen und Römer, pp. 65—66; see also his Die Landschaft in der Kunst der alten Völker, esp. pp. 101-215; Helbig, "Beiträge zur Erklärung der campanischen Wandbilder, II," Rheinisches Museum, N . F., Vol. 24 (1869), pp. 497-523, esp. p. 514, and his Untersuchungen über die Campanische Wandmalerei, chap. 23. I am greatly indebted to these stimulating works; they are especially helpful in providing copious citations to the sources.

id

Part One: Introductory Essay

articulate inhabitants; one may doubt that they are part of popular belief. The scanty evidence can scarcely suggest any generalization. An idyll ascribed to Theocritus, a few lines from Bion, cannot sum up a centuries-long period any more than Homer can. Regardless, however, of the problem of representativeness, I would like to quote a few passages from the familiar Hellenistic and Roman writers in order to show that significant attitudes toward nature found expression at that time. In general, these were realistic even when dealing with mythological subjects or with the activities of gods; they were more sustained than short epithets or similes; they had verisimilitude, bearing the marks of observation, of country walks, of conversations with shepherds. The first of these works, The Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (third century B.C.) is a version of one of the oldest Greek sagas, the voyage on the "Argo" of Jason and his companions to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. We are concerned here not with the tale but with the incidental descriptions of nature which appear from time to time during the progress of the voyage. ( 1 ) Running past the Tisaean headland, the son of Oeagrus, touching his lyre, "sang in rhythmical song of Artemis," and as he sang, "the fishes came darting through the deep sea, great mixed with small, and followed gambolling along the watery paths. And as when in the track of the shepherd, their master, countless sheep follow to the fold that have fed to the full of grass, and he goes before gaily piping a shepherd's strain on his shrill reed; so these fishes followed; and a chasing breeze ever bore the ship onward" [I, 570-579]. (2) Jason, with the spear given him by Atalanta, "went on his way to the city like to a bright star, which maidens, pent up in new-built chambers, behold as it rises above their homes, and through the dark air it charms their eyes with its fair red gleam and the maid rejoices, love-sick for the youth who is far away amid strangers, for whom her parents are keeping her to be his bride; like to that star the hero trod the way to the city" [I, 775-781 ]. (3) In the passage between Scylla and Charybdis, they have the assistance of the Nereids (who circle the ships like dolphins) and of Thetis (who guides the ship's course). "And the ship was raised aloft as the current smote her, and all around the furious wave mounting up broke over the rocks, which at one time touched the sky like towering crags, at another, down in the depths, were fixed fast at the bottom of the sea and the fierce waves poured over them in floods" [IV, 920-979; quotation is in lines 943-947]. (4) There are sensitive delineations of light, especially that of morning, which enhance the beauty and add to the total impression of the landscape. " N o w . . . gleaming dawn with bright eyes beheld the lofty peaks of Pelion, and the calm headlands were . . . drenched as the sea was ruffled by the winds . . . " [I, 519-521 ]. "But when the sun rising from far lands lighted up the dewy hills and wakened the shepherds," they loosed their hawsers, put on board their spoil, "and with a favouring wind they steered through the eddying Bosporus" [II, 164-168].

Part One: Introductory Essay

27

(5) Hera and Athena visit Cypris, Eros' mother, to urge the boy to pierce Medea, daughter of Aetes, with his arrow so that she might love Jason; they act without delay and successfully. Eros then "fared forth through the fruitful orchard of the palace of Zeus," he passed through the gates of Olympus high in air, then in a downward path from heaven he turned toward earth. "And beneath him there appeared now the life-giving earth and cities of men and sacred streams of rivers, and now in turn mountain peaks and the ocean all around, as he swept through the vast expanse of air" [III, 164-166]. (6) "Now dawn returning with her beams divine scattered the gloomy night through the sky; and the island beaches laughed out and the paths over the plains far off, drenched with dew, and there was a din in the streets; the people were astir throughout the city, and far away the Colchians were astir at the bounds of the isle of Maeris" [IV, 1 1 7 0 - 1 1 7 5 ] . (7) There are also comparisons between a state of mind and the appearance of nature. Medea, in love with Jason and kept wakeful by her cares, dreads his fate before the strength of the bulls. "And fast did her heart throb within her breast, as a sunbeam quivers upon the walls of a house when flung up from water, which is just poured forth in a caldron or a pail may be; and hither and thither on the swift eddy does it dart and dance along; even so the maiden's heart quivered in her breast" [III, 755-759]. In this period the most familiar examples of the feeling for nature are in the writings of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus (or from those writings conventionally attributed to them). In this bucolic poetry, especially that of Theocritus, there are charming allusions to the details of Mediterranean rural life: to goatherd's sticks, to bees, to grazing meadows. This freshness of description is also evident in urban scenes, as in The Women at the Adonis Festival, which is set in Alexandria. Gorgo makes a morning call on Praxinoa asking her to the festival of Adonis, which is being held at the Palace of Ptolemy II. Going with difficulty through the crowded streets of Alexandria— "How we're to get through this awful crush," says Gorgo on the way, "and how long it's going to take us, I can't imagine. Talk of an antheap!"—they arrive at the palace, where Gorgo insists that Praxinoa admire the delicate and tasteful embroideries. Praxinoa replies "Huswife Athena!" Gorgo marvels that the weavers and embroiderers are capable of such detailed work. "How realistically the things all stand and move about in it! They're living! It is wonderful what people can do." And the Holy Boy, Adonis, "how perfectly beautiful he looks lying on his silver couch with the down of manhood just showing on his cheeks . . . !" [Theocritus, Idyll X V , 78-86]. The wonderment has its rural parallels, set in country sounds and scenes. "Something sweet is the whisper of the pine," says Thyrsis, "that makes her music by yonder springs, and sweet no less, master Goatherd, the melody of your pipe" [Id. I, 1 - 3 ] . Intimate touches sketch the life of the herdsman. " I go a-courting of Amaryllis, and my goats they go browsing on along the hill

28

Part One: Introductory Essay

with Tityrus to drive them on. M y well-beloved Tityrus, pray feed me my goats; pray lead them to watering, good Tityrus, and beware or the buckgoat, the yellow Libyan yonder, will be butting you" [Id. Ill, 1 - 5 ] . The goatherd tells Thyrsis he is no apprentice at the art of country music. "So let's come and sit yonder beneath the elm, this way, over against Priapus and the fountaingoddesses, where that shepherd's seat is and those oak-trees" [I, 19-23]. In the fifth idyll, Lacon tells Comatas, "You'll sing better sitting under the wild olive and this coppice. There's cool water falling yonder, and here's grass and a greenbed, and the locusts at their prattling" [ V , 3 1 - 3 4 ] ; but Comatas's tastes in natural surroundings are different: "Thither I will never come. Here I have oaks and bedstraw, and bees humming bravely at the hives, here's two springs of cool water to thy one, and birds, not locusts, a-babbling upon the tree, and, for shade, thine's not half so good; and what's more the pine overhead is casting her nuts" [ V , 45-49]. In The Harvest-Home, the poet and his companions set out from Cos to the country to participate in the harvest festival. On the way they overtake the goatherd, Lycidas of Cydonia, "which indeed any that saw him must have known him for, seeing liker could not be. For upon his shoulders there hung, rank of new rennet, a shag-haired buck-goat's tawny fleece, across his breast a broad belt did gird an ancient shirt, and in's hand he held a crook of wild olive" [VII, 10-20]. They left the goatherd to take another road; the three of them, Eucritus and I and pretty little Amyntas turned in at Phrasidamus's and in deep greenbeds of fragrant reeds and fresh-cut vine-strippings laid us rejoicing down. / Many an aspen, many an elm bowed and rustled overhead, and hard by, the hallowed water welled purling forth of a cave of the Nymphs, while the brown cricket chirped busily amid the shady leafage, and the tree-frog murmured aloof in the dense thornbrake. Lark and goldfinch sang and turtle moaned, and about the spring the bees hummed and hovered to and fro. All nature smelt of the opulent summer-time, smelt of the season of fruit. Pears lay at our feet, apples on either side, rolling abundantly, and the young branches lay splayed upon the ground because of the weight of their damsons [VII, 128-146]. In Theocritus' hymn to Castor and Polydeuces, the men of Jason's ship went down the ladders, Castor and Polydeuces wandering away from the rest to see "the wild woodland of all manner of trees among the hills." Beneath a slabby rock they found a freshet ever brimming with pure clear water. The pebbles at the bottom were like silver and crystal, and there grew beside it long and tall firs, poplars, planes, and spiry cypresses, "as all fragrant flowers which abound in the meadows of outgoing spring to be loved and laboured of the shag bee" [XXII, 34-43]. Both in Bion and in Moschus there are passages implying a communion of man with nature, a sympathy within nature for the misfortunes of men, suggesting the pathetic fallacy that Ruskin found so distasteful (Modern Painters, Part I V , chap. 12). In Bion's Lament for Adonis (30-39), not only do the

Part One: Introductory Essay

29

Nymphs and Aphrodite mourn but so also do the elements of nature—for him and for Cypris, beautiful while Adonis lived, whose loveliness has now died with him. With all the hills 'tis Woe for Cypris and with the vales 'tis Woe for Adonis-, the rivers weep the sorrows of Aphrodite, the wells of the mountains shed tears for Adonis; thefloweretsflushred for grief, and Cythera's isle over every foothill and every glen of it sings pitifully Woe for Cytherea, the beauteous Adonis is dead, and Echo ever cries her back again, The beauteous Adonis is dead. Similarly, in The Lament for Bion (usually published in the works of Moschus and probably the work of a pupil of Bion), the same sympathy comes forth from nature. Cry me waly upon him, you glades of the woods, and waly, sweet Dorian water; you rivers, weep I pray you for the lovely and delightful Bion. Lament you now, good orchards; gently groves, make you your moan; be your breathing clusters, ye flowers, dishevelled for grief. Pray roses, now be your redness sorrow, and yours sorrow, windflowers; speak now thy writing, dear flower-deluce, loud let thy blossoms babble ay; the beautiful musician is dead.4* In a fragment attributed to Moschus, a fisherman muses about the elements and how they affect him. When the wind strikes gently upon a sea that is blue, this craven heart is roused within me, and my love of the land leads to the desire of the great waters. But when the deep waxes grey and loud, and the sea begins to swell and to foam and the waves run long and wild, then look I unto the shore and its trees and depart from the brine, then welcome is the land to me and pleasant the shady greenwood, where, be the wind never so high, the pine-tree sings her song. The fisherman prefers life on shore, to sleep beneath the plane "and the sound hard by of a bubbling spring such as delights and not disturbs the rustic ear" [Fr.4], Among the Roman writers who were strongly influenced by Hellenistic tastes, descriptions, details of rural life, themes of communion with nature, and comparisons between city and country were also expressed, often with vigor and beauty or, as Columella did, with bitterness. One need only recall the nature imagery of Lucretius. ( i ) T o Venus, the life-giver (alma Venus), mother of Aeneas and thus of the Roman people, and the goddess of love, he says in the opening lines, "Thou, goddess, thou dost turn to flight the winds and the clouds of heaven, thou at thy coming; for thee earth, the quaint artificer (suava daedala tellus) puts forth her sweet-scented flowers; for thee the levels of ocean smile, and the sky, its anger past, gleams with spreading light." With spring and the coming of the strong west wind, "first the birds in high heaven herald thee, goddess, 86 The Lament for Bion, 1-7. Bion's fragments 9 on the evening star and 12 on Galatea's lover combine sentiments of communion with nature with love and unrequited love.

jo

Part One: Introductory Essay

and thine approach, their hearts thrilled with thy might. Then the tame beasts grow wild and bound over the fat pastures, and swim the racing rivers; so surely enchained by thy charm each follows thee in hot desire whither thou goest before to lead him on." For Venus alone is "pilot to the nature of things, and nothing without thine aid comes forth into the bright coasts of light, nor waxes glad or lovely. I long that thou shouldest be my helper in writing these verses. . . ."87 (2) The body has modest needs—only that which gives delight and takes away pain. Nature does not need banquets in palaces, nor golden images of youths about halls grasping fiery torches; nor need fretted and gilded rafters reecho to the lute; men can "lie in friendly groups on the soft grass near some stream of water under the branches of a tall tree, and at no great cost delightfully refresh their bodies, above all when the weather smiles on them, and the season of the year bestrews the green grass with flowers" [II, 20-33]. (3) "For often the fleecy flocks cropping the glad pasture on a hill creep on whither each is called and tempted by the grass bejewelled with fresh dew, and the lambs fed full gambol and butt playfully; yet all this seems blurred to us from afar, and to lie like a white mass on a green hill" [II, 3 1 7 - 3 2 2 ] . (4) "For often before the sculptured shrines of the gods a calf has fallen, slaughtered hard by the altars smoking with incense, breathing out from its breast the hot tide of blood. But the mother bereft wanders over the green glades and seeks on the ground for the footprints marked by those cloven hoofs, scanning every spot with her eyes, if only she might anywhere catch sight of her lost young, and stopping fills the leafy grove with her lament " [II, 351-360.] A practical and utilitarian attitude toward nature so conspicuous in Virgil's Georgics might be counterbalanced by a lyrical and esthetic interpretation of landscape so congenial to the Eclogues. Here, says Tityrus, after hearing Melibaeus' complaints about the evils which have befallen him and his estate, you can rest tonight with me on the verdant leaves. There are ripe apples, soft chestnuts, and plenty of pressed cheese for us. N o w the distant housetops are smoking and the longer shadows fall from the high mountains [ E c . I, 80 ad fin]. Mossy fountains, grass softer than sleep, green arbutus covering you with its thin shade, keep off the noon heat from the flock; already the burning summer approaches and now the buds are swelling on the fruitful vine [Ec. VII, 45-48]. Virgil expresses a desire for communion with nature, assuming, no doubt, that a deeper understanding of life comes with divorcement from the world of men. Let Pallas live, he says, in the cities she has built; the woods above all please us [Ec. II, 62]. 47 Lucr. I, 1-2 j. On the invocation to Venus and its possible inconsistency with Epicurean doctrine, see Bailey's ed. of Lucr. Vol. 2, pp. 588-591. See also Latham's very graceful trans, of this passage in the Penquin Classics ed.

Part One: Introductory Essay

3i

Of the writers of antiquity whose writings have come down to us, however, none has shown a preference for rural life so clearly as has Horace. The joys of the country are associated with the carefree existence of a pristine race of mortals, free of anxiety in money matters, of war-making, of sailing on the angry sea, of life in the Forum and the "proud thresholds of more peaceful citizens." The rural dweller may "wed his lofty poplar-trees to well-grown vines"; look out upon "the ranging herds of lowing cattle"; prune away the useless branches and graft on fruitful ones, store his honey, shear his sheep. The modest wife and mother (in addition to her usual duties) piles high "the sacred hearth with seasoned firewood," pens "the frisking flocks in wattled fold," and milks the cows. Beloved are the scenes of homeward-coming sheep, weary oxen dragging along "the upturned ploughshare on their tired necks" [Epode 2]. Horace, "a lover of the country," sends greetings to Fuscus, "lover of the city." "You keep the nest; I praise the lovely country's brooks, its grove and moss-grown rocks." The contrast is really one between art and nature. Like the slave in the priest's household who was fed to satiety with so many sacrificial cakes that he ran away in order to get plain food, he prefers bread to honeyed cake. He follows Stoic teaching when he asks, if it is our duty to live agreeable to nature, what is to be preferred to the country? City advantages are unfavorably compared with country simplicities and even in the city nature is not avoided. "Why, amid your varied columns you are nursing trees, and you praise the mansion which looks out on distant fields. You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will ever hurry back, and ere you know it, will burst through your foolish contempt in triumph." "Is the grass poorer in fragrance or beauty than Libyan mosaics?" Is the water in the leaden pipes of the city purer than the water which "dances and purls down the sloping brook?" [Epistles, Bk. 1 , 1 0 ] . Similar themes appear in Tibullus, a contemporary of Virgil and of Horace; his poetry, as does Horace's, contrasts the urban with the rural, the life devoted to wealth, position, or warfare with that associated with humility, desire for a modest fortune, quiet, physical activity, and simplicity [I, i, 1-30]. "When the time is ripe, let me plant the tender vines and the stout orchard trees with my own deft hands, a countryman indeed" [I, i, 7]. Like Varro, he regards the country as the primordial teacher of man. "I sing the country and the country's gods" [II, i, 37]. "They were the guides when man first ceased to chase his hunger with the acorns from the oak." They taught him to build, to train bulls to be his slaves, and to use the wheel. These savage activities were replaced by the planting of fruit trees and gardens, and the "golden grapes gave up their juices to the trampling feet, and sober water was mixed with cheering wine. From the country comes our harvest, when in heaven's glowing heat the earth is yearly shorn of her shock of yellow hair" [II, i, 37-50]. The toils of country life are realistically described [II, i i i ] ; " . . . nor think it shame to grasp the hoe

Part One: Introductory Essay 3* at times or chide the laggard oxen with the goad, nor a trouble to carry homewards in my arms a ewe lamb or youngling goat forgotten by its dam and left alone" [I,i]. Among the agricultural prose writers, Varro and Columella were more philosophical and stern; their belief in primordial rural strength only hardened them in their conviction that the city was an unnatural creation. To Varro the farming life was more ancient than that of the town by an astounding number of years, "and small wonder, for divine nature made the country, but man's skill the towns, and all the arts were discovered in Greece, 'tis said, within the space of a thousand years, but there was never a time when there were in the world no fields which could be cultivated."68 Columella was perhaps the most bitter commentator in the ancient world about city and country. He lamented the abandonment "with shameful unanimity" of rural virtues and rural discipline, recalling that the Roman heroes and statesmen of old defended their country in need, returning to the plow with peace. Echoing complaints made by Varro "in the days of our grandfathers," Columella says that heads of families have quit the sickle and the plow, have crept within city walls; "we ply our hands [i.e., applaud] in the circuses and theatres rather than in the grainfields and vineyards; and we gaze in astonished admiration at the posturings of effeminate males, because they counterfeit with their womanish motions a sex which nature has denied to men.. . ." The city is a place of excess, of gluttony and drunkenness, debauching the young into premature ill health. In contrast is the life of the country, which is presumed to be closer to ways which are most natural to man because they were gifts originally given mankind by the gods.89 The nature imagery of Homer is vivid, but it is closely related to the activities of the gods; in the Hellenistic age, the tendency was to see the aspects of nature as they really were. The fuller knowledge of geography, the experiences of trade, travel, and exploration are manifest in such literature, for landscapes could be compared.70 The nature poetry and landscape description of the Hellenistic age cannot be matched in any previous period in the classical world, and they may be compared with passages from Ausonius, St. Augustine, the Romance of the Rose, and with such writings in modern times. The interest in nature, emboldened and intensified by inspirations from the East (such as the garden), combined with the enlargement of urban life, brought about a sharpening of the distinction, if one can trust the evidence from men like Horace, Varro, and Columella, between nature and art. This generalization admittedly is difficult to establish, but there does seem ground for belief in the emergence of a self-conscious awareness of the sharp contrast 88

Intro, to Bk. Ill; cf. intro. pref. to Bk. II. Columella, On Agriculture, Bk. I, pref. 1 3 - 2 1 ; see also Varro, Bk. II, pref. j, which is the passage to which C. refers. 70 Helbig, Untersucbungen, pp. 204-209. 89

Part One: Introductory 71

Essay

33

between rural and urban life. Indeed, it is probably one of the periods in Western civilization in which the contrast between natural and cultural landscapes has been sharpest. This phenomenon does not first appear with the age of forest clearance in the Middle Ages, the eighteenth century ordering of nature, or the Industrial Revolution. The enlarged size of many Hellenistic cities may well have increased awareness of this distinction, the presence of gardens and tree-lined promenades suggesting a desire to create a small realm of nature within the city. This discussion brings us to the last point about the Hellenistic period: its importance in the history of Western urbanism. Notwithstanding the deprecating remarks often made about the city, it is hard to deny the existence of a strong urban tradition, an affection for the city as a superior creation of man which existed in the Mediterranean world, and a sharing of this tradition by the peoples of the Hellenistic world. It is hard to believe that Aristotle could think the city an artificial rather than a natural creation; with his strong conviction that man is a social animal, life in the polis would be a natural existence for man. For the present it is enough to say that urbanization in this period was of a special nature: it took place most conspicuously in Asia Minor and for the most part in areas which had been urbanized since very ancient times, and Alexandria became one of the greatest, most interesting, and cosmopolitan cities of history. In chapter 3 there will be more to say about the Hellenistic city because it obviously engenders environmental change.

71

Ibid., pp. 270 B.

Chapter i

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos and on Earth I.

THEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY

In ancient and modern times alike, theology and geography have often been closely related studies because they meet at crucial points of human curiosity. If we seek after the nature of God, we must consider the nature of man and the earth, and if we look at the earth, questions of divine purpose in its creation and of the role of mankind on it inevitably arise. The conception of a designed world, in both classical and in Christian thought, has transcended personal piety. In Western thought the idea of a deity and the idea of nature often have had a parallel history; in Stoic pantheism they were one, and in Christian theology they have supplemented and reinforced one another. Whether a God or the gods had a share in the life of men spent in their beautiful, earthly home, or whether, as the Epicureans believed, the order of nature was not to be ascribed to divine causes, the interpretations which arose out of these arguments have had a dominant place in molding the conception of the earth as a suitable environment for the support of life.

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

3«

Living nature has been one of the important proofs used to demonstrate the existence of a creator and of a purposeful creation; in the pursuit of this proof there has been an intensification, a quickening, and a concentration of interest in the processes of nature itself. Proof of the existence of divine purpose involved consideration of the assumed orderliness of nature, and if this orderliness were granted, the way was open for a conception of nature as a balance and harmony to which all life was adapted. The conception of the earth as an orderly harmonious whole, fashioned either for man himself or, less anthropocentrically, for the sake of all life, must be a very ancient one; probably we must seek its ultimate origin in earlier beliefs in the direct personal intervention of the gods in human affairs or in the personification of natural processes in the naming of gods of the crops, and in the old myth of the earth-mother so widespread in the ancient Mediterranean world. There are hints that this conception was established long before the Greeks. Explaining the way in which knowledge of the Gods has been imparted to men, Plutarch says men accepted heaven as the father, earth as the mother, the father pouring forth spermlke water, the earth-mother receiving it and producing [De placitis philosopborum I, vi, u ]. Diodorus says the Chaldeans thought the world was eternal, its disposition and orderly arrangement the work of divine providence, its basis astrology [II, 30, 1 - 3 ] . Plutarch elsewhere speaks of a widely held belief of Greeks and barbarians alike that the universe is not of itself suspended aloft without sense or reason or guidance. Wilson has called attention to an old Egyptian text, "interesting and unusual in making the purposes of creation the interests of humans; normally the myth recounts the steps of creation without indication of purpose." The gods take care of men created in their image. Well tended are men, the cattle of God. He made heaven and earth according to their desire, and he repelled the water monster (at creation). He made the breath (of) life (for) their nostrils. They are his images that have issued from his body. He arises in heaven according to their desire. He made for them plants and animals, fowl and fish in order to nourish them. He slew his enemies and destroyed (even) his (own) children when they plotted rebellion (against him).1 In the Memphite theology, whose original text belongs to the early Old Kingdom, Wilson notes the emergence of the idea of a rational principle in nature which appeared two millennia before the Greeks and Hebrews. Ptah, the god of Memphis, was the heart (that is, the mind, will, and emotion) and the tongue (the organ of expression and command) of the gods. "There was an articulate intelligence behind the creation. Through the thought of the heart and the expression of the tongue, Atum himself and all the other gods 1

Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 369C. John A. Wilson in Henri Frankfort, et d., Before Philosophy, p. 64.

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

37

c a m e into b e i n g . " T h i s , W i l s o n believes, w a s the closest the E g y p t i a n s e v e r c a m e t o the L o g o s doctrine; the search f o r a first principle " w a s inquisitive and e x p l o r a t o r y b e y o n d the normal E g y p t i a n p l a c i d i t y w i t h the universe as created." 2 A n d in the h y m n t o A m u n ( w r i t t e n in the time o f A m e n h o t e p II, ca. 1 4 3 6 1411 B.C.), the g o d A m o n - R e creates pasture f o r beasts, f r u i t trees f o r man, that o n w h i c h the fish and the birds, gnats, w o r m s , flies, m a y live, g i v i n g breath t o w h a t is in the e g g , sustaining the son o f the slug. T h e c o n c e r n o f the primeval c r e a t o r - g o d A t e n , here identified w i t h A t u m , is f o r all m a n k i n d regardless of race o r c o l o r : A t u m , w h o made the common folk, W h o varied their natures and made their life, W h o diversified their hues, one from the other. 3 E v e n m o r e striking is the f a m o u s h y m n o f A k h - e n - A t o n ( 1 3 6 9 - 1 3 5 3 B.C.) to A t e n , the sun g o d , a h y m n w h i c h o w e s its f a m e t o its b e a u t y , t o its place in the history o f monotheistic ideas, and t o the speculation it has aroused b e cause o f the striking similarities b e t w e e n it and the 104th Psalm. O n e passage f r o m this h y m n reveals the antiquity o f the idea of the g l o r y of the creator b e i n g manifested in his w o r k s : H o w manifold is that which thou hast made, hidden f r o m view! T h o u sole god, there is no other like thee! T h o u didst create the earth according to t h y will, being alone: Mankind, cattle, all flocks, E v e r y t h i n g on earth which walks with (its) feet, A n d what are on high, flying with their wings. 4 2 Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, pp. 59-60; an excerpt relating to this question is translated on p. 60. Wilson dates the period of the Old Kingdom from 2700 to 2200 B.C. After remarking that this search for a first principle was only an approach to abstract thinking, Wilson continues, "But we must remember that the Memphite Theology lies two thousand years before the Greeks or Hebrews. Its insistence that there was a creative and controlling intelligence, which fashioned the phenomena of nature and which provided, from the beginning, rule and rationale, was a high peak of pre-Greek thinking, a peak which was not surpassed in later Egyptian history." See also the extracts from ""ITie Theology of Memphis," trans, by John A . Wilson in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2nd ed., pp. 4-6. For another discussion, Rudolf Anthes, "Mythology in Ancient Egypt," in Samuel Noah Kramer, ed., Mythologies of the Ancient World, pp. 61-64; siso his discussion of the so-called "Credo of a Highpriest of Thebes," p. 47. Anthes says "The Theology of Memphis" is a badly preserved inscription on a monolith erected about 700 B.C. copied on King Shabaka's orders from an old papyrus roll. A dating of 2500 B.C. appears possible and has been generally accepted for the time being, p. 61; the hymn to Osiris was engraved on a tombstone of Amenmose, ca. 15jo B.C., pp. 82-85. s Quoted in Williams, "The Hymn to Aten," in D. Winton Thomas, ed., Documents from Old Testament Times, p. 1 jo. On the hymn to Amun, see pp. 149-150. 4 Strophe V I , lines 52-57, ibid., p. 147.

3«

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

L i k e the h y m n to A m u n , that to A t e n recognizes that there are differences among peoples, and praises a creator w h o cares f o r all: T h e foreign lands of Hurru and Nubia, the land of Egypt— T h o u dost set each man in his place and supply his needs; Each one has his food, and his lifetime is reckoned. Their tongues are diverse in speech and their natures likewise; Their skins are varied, for thou dost vary the foreigners. 5 T h i s creator does not hesitate to make different environments f o r different kinds of men. L o n g b e f o r e Herodotus and Plato talked of the distinctive sources of E g y p t i a n water, the H y m n to A t e n distinguishes b e t w e e n the E g y p t i a n N i l e and the N i l e of other countries. T h e creator makes a life f o r foreign peoples, but t h e y have been given their N i l e in the s k y that it may, like the sea, flow d o w n the sides of their mountains, watering "their fields amongst their t o w n s . " T h e Nile in the sky is for the foreign peoples, For the flocks of every foreign land that walk with (their) feet, While the (true) Nile comes forth from the underworld for Egypt. It is perhaps the earliest mention o f the distinction between a land o w i n g its water solely to an exotic stream and a land dependent upon rainfall. 6 Strophe VII, lines 58-62, ibid., p. 147. •Strophe VIII, lines 69-77. See also Deuteronomy 11:10-12. According to Williams, the evidence indicates that the cult of Aten had developed "probably as early as the reign of Thutmose IV (ca. 1411-1397 B . C . ) " p. 142; the evidence also is inconclusive that Akhen-Aton is the world's first monotheist, pp. 143-144. Of the often-noted parallel between Psalm 104 and the hymn, he says that while Egyptian literary work influenced Hebrew literature, "we may wonder how a Hebrew poet, more than half a millennium later, could have become acquainted with the central document of a religion which later ages execrated and sought to obliterate from their memory. Despite the complete eclipse of Atenism after the death of Akhenaten, however, its influence remained in art and literature, and many of the ideas contained in the Aten Hymn, itself dependent on earlier models . . . found expression in later religious works. From sources such as these the Psalmist may well have obtained his inspiration." Ibid., p. 149. Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, pp. 225-229, also discusses the similarities between this hymn and Psalm 104. See the earlier discussions of Breasted, A History of Egypt, pp. 371-374 ff., and The Dawn of Conscience, pp. 367-370, to which Wilson refers. Breasted, Dawn of Conscience, p. 368, quotes Hugo Gressman's conclusion that the mythological motif of the creation of the world probably originated in Babylonia and that "The motif of the divine care of the world was a later idea, which made its way into Palestinian Psalmody under the influence of Egypt." See also translations on pp. 282-284. Wilson concludes that there is no direct relationship. "Hymns of this kind were current long after the fall of Akh-en-Aton, so that when Hebrew religion had reached a point where it needed a certain mode of expression it could find in another literature phrases and thoughts which would meet the need." Of the positive qualities of the hymn, he writes " . . . it expressed beautifully the concept of a god who was creative, nurturing, and kindly and who gave his gifts to all mankind and to all living things everywhere and not to the Egyptians alone," p. 229. 5

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos 2.

39

B E G I N N I N G S OF T H E T E L E O L O G I C A L V I E W OF N A T U R E

If the notion of God's care for the world existed—as apparently it did from very ancient times—it could gradually be joined with the conception of a unity and harmony in the universe, the two becoming the components of the idea of purposefulness in the creation—that it was the result of intelligent, planned, and well-thought-out acts of a creator. When, in fact, does the idea of a teleology in nature emerge, one abstract and broad enough to be applied to the life of an individual, to the earth as a planet, and to the cosmos? Anaximander espoused the principle of a universe governed by law, but it fell short of teleology. In Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Herodotus, however, there are hints which ultimately lead to the teleology of Plato and Aristotle. T o Anaxagoras, Mind "is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing but is all alone by itself." It is "the finest of all things and the purest, it has all knowledge about everything and the greatest power; and Mind controls all things, both the greater and the smaller, that have life." Mind controls the rotation and its beginning; it knows when things are "mingled and separated and divided off. . . ." Mind arranges the "rotation in which are now rotating the stars, the sun and moon, the air and the aither that are being separated off." "And the dense is separated off from the rare, the hot from the cold, the bright from the dark and the dry from the moist"; and "nothing is altogether separated off nor divided one from the other except Mind" which is all alike. The argument for intelligent management is based largely on celestrial phenomena, on the existence of mixtures and of opposites.7 If one agrees with Socrates that Anaxagoras was "a man who made no use at all of Mind, nor invoked any other real causes to arrange the world, but explained things by airs and aithers and waters and many other absurdities,"8 one can see a more active and a more spiritual principle at work in the thought of Diogenes of Apollonia who, it has been said, is the first to have expressed an authentic teleological view of nature.® Intelligence is required, he said, for the underlying substance "so to be divided up that it has measures of all things—of winter and summer and night and day and rains and winds and fair weather" [Fr. 3 ]. The argument is based on the weather and seasonal and diurnal change. May it not come also from observing the characteristics of the Mediterranean climate with its rainy winters and arid summers with bright cloudless skies, its famous winds blowing from many directions? 7

F r . 12, Simplicius Phys. 164, 24 and 156, 13. In Kirk and Raven, PSP, pp. 372-373. Plato Phaedo, 98 B 7, text and translation being in Kirk and Raven, PSP, p. 384. •See Theiler, Zwr Geschichte der teleologischen Naturbetrachtung bis auf Aristóteles, p. 19. 8

4°

Order and Purpose in the

Cosmos

Men and other living things breathe air and live by it; for them it is "both soul and intelligence" [Fr. 4]. Air is that which men call intelligence; "all men are steered by this and . . . it has power over all things." It is divine, it reaches everywhere, it disposes all things, it is in everything. Everything has some of it, the amounts however varying. It is "many-fashioned, being hotter and colder and drier and moister and more stationary and more swiftly mobile and many other differentiations are in it both of taste and of colour, unlimited in number" [Fr. 5]. All living things have the same soul; this air is warmer than that outside, cooler than that near the sun. The bodily heat of all men is not the same, but neither are the differences so great that they become unlike. Differentiation thus is possible within a broader and basic similarity. "Because, then, the differentiation is many-fashioned, living creatures are many-fashioned and many in number, resembling each other neither in form nor in way of life nor in intelligence, because of the number of differentiations. Nevertheless they all live and see and hear by the same thing, and have the rest of their intelligence from the same thing" [Fr. 5]. In this conception, it is the meteorological and biological elements in the teleology which are most prominent.10 According to Aerius, Diogenes and Anaxagoras thought the world (#«xr/tos) "out of its own propensity" made an inclination to the south, and that living creatures then emerged. The inclination may have been owing to a wise Providence so that thereby some parts of the world may be habitable, others not, depending upon the rigorous cold, scorching heat, or temperate climate of various regions.11 And of the sense of purpose in the acts of creator-deities, Herodotus wrote: "Of a truth, Divine Providence does appear to be, as indeed one might expect beforehand, a wise contriver. For timid animals which are a prey to others are all made to produce young abundantly, that so the species may not be entirely eaten up and lost; while savage and noxious creatures are made very unfruitful." 12 10 Fr. 3 = Simplicius Phys. 152,13; Fr. 4 = ibid., 1 JI, 18; Fr. $ = ibid., 152, 22; in Kirk and Raven, PSP, pp. 433-435. 1 1 Fr. 67, Diels, Vorsokr. (6th ed., Berlin, 1952), Vol. II, p. 22. T h e source is Aerius II, 8. 1. 13 Hdt. Ill, 108. Herodotus has been talking about vast numbers of winged serpents guarding trees bearing frankincense; the Arabians said the whole world would swarm with them if their numbers were not kept in check. Herodotus then describes reasons for the high fertility of hares, low fertility of lions, and the natural checks to viper and winged serpent multiplication. It is all fabulous, but the idea of differential rates in increase of animal populations is certainly there (III, 107-109). For commentaries on this passage, see Nestle, Herodots Verhältnis zur Philosophie und Sopbistik, pp. 16-18 and H o w and Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, Vol. I, pp. 290-291, cf. Plato, Protagoras, 321 B. Nestle thinks that Hdt. Ill, 108, and Plato, Protagoras, 321 B, have a common source in Protagoras' *«/» rrp FV ¿pxö Karatrraatat. See Diogenes Laerrius, IX, JJ.

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

41

In this passage the purposeful creation is confined to the fertility of animals, but it reveals the antiquity of the observation that there is a differential fertility among animals, depending upon whether they prey or are preyed upon, and that nature has great reproductive power. In the myth which Plato has the Sophist Protagoras tell his audience, themes of creation, fertility, adaptation, are woven in with the doctrine of the elements and the idea of design. The gods, already in existence before mankind, fashioned living creatures out of earth and fire, and various mixtures of both, and when they were on the verge of being created, Epimetheus and Prometheus were ordered by the gods "to equip them, and to distribute to them severally their proper qualities." Epimetheus said to Prometheus, "Let me distribute and do you inspect." In distributing attributes to animals, Epimetheus was guided by the principle of preventing the extinction of any one kind. Each animal found a niche and a refuge depending on its nature, like the birds flying in the sky, or animals burrowing in the earth. After being provided with the means of protecting themselves against other animals, they were then given protection against the elements: hair, thick skins, hoofs, hard, callous skins under the feet. Their sources of food were also different: some got herbs, fruit, roots; others, animals—a hint that there is a relationship between animal life and the kinds of plant life in a planned world. Predators had few young, but those who were preyed upon avoided extinction by being prolific. When he came to inspect, Prometheus, noticing that Epimetheus had distributed all the qualities he had to the animals, saw in his perplexity that other endowments must be bestowed on man when he appeared; Prometheus stole the mechanical arts of Hephaestus and Athena, and fire, without which they could not practice these arts. With these gifts, for which Prometheus paid such a heavy penalty, man "had the wisdom necessary to support life," though he lacked political wisdom. Man thus possessed qualities and skills derived from the gods; with them he invented language and names, learned construction and the handicrafts and how to get food from the soil. The arts of man take the place of the natural protections and defenses granted the animals. Can one interpret this myth to mean that man can survive and perpetuate himself only by applying his arts, his tools, and his inventions to nature, to manipulate and fashion it to his own ends? While being alert to the danger of reading this passage with modern eyes, one can still discern the biological idea of a natural control of animal populations through predation and environmental conditions, contrasted with a social idea of the arts which are to man what protective devices, dexterities, and adaptations are to the animals. This myth may represent an early attempt to explain how man, a part of nature, has a position with relation to it far different from that of other forms of life. Although the order of nature and human art are of divine origin, man and

42

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

animals, both part of the same creation, have endowments of an entirely different order.13 3.

XENOPHON ON DESIGN

In a famous passage Xenophon puts arguments into the mouth of Socrates which were used by virtually every writer sympathetic to the design argument through the middle of the nineteenth century, elaborated and illustrated, to be sure, by the incomparably richer body of scientific knowledge of modern times. Three kinds of proof are used in demonstrating the existence of a divine providence: the proof of physiology, of the cosmic order, and of the earth as a fit environment. Socrates, anticipating Paley's Natural Theology and the famous Bridgewater Treatises of the nineteenth century, points out that the creator seems to have given men eyes, ears, nostrils, and the tongue for some useful purpose; of what use would smells be, he asks, without nostrils? The eyelids are compared to doors, opening for seeing, closing with sleep; other illustrations from the human anatomy are given to the same purpose. The gods have given erect carriage to man alone; he can see above him, ahead of him, and he is less exposed to injury; and in addition man has been given a soul. In this long history of the physiological argument, the eye—followed closely by the hand—has been a classic proof of design.14 From the hands came the arts; from the eyes, the ability to see the divine creation; from the erect carriage, the ability to look upward to the stars, instead of bending like the animals toward the earth. The old astronomers, says Cumont, "marvelled at the power of the eye, and the ancients expressed their astonishment at the range of vision which reached the remotest constellations. They give it the preeminence over all the other senses, for the eyes are to them the intermediaries between the sidereal gods and human reason."15 The second, the argument based on cosmic order—the forerunner of the astro-theology of the eighteenth century and a basic argument of all natural theologies—may be passed over to consider the third, which is of chief interest —the evidence of design apparent on the earth itself. Socrates asks Euthydemus whether he has ever considered how carefully the gods have provided for the requirements of man, and, when Euthydemus replies that he has not, he " P l a t o , Protagoras, 320 d-322 d (trans, by Jowett). This famous myth has been interpreted in many ways, perhaps most often as an idealized account of the development of civilization. Guthrie sees Protagoras (the Sophist, not the Platonic dialogue) as the first thinker who advanced a kind of social-contract theory of the origin of law, The Greeks and Their Gods, pp. 340-341. For an interpretation by a modern authority on the Sophists, see Untersteiner, Mario, The Sophists (trans, by Kathleen Freeman), pp. 58-64, and for references to the literature on the myth, pp. 72-73, esp. fn. 24. 14 Xen., Mem. I. iv. 4 - 1 j ; see 8-9 on the elements, the mind, and chance. 15 Cumont, Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans, p. 57.

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

43

and Socrates together point out in detail the nature of divine foresight: light is provided for man, but night is also necessary for a period of rest, and if some tasks, like sailing, must be done at night, there are the stars to guide us while the moon marks off the divisions of the night and of the month. The gods have made the earth yield food and they have devised the seasons. Water, aiding earth and the seasons, is supplied in great abundance; and fire, another evidence of divine foresight, not only protects man from the cold and dark, but is needed in everything of any importance which men prepare for their use. After the winter solstice, the sun approaches to mature some crops and to dry up others already matured. Even its northward turning is gradual and gentle—here the design fits in admirably with the temperate climates—for it does not retreat far enough to freeze man and it returns to be again in that part of the heavens of most advantage to us. Euthydemus then says, " I begin to doubt whether after all the gods are occupied in any other work than the service of man. The one difficulty I feel is that the lower animals also enjoy these blessings." Socrates replies that the animals are produced and nourished for the sake of man, who gains more advantages from the animals than from the fruits of the earth. " . . . A large portion of mankind," he adds, with eyes clearly on the sheep and goats of the eastern Mediterranean, "does not use the products of the earth for food, but lives on the milk and cheese and flesh they get from live stock. Moreover, all men tame and domesticate the useful kinds of animals, and make them their fellow-workers in war and many other undertakings." They are stronger than man, but he can put them to whatever use he chooses. The gods gave man his senses in order that he might take advantage of the innumerable beautiful and useful objects in the world. "Yes, and you," says Socrates, "will realise the truth of what I say if, instead of waiting for the gods to appear to you in bodily presence, you are content to praise and worship them because you see their works." 16 This statement in the Memorabilia, along with the arguments of the Stoic Balbus in Cicero's De natura deorum became the prototype of all subsequent writings. N o basically new idea, despite its use over two millennia, was ever added to it, although the illustrations became more sophisticated and more plentiful. Xenophon's Memorabilia17 was much admired by the early Stoics, and his works and Cicero's were influential in the seventeenth century attempt to interpret the earth and the living nature on it as evidence of purpose. The characteristics of the arguments presented by Socrates and Euthydemus in the Memorabilia are as important as the ideas themselves. These characteristics have reappeared countless times in the modern literature of natural theology, biology, geography, and demography, and therefore should be recapitulated here. There is the strong sense of wonderment at the works of nature, a won18

Xen., Mem. IV. iii. 1-14. For the sources of Xenophon's ideas, see Theiler, Zur Qesch. d. teleolog. betrachtung bis auf Aristoteles, pp. 19-54. 17

Natur-

44

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

derment heightened in modern times under the influence of Christianity. It often replaces curiosity, for in it there is little exhortation to study and to investigate nature, although this objection is not true of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century students of natural history. It is as if the two men are looking out over the pleasing landscape of the Mediterranean shore with its blue skies, its vines, and its cultivated fields, and are seeing there living proofs of a reasoned and purposive creation. Natural theology never lost this wonderment, nor a feeling for the wholeness and the unity of all nature. The strong utilitarian and practical bias of the ideas is equally striking, whether all manifestations of nature are considered as creations for the welfare and comfort of man alone, or whether—in modern restatements—the design is viewed less anthropocentrically and becomes the means of interpreting and explaining the existence of all life. The emphasis on favorable conditions for food production, for navigation, for human comfort, for the discovery and application of the arts and sciences—all made possible by divine arrangements —so strongly expressed in these passages, has characterized the vast majority of conceptions of the earth written from this point of view. Finally, the order and beauty of nature described here, including the advantages of seasonal change, can be argued more persuasively for the temperate zones. 4.

T H E ARTISANSHIP OF G O D AND OF N A T U R E

Even more important in the history of these ideas is the concept of the artisan deity which Plato advanced in the Timaeus. This concept is the sophisticated expression of earlier mythological themes of God as a needleworker, a potter, a weaver, a smith. "Almost everywhere the primordial creation is burdened with the earthly weight of a lowly handicraft, with the tool of physical demiurgy." The world-creator of the Timaeus "is a sublimation of the mythical artisan-god." In his exposition Timaeus makes a distinction between the ideal and the eternal (that which is existent always and has no becoming) and the real and the transitory (that which is becoming always and is never existent); the first is apprehended by thought aided by reasoning, the second is merely the object of opinion aided by unreasoning sensation. Anything, like the cosmos, which has a becoming must have a cause of this becoming. If the divine artisan uses the eternal as his model, his creation will be beautiful, but if he takes the created model (or the becoming) as his own model, his creation will not be beautiful. The whole cosmos has been created: it is visible, tangible, and has a body, and thus is a becoming apprehended by belief and sensation. Upon which model did the architect-creator make the cosmos? Timaeus answers that it was made in the model of the eternal, for it is too beautiful not to have been so modeled, and it would be impious to suppose it to be patterned on a created model. "But it is clear to everyone that his gaze was on the Eternal;

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

45

for the Cosmos is the fairest of all that has come into existence, and He is the best of all the Causes." The creator "was good, and in him that is good no envy ariseth ever concerning anything; and being devoid of envy He desired that all should be, so far as possible, like unto Himself," desiring that "so far as possible, all things should be good and nothing evil." God finding everything "in a state of discordant and disorderly motion" brought it to a state of order. The cosmos was intentionally made the most beautiful and the best; it has come into being through God's providence. Since it is made after the eternal model, one can assume that only one such has been created, that it is a living creature with soul and reason. The cosmos, as a living creature, contains within it "all of die living creatures which are by nature akin to itself." In the beginning God made this body of the universe of fire and earth, later inserting water and air between them. All of the elements were used up in order to make it perfect and whole; since they were used up, another such living body could not be made. The living whole, made in the shape of a sphere, was secure from both old age and disease;18 the creator-artisan not only acts for the best but he acts like a human artisan in having in his mind's eye the model or plan of the kind of universe he is creating. Plato was not die first to advance teleological ideas regarding the creation of the cosmos but he seems to be the first to see it as the work of an intelligent, good, reasoning, and divine artisan.19 It was this idea—especially the short passages from 27D to 30D—which influenced the theology of the early Church fathers; Plato's God, however, is clearly not the Christian God, though many attempts have been made to find strong similarities between them.20 The soul is the cause of individual life, and purposefully ordered life reveals itself in regular movements. By analogy the world soul is the first and oldest creation of the Demiurgus; it is the principle of order and of orderly movement in the skies. In the cosmos, the four elements are bound together by friendship, associations ordained by God.21 The Platonic artisan is mind imposing itself on reluctant matter. "Plato 18

T h i s discussion is based on Plato's Trmaeus (Loeb Classical Library), 27-33C. The argument is summarized in 69B, ff., followed by a detailed description of the creation of the various parts of the body from the teleological point of view. See also R. G . Bury's comments, in the intro. to his trans, of Trmaeus in the Loeb Classical Library, pp. 1 4 - i j , and Bluck, Plato's Life and Thought, pp. 137-140. The first quotation on the nature of the artisan-god is from Robert Eisler, Welterrmantel vnd Hrmmelszelt, p. 23$ as translated in Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, pp. 545-546. After mentioning that the Timaeus is a sublimation of the mythical artisan-god, Curtius continues, "Both elements then fuse with the potter, weaver, and smith god of the Old Testament in the medieval topos of the Deus artifex," p. 546. 1» Theiler, op. cit., has made a thorough study of this idea, including exhaustive references to the teleological principle in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. *°Bultmann, Primitive Christianity, pp. 15-18, discusses this point. 11 Spitzer, "Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony," Traditio, V o l 2 (1944). pp. 417-419.

4*5

Order and Purpose in the

Cosmos

bases his physical doctrine on the principle that Reason [ vovs] and Life [«/rox1?] are prior in nature to Body [o-w/ta] and to blind physical cau-

sation [ avayK-q ].',2i

What is most revealing in Plato's conception, from the point of view of our history, is the relationship of artisanship to art, the S-q/uovpyos to rt'xn). The Greeks' respect for the artisan and for the beauty and order produced by intelligence and manual skill lies deep in their history. "Even in the distant age of bronze the inhabitants of Greece and the islands held the skilled worker in metal in very high regard. His art was both a mystery and a delight, and he was thought to owe his gifts to supernatural beings around whom many legends grew." Hephaestus is a divine artificer because he is so great an artist in metal and ivory and precious stones. "The mortal smith worked, as he thought his god worked, with his delicate moulds engraved by his own hand, and employed drills, chisels, punches, and flats. There is no lack of evidence from the prehistoric bronze age of the fineness of such work." 23 In a period which lacked precision measurements and instruments, high skill was achieved in carving, chasing, and engraving on gold, silver, bronze, ivory, and gems and in the construction of monuments and buildings which required plans. The respect for artisanship could lead to two general ideas: ( i ) the creator as artisan, and (2) man as a being who can create order and beauty out of brute material, or more broadly, who can control natural phenomena with a combination of intelligence and skill. In the Timaeus, the idea is expressed that we live in a world full of the richness, fullness, and variety of life owing to the non-envying nature of the divine artisan. (See the discussion of the "principle of plenitude," pp. 5-6.) Over two thousand years before Voltaire was making fun of Pope and Leibniz, Plato had declared that this was the best of all possible worlds, that the arrangements observable in the cosmos and on the earth itself were a result of the work of a generous and unstinting divine artisan, and that the fullness and variety of life was inherent in the very making of the cosmos as a living being. These ideas, together with those derived from Christian thought, go far toward explaining attitudes toward the earth which persisted until the publication of the Origin of Species. 5.

ARISTOTLE'S TELEOLOGY OF N A T U R E

Unlike Plato, Aristotle apparently had no need for an artisan deity, but the evidence is inconsistent and uncertain whether he believed the structure and history of the cosmos to be the fulfillment of divine planning, to be due to 22 Ltfws 899b. 9; the quote is from Kahn, Anaxtmander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, p. 206; see also pp. 206-207. On the artisan, see also Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, p. 67. 23 Seltman, Approach to Greek Art, pp. 1 2 - 1 3 .

Order and Purpose

in the

Cosmos

47

individual beings consciously working toward ends, or that nature itself unconsciously strives toward ends. Ross believes it is the third "which prevails in Aristotle's mind." Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes and his belief that nature does nothing in vain gave further support to the teleological argument in philosophy and biology and its application to the earth. The final cause is the rational end implicit in the formative process, the final cause being responsible for the character of the course which the Logos follows. The final cause is the crucial one; it is "the logos of the thing—its rational ground, and the logos is always the beginning for products of nature as well as for those of Art." The works of nature can be understood on the analogy of processes observed in the making of machines and contrivances by man, for it is impossible to conceive of such a machine or such a contrivance being made without a preconceived pattern existing in the mind of the artificer. In his healing the physician thinks of health, and in his construction the builder thinks of a completed house, and once they have these goals in mind, "each of them can tell you the causes and rational grounds for everything he does, and why it must be done as he does it."24 Aristotle explains that this purposeful activity, so clear in the plans of the doctor or the builder, is even more true of nature, but "the final cause, or the Good, is more fully present in the works of Nature than in the works of Art." Nature, like man, is a craftsman, but an infinitely more powerful one. In applying his method to the study of animals, Aristotle says that we should investigate all of them, even those that are mean and insignificant, for when we study animals we know that "in not one of them is Nature or Beauty lacking. I add 'Beauty,' because in the works of Nature purpose and not accident is predominant; and the purpose or end for the sake of which those works have been constructed or formed has its place among what is beautiful." It is the figure and form, not merely the bricks, mortar, and timber, that concerns us in a house; "so in Natural science, it is the composite thing, the thing as a whole, which primarily concerns us, not the materials of it, which are not found apart from the thing itself whose materials they are."25 In the Politics Aristotle expresses clearly but in disappointingly crude fashion the idea of purpose in nature, including the relation of plants and animals to the needs of man. Variety in the kinds of animals corresponds to that in the kinds of food, for food habits make differences in their ways of life. Nature has determined their habits in order that they can obtain their choice of foods with greater ease. Plants must be intended for the use of animals; animals, we can infer, exist for man; the tame for use and food, the wild— 24 Arist., Parts of Animals (Loeb Classical Library), I. i. (639b 1 j-22). See W . D. Ross, Aristotle, on alternative interpretations of teleology and the role of God, pp. 181-182. 26Ibid., I. v. (645a 24-37).

48

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

if not all—for food, clothing, and various instruments. "Now if Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man."24 In this anthropocentric conception of interrelationships in nature, the distribution of plants and animals is directly related to the needs and uses of man; the idea has been repeated countlessly in modern times, although many writers on natural theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries protested against it as being incompatible with the Christian religion, maintaining that it was but another example of man's pride. No doubt man owed his existence to such providential arrangements in nature, but these did not exist for him alone. Aristotle says that if men, living luxuriously in well-planned houses under the earth—and who had heard by rumor of the existence of deities or divine powers—should suddenly behold, if the jaws of the earth were opened up, the earth, the seas, the sky, the clouds, the winds, the sun, moon, and stars and the heavenly bodies fixed in their eternal courses, "surely they would think that the gods exist and that these mighty marvels are their handiwork."27 What, then, are the general characteristics of Aristotle's teleology of which these illustrations are a part? Everything is done for an end; the cosmos, although eternal, is the result of planning. Recurrences in the cosmic order are evidences of plan and purpose—and thus of artisanship, for one studies nature as one studies an object made by a man: What is it made of? How is it made and by what techniques? What are the functions of each constituent part? What is its purpose?28 Aristotle often describes nature anthropomorphically as if it were a tidy and frugal householder, so well-ordered is it. Not everything, however, can be explained by final causes; for some phenomena material and efficient causes are sufficient: the eye as a whole may be explained by final causes, but not its color, for that serves no useful purpose.29 Of particular interest is Aristotle's application of teleological ideas to biology, because of his contributions to that field. It is an immanent teleology. "The end of each species is internal to the species; its end is simply to be that kind of thing, or, more definitely, to grow and reproduce its kind, to have sensation, and to move, as freely and efficiently as the conditions of its existence—its habitat, for instance—allow." A characteristic of one species is not designed for another; nature gives an organ only to an animal that can make use of it. For whose ends does this purposiveness exist in nature? Aristotle does not suggest that the individual animal acts out his life purposefully. "It is generally 48

Arist., Politica, I. 8. (nj6 a 18-30, i256b 10-25.) In Cic., Nat. D. (Loeb Classical Library ), II, 37. 94-95. See Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part XI. 28 On Aristotle's teleology in physics, see Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks, pp. 103-nz. 19 W. D. Ross, Aristotle, pp. 81-82. 27

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

49

nature that is described as acting for a purpose, but nature is not a conscious agent; it is the vital force present in all living things." ". . . Aristotle appears to rest content, as many thinkers have done since, with the surely unsatisfactory notion of purpose which is not the purpose of any mind."*0 If the purpose is an unconscious one, how can it be a purpose? "But Aristotle's language suggests that he (like many modern thinkers) did not feel this difficulty, and that, for the most part, he was content to work with the notion of an unconscious purpose in nature itself." 31 If Aristotle's teleology of nature is unsatisfactory, if there is uncertainty regarding purpose and the role of mind, these flaws did not affect its adoption with necessary changes by Christian thinkers whose Christian God could supply purpose and the design in full measure. 6.

MISGIVINGS OF THEOPHRASTUS

B y the death of Aristotle in 322 B.C., several important ideas concerning the relationship of man to the earth had already been well established: the hidden divine force could be discerned in the works of the creation; a creator-artisan, a demiurge, had, like a craftsman, made order out of the disorderly matter of the universe; there was a purpose or a final cause inherent in natural processes; there was a fullness and richness of life in nature; and plants existed for animals and animals for man. Could all of these ideas have been inspired by such commonplace observations as the variety and richness of plant life, the role of the plan in crafts like the carpenter's, the heavy reliance of man on domestic animals and they on man, the necessity of plant life to the survival of these animals? In these earlier writings, however, references to the terrestrial order were not elaborated upon although it was conceived of as a balanced and harmonious creation of which man was a part; it is in this conception that we should seek the origins of the modern idea of a balance in nature, so important in the history of biology and ecology, with the significant difference that in the modern idea human activities have often been regarded as interferences—often destructive—in this balance. Theophrastus (372/369-288/28$ B.C.), Aristotle's pupil who took over the school when Aristotle left Athens, saw difficulties in the teleological view 30

Ibid., p. 12 j. Ibid., p. 182. Ross cites a possible exception to Aristotle's denial that a characteristic of one species may be designed for the benefit of another: "Sharks have their mouth on their under surface in order that, while they turn to bite, their prey may escape—but also to save them from over-eating!" p. 125. This discussion is based on Ross, pp. 12;, 181-182; on teleology applied to the state, see p. 230. On Aristotle's teleology see also Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, pp. 197-198. For full documentation, see Zeller's Die Philosophie der Griechen m ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickhmg, II Tl., II Abt., 4th Aufl., pp. 421-428; see also Theiler, op. cit. (see n. 17 above), 8J-ioi. 31

jo

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

of nature so forcefully expressed b y both Plato and Aristotle, pointing out the shortcomings of final causes and the shakiness of the assumption of planfulness and purposiveness in nature. His examples are taken from cosmic and terrestrial phenomena and from the plant and animal kingdoms. It is difficult, he says, to find plans in each class of things, to link them up with a final cause, difficult "both in animals and in plants and in the very bubble." This linking may be possible " b y reason of the order and change of other things," such as seasonal change "on which depends the generation both of animals and of plants and fruits, the sun being, as it were, the begetter." T h e o phrastus obviously thinks teleological explanations are rough approximations, to be used with caution; difficulties in them call for an inquiry to determine the "extent to which order prevails, and an account of the reason w h y more of it is impossible or the change it would produce would be for the worse." 32 T h e finding of ends in nature, he says, is not so easy as is claimed. In a sentence suggesting an objection Kant later made in his illustration of the pine tree growing on the sand (see below, p. 530), Theophrastus asks, " W h e r e should w e begin and with what sort of things should w e finish?" Is this directed against the fault which Ross noted in Aristotle's teleology that his notion of purpose was unsatisfactory because it was not the purpose of any mind? Many things occur, he adds, not for the sake of an end but b y coincidence or necessity; celestial and terrestrial phenomena are in this category. "For to what end are the incursions and refluxes of the sea, or droughts and humidities, and, in general, changes, now in this direction and now in that, and ceasings-to-be and comings-to-be, and not a f e w other things, too, that are like these?" 33 Theophrastus finds similar failures of teleological explanation in animals possessing useless parts, in the nutrition and in the birth of animals, phases of which are owing to necessity and coincidence. H e warns against assuming uncritically "that nature in all things should desire the best and when it is possible give things a share in the eternal and orderly. . . His attitude differs from that later expressed b y Lucretius: Theophrastus, speaking primarily from a biological point of view, advocates a skepticism regarding the validity of final causes in interpreting the nature of nature; Lucretius condemns them entirely, although he has his own private teleology. Theophrastus points out that what does not obey or receive the good greatly predominates, the animate being a small part, the inanimate infinite in the universe, "and of animate things themselves there is only a minute part whose existence is actually better than its non-existence would be." Again in calling attention to the narrow range of applicability of the doctrine of final causes, Theophrastus questions its validity as a satisfactory explanation for whatever order may exist. Obviously Theophrastus thinks that there is physical dis82 33 M

Metaphysics, I V , iy. Metaphysics, IX, 29. Metaphysics, IX, 31.

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

51

order in nature, that order must be proved, not assumed: ". . . We must try to find a certain limit, both in nature and in the reality of the universe, both to final causation and to the impulse to the better. For this is the beginning of the inquiry about the universe, i.e. of the effort to determine the conditions on which real things depend and the relations in which they stand to one another."35 In the De natura deorum, Velleius, the Epicurean spokesman, has nothing complimentary to say of either Theophrastus or his pupil Strato. Theophrastus is "intolerably inconsistent; at one moment he assigns divine pre-eminence to mind, at another to the heavens, and then again to the constellations and stars in the heavens." Nor is Strato, surnamed the natural philosopher, worthy of attention: "In his view the sole repository of divine power is nature, which contains in itself the causes of birth, growth and decay, but is entirely devoid of sensation and of form." Cicero himself says Strato wants to exempt the deity from exertion on any extensive scale: "He declares that he does not make use of divine activity for constructing the world." All existing phenomena have been produced by natural causes—he has no patience with Democritus' atomic theory—teaching that "whatever is or comes into being is or has been caused by natural forces of gravitation and motion."36 7.

STOIC V I E W S OF N A T U R E

Although the idea that the earth is a designed and fit environment for life was formulated in all its essentials by the fourth century B.C., it was further cultivated and enriched by the Stoics, a crucial change in emphasis apparently being taken by Panaetius and his pupil Posidonius. Panaetius, a Rhodian born about 185 B.C., had traveled widely throughout the Mediterranean world, including Egypt and Syria; at Athens he studied under the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon,37 himself a pupil of Chrysippus. Panaetius lived in Rome where Polybius inspired him with interests in history, especially that of Rome's triumphal and inexorable march to world power, interests which made him fully conscious of the importance of historical development to a deeper understanding of the present.38 Panaetius gave a deeper meaning to the old Stoic belief that the beauty and purposefulness of the world is to be ascribed to a creative primeval force, less by new ideas than through appreciation of the visible aspects of nature. Through him the feeling for nature in Hellenistic poesy and painting was brought to bear on a philosophical world view: not only is there a splendor in the cosmic 35

Metaphysics, IX, 32, 34. Velleius' speech is in Nat. D., I, 13, 35, Cicero's in Académica, II, 38, 121. 47 W . D. Ross, "Diogenes (3)," OCX), p. 285. 38 This discussion of Panaetius is based on Pohlenz, "Panaitios, j," PW, 18:3, coL 421, and on his Die Stoa, Vol. I, pp. 191-207. 36

j2

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

order, but there is joy in the beauty of the earth—of the Greek landscape with its alternation of land and sea, its innumerable islands, its contrasts between the lovely shores and the steep mountains and the rough cliffs, and the variety of plant and animal life existing in this landscape. It not only has beauty; it also has a perfection. Do we not recognize the work of a purposefully creative nature as the Nile and the Euphrates fertilize the fields, in the winds, in day and night, summer and winter everywhere, for these make life and growth possible? The most wonderful fact of all is that nature not only has created its beings once but has provided for their perpetuation. The apex of the creation is man, his erect carriage being his decisively differentiating characteristic. He need not, like the animals, look at the ground in searching for food, but can see the creation as one viewing a panorama from an eminence, seeing there the external world which he can make use of with the help of his intelligence. Panaetius however does not share the old Stoic anthropocentric belief that the earth has been created for human needs alone; man is here and he makes use of its beauties and resources. These ideas, many of which reappear in Cicero's De natura deorwm, show the early fusion of esthetic and utilitarian attitudes toward the earth. It is beautiful and it is useful; these two simple characterizations of the earth explain much of the subsequent history of attitudes toward it: it is beautiful to look upon and its beauty should be preserved; it is useful because it possesses the materials for the exercise of the mind of man, whose creations, tools, and machines change and improve it to meet his ever-recurring and increasing demands.89 Panaetius also made one of the earliest attempts to use ideas of environmental influence within a framework of the design argument. Rejecting Stoic beliefs in astrology, he accepts Hippocratic ideas, finding in man a distinctive characteristic—that he belongs to a community whose character is determined by climate and landscape.40 One senses in Posidonius' thought—which has come down to us only in the works of others—a profound sense of the importance of geography and of the biological interrelationships existing in the terrestrial harmony.41 Both Panaetius and Posidonius seem to be set apart from the pre-Socratic philos89 Pohlenz, Die Stoa, Vol. I, pp. 195-197. This paragraph is based on Pohlenz's analysis of Panaetius and the characteristics which distinguished him from the older Stoics. See also Cic., Nat. D. II, 52-53, and Pohlenz, Vol. II, pp. 98-99. His sources, says Pohlenz, were mostly Xenophon, Aristotle, and the teleological physiology of Erasistratus. "Aber ihm selbst [Panaetius] gehört die Grundstimmung, die überall in der Welt das Wirken eines zweckbewusst schaffenden Logos spürt, und die 'natürliche Theologie'; die in diesem die Gottheit erkennt." Vol. I, p. 197. See also p. 193. Pohlenz, Die Stoa, Vol. I, p. 218. 41 Because of the extraordinary difficulty of Posidonian scholarship (largely a question of Quellenuntersuchungen) and because of the controversial nature of many of the interpretations, I have used the following secondary sources: Reinhardt, K., "Poseidonios von Apameia," P W , 22:1, cols. 558-826 (an article giving impressive evidence of the depth of Posidonian scholarship, its controversies, and its difficulties) and the same author's Poseidonios, and Pohlenz's discussion as already cited.

Order and Purpose m the Cosmos

53

ophers, from Plato, Aristotle, and the earlier Stoics, in their greater use of ethnological, geographical, and biological materials. The emphasis shifts from the cosmos as a whole, from physical theory such as the doctrine of the elements, from theories of origins and of cosmogony, to an investigation of visible phenomena on earth. With the inspiration of Panaetius, Posidonius found in the Stoic teleological teachings a way of unifying—and then of understanding—separate fields of knowledge; Posidonius has been called the greatest scientific traveler of antiquity.42 One has the impression of a profoundly curious man traveling throughout Gaul, Italy, Spain—where he studied the tides at Gades—in order to observe the diversity of peoples and of environments in which they lived.43 Posidonius had a sense of the significance of history; both writers were impressed with the theme of Polybius who set down the events which in a period of fifty years had led Rome from a position as a peninsular power to world hegemony.44 The sense of history, the sense of life and growth in nature, of natural phenomena such as the tides, gave his thinking a dynamic force which the older Stoic conceptions lacked, for to them the unity and harmony of nature seems to be more like a fixed and hardset mosaic. What lay behind his belief that the world is perfect, that its processes are based on purpose, that being and life belong together, that life permeates the entire cosmos, that it is a vital force found everywhere? Posidonius accepted astrology; his teacher Panaetius had rejected it. But it clearly is the astrology of which Thorndike wrote, the great cosmic influences exerted as a natural law on the sublunary world. T o Posidonius, Panaetius' theories of environmental causality were not carrying things back far enough. Climate and landscape themselves were determined by the position of the sun under the influence of the other stars. This way of thinking led him to postulate the direct influences of the stars on a people, and the indirect influences on the characteristics of individuals. All parts of the cosmos are bound together by sympathy: the moon and the tides, the sun and vegetation, the influence of the stars on individuals and on a people. The influence of the sun and the moon on earthly life are plain enough. Could one not go beyond this and speak of the influences of the farther planets and constellations? One must go beyond the climatic theories of Panaetius, for climate and landscape were the result of the position of the sun and the influence of other stars.45 Man is very much a part of nature; he grows in his environment and is affected by it—here theories of environmental influence, such as the preem42

Pohlenz, Die Stoa, Vol. I, p. 209.

**Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 209-210: on his personal experiences with the Celts, his study in Spain, the influence of the sea on coastal formations, of mining, inventions, his revulsion at the inhuman treatment of slaves in the mines, and his school in Rhodes in which Cicero was a student. 44

Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 211-212. «Ibid., I, p. 218.

54

Order and Purpose in the

Cosmos

inent qualities of temperate climates, are introduced. These relationships, however, can only be understood by conceding the existence of harmonies in the whole cosmos. The sun, an example of divine foresight, is created for the benefit of all life; it makes possible the existence of plants and animals, the alternation of day and night, the climate, the pigmentation of man; it makes the earth wet or dry, fruitful or barren. Human arts are imitations of nature, for only human thought could invent the ship's rudder by observing a fish's tail, the invention being possible because the same Logos, the same rational plan, is at work in human thinking as is manifest in nature. Human art, as distinguished from that of the animals, is manifested in its manifold inventions devoted not only to the satisfaction of needs but to the making of a more beautiful life. It is the creativity of the Logos, and not necessity, which has brought about the development of human culture; man with his intelligence, his innumerable accomplishments and his inventions, is part of nature, and his powers, derived from nature, enable him to succeed in a wide variety of undertakings, powers, and abilities which are denied the plants and the animals. The earth is created by the gods not only for their own sakes but for man and the lower orders of plant and animal life.40 The central thought of Posidonius' philosophy, Reinhardt has said, is that of development reaching its goal through differentiation. How is one to explain multiplicity from unity, the complex from the simple? From the poets and from history he gathered his materials to show the original unity of all the highest human activities and their gradual development into the now dominant complexity.47 Posidonius' thought is derived from ideas in biology, history, astronomy, geography, and ethnology. It seems ecological too, and the emphasis on esthetics and the beauties of nature as convincing evidence of a purposefully made earth and cosmos makes one understand both the reverence in which he was held in antiquity and his influence, through writers like Cicero, Seneca, Strabo, and Vitruvius, on the thought of modern times, an influence which is all the greater if it is true, as has been suggested, that the second book of Cicero's De natura deorum is derived in large part from Posidonius.48 8.

O N THE NATURE OF THE GODS

Cicero's dialogue, De natura deorum, with its contrasting views of the Epicureans, the Academics, and the Stoics, became an important repository of religious ideas, including the design argument; it became—with similar writIbid., pp. 222-224; 227-228. Reinhardt, Poseidonios, p. 75. Posidonius will be discussed later with relation to environmental theories. His ideas of nature were closely tied up with old Stoic ideas that fire was the most vigorous and most active element and therefore would gradually get the upper hand. (Pohlenz, Die Stoa, I, p. 219.) On his ideas of sympathy and the cosmos as an organic whole, see idem, Kosmos tend Sympathie, pp. 117-119. On the earth as a home for men, idem, "Poseidonios von Apamea," PW, 22:1, cols. 809-810. 46 47

48

Order and Purpose in the Cosmos

55

ings of Seneca and the Timaeus of Plato—a vehicle for the reintroduction of the classical design argument in the Renaissance and in the influential natural theologies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.49 The four interlocutors of the dialogue are Balbus, a Stoic, Velleius, an Epicurean, and Cotta and Cicero, Academics and disciples of Plato. Cicero introduces the dialogue by reviewing the principal attitudes which are held concerning the nature of the gods: the view that the gods take no cognizance of human affairs, which Cicero impatiently dismisses; the view of those men "of eminence and note," meaning the Stoics, who conceive of the world as directed by divine intelligence and reason, the products of the earth, and atmospheric and seasonal changes being their gifts to man. Even Carneades' sharp criticism of this point of view is done "in such a manner as to arouse in persons of active mind a keen desire to discover the truth."50 Velleius, the representative of Epicureanism, ridicules both Plato's artisandeity, who does not create but who makes order out of chaos, and the Stoic idea of providence. I am not going to expound to you doctrines that are mere baseless figments of the imagination, such as the artisian deity and world-builder of Plato's Timaeus, or that old hag of a fortune-teller, the Pronoia (which we may render "Providence") of the Stoics; nor yet a world endowed with a mind and senses of its own, a spherical, rotary god of burning fire; these are the marvels and monstrosities of philosophers who do not reason but dream. What power of mental vision enabled your master Plato to dercry the vast and elaborate architectural process which, as he makes out, the deity adopted in building the structure of the universe? What method of engineering was employed? What tools and levers and derricks? What agents carried out so vast an undertaking? And how were air, fire, water and earth enabled to obey and execute the will of the architect?®1 It is noteworthy that this criticism employs technological figures of speech, but with Plato the analogy of the human artisan supports, while with Velleius it denies, the planned creation. Later Balbus retorts that Velleius has a very limited understanding of the Stoic vocabulary; he and others of like belief are too enamored of their own ideas to inform themselves of others'. Pronoia is not a hag, not a special kind of deity. Velleius apparently does not understand ellipsis: if the words understood and therefore omitted are supplied, the meaning of pronoia is not an 49 The literature on the sources of Cicero's Nat. D. is enormous. Book II has been especially studied for the influence of Panaetius and Posidonius. See the magistral study of Arthur Stanley Pease, M. Tullí Ciceronis de natura deorum, i vols., Vol. i being a commentary on Bk. I of Nat. D.; Vol. i, on Bks. II and III. This work includes the text of Nat. D. and an illuminating introduction. 50 Cic., Nat. D., I, i-i. On Carneades, see Pohlenz, Die Stoa, Vol. I, p. 176. Carneades objected to the Stoic belief in the divinity of the world: the purposefulness of nature could be explained by natural causes without assuming a purposively creating intelligence. Animals could not be created for man alone; every being had in itself a naturally directed end or purpose. " Cic., Nat. D., I, 8, 18-10.

5lbid., IV, 7j. 18

19

186

The Earth as a Planned Abode

ligence; it is superior to the strength and physical endowments of the animals. B y our intelligence we tame and domesticate animals; we can protect ourselves against those which w e do not domesticate and we can use them—as w e use the domestic animals—for food. Origen seems to follow Stoic doctrine here. The Creator, then, has made everything to serve the rational being and his natural intelligence. And for some purposes we need dogs, for example for guarding flocks or herds of cattle or goats, or as house-dogs; for others we use beasts to carry burdens or baggage. Similarly the species of lions and bears, leopards and boars, and animals of this sort, are said to have been given to us in order to exercise the seeds of courage in us.21

Although this passage repeats the trite utilitarian ideas of nature, the existence of the domestic animals is proof of human intelligence and skill and that rational creatures, cooperating with God, give meaning to the creation. "In reply to what you say [says Celsus], that G o d gave us the ability to catch the wild beasts and to make use of them, we will say that it is likely that before the existence of cities and arts and the formation of societies of this kind, and before there were weapons and nets, men were captured and eaten b y wild beasts and that it was very rare for beasts to be caught b y men." 82 T o this interpretation that man's rule over the rest of the creation has been contingent upon the development of culture, that it is historical in character and did not exist from the beginning, Origen can think of nothing better to say than to grant for the sake of argument the truth of the thesis and then to add that in the beginning there was more solicitous care for the human race; there were divine voices, oracles, visions of angels. And it is probable that at the beginning of the world human nature received more help until men had progressed in intelligence and the other virtues, and in the discovery of the arts, and were able to live independently, not needing those beings who minister to God's will always to be looking after them and caring for them with some miraculous appearance. It follows from this that it is untrue that at the beginning men were carried off and eaten by wild beasts and that it

•was very rare for beasts to be caught by men?3

This weak answer, however, does express the interesting idea that the human race had attained its mastery over life with maturity; in the beginning, like an infant in a nursery, it had to be protected until it had developed its powers. Then, like a grown child, not only could it hold its own but later it could achieve the striven-for suzerainty. T h e child abandoned in the wilds is at the mercy of the wolf; the growing youth, the vigorous man, can kill him easily with a snare or a bow and arrow. 21

Ibid., IV, 78; see Lucr., V , 218; Chadwick's remarks Contr. Cels., pp. x-xi; and chap. I, sees. 7-8, and chap. Ill, sec. 7,011 Stoic views.

Ibid., IV, 79. »Ibid., IV, 80.

The Earth as a Planned Abode 3.

187

PHILO AND THE HEXAEMERAL LITERATURE

T h e hexaemeral literature, the literature of comment and exegesis on the sixday creation, was an admirable vehicle for bringing the biological, geographical, and physical writings of the pagan world to bear on a central theme in Christian theology, the order of creation of plants, animals, birds, fish, and man. 24 W h y was the creation a sequence and not a single act? W a s creation in sequence a manifestation of divine orderliness? T h e answers to the first question were varied but one important answer was that the sequence in creation demonstrated to man at each step the existence of G o d . T h e answer to the second was a uniformly affirmative one: the account in Genesis was a description of the activities of an orderly God. Philo's On the Creation is an early—perhaps the earliest—example of such an hexaemeron; in it one can see classical and Hebrew ideas of man and nature being combined almost before one's eyes. 25 Philo emphasizes the need of KOX recognizing G o d ' s power as a father and a maker (Swa/xevs ¿ 9 TTOL^TOV irarpos ) "and not to assign to the world [/cooyios] a disproportionate majesty." Furthermore, a father and a maker cares for what he has brought into being. 2 * Philo says that G o d made all things in preparation for man "as for a living being dearest and closest to Himself. . . . " It was G o d ' s will that man on coming into the world should live and live well, that he should "find both a banquet and a most sacred display" ( a-vfinocriov xai dia/rpov Updrarov ) —the banquet meaning the fruits of the earth for his sustenance, use, and enjoyment, the display meaning the orderly heavens, all sorts of spectacles "circling with most wondrous movements, in an order fitly determined always in accordance with the proportion of numbers and harmony of revolutions." 2 7 Man's existence on earth is characterized b y a dominion over nature of farreaching proportions that can be seen in everyday life. (See chap. VII, Sec. 3.) T h e Creator has so made man that he is at home in all the elements: he lives and moves on land; he can dive, swim, sail, fish; "merchants and shipmasters and fishers for purplefish and oyster-dredgers and fishermen generally are the clearest evidence of what I have said." His erect body allows him to move through the air; and he is heavenly because with the gift of sight he draws near the sun, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars. Man being composed of the four elements is at one physically with the world, but divine 24 Generally, Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature. A Study of the Greek and Latin Commentaries on Genesis. Robbins shows the strength of this tradition to the time of Milton (see Paradise Lost)-, actually the hexaemeral literature was v e r y much alive in the nineteenth century, when, as Darwin and Lyell discovered, many thinkers were still following in "the footsteps of the Creator day by day." 26 See Robbins, op. cit., pp. 24-35, i" 1 which other Jewish hexaemeral writings are also discussed. 26 On the Creation, 7-10. 27 Ibid., 77-78.

188

The Earth as a Planned Abode

reason grants him kinship with the first father ("Every man, in respect of his mind, is allied to the divine Reason, having come into being as a copy or fragment or ray of that blessed nature ") 28 Although the world was created in six days, the Creator did not require this time, for He could do all things simultaneously. "Six days are mentioned because for the things coming into existence there was need of order." Order involves number, and of the numbers six is the most favorable to productivity: it is the first perfect number after one since it is equal to the product of its factors (one, two, three) and their sum; half of it is three, a third, two, a sixth, one. In its nature it is both male and female "and is a result of the distinctive power of either." Male may be considered odd, female even; three is the starting point of the odd numbers and two of the even, their product being six. Since the world is the most perfect of things which have come into existence, it should be constituted in accordance with a perfect number, six; and as the world was "to have in itself beings that sprang from a coupling together, [it] should receive the impress of a mixed number, namely the first in which odd and even were combined, one that should contain the essential principle both of the male that sows and of the female that receives the seed."29 St. Augustine repeats the same thought: God did not require a protracted time for creation; because six is a perfect number it signifies also the perfection of his works. "And therefore we must not despise the science of numbers, which, in many passages of holy Scripture, is found to be of eminent service to the careful interpreter."30 Although we will not follow Philo through every day of the creation, a few examples of his exegesis show the kinds of questions considered by one infatuated with the properties of numbers. In these creative acts of God, each day receives its share of the whole. The initial acts of the creation are not counted as a "first" day but as "one day" to avoid counting it with the others. What Philo means can be understood from Genesis 1:5: "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." Following the lore of the properties of numbers, "one day" has the nature of a unit. The Creator conceives the models of its parts, then the ideas, then the sensible world.31 On the third day it was necessary to control the briny water so that the land would not be barren for crops of trees; dry land is separated from the sea; the earth is put in order and clothed. All plants at the creation are perfect, the fruit ripe, ready for immediate consumption.32 Heaven is created on the fourth day. Four is a perfect number; much evi48

Ibid., 147,14J-146. "Ibid., 13-14.

*> City of God, XI, 30. »1 On the Creation, 1 j, 19. (Follows Trmaeus 29E.)

**lbid., 38-41.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

189

dence is adduced to prove this, the simplest being that it is the base and source of ten the complete number. What ten is actually, four is potentially. If the numbers from one to four are added together, the sum is ten. Further evidences of its importance are the four elements, the four seasons, and that "it was made the starting-point of the creation of heaven and the world." Since this numeral is "deemed worthy of such high privilege in nature" it comes as no surprise that light was created on this day; then man's glances turned upward to the heavens, and man started toward the birth of philosophy.33 It is only natural for the animals to be created on the fifth day, there being no kinship so close to animals as this number, as one can see in the five senses.®4 Man's place in nature is explained by his order in the creation, the most inferior, the fishes, coming first, the most superior, man, being last, those between the two extremes coming in the middle. What is it that sets man off then from the rest of the living creation? It is that man is created after the image and likeness of God; nothing earth-born is more like God than is man; it is in mind, the sovereign element of the soul, not in body, for mind was molded after the archetype, the Mind of the Universe. To an individual, his mind is like a god to him; "for the human mind evidently occupies a position in men precisely answering to that which the great Ruler occupies in all the world."85 This comes about as close as one can come to finding man's place within Old Testament nature and also to finding his apartness. It is mind which brings about the apartness and it is mind which also brings about the control over other forms of life. 4.

ST. BASIL AND THE HEXAEMERAL LITERATURE

In the following centuries, the important contributions to the development of these ideas were made by St. Basil, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine. Basil's hexaemeron, written in Greek, was a source for the hexaemeron of Ambrose, which, composed in Latin, was more widely understood in the West. Augustine as a young man was greatly inspired by Ambrose, then Bishop of Milan, and he had also used Basil's hexaemeron in Latin translation.36 The works of these men reveal some interest in interpreting living nature; if their eyes were on Heaven, there was at least an occasional glance at the earth below. It is not surprising that there should be an intense interest in nature, because any hexaemeron, or any commentary on Genesis, which took the 33

34

Ibid., 47-53.

Ibid., 62. » Ibid., 69. 36 Works and bibliography in Gilson, HCPMA, pp. J81-J82, 589-591. On the literature of the Latin translation of Basil's hexaemeron, p. 582; on Ambrose's interest in moral lessons rather than abstract speculations, p. 589; on Augustine's learning from St. Ambrose, the " 'spiritual meaning' hidden behind the letter of the scripture," p. 590.

¡go

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

six-day creation story literally (Augustine, however, did not) 37 of necessity had to document it with facts and observations taken from plant and animal life and from the general configuration of the land and of the sea.38 One must remember also the outlook of educated Christian thinkers of the fourth century A.D. Pagan thought and literature were known to them; many had been converts to Christianity; they bolstered their own religion with whatever could be salvaged from the science, philosophy, and even the religion of the pagans.39 If in the later Middle Ages it was necessary for Christian theologians to meet the challenge of Muslim thought and the translations, by studying and incorporating the new and the acceptable wherever possible, there was in this early period a similar necessity for the Christian thinkers to show the quality of their thought and to use known facts or supposed facts to demonstrate the superiority of their religion to the best that pagan philosophy and theology could offer. St. Basil's (ca. 3 3 1 - 3 7 9 ) is the most comprehensive of the early hexaemera. His exegesis is expressed in the famous homilies which he prepared for his simple and untutored congregation; they are unencumbered with technical details or abstruse hairsplitting. Their intent is to show the wisdom of the Creator, a wisdom evident in the balance and harmony of nature, in the adaptation of all life—including the special adaptations of man, the highest manifestation of life on earth—to terrestrial conditions. Like the natural theologies of modern times, the early hexaemera had striking characteristics in common, among them an appalling lack of originality, but the better ones did attempt a synthesis, relying heavily on the biology of Aristotle, the philosophy of Plato, and the nature imagery of Virgil, which would make the creation sequence understandable and believable.40 The charm of Basil's hexaemeron is due to the clarity and simplicity of its form: it is a popular, not a technical, treatise, and Basil obviously felt that his congregation would understand his meaning best through the simple, homely, moralizing illustrations which he used. Basil begins by noting "the good order which reigns in visible things," questioning then the conclusions of Greek science and philosophy, particularly the idea that because bodies are impelled by a circular force they have 37

E.g., see conveniently his allegorical interpretation of Gen. 1, in Conf., Bk. xiii. See inter alia, the following works in The Catholic University of America Patristic Studies: V o l . 1, Jacks, St. Basil and Greek Literature; V o l . 29, Diederich, Vergil in the Works of St. Ambrose-, V o l . jo, Springer, Nature-Imagery in the Works of St. Ambrose. 39 See, for example, Jacks' remarks on the education of St. Basil, op. cit., pp 18-26, and pp. 7 - 1 7 on Christian and pagan learning. 40 On the influence of the Timaeus on the hexaemeral literature, see Robbins, Hex. Lit., pp. 2 - 1 1 . "Plato is accorded respectful treatment, in general, b y the Hexaemeral writers. There were, however, certain Platonic assumptions that the church could not accept, especially the theory of the eternity of matter, the doctrine of metempsychosis, which Origen was accused of holding, and the theory that the ideal pattern of creation is independent of G o d " (p. 1 1 ) . 38

The Earth as a Planned Abode

191

no beginning, a clear protest against cyclical ideas applied to broader fields and derived from the analogy of circular motion. The world had a beginning and it will have an end.41 The world is not eternal, as the Greeks thought; it has been created. Before this creation an order of things existed, the Creator-demiurge could work in an atmosphere favorable to the exercise of his supernatural powers, permitting him to perfect his works.42 T o this world it was necessary to add a new one, the present world, "both a school and training place where the souls of men should be taught at a home for beings destined to be born and to die." It is in this present world too that the passage of time was created, "for ever pressing on and passing away and never stopping in its course." Mortal creatures are adapted to the nature of time; they grow, or perish "without rest and without certain stability." Existence is compared to being in a current whose motion carries a plant or an animal from life to death. Creatures live in surroundings "whose nature is in accord with beings subject to change." Time and life are transitory, for in time "the past is no more, the future does not exist, and the present escapes before being recognized." The pregnant idea of a time-dominated world being a school for man, later secularized and expanded, suggests the modern theme of the earth as a nursery and as a school for mankind, prominent in the writings of Herder in the eighteenth century, repeated in the geography of Carl Ritter in the early nineteenth, and introduced into America through the lectures of Ritter's Swiss-born pupil, Arnold Guyot, at Princeton in 1849.43 It is one of the key ideas in the Christian attitude toward the earth before the Darwinian theory of natural selection made nature more brutal than the nature, described by earlier writers, designed for man by a beneficent Creator. Thus, ours is not a chance creation nor is it created without reason, for it has a useful purpose: "since it is really the school where reasonable souls exercise themselves, the training ground where they learn to know God; since by the sight of visible and sensible things, the mind is led, by a hand to the contemplation of invisible things."44 (Quotes Rom. 1:20.) The artisan analogy serves the ends of Christian theology too, for creative arts survive the creative act. Basil contrasts them with dancing and music which stop with the end of the performance; but our admiration must be greater for the artisan—the architect, the wood worker, the weaver, the worker in brass—than for his creation. Similarly the world is a work of art from which one learns to know God: it is like a building proclaiming the fame of the architect. The earth is good, useful, beautiful; if the thought here is 41

42

Hex., Horn. 1, 1 - 3 ( N P N , Vol. 8, pp. J2-J3).

Basil follows apparently Origen, De Prmc., II, 1, 3. See also Robbins, Hex. Lit., on Basil's use of Plato, Aristotle, Origen, and Philo, pp. 42-44. 43 Hex., Horn. 1, 5, (NPN, Vol. 8, p. 54). Guyot, Earth and Man, pp. 30, 34-35. 44 Ibid., Horn. 1, 6, p. JJ.

192

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

not derived directly from the Timaeus, it at least owes much indirectly to it. "Being good, He made it a useful work. Being wise, He made it everything that was most useful. Being powerful, He made it very great."45 The beneficent Christian God has fashioned, not out of caprice or personal necessity but out of His goodness, the powerful, useful, beauteous world of nature we behold. At its creation the earth was still in need of finishing. Everything was under water; God had yet to adorn his work with the beauties of plant life. Basil compares the unfinished with a finished earth, "for the proper and natural adornment of the earth is its completion: corn waving in the valleys—meadows green with grass and rich with many colored flowers—fertile glades and hilltops shaded by forests."48 In the third homily, which is concerned with cosmology and the elements, Basil speaks of the importance of air and water. There are vast quantities of water in the earth because it is necessary to preserve the earth against fire until the final conflagration. In the meantime, fire is necessary to support life with the arts like weaving, shoemaking, architecture, agriculture; heat, a milder form of fire, is continuously needed for the reproduction and survival of animals and fish and for the ripening of fruit. Water and fire thus balance one another; both are indispensable. These ideas are based on the classical doctrine of the four elements. Basil sees the divine plan as he surveys the habitable parts of the earth linked together by the encircling seas: "and irrigated by countless perennial rivers, thanks to the ineffable wisdom of Him Who ordered all to prevent this rival element to fire from being entirely destroyed." Eventually, however, fire will triumph. (Quotes Isa. 44:2 7.)47 Basil has proofs of the fitness of the environment: the changes in the sun's position in the heavens during the year (the solstices are especially noticed) mean that there is no excessive heat in one place, but a temperate climate throughout the habitable world.48 The thinkers of the pre-Columbian era living in northwest Europe or in the Mediterranean had less difficulty in showing favorable climates to be part of the design than did those following the age of discovery who were confronted with sharper extremes. Basil, like Ambrose who followed him in this, had a sensitive appreciation of the beauties of the sea. The sea was also useful, because it was the source of the earth's moisture through subterranean conduits or through evaporation of its waters. According to a widely held theory, refuted decisively by Bernard Palissy in the sixteenth century, water from the sea reached subterranean canals and caves and was blown by the wind up through channels 45

Ibid., Horn. 1, 7, p. j6. Ibid., Horn, z, 3, p. 6o. *7 Ibid., Horn. 3, 4-6, pp. 67-69. On ancient science and Basil's and other hexaemera, see Karl Gronau, Poseidonios und die Jüdisch-Christliche Genesisexegese. See pp. 77-78 for the classical background of the discussion of water and fire. 48 Ibid., Horn. 3, 7, pp. 69-70. 48

The Earth as a Planned Abode

193

49

in the soil, being purified in the process. The other source of the earth's water suggests a rough form of the hydrologic cycle. The sea receives the waters of the land without overflowing its shores because the sun evaporates the water, the moisture-laden air ultimately returning to land to release its waters to enrich the earth. Basil, born in Caesarea, had traveled to Constantinople, Athens, and Egypt, and probably knew and loved the Mediterranean and its islands. The islandencircling sea has both beauty and utility. Commenting on Genesis 1 : 1 0 ("And God saw that it was good") Basil says it was not merely its pleasant aspect that God saw; the Creator contemplated his works, not with his eyes but in his ineffable wisdom. " A fair sight is the sea all bright in a settled calm; fair too, when, ruffled by a light breeze of wind, its surface shows tints of purple and azure,—when, instead of lashing with violence the neighboring shores, it seems to kiss them with peaceful caresses." According to Scripture, God does not find the goodness and charm of the sea in its beauty, but in its purposes, for it is the source of moisture, it encircles the islands "forming for them the rampart and the beauty, because it brings together the most distant parts of the earth, and facilitates the intercommunication of mariners."50 There is none of the distrust of a maritime location as a destroyer of indigenous cultural values expressed, as we have seen, by Cicero and Caesar. T o Basil, the very existence of organic life is one of the best proofs of the essential nature of the earth and of God. The grasses serve both animals and man, but those who worship the sun as the cause of vegetation err, for plant life existed before the creation of the sun.51 In rejecting pagan belief in the sun as a source of plant growth, Basil denied not only pagan science but the evidences of the senses. The beauty and harmony of nature, as evidenced in plant life, are related to the creative act of God, and it was necessary, as Basil, and later Ambrose, thought, to insist, following Genesis, that plants were growing before the sun was created. The sun is not a creator of the becoming: God's benevolence opens up the earth's bosom, his grace allows it to bring forth its fruits; the sun is younger than the green [Ambrose].82 49 The theory was held in variant forms even to the Renaissance. See Bernard Palissy, Admirable Discourses (1580), for the refutation of the idea and evidence that the waters of the earth are derived from rain. Leonardo was far more conventional in this respect. 80 r Hex., Horn. 4, 6, p. 75. 51 On this interesting and curious subject see Gronau, op. cit., pp. 100-106. Gronau believes Basil used some type of compendium of natural history based on Aristotle or Theophrastus rather than the work of any specific classical writer. 52 Jacks, St. Basil and Greek Literature, pp. 108-109. Plutarch (De Plac. Philosophorum V , 910 C) credits Empedocles with the theory that trees, the first living things, existed before the sun and the creation of day and night. Basil says of this: "If they are sure that the earth was adorned before the genesis of the sun, they ought to withdraw their vast admiration for the sun, because they believe most plants and grasses vegetated before it rose" (Jacks' trans.). See Hex., Horn. 5, 1.

iç4

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

There is a strong sense of the partnership of man and nature in Basil's eulogy of the trees which supply food, roofs, ships' timber, and fuel. Even a succession initiated by man is commented upon: "It has been observed that pines cut down, or even submitted to the action of fire, are changed into a forest of oaks." Furthermore, man can remedy (through artificial selection) natural defects of fruits by his own devices, and gardeners have learned to know the sex of the palm and the fig.53 Both Basil and Ambrose were interested in animal life; they saw great significance in the ability of animals to live together and in the protective devices they possess which are useful for their survival; each species has its own habitat. In the sea, the smaller fish are the prey of the larger—an opportunity now to moralize on the human propensity to oppress inferiors. Each kind of fish, nevertheless, has its home in the sea assigned to it with equality and justice. How do fish migrate from gulf to gulf toward the North Sea, and how do they know they can cross the Propontis into the Euxine? " W h o puts them in marching array? Where is the prince's order?" 54 In a notable passage, Basil reveals how intense is his interest in finding in nature evidences of the divine. " I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator." 55 It is true that the early Church Fathers, including St. Basil, added little if anything to the store of knowledge regarding the earth; their biology, their geography, their natural history came entirely from pagan sources. Basil's hexaemeron is a compendium of classical science and natural history organized around a Christian principle; it is, in fact, a rich storehouse of ancient science, now in the service of the Christian religion.56 Basil's physico-theology is the best of its kind until the works of Ray and Derham in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; these men had, however, the benefits of the heady discoveries which Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and others had heaped upon the student of nature and the servants of God alike. St. Ambrose shares with St. Basil, from whom he borrowed so much, this strong desire to interpret and appreciate the physical world of nature about him, but his work is more allegorical, and has more moralizing in it. Ambrose also uses the classical writings, especially those of Virgil. His classical education, his early interest in nature, stimulated by the impressions of a trip he made as a boy from Trêves (Trier) on the Moselle to Milan, probably were the sources of this intense love of nature that appears not only in his hexaemeron 53 He*., Horn, j , 7. Cf. Ambrose, Hex. 3, 13, 53-57, PL, Vol. 14, cols. 191-194. For the classical references to caprification, see Gronau, op. cit. (n. 47 above), p. 102. 54 Hex., Horn. 7, 4, p. 92. See also Horn. 7, 1-3. 58 Ibid., Horn. 3, 2, p. 76. 58 On Basil's reading and his sources, see Jacks, op. cit., p. 19, and Karl Gronau's exhaustive commentary on Basil's hexaemeron, pp. 7-112.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

195

but in his letters and the hymns." Although nature is described not for its own sake but for its uses in moral and religious teaching, his pleasure is unconcealed, and the pious phrases are suffused with the color, fragrance, and beauty of nature. In his hexaemeron, Ambrose borrowed so much from Basil that it seems in reading Ambrose one is reading Basil again. Elaborating on the twentyfourth verse of Psalm 104, Ambrose says the world (mundus) is a sign (specimen) of divine creation the sight of which leads us to praise the Maker {operator). If we interpret "in the beginning" in terms of number (i.e., sequence), heaven and earth were created and then the earth, with its hills, lowlands, and habitable regions, was finished in detail." Like his Christian and classical predecessors, he cannot explain why only certain parts of the earth should be habitable. The actual becomes the ideal; what is desirable to the eye is the mirror of the design. Ambrose, like Basil (both were influenced by Philo), feels called upon to justify the time taken for the creation when God could have made everything instantaneously. God, however, wishes to bury classical theories once and for all. The creation was spread over six days in order that there would be no mistaken belief that the world is eternal and uncreated and so that by this example man could be induced to imitate Him. In unabashed analogies from the daily life of the artisan, Ambrose says God would have us imitate him, that we first create a thing and then we finish and adorn it, for, had we ideas of doing both at once, we could complete neither. The embroidery comes after the weaving. God created the world first; then he adorned it so that we may know that He who created it was also responsible for its adornment and furnishing. We would not think the creation and the adornment were the work of different hands: one is believed in through the other. This is also the general argument of St. Basil.59 Like some of the classical and biblical writers and those of the Old and New Testaments, Ambrose was fascinated with water, his praise of the sea (following Basil) being one of the most frequently quoted of his nature passages. It is benevolent (III, 5, 22): It gives rain to the land; and it is the lodging place of rivers (hospitium fluviorum), the source of rain (fons imbrium). It is a wall against the dangers of war, a barrier against the barbarian fury. Along its shores are the alluvial soils, deposited by the rivers flowing into it. It is a 57 On Ambrose's use of classical writers (especially Virgil) whose writings were important in the education of fourth century youth, and his dependence on Plato and Origen in biblical exegesis, see Diederich, Vergil in the Works of St. Ambrose, pp. 1-6, a large part of which is devoted to a painstaking comparison of passages in the works of Ambrose with corresponding ones in Virgil. These are mostly from the Georgics and the Aeneid, less from the Eclogues. See also Joh. Niederhuber's introduction to his German translation of the Hexaemeron, BDK, Vol. 17. 58 Ambrose, Hexaemeron, 1, j, 17; 1, 4, I 2 , in: PL, Vol. 14, cols. 139, I 4 I - I 4 2 . i9 Ibtd., 1, 7, 27, PL, cols. 148-149.

196

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

source of taxes and a means of livelihood at harvest failure through trade and commerce, and in other ways. In his practical theology, each wave has its use in this transparently utilitarian view of nature.60 Ambrose's hexaemeron is less intellectual than is Basil's; there is much more allegory and spiritual interpretation in it, an emphasis which had a marked influence on Augustine, but Ambrose also kept alive and passed on the conception of man as a partner of God in improving the earth. (See pp. 298-299.)81 5.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Viewed against the background of these predecessors, Augustine follows along well-trodden paths. What is distinctive in him is the wealth of ideas and the imagination with which they are explored. His ideas regarding the natural order on earth are not so intimately related to the sequence of creation as were the hexaemeral treatises of St. Basil and St. Ambrose, for Augustine's own hexaemeron De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim is not a literal one and therefore puts less stress on natural phenomena associated with the creation than does St. Basil.62 Broadly speaking, Augustine's contributions to the conception of nature as observed here on earth are derived from Greek biology and philosophy (especially Plato) and from the Bible and biblical exegesis. St. Augustine's conception of the relation of God, the Creator, to the creation observable on earth and to man may be summarized as follows: It is God, the Creator, whose workmanship in creating heaven and earth we must constantly adore. The earth and earthly things are to be spurned when we compare them with the greater glories of the City of God, but neither are life on earth and the beauties of nature to be despised because they are on a lower order in the scale of being or because they represent an order inferior to the Divine Order. The earth, life on earth, the beauties of nature, are also creations of God. Man full of sin and prone to sinning is nevertheless a glorious product of God's greatness: man's arts and skills are proof of this, but this greatness does not come from an innate worth in man—it is no occasion for pride—but from the goodness of God who created him. Let us now illustrate these general ideas from the works of St. Augustine. In the Judeo-Christian doctrine, the distinction between the Creator and the created (even though proofs of the Creator's existence may, to some extent, be obtained from observing the creation) is unequivocal, as it must be: there can never be any question of the inferiority of the natural order, lovely 80 Ibid., 3, 5, 22, PL, cols. 177-178. In his German translation of Ambrose's Hex., Niederhuber says the philosopher Secundus replied to Hadrian's question what the ocean was by saying the sea was a "hospitium fluviorum" and a "fons imbrium." (Mullach, Fragm. phil. Graec., I, 518.) BDK, Vol. 17, p. 89 note. 81 Gilson, HCPMA, p. 589, note 11. See also p. JJ, and Augustine, Conf. VI, 4. ** Robbins, Hex. Lit., pp. 64-65. See also Augustine, Conf. XIII.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

197

as it is, to God. It is a distinction that lies at the root of Christian belief and in the Christian attitude toward nature: one should never become so entranced with the beauties of nature that he mistakes them for anything other than creations like himself. Augustine emphasizes this distinction many places in his work. 63 T h e distinction does not mean the rejection of natural theology. Augustine in fact has made good use of Romans 1:20. 64 Although one can find in the creation evidences of the creator, they must be correctly interpreted. T h e strength and the dangers of natural theology are well brought out in his commentary on Psalm 39: "Learn in the creature to love the Creator, and in the work Him who made it. Let not that which was made b y Him take hold of thee, so that thou lose Him b y Whom thou also wert thyself made." 8 * In one of his sermons, he distinguishes between evil in the world of men and the goodness inherent in the order of nature. Evil even plays an important and positive role in teaching man where his interests lie. Evils abound in the world in order that the world may not engage our love. Those who have despised the world with all its superficial attractions were great men, faithful saints; we are not able to despise it foul as it is. The world is evil, yea, it is evil, and yet it is loved as though it were good. But what is this evil world? For the sky and the earth and the waters and the things that are in them, the fishes and the birds and the trees are not evil. All these are good; it is evil men who make this evil world.68 Augustine is thinking, too, of the pagan religions, of the personification of nature and of the earth. T h e distinction between the creator and the created rests on the belief that there is one God, and that the phenomena of nature, despite their great variety, are the work of a single artisan, not of many. 67 In a long exposition and criticism of the lost work of Varro, Antiquitatum rerum humanarum et divinarum libri XL1 (the last sixteen books dealing with res divinae), Augustine protests that the pagan ideas of the gods start with the conception of the earth as the mother of the gods. T h e earth is no mother; it itself is a work of God. 68 Augustine expresses contempt of and disgust with the effeminate and the emasculated men consecrated to the worship of the Great Mother Earth. 69 A l l the great works observable on earth-the gift of a 63 1 am greatly indebted to Przywara's An Augustine Synthesis (cited as Przy.) for many of the references to Augustine. For examples of Augustine's distinction, see "Contra Julianum," IV, 3, 33, OCSA, Vol. 31, p. 286, Przy. p. 346; "De Trin.," IX, 7-8, 13, NPN 1st Ser. Vol. 3, pp. 130-131, Przy. p. 346; ibid., X V , 4, 6, NPN, as cited, p. 202, Przy. pp. 74-75; "Sermones ad Populum," 1st Ser., 158, 7, 7, OCSA, Vol. 17, pp. 487-488, Przy. pp. 367-368; "Enarrationes in Psalmos," 39,7,8, OCSA, Vol. 12, p. 273, Przy. p. 410. 64 City of God, VIII, 10, and De Trin. VI, 10, 12, Przy. pp. 141-142. 85 "Enarrationes in Psalmos," 39, 8, OCSA, Vol. 12, p. 273, Przy. p. 410. 88 "Sermones ad Populum," 1st Ser., 80,8, OCSA, Vol. 16, p. 573, Przy. p. 434. 87 City of God, VI, 8; VII, 23, 30. 48 Ibid., VI, 8. 89 Ibid., VII, 16. Several chapters of the City of God are concerned with Varro's lost work: IV, 31; VI, 2-6; VII, 6, 22-26.

ip8

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

rational mind, the ability to reproduce, the course of the moon, to mention only a few of Augustine's examples—are not, as Varro thinks, creations to be distributed among the gods; they are creations of one God. Heaven and earth are filled with His power. The Creator, whom St. Augustine compares with a shepherd or a husbandman ("ille summus pastor, ille versus agricola")70 is infinitely superior to what he has made.71 Following the guidance of Plato and the Timaeus, the Creator is also an artificer of infinite skill who is pleased to create, and what He creates is a world of order72 and it is created out of His goodness, for He is pleased to create. He upbraids Origen for not seeing this and for missing the significance of Genesis 1:31 ("And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good"). 78 In an important passage, St. Augustine distinguishes between the actual order of nature and the standards of value which human beings place upon it. Living things rank above the lifeless, and among the living, sentient beings like the animals are above the trees, those of the sentient beings that are intelligent, like man, are in turn superior to cattle. And among the intelligent the immortal angels rank above mortal man. These gradations in the order of nature may not be pleasing to men who may prefer forms without sensation to sentient beings. A n d so strong is this preference, that, had w e the power, w e would abolish the latter from nature altogether, whether in ignorance of the place they hold in nature, or, though w e know, sacrificing them to our own convenience. W h o , e.g., would not rather have bread in his house than mice, gold than fleas? But there is little to wonder at in this, seeing that even when valued b y men themselves (whose nature is certainly of the highest dignity), more is often given for a horse than for a slave, for a jewel than for a maid. T h u s the reason of one contemplating nature prompts very different judgments from those dictated b y the necessity of the needy, or the desire of the voluptuous; for the former considers what value a thing in itself has in the scale of creation, while necessity considers how it meets its need; reason looks for what the mental light will judge to be true, while pleasure looks for what pleasantly titillates the bodily sense.74

In distinguishing between the order in nature and human evaluations of it, Augustine departs from the familiar utilitarian view of nature. In another passage, he is even more forthright in exposing the narrowness of the utilitarian view of nature. The phenomena of nature are to be judged by their own, not by human, standards. "Therefore, it is not with respect to our convenience or discomfort, but with respect to their own nature, that the creatures are glorify70

"Sermones ad Populum," 1st Ser., 46, 8 , 1 8 , OSCA Vol. 16, pp. 264-265, Przy. p. 273. De Trin., X V , 4,6; City of God, XI, 4. City of God, XI, 4. 73 See the discussion of Origen, p. I8J. City of God, XI, 23. On the goodness on earth being the result of the goodness of God, see De Trm., VIII, 3, 4-5, Przy. p. 134. 1* City of God, X1,16. 71

72

The Earth as a Planned Abode

199

ing to their Artificer." 75 Augustine here upholds a tradition that is teleological in character but which is centered upon the excellence and purposiveness of individual creations for their own sakes without regard to their usefulness to man. It is reminiscent of Aristotle's conception of the end of a species being internal to it; a characteristic of one species is not designed for another.78 Augustine's distinction between Jerusalem and Babylon, symbolizing the love of God and the love of the world, is helpful in understanding his attitude toward nature. These two cities are separate, but not completely isolated from one another. Neither is Babylon completely useless.77 T h e earth is most certainly not lacking in beauty. In fact, familiarity with its wonders may blunt our perceptions. "But in all the varied movements of the creature what work of God's is not wonderful? And yet these daily wonders have by familiarity become small in our esteem. Nay, how many common objects are trodden underfoot which, if carefully examined, amaze us!" 78 This strong urge to see in the creation the works of the Creator is tempered with the thought that we must see its limitations as a means of understanding God even if its beauties proclaim His existence. And although it is dangerous to quote in support of a thesis scattered passages from a prolific author written at different times in his life and for different purposes, I think we will make no mistake in quoting passages from various sources regarding Augustine's view of nature; the emphasis may vary, but he never lets himself stray far from the idea that nature and the earth are creations of God, that they have beauty, grace, usefulness, that one should never lose oneself in them, worshipping them, and forgetting the Creator and the City of God. "Let us not seek in this (earthly) beauty that which it has not received, for because it has not received that which we seek it is on that account in the lowest place. But for that which it has received let us praise God, since even to this that is lowest He has given also the great good of outward fairness." 79 Augustine warns that men's love should be directed to God, as if pantheism and the worship of the creation were a constant danger. H e himself had come too late to the love of God; he had gone astray by looking at the fairness of the creation. God was with him, he was not with God and the creation had impeded the understanding: "And there made I search for Thee, and in a deformed manner I cast myself upon the things of T h y creation, which yet thou hadst made fair Those things withheld me from Thee, which yet, if they had not their being in Thee would not be at all." 80 Ibid., XII, 4; see also chap. j. See p. 48 and Ross, Aristotle, p. 125. See City of God, XIV, 28, and "EnarrationesinPsalmos," 44,2; 136,2, OCSA, Vol. 13, pp. 92-94; Vol. 1 j, pp. 244-245, Przy. p. 267. 78 ^Epistola," 137, 3,10, OCSA, Vol. j , p. 166, Przy. pp. J O - J I . ""Contra Epistolam Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti liber unus," chap. 41, par. 48, OCSA, Vol. 2 j , p. 476, Przy. p. 1. Conf. X, 27, Przy. p. 7 5 . 71 78 77

200

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

The cosmological and physico-theological arguments are used in a variety of moods, some of passionate lyrical beauty, to show how men arrive at a knowledge of God by observing the order and beauty of the visible creation. Ask the loveliness of the earth, ask the loveliness of the sea, ask the loveliness of the wide airy spaces, ask the loveliness of the sky, ask the order of the stars, ask the sun making the day light with its beams, ask the moon tempering the darkness of the night that follows, ask the living things which move in the waters, which tarry on the land, which fly in the air; ask the souls that are hidden, the bodies that are perceptive; the visible things which must be governed, the invisible things which govern—ask all these things, and they will all answer thee, Lo, see we are lovely. Their loveliness is their confession. A n d these lovely but mutable things, who has made them, save Beauty immutable?81

Man's place in this creation is consistent with its harmony and order, consistent too with the scale of being, of creatures high and low, that fill up all nature. God determined upon a single parent for man as a warning that with the propagation of the human race, the unity of its growing multitudes should be preserved. The creation of woman from Adam's side signifies how close the ties of man and wife should be: "These works of God do certainly seem extraordinary, because they are the first works." Man's sin and fall did not deprive him of the ability to propagate but his fecundity is now infected with lust. Before the Fall, our parents could obey the injunction to increase and multiply without lust. Lust began after sin. Having children is "part of the glory of marriage, and not of the punishment of sin."82 St. Augustine attempts, by a rudimentary population theory whose premises are in the Scriptures, to account for the growth of the world's population and for the retention of certain blessings bestowed on the human race despite the miseries it has endured. It is a creation having the continuing governance of God; if His creations were deprived of His strength they would perish. The actual work of the six days refers only to the creation of natures, not to controlling them; God continues in his governance of the universe.83 The most important idea concerning man's relation to the Creator and to the rest of the creation is that men become gods, not by themselves, but "by participation in that one God who is the true God." ("Non enim existendo sunt homines dii, sed fiunt participando illius unius, qui verus est Deus.") 84 Even in the arts and the sciences (like agriculture), divine power governs; man merely helps. "God, who while man plants and waters, Himself giveth the increase."85 Man is a miracle existing in a visible world that is also a mighty 81 "Sermones ad Populum," id series, No. 241, chap. 2, par. z, OCSA, Vol. 18, p. 238, Przy. p. 116. 82 City of God, X n , 27; XIV, 21. 88 "Epistola," 205, 3,17, OCSA, Vol. 6, pp. 117-118, Przy. pp. 117-118; "De Genesi ad litteram," IV, 12, 22-23, OCSA, Vol. 7, pp. 121-122, Przy. pp. 117-118. « "Enarratio in Psalmos," 16th Disc, on Ps. 118, par. 1, OCSA, Vol. 14, p. j8$, Przy. p. 306. wDe Trm. HI, 5 , 1 1 , Przy. pp. 43-44. Cites I Cor. 3:7.

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

201

miracle. Man's nature was created as a mean between the angelic and the bestial and in such a way that if he had subjected himself to the Creator, he could have become an angel and achieved immortality without the intervention of death, but if he offended the Creator by the proud use of his free will, he became subject to death and to living as the animals.87 It is man's mind, not his body, which is in the image of the Creator.88 There is much evil in man, says Augustine, but his condition "would be lowered if God had not wished to have men supply His word to men."89 It is man, not nature, that is evil.94 Man, a creation of God, is assisted by Him, and often assists Him. It is this relationship which makes St. Augustine so hostile to astrology—which he rejects as being absurd on the face of it and incompatible with man's relation to God. Many of the earlier Church Fathers, seeing in the pagan gods and in astrology a threat to Christian doctrine, were far more critical of astrology than were the thinkers of the late Middle Ages.91 The place of man as an active power in nature will be discussed later (see chap. VII). It is sufficient now to mention that his discussion of the miseries and misfortunes inherent in human life is followed by most enthusiastic praise of man and his skills, praise of man as an inventor, a creator, a discoverer, whose talents range widely over the arts, agriculture, the hunt, and navigation. Man still has dignity and greatness, and they have not been engulfed by his sin.92 With St. Augustine, the design argument, the scale of being, and the principle of plenitude achieve greater stature than contributions to the hexaemeral and exegetical literature; they constitute a Christian synthesis, a philosophical view of man and nature. The synthesis grew in importance because the Christian religion grew in importance. It is a parochial, delicate, and audacious synthesis whose polarities offer hard choices: one is the way of physico-theology and of nature study, of appreciation of man and his creative abilities; the other is the way of ascetic otherworldliness, the contempt for nature, the condemnation of man, themes also profoundly affecting the Christian outlook on man and nature in the Middle Ages and in modern times as well. Augustine did not invent these extremes. They were implied in the Scriptures. They can be seen, however, as plainly in him as in any important early Christian thinker. Who does not feel die other extreme in reading the first few 86

84

See City of God, X , 12. "Ibid., XII, 21. 88 "In Joannis Evangelium," T r . 23, par. 10, OCSA, Vol. 9, p. 521, Pray. p. 18. On Christ. Doct., Prol. 6. 90 "Sermones ad Populum," 1st ser., No. 80, par. 8, OCSA, Vol. 16, p. 573, Przy. p. 434. 91 St. Augustine, On Christ. Doct., II, 21-22; on the Church Fathers and astrological fatalism, see also Eliade, Cosmos and History, pp. 132-133, and the references there cited, and Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought, pp. 119,265-266. 98 City of God, XXII.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

202

books of the Confessions? Who can resist sympathizing with his father when Augustine writes of him, The brambles of lust grew high above my head and there was no one to root them out, certainly not my father. One day at the public baths he saw the signs of active virility coming to life in me and this was enough to make him reush the thought of having grandchildren. He was happy to tell my mother about it, for his happiness was due to the intoxication which causes the world to forget you, its Creator, and to love the things you have created instead of loving you, becaure the world is drunk with the invisible wine of its own perverted, earthbound will.83 There is, I must confess, a difficult problem in selection and quotation. In tracing the history of the idea of a designed earth, pertinent passages emphasizing the importance of nature in Christian theology and illustrating a love of and aesthetic appreciation of it may be quoted or cited more frequently than is warranted by their significance in the literature. Through selection of materials, the thought of some Church Fathers can be presented so that they appear more ascetic and less tolerant, having less love of life, nature, and learning, so that their thought becomes "incompatible with any high valuation of nature."04 Many expressed both viewpoints; one cannot assume consistency or that contradictions or differences in emphasis will be reconciled. The idea of a divinely designed earth—beautiful, lovely, and useful because of its order and harmony, made by a benevolent Creator for man endowed with the intelligence and skill to use it—prospered, despite this early obsession with sex, the dreary emphasis on sin, miracles, and marvels, and painful allegorizing, because it had strong support in Scripture, the fundamental passage being Genesis 1 : 3 1 , and because the Christian religion needed, as the frequent quotation of Romans 1:20 shows, what later was known as the physicotheological proof of the existence of God. Religious thinkers are the main sources for the thought of this age; they are excellent on theology, but it is less certain that they mirror the true feelings of less literate and articulate people. Newer studies of industry, techniques, and agriculture in the Middle Ages often point to enthusiastic activity and to the survival, perhaps improvement, of many industrial techniques in the so-called Dark Ages.85 6.

T H E LEGACY OF THE E A R L Y EXEGETICAL WRITINGS

Three ideas concerning the earth and nature emerged from the exegesis of the patristic period; they were widely disseminated in the later Middle Ages and important through the seventeenth century. They were rooted in the idea of 93

Conf. II, 3, trans, by Pine-Coffin. On this subject see Raven, Science and Religion, pp. 48-49. See also Bark, Origins of the Medieval World, pp. 148, 153. Salin and France-Lanord, Rhin et Orient, Vol. 2, Le Fer à PÉpoque Mérovingienne, especially pp. 3-5, 135M 95

The Earth as a Planned Abode

103

God as a maker, an artisan, deus artifex, and of God being manifest in his works; many times their inspiration was Romans 1:20. There is a book of Nature which when read along with the book of God, allows men to know and to understand Him and his creation; not only man but nature suffered from the curse after the Fall; one may admire and love the natural beauty of the earth if this love and admiration are associated with the love of God. This idea is similar, to the first but it lacks the contrast with revealed religion and the strong dependence on the artisan analogy. It is the view which leads to St. Francis' "The Canticle of Brother Sun." Nature as a Book God is revealed in the Scripture; his works are also visible in the world. The book of nature is contrasted with the Bible, the book of revelation, the former, however, being of a lower order than the latter because God is revealed in His word but only partly so in His works because he is a transcendent God. The book of nature becomes a commentary, further substantiation of the truth of the revealed word. Athanasius, for example, praises the book of creation whose creatures are like letters (¿crop y p a ^ a a i ) proclaiming in loud voices to their divine master and creator the harmony and order of things. Nature conceived of as a book thus often supplemented revelation as a means of knowing God and his creation; but the conception could, as it did with Lull and Sibiude, get out of hand, assuming a strong, independent existence. How early this notion appeared in Christian theology I do not know, but it is already well developed by John Chrysostom (died 407), whose clear, simple, repetitious homilies resemble St. Basil's. Does his ingenious argument arise out of his historical sense, the cultural and lingual diversity, and the economic well-being of the peoples he knows? If God instructs by books, he says, such teaching puts a premium on literacy and wealth. The literate man can read, the wealthy can buy his Bible. What can the poor and illiterate do if they do not have the book of nature? The book also puts a premium on knowledge of the language in which it is written; "but the Scythian, and the Barbarian, and the Indian, and the Egyptian, and all those who were excluded from that language, would have gone away without receiving any instruction." Such things cannot be said of the heavens; all men can read here, at least all men who can see. From this volume in the skies the wise, the unlearned, the poor, the rich, all can learn the same. Quoting Psalms 19:3, he speaks of the universal appeal of the creation "which utters this voice so as to be intelligible to barbarians, and to Greeks, and to all mankind without exception." The same learning can come from contemplating the alternation of day and night, the order of the seasons which "like some virgins dancing in a circle succeed one another with the happiest harmony," the relation of land to the sea, and the balancing of the powers of nature. The sandy shores break up and throw back upon the sea its powerful waves; hot and cold, dry and moist, fire and water,

2«4

The Earth as a Planned Abode

earth and air, are at strife but they do not consume one another; and a similar balancing of the humors takes place in the body. Man was not present at the creation; even if he were he could not have understood. Thus the mode of creation has become the best teacher of man. In early Christianity these arguments would have a powerful appeal to the untutored and to converts of diverse cultural backgrounds, for like Basil's, the homilies have charm and are sprinkled with allusions to the experiences of everyday life.94 St. Augustine also expresses the idea fully and vigorously: "Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Note it; read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink; instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? Why, heaven and earth shout to you: 'God made me!' And in his discourse on Psalm 45, Augustine says that Divine Scripture is the book in which one learns, the universe (orbis terrarum) the book in which one sees. No one can read the pages of a book if he does not know the letters, but in the world even the most unlettered can read {in toto mundo legat et idiota).M The metaphor is constantly used in subsequent writings. Alan of Lille (twelfth century), author of the Complaint of Nature, wrote, Omnis mundi creatura Quasi liber et pictura Nobis est et speculum"

The idea of the world or nature as a book "originated in pulpit eloquence, was then adopted by medieval mystico-philosophical speculation, and finally passed into common usage." The metaphor suggests the thought of Paul in Romans 1:20, the text being especially conspicuous in John Chrysostom's homilies; it also suggests that what one sees in nature is a reflection of something else. The expression, as Curtius says, frequently was secularized and was common in the Renaissance and later, but by this time, I think, the mood and the meaning had changed; one read the book of nature not to find out about 86 Athanasius, "Oratio contra Gentes," 34, PG, Vol. 2 j, 68B-69A. John Chrvsostom, "The Homilies on the Statues, or to the People of Antioch," IX, 5-9, A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Vol. 9, pp. 162-170. See also "The Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Romans," III, Ver. 20, op. cit., Vol. 7, p. 36. On his natural theology, see op. cit., Vol. 9, Horn. X, 3-10, pp. 175-18$; Horn. XI, 5-13, pp. 192-199. See von Campenhausen, The Fathers of the Greek Church-, for the background of Chrysostom's famous sermons on the statues, delivered in 387, see the essay on him in this work. 87 1 quote this because of its interest without being able to give the source. Hugh Pope, St. Augustine of Hippo, quotes it on p. 227, but die citation of De Civ. Dei, Bk. XVI. viii, 1, is not correct. * "In Psalmum 45," OCSA, Vol. 12, p. 389. M PL, Vol. 210, J79A.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

205

something else but to learn about nature itself.100 The idea of nature as a book prepared the way for bolder formulations by Ramon Lull and Ramon Sibiude (Raymundus .de Sabunde, Raymond Sebond) who saw flaws in the revealed word and its exegesis, laying the groundwork for a natural theology in the later Middle Ages. (See sec. 14.) The Effect of Man's Sin and Fall on Nature The sin and fall of man posed another question: Was there a deterioration in nature corresponding to and coincident with the sin of man? W e have already met up with the difficulties the classical authors had in explaining physical evil (predators, earthquakes, and everyday annoyances such as insects, despite die fact that bees and to some extent ants were often much admired). The activities of bees and ants, however—especially the bees—provided rich material for moralizing, for proving God's design even with the most humble beings, and for reading some strict lectures to the human race. If it was hard to find a place for them in the biological order, they were at least respectable and often more reliable, industrious, and dependable than man. They were representatives of a social order inferior to but still comparable with human society. Learn, says John Chrysostom, from irrational animals as we in our families learn from thoughtful children. He applauds the prudence and industry of the ant. The bee's service to man carries its own moral for him because the bee labors for others; less enthusiasm, however, is shown for the self-centered spider. Similar morals are drawn from observations on the habits of the asp, the dog, and the fox. The thinkers of the Middle Ages, too, had their store of stock answers to explain physical annoyances and evil. Among the most popular were that man in his ignorance does not know the uses of insects, an answer combining humility with irresponsibility; that they were designed to stimulate a more sincere study of the wisdom of God, to inculcate in man moral lessons and virtues; that they were nuisances reminding him of his sinfulness and weaknesses and thus teaching him humility; that the order of nature serves man but is not entirely subject to him, an answer which permitted humility and was less anthropocentric; and that there had been a change in nature corresponding to the new state of human affairs following the fall of man whose existence, though continuing, would be plagued by lust, sin, toil, and evil— and annoyances of insects. In his commentary on Genesis, Bede asks why God, after the creation but before the Fall, had put the fish, birds, and other animals under man's dominion, for God at first had clearly intended that man would have food derived only from plants. Bede answers that God, foreseeing man's fall, had taken the pre100

Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, p. 321; see his discussion

of the book of nature, pp. 319-326, quoting the passage from Alan of Lille, p. 319.

206

The Earth as a Planned

Abode

caution of providing him with his later needs in future sin. Birds and even vicious and poisonous animals had obeyed God's holy servants in the wilderness without harming them.101 One of the most interesting examples comes from the early thirteenth century. Alexander Neckam compares the contemporary with the original condition of man, explaining the extent of man's dominion over nature and his partial successes in animal domestication. Both achievements are explained historically. Contemporary life may be a reminder of the state of man before the Fall. "The very herds and flocks serve to remind him of the glory of his primitive dignity, which he had before the Fall." Man lost his domain over the whole animal creation because he presumptuously insisted on divine prerogatives; this pride and this usurpation were die causes of his being deprived of control over large portions of nature; the Lord, however, in his pity allowed man as a consolation the use of certain animals. The insects—and the poisonous plantswere allowed by the Lord to continue living, in order to remind man of his pride and his deceit. Thus the earth is governed by moral, not biological, causes. These attempts to explain changes in nature and the earth from its antediluvian condition—which were made all through the Middle Ages and into modern times as well—were essentially attempts to account for obvious disharmonies in nature. On the earth, still beautiful though spoiled by the Fall, the natural order had been brought into harmony with the imperfect moral stature of man. There were on this beautiful earth barren wastes, wild beasts preying upon man and the gentler animals, poisonous snakes and herbs, and annoying insects. The obvious struggles in nature were reconciled with the facts of a revealed religion. One could explain, too, the survival of man despite his sin and fall; he continued to live and to reproduce himself, but under less favorable circumstances than existed before the Fall. Despite the hardships which nature had put in man's way, the human race had multiplied—even prospered to a degree—and had retained sufficient moral stature to comprehend and even haltingly and sinfully to obey the commands of God. And lastly, was it not a way of explaining the enormous cultural significance of animal domestication? God had not deprived man of all control. The gentler animals still were his servants.102 101 John Chrysostom, "The Homilies on the Statues, or to the People of Antioch," XII, 5-6, A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Vol. 9, pp. 204-206. On Bede's hexaemeron, see Robbins, Hex. Lit., pp. 77-83, and Werner, Beda der Ehr•aiirdige, pp. 152-161. According to Bede, before the Fall the earth had no poisonous plants nor anything unhealthful; there was no unfruitful vegetation, no wolf stalking before the sheepfold, no snake had eaten the dust; all animals lived harmoniously, feeding on herbs and tree-fruits. Hexaemeron, Bk. 1, PL 91, 32 A - C . 102 Alexander Neckam, De naturis rerum, Bk. 2, ch. 156. (Ed. Th. Wright, London, 1863). Translated in Boas, Essays on Primithrism and Related Ideas m the Middle Ages,

The Earth as a Planned Abode

207

Nature and the Love of God T h e consciousness of nature, if not the love of natural beauty for its own sake, finds support in the Bible, in biblical exegesis, particularly in the hexaemeral and the Eden literature during the Middle Ages. W h a t is the meaning of this consciousness of nature? There is a constant striving to see correspondences between natural beauty and biblical texts, and for symbolism, as in the selection of a cloister site shaped like the Greek capital delta, A, because it symbolized the trinity, to describe paradise as an ideal landscape. It would be wrong to say that such appreciation of nature leads inevitably to science, to an investigation of nature, especially to the interrelationships of biology and human society; it could just as well lead to mysticism, to the nature poetry of the troubadors, to allegory, to the poetic imagery of Dante, to natural religion, magic, and esoteric lore.108 This literature, ranging from description to allegory, finding both moral lessons and a glorification of life in nature and its relation to the Creator, however, kept alive the notion of the earth as the home of man, even if it were little more than an anteroom to the next world. These nature sentiments—concrete and passionately felt—often are found in the literature on the founding and siting of cloisters. Although many were placed on uninviting land such as swamps and dense forests, sites were often chosen for their beauty: the cloister gardens in the beautifully sited places were considered miniature pictures of the glories of creation. 104 Possibly too the site of the monastery on Mt. Athos (Hagion Oros, ayiov opos), on the easternmost arm of the Chalcidice peninsula, inspired the literature on site selection of monasteries.108 It is true that there was litde nature study; rather it was nature observation with a purpose, nature appreciation which became the material for edification, for homilies, moralizing, allegories, and for the praise of God. There are hints, however, of individual tastes, illustrated by the oft-quoted verses, Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat Oppida Franciscus, claras Ignatius urbes.108 pp. 83-85. The theme was also thoroughly explored in the seventeenth century. See chap. 8, and Victor Harris, All Coherence Gone. See the wise remarks of Olschki, Die Literatur der Technik and der angewandten Wissenschaften vom Mittelalter bis zur Renaissance (Vol. I of Gesch. d. neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur), esp. footnote 1, pp. 13—15. 104 See Zöckler, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 313—315, for an interesting discussion on natural beauty and the founding of cloisters; see also Ganzenmüller, Das Naturgefühl hn Mittelalter, pp. 98, 149, and the symbolism of the Trinity in selecting cloister sites shaped like the Greek letter delta, p. 98. Ganzenmüller and others point out that sites were not intentionally chosen because they were poor or unhealthful. 105 See Hussey, The Byzantine World, pp. 127-128. 1M Quoted from Wimmer, Historische Landschaftskunde, p. 154, footnote 1. I do not know their origin.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

208

There was no need to prove Christ's divinity by contemplating the wonders of the creation—he was revealed in the Scripture—but on the other hand, evidences of God from the order of the heavens and of nature on earth were stronger than human conceptions. The strongest religious personalities of the Middle Ages, Anselm of Canterbury, Petrus Damiani, Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bonaventura, embraced nature not only as a creation of God but as the image of the Eternal.107 7.

CONTINUITIES FROM BOETHIUS TO THE THEOPHANY OF JOHN THE SCOT

With these remarks on the legacy of the exegetical literature, we may now return to our principal theme and show by examples continuities and variations in these ideas from Boethius to John the Scot. Boethius' (ca. 450-524/25) ideas are traditional but they appear in the Consolation of Philosophy, an extremely influential literary and philosophical work; in it also is an epitome in twenty-eight verses of the Timaeus, as annotated by Chalcidius, who flourished probably at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century.108 Boethius comments on the smallness of the habitable parts of the earth and the vanity of seeking fame when one is confined "to this insignificant area on a tiny earth." Lessons in the need of humility and on the insignificance of man in the cosmos were common in Christian theology long before the Copernican revolution allegedly made man feel alone and lost in the universe.109 The artisan analogy is there; so is the significance of man's erect carriage and other typical arguments of the physicotheological proof, although Boethius leans to the cosmological.110 John the Damascene belongs to the Greek patristic age, but he is well known to the Latin scholastics. Writing in the seventh century, he is cited by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth. The divine being is incomprehensible to us, he says, but God has not left us in complete ignorance, for nature has implanted the idea of God in us. The order of nature, assumed from theology and the doctrine of the four elements, teaches us that there is a God in control of the opposing forces of fire and water, of earth and air; He has forced them together, and he is responsible for their continuing to operate together amicably. 111 The most important transmitter of these ideas in the Latin West however, is Isidore of Seville, whose major work, the Etymologiae, and the lesser De 197

On this point see Ganzenmuller, op. cit., pp. 291-292. Cons, of Phil., Bk. 3, Poem 9. For summary with references to the literature on Chalcidius, see Gilson, HCPMA, pp. 586-587. 109 Ibid., Bk. 2, Prose and Poem 7. 110 Ibid., Bk. 4, Prose 6; Bk. 5, Poem 5; Bk. 3, Prose 12. 111 Expositio accuratafideiorthodoxae, I, 1; in II, 11, John describes the temperate climate of paradise. On general ideas see Gilson, HCPMA, pp. 91-92, 600. 1,8

The Earth as a Planned Abode

209

rerum natura were influential sources for those portions of the great encyclopedic works of the later Middle Ages dealing with the properties of things {de proprietatibus rerum) by such writers as Alexander Neckam, Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, Thomas de Canompré, Vincent Beauvais, and Bartholomew of England.112 Historians of many disciplines have emphasized the role of Isidore of Seville in transmitting classical knowledge to the Latin West in encyclopedic form, Gilson likening the Etymologiae in the Middle Ages to the Encyclopaedia Britannica or Larousse in modern times.118 In both of Isidore's works, one can recognize the doctrine of the elements, the humors, and the threadbare geographical description and theory. Isidore mentions many times the Christian belief in the beauty of God being manifest in His creation.114 A chapter in one of his manuals on theology is entitled, "Quod ex creaturae pulchritudine agnoscatur creator." In simple Latin, he instructs his readers in the terminology of classical physics, cosmology, and geography: he tells them that the Greek kosmos is the Latin mundus, he defines microscosm and the klimata-, in his discussion of the four elements he mentions that the Greek oroix«a are the equivalents of elemental The Etymologiae contain much more: a bestiary; an elaboration of the four-element theory and a discussion of the o r o a gazetteer type of geography, including an interesting chapter on the Mediterranean Sea, with notes on cities, buildings, arable land; Varro's system of land classification and a digest of agricultural practice, with references to Hesiod, Democritus, Mago the Carthaginian, Cato, and Varro. Isidore also copies part of the remarks of Servius the Grammarian, about national characteristics of the Romans, Greeks, Africans, and Gauls, thus incorporating in his influential work ideas of environmental influence which were repeated by other encyclopedists later in the Middle Ages.116 The Irish-born John the Scot or Johannes Scotus Erigena (Erhi, Hibernia, Scottia were the main ancient names for Ireland), a learned man—possibly a clerk, possibly a monk—at the court of Charles the Bald, was acquainted, unlike most Western scholars, with Greek literature and could read the Greek language; it is now believed, however, that these were continental acquisitions, and that he arrived in Gaul from Ireland with only a rudimentary knowledge of Greek. His De divisione naturae is of interest to us because it is preoccupied with the idea of nature and with the related concepts of creator and creature. The 112

On this literature, see Delisle, "Traités Divers sur les Propriétés des Choses," Hist. Litt. de la France, Vol. jo, pp. 354-365. 11» Gilson, HCPMA, p. 107. 114 E.g., Sententiarum libri très., Bk. I, chap. 4. 115 De natura rerum, chap. 9. 118 Isidore, "Etym.," PL, Vol. 82. Bestiary, Bk. XII; the elements, Bk. XIII, chap. 3, 2; geography, Bk. XIV; Varro, Bk X V , chap. 13,6; Servius, Bk. IX, 2.

2IO

The Earth as a Planned Abode

key to the meaning of the sensible world he finds in the Greek word theophania. By the divine being, he says, we do not mean God alone, for Holy Scripture often designates as God what is really his manner of being, which in turn is revealed to thinking and rational creatures in proportion to their power of grasping it. This way of being the Greeks call a theophany, an apparition of God (dei apparitio). Take as an example, he says, the expression, " I saw God sitting" (Vidi Dominum sedentem); by this one does not mean that he has seen the being of God Himself, but something created by Him (cum non ipsius essentiam, sed aliquid ab eo factum viderit).1" God even creates Himself in the sense that he reveals himself, that his work is a theophany. De divisione naturae is presented as a dialogue between teacher and pupil, and the latter is always accommodatingly moving the furniture around for the next scene. The universe, like the Holy Scripture, is a revelation. The teacher asks the pupil to consider whether spatial and temporal recurrences observable in parts of the sensible world are without their secrets or not (vacant quodam mysterio, necne). The cooperative pupil replies that he will not lightly assert they are so bereft, for there is nothing in the visible phenomena of the corporeal world which does not also signify something incorporeal and spiritual. The pupil then asks the master for a short discussion of these recurrences, and as always happens in such dialogues, the well-prepared master readily replies. His illustrations reveal the strong impression which cyclical processes have made on him. T o those who contemplate the nature of things with both spiritual insight and the judgment of the senses (aniini conceptione et corporate sensus judicio), it is clearer than light itself that this recurrence takes place in the heavens, the continually moving spheres returning always in their courses to their point of origin. The sun and moon are examples; none need be given of other planets, for such knowledge is known to all who know astronomy (astrologia). The cyclical nature of things, their periodic return to former positions or states, is also revealed in terrestrial phenomena. What of air? Does it not at definite times return to the same states of cold, heat, and the temperate? (Possibly he means here diurnal or seasonal march of temperature.) What of the sea? Does it not absolutely follow the course of the moon? What of animals of the land and sea? What of plants and grasses? Do they not also have their times for bursting forth into buds, flowers, leaves, fruits? This growth too is cyclical, the end of the movement is the beginning, the beginning the end. Thus cyclical regularities in the heavens and the organic cycle on earth, so frequently used as analogies in Greek thought, are adduced as evidence of law, harmony, order, and divine revelation in nature.118 117 Cappuyns, Jean Scot trigbie, pp. 7-8, 13-14, 28; on his profession, pp. 66-6y, on God creating himself, p. 346. De div. vat., I, 7, PL, Vol. 122,446D. 111 De div. not., V , 3,866A-D. See Burch, Early Med. Pbilos., p. 9.

The Earth as a Planned Abode

211 In describing God as the cause of goodness, he again resorts to cyclical or supposed cyclical phenomena. Let us take, he says, our examples from nature. This goodness is compared to a river which, rising at its source, flows in its bed ever downward uninterruptedly to the sea. In the same way divine goodness, being, life, wisdom—everything which is in the primordial source of a l l flows downward like a stream, first into the primordial causes, bringing them into being. Next, continuing downward through these primordial causes, ineffable in their workings, but still in harmony with them, they flow from higher to lower, finally reaching the lowest ranks of the All. The return flow is through the most secret pores of nature by a most concealed path to the source. The highest, the supreme good, thus bestows existence on the first order of being, which in turn shares it with the next lower one, the division of being continuing downward by this sharing ( p a r t i c i p a t i o ) to the lowest order of being. Participatio, he says, is nothing other than the derivation of existence by one order from the one next higher in the scale. In this hierarchy of being all orders do not have life in themselves, nor are they life; they derive it from above.119 The metaphor of the flowing river is clearly suggested by the ancient idea of the natural cycling of water from mountain to sea and return. The water rises in a spring of the mountaintop, it grows to be a river, descending in its course to the sea, and returning to land by submarine channels. Then it reaches to the top, often by some kind of natural alembic, since it was not known that springs in the mountains owed their existence to rainfall. The emphasis on theophany, on God being revealed in the creation, implies that God knows himself through his creative acts, "for whatever He knows He creates, and what He creates derives from Himself. Accordingly, the whole creation is a process of divine revelation, with each being an aspect, finite and limited, of God's own nature."120 It is this idea which relieves the philosophy of the charge of pantheism, so often made by earlier students of John the Scot. In a certain sense, God and the creature are one and the same. We ought not to think, he says, of God and creature as two and different from one another but as one and the same. (Proinde non duo a seipsis distantia debemus intelligere Deum et creaturam, sed unum et id ipsum.) The creature exists in God while God himself in a wonderful and ineffable way is created in the creature.121 Two of his celebrated four species or divisions of nature are concerned with God, two with the creation. "We comprehend nature by reason because nature is itself rational." If we do not know God or his nature, we can infer from the order of the sensible and intelligible world that he exists and that he 119 De div. nat., Ill, 3-4, P- 301-30J)The forestis originally was undeveloped and outside the boundaries of the manor, whose inhabitants were denied use of it (ibid.). The inhabitants had rights to the waters and woods within the manor, the king or the lord, sole right to the waters and woods without. "It was his forastis, his forestis dommica. Often this epithet dominica is added

326

Interpreting Piety and Activity

The reservation of choice forest areas for hunting grounds is a type of forest use that has been mentioned frequently in modern histories of forestry. The argument is that there was unwitting conservation, not because the need for such conservation was understood, but because royal or noble enthusiasm for hunting enforced exclusions of destructive intruders. In France, these policies engendered hatreds against the forests and their royal and noble owners that reached a climax in the French Revolution. Although there is no doubt that forest landscapes were maintained which would otherwise have been destroyed, this emphasis does less than justice to the history of forest use and to the complexities in customary practice and usage, especially in the later Middle Ages. Three such examples, gruerie, afforestano, and baliveau, illustrate the influence of law or custom in preserving or changing a landscape. In his study of the forest of Orléans, De Maulde said, "La gruerie est le fondement de tout ce que concerne les bois." The essence of the practice was that an owner was not permitted to exploit a forest at his own pleasure; it was subject to the supervision of the central authority, an officer of the king supervising sales and the operations they involved. The right of gruerie often accompanied the right of grairie, that is, the exclusive enjoyment of subsoil rights, of pastures, and of the hunt. Gruerie is known in the Middle Ages under two names (and their variants) : gruagium and danger-, De Maulde found traces of it in the twelfth century, and that it was in full vigor at century's end. Under gruerie, owners could sell their wood only with formal permission of the prince. In November, 1202, Philippe-Auguste permitted the canons of Saint-Liphard de Meung to sell their wood for three years at Bucy; in 1235 a charter of the chapter of SaintVerain de Jargeau announced the king's permission to sell two hundred arpents of wood, the chapter deciding, entirely voluntarily and as a concession, that the king would receive two-thirds of the sale.m The same charter suggests to die word forestis in the documents beginning in the seventh century." By the ninth century the forestis is the forest belonging to the king or some exalted person, reserved to the chase and where no cultivator (colon) could enter to cut wood or to take game (Huffel, 1:1, p. 304). In Germany die word has had a similar history. Before the end df the eighteenth century foresta (forestis, foreste) designated the royal forest or one conferred on a noble by the king as contrasted with other wooded lands; later it had the meaning of a wooded area (Bannforst) in which hunting rights were denied to all except the king or those allowed by him to hunt there. Royal forest holdings in which hunting rights were not reserved were usually called silva or nemus (Schwappach, pp. 56-59, and the references to other literature, footnote 8, p. 56. See also his "Zur Bedeutung und Etymologie des

Wortes, 'Forst,'" Forstwissen/chaftliches Centralblatt, 1884, p. 515). 123

The two important notices, printed in De Maulde, p. 36, are as follows: Ego prior de Flotans, et fratres eiusdem loci, notum facimus presentibus et futoris quod dominus rex francorum concessit nobis quod nos venderemus nemus nostrum quod est circa donmm nostrtm ad fadendam ecclesiam nostram; tali condidone quod de cetera non paten-

Interpreting Piety and Activity

327

that originally gruerie represented the expenses of guarding the forest and were a levy on the woods corresponding to that levied on agricultural produce. The right of the king to grant permission for sales is acknowledged by the prior of Florin in 1202; with Saint-Verain de Jargeau it has become a tax.124 Although he was hostile to it, De Maulde credited gruerie with accomplishing a near miracle with the forest of Orléans, a "masse si homogène, si dense, ait pu se conserver dans tout le moyen âge avec son intégralité aussi complète. . . ." ,2S Under afforestano, certain forested tracts, reserved and forbidden of access, were protected from the waste and improvidence arising out of the continual daily exercise of common rights and usages for the period required for healthy forest production.128 The reasons for afforestano apparently were little different from modern motives; they were related to forest preservation and to economic gain. At the beginning of the Carolingian period, the population was growing, clearings had begun to reduce the areas of the forest, the lords began to regulate and even to prohibit the exercise of certain rights. Rights of use covered only the needs of those entitled to them, and areas sufficient to satisfy these needs were set aside. The rest were prohibited (defensa). Many names were used to designate these prohibited areas: dépends, bétal, embannie, hate, plessis. Such an area was also called a foresta™ and to inclose it was to afforest it. Early in the history of western Europe, as the Capitulary of Louis the Debonair (818) forbidding the lords from creating new forestae makes clear,128 there was a struggle between those possessing traditional rights of use and desiring to exercise them and those who wanted to limit them or to change mus vendere predictum nemus ullo modo absque mandato domini regis. Actum anno Domini millesimo ducentesimo secundo, mense novembri. Omnibus présentés litteras inspecturis, Simon decanus, totumque capitulum Jargogilense, salutem in Domino. Noverint universi quod nos de ducentis arpentis nemorum nostrorum de Monlordino que illustris Francorum rex nobis concessit ad vendendum, volumus et concedimus uod de denariis venditiones dominus rex percipiat duas partes, et nos tertiam. Actum anno •omini millesimo ducentesimo tricesimo quinto, mense novembri. 124 Further discussion in De Maulde, pp. 36-55. T h e right existed until the revolution; che National Assembly from its earliest days had demanded its suppression, pp. J4-J5. On gruerie applied to non-navigable streams, see p. JJ. De Maulde (p. 33) was no friend of the custom, regarding it as transferring "d'un manière quelque peu socialiste et barbare" rights of proprietors to communal state ownership represented by the ducal administration. See also Lex. Man., article Dangerium, whose definition relating to forestry is taken from Du Cange. "In re forestaria, dangerium dicitur jus quod rex habet in forestis et silvis Normanniae, in quibus proprietarii caesionem facere non possunt inconsulto rege, aut illius officialibus, sub commissi poena quam danger v o c a n t " De Maulde points out, pp. 32-33, that the practice is not confined to Normandy as Du Cange says. Note also the usage m forestis et silvis. 125 De Maulde, p. 32. m AMA, p. 432. 127 See Huffel, 1 : 2 , pp. 81-82; p. 81, footnote 2. ™lbtd„ p. 82.

a

J28

Interpreting Piety and Activity

them. Even if these struggles had little to do with forest conservation per se, the theme is a stimulating one. Victories and defeats are reflected in the landscape. The partisans of change won out: it is the contrast between the clearing in the forest at the beginning of the Middle Ages and the spot of forest in the arable at the end. Reforestation (or afforestation in the modern sense of the word) through natural regeneration was accomplished by leaving behind small trees or saplings often after an area had been cut over. Du Cange defines the term for this practice as baivarius (or bayvellus), as "arbor ad propagationem sylvae relicta";128 the word has come down in French in the forms of baivtaux and baliveau, usually translated as staddle. According to Huffel, baivarius was very ancient in France; in the old texts trees were often called estallons (= étalions, stallions.) In the French forest ordinance of 1376, the purpose of baliveau is clearly to "repeople" the forest, warnings being given and penalties provided for failures to comply. From eight to ten stallions were required for an arpent (from sixteen to twenty per hectare). Balivage is repeatedly required in the royal forest ordinances during the Middle Ages, the old texts mentioning also the frequent failures to comply with the minimum number of trees to be left. And in the French forest ordinance of 1516 the baliveaux are like studs carrying the seeds needed to repeople the forests; the ordinance expresses the wish that a sufficient number of the beautiful trees be spared for the purpose.180 Baliveaux were probably the only effective means of reproduction in a cutover forest. The practice was important too because rights of pannage ruined the possibility of natural reproduction; if the pigs were gone, the trees left after sale could reseed the clearing.1*1 There are notices from the sixteenth century (possibly representative of earlier abuses too) indicating that neither buyers nor sellers could be relied upon to spare these trees for reseeding or to be conscientious in their choice of the trees to remain; baliveaux were designated by the timber marks of a forestry official—some fleur-de-lis marks were discovered in baliveaux felled in the nineteenth century.188 The grand master or deputy forester often added Du Cange, Lex. Man., under Batvarius. According to Huffel, the origin of the word is unknown. See his discussion, "Les Méthodes de l'Aménagement Forestier en France," Annales de VËcole Nationale des Eaux et Forêts, Vol. 1, Fascicule 2 ( 1927), p. 15, note 2. 180 lbid., pp. ij-16: Pour ce qu au temps passé les maistres, en faisant et vendant ventes de bois, ont par inadvertance ou autrement oublié i faire retenue de baiviaulz ou estallons pour la repueple des forez... ordené est que doresnavant en toutes ventes sera entendue la retenue des bayveaulz et estallons, de huit ou dix en l'arpent; et ce seront tenus les maistres de mettre en leurs lettres . . . et s'il n'y est mis, si sera-t-il sou entendu (et si cettee mention est omise elles sera néanmoins sous-entendue). Si Iesdits maistres oublient ou délaissent a faire cette retenue . . . ce sera en leur péril et en seront, avec les marchans (meaning here both buyer and seller) chargiez de faire restitution. . . . Quoted from Vol. 6 of Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France de la 3* Race. U1 De Maulde, p. 452. 1,1 lbid«, p. 414.

Interpreting Piety and Activity

3*9 a countermark to that of the master of the guard, and the buyer who cut down such a marked baliveau exposed himself to a serious penalty. De Maulde has listed the names of trees which reached "colossal dimensions." Many of them, especially in the sixteenth century, were famous. Certain regions were named after the trees. Often these great relict trees were in fields far from forests. So great was the respect given them, so remote was the possibility of cutting them down, that they became landmarks for the bounding of inheritances, a custom perpetuated in the Orléans and neighboring pays, with equal penalties in the fifteenth century for removing a boundary marker or cutting down a tree used as one.133 The trees, left for natural reproduction, became objects of beauty in their permanence, becoming living legal documents. In the Middle Ages—as in contemporary life—the multiplicity of rights set bounds to the exploitation of natural resources. One writer has said that attempts to limit these rights seem almost as old as the rights themselves. One senses an uneasy truce throughout the Middle Ages between these two tendencies. Rights of usage were not empty legalisms; they were expressions of the necessity of eating and having access to food on the land. Viewing the Middle Ages as a whole, it seems that the tendency was toward more precise definition and delimitation of these rights with time.134 Conflicts of interest involved in the modification or preservation of the landscape135 necessarily were local in nature. For the most part it was not a question of conservation in the modern sense of the word, although, as will be pointed out in more detail later, the need for a balance between the forests and the arable, and for forest conservation, was recognized. The cultivators in their expansion met up with the opposition of the forest intendants and similar officials who, in defending the woods, defended also their hereditary offices, which existed only because of the forests they supervised. The monks could have been on either side. When they were clearing the woods, they often conflicted with the forestarii. The Bollandists' lives of the saints have preserved anecdotes illustrating conflicts with these forestarii. The monks and their helpers, under the Benedictine Rule, cleared perhaps for seven hours a day and their clearings naturally lessened the importance of an area as a wooded land. Vaudrégisile, count of the Palace under Dagobert I, became a monk; he was the first abbot of Fontanelle. He began to deforest lands near the mouths of the Seine, forests given him by Erchinoald, mayor of the Palace, the queen Bathilde, and King Clovis II. One day while Vaudrégisile was supervising the m

Ibid„ pp. 455-4î. 1338). These texts are quoted in part by Schwappach, pp. 169-170.

344

Interpreting Piety and Activity

These and many other similar regulations are evidences of a genuine concern for the well-being of the forest as a habitat of living things. It had to be preserved as a breeding ground for the wild animals needed for the hunt and as pasturage for the domestic animals. According to Maury the provisions in Salic law to protect forests really intended the preservation of the domestic animals; and in protecting grazing lands for pigs, sheep, goats, it guaranteed a suitable environment for birds and bees, protecting the trees against reckless destruction by those with rights of usage.189 There are indications too that when a forest had been cut over, care was taken with the young regrowth; how widespread this practice was cannot be ascertained. De Maulde, for example, cites an agreement between a Lord Bouchard de Meung and the commanderie of the Hospital de Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem at Orléans (approved in 1160 by the bishop of Orléans) concerning the clearing of a forest to build a village, further clearings to come with the bishop's consent as the population grew. Peasants had rights of use in these forests for their cattle, but if a clearing was made, those cut-over areas in which the regrowth was taking place were denied to the animals.194 The same author cites some ancient texts concerning the forest of Orléans in which all animals except goats (capris tamen exceptis) are allowed to graze; to the latter, access is persistently denied.191 It is possible that man's realization of his power to make radical changes in the environment by means of his influence on the breeding, housing, and wandering of domestic animals comes late, even though grazing at will on open, flat, or mountain lands is a very ancient example of man's ability to make changes in the physical environment through controlled concentrations of animals at selected places. Regulating the multiplication of animals and their densities has vast cumulative effects. These slower ecological processes were less apparent than the immediately visible effects of clearing through purposeful firing or cutting. Of course it is true that the habits of the animals could be readily observed. Goat damage to young trees, to the young shoots of trees, and even to an entire stand of trees was not difficult to discover. Forest fires, moreover, were often started by shepherds, accidentally, or intentionally to secure a finer growth of grass. The shepherd, the domestic animal, and fire thus became a powerful combination. In many countries, the activities of the woodcutter and the herder have been associated with forest fires. In his history of the forest of Orléans, De Maulde has cited interesting notices from the parishes of Vitry and Courcy, 188 Maury says that in the Salic law the legislation protecting forests really intended to preserve the domestic animals; in protecting grazing lands for pigs, sheep, goats, it also guaranteed a suitable environment for birds and bees, protecting also the trees against reckless destruction by those with rights of usage (Les Forêts de la Gaule, pp. 90-91). 190 De Maulde, pp. 114-11 j. 181 Ibid., p. 149, and footnote 6.

Interpreting Piety and Activity

345

dating from the middle of the fifteenth century. A fine of five sous was levied for lighting a fire in a forest with dry wood, a distinction being made between starting a fire at the base of a dry oak or one still green. A fire started against an oak which is more dry than green increased the fine by five sous regardless of the season. If the oak is more green than dry, the fine is increased to fifteen sous parisis. Forest fires were controlled through custom, those having the right to burn for pasture having also the obligation to fight fires. They were put out by beating with brooms, by backfiring, and by trenching. The dangers of burning were recognized, but so was the role of fire in creating new fertility. In the same work, De Maulde cites evidence showing an acute realization in the fourteenth century of the tragic effects of indiscriminate deforestation. The cutover areas or vagues, were overgrown with broom {genêt) and heath following deforestation. Texts of the thirteenth century distinguished between woods and the places where woods should be but were not, between the real forest and the confusion of bramble. In the fifteenth century, the word alaise was used to define part of a forest, detached from the rest, sometimes by extensive stretches of vagues, and forming a well-defined region of its own, created not only by neglect but by the animals that nibbled and trampled the sprouting seedlings, preventing regrowth.192 13.

SOILS

The possibility of improving the soils through human agency was recognized in the Middle Ages. Soil theory, based on the doctrine of the four elements, was empirical in nature. The importance of fertilizers was also realized as is shown by the discussions of Albert the Great and Pietro Crescenzi (Petrus de Crescentis [ 12 30-1310], whose Opus Ruralium Contmodorum had profited from Albert's work). Marling seems to have been one of the chief means of improving soils, animal manures playing a subordinate role (and a lesser part than in modern times) owing to the smaller size of the animals and their frequent grazing in open fields, meadows, and forests.193 Of greater interest is a theory mentioned by Sclafert in her study of the deforestation of the southern Alps: in the eyes of the peasant, whose harvests were often so precarious, the trees of the forest—useless vegetation—were his enemies, attracting to themselves all the juices of the soil ("attirait à elle tous les 192

Ibid., pp. 87-91. The notice on young seedlings is from a letter of patent in 1543. For a discussion of fertilizers during the Middle Ages, especially in France, see AMA, pp. 261-269. See also Bertrand Gille, "Les Développements Technologiques en Europe de 1100 à 1400," JWH, 3 ( 1956), p. 96, on differences between the Middle Ages and classical antiquity in agricultural methods, at least as they appear in the Roman writers on agronomy, marling, fallowing, and in the agricultural writers such as Walter of Henley (thirteenth century), Petrus de Crescentis (fourteenth century), and others. 193

346

Interpreting Piety and Activity

sucs de la terre pour nourrir un végétation inutile"). 194 Among the monks, some believed in the theory, while others opposed cutting down forests for this reason. Albert the Great had warned against leaving rhizomes of cut-over trees in the soil. (See p. 315.) In the later Middle Ages, when more land was obtained by draining marshes and from other kinds of reclamation, perhaps the conflict between forest and the arable was less intense.198 14.

HUNTING

Hunting had a varying relationship to agriculture: there are indications in the late Middle Ages of a shift away from an emphasis on the preservation of wildlife (even though there might be no closed season for the privileged few who could hunt) to the preservation of crops and domesticated animals subject to the depredations of the wild animals. Furthermore, hunting is a sensitive subject in the Middle Ages because of its relationship to theology, and the official attitude of the Christian Church was at odds with an apparently widespread and irresistible infatuation with hunting. One could expect of the Church, as with many religions, a counsel of compassion and pity and even friendship with the wild beasts. In Christian doctrine, sparing them, refraining from cruelty to them, was part of the duty of man, and was performed in the name of humanity. 1,6 Christian hagiography is full of instances of friendship with small animals and even with large predators. Myths and legends woven by later writers around the lives of their favorite saints had them in their forest retreats, striking up friendships with the animals, or as Montalembert has said, retraining feral animals.197 This Christian hagiography may indeed be a form of protest against heartless killing of wild animals.188 St. Jerome had said there were numerous examples in the scriptures of holy fishermen, but not a single example of a holy hunter; St. Ambrose, that the just had never been found among the hunters; and Pope Nicholas I had declared that only reprobates are given to the chase. These sentiments were expressed before Saint Hubert, Bishop of Liège, became, in the eleventh century, patron saint of hunters.199 Such was the passion for hunting in the Middle Ages that the Church vainly held its clerics from it. In principle, the only hunting actually prohibited was 184 Sclifert, "A Propos du Déboisement des Alpes du Sud," Annales de Géographie, Vol. 42 (1933), pp. 266-277, 350-3 60 . ref - on p. 274. 188 Anton, Geschichte der teutseben Lmdwirtschaft, Vol. 3 (1802), has given many interesting details from older documents which illustrate this ¿heme, pp. 185-216. See also AMA, pp. 260-264. 186 Dom Leclercq, "Chasse," in Diet• tTArch. Chrét. et de Liturgie, Vol. 3, col. 1087. ro Montalembert s discussion is particularly interesting because of his sympathyamounting to hagiolatry—with the monks. See VoL 2, pp. 226-231. 188 For general discussions of hunting and the chase, see AMA, pp. 547-618 (Le gibier et la chasse) and the pertinent chapters of Schwappach. 1M Leclercq, "Chasse," loc. cit.

Interpreting Piety and Activity

347

the chase with horn, shouting, and dogs, and falconry, because of the luxurious and worldly display they symbolized. Kings and councils reportedly tried to control the ecclesiastical zeal for hunting. In the Council of Agde ( j o 6 ) the clergy was forbidden to hunt with dogs or to possess hawks. In Carolingian and later times there were repeated prohibitions against the use of dogs, hawks, falcons, and various other birds of prey, and of sentinels.200 The basic objection to hunting and the reasons for trying to control it—among the lay and clergy alike—was that it embodied atavistic instincts which should be kept at bay.201 The utilitarian argument in favor of hunting apparently was very strong, and this attitude is understandable once it is realized that hunting was more than a pleasurable pastime; it supplied food, even for the highly piaced; it controlled species harmful to crops and to domestic animals; it furnished pelts, furs, and hides for gloves and the bindings of monks' books, the latter need often being advanced as a justification for clerical hunting, especially of the chamois. Hunting caused a notable, if temporary, change in the landscape: the large managed forests were crossed by wide roads favorable both to the habitat of the wild life and to the ease of the hunt.202 Under the circumstances, it is easy to understand recurring opposition to deforestation on the part of the large royal, noble, or ecclesiastical landholders during the Middle Ages. National historians of European forestry have repeatedly stressed the role of hunting in forest conservation. La chasse, [says HufFel of French forest history] en dehors même du rôle utile du gibier pour l'alimentation, a toujours tenu une grande place en forêt. Nos rois, chacun le sait, étaient restés, comme leurs premiers ancêtres, des chasseurs passionnés. La conservation, àtravers les siècles, d'un immense domaine forestier royal, ducal ou seigneurial s'explique surtout par le soin jaloux avec lequel les souverains ménageaient le terrain de leurs chasses: c'est au culte de nos rois pour le "noble déduit" que nous devons, en grande partie, de posséder dans le domaine national cette partie infiniment précieuse et la plus riche ae nos forêts qui provient de l'ancien domaine souverain.*0 15.

LESSER T H E M E S OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

These are the main themes concerning environmental changes, but there are also minor ones, some of religious, some of lay origin, that should at least be mentioned. One is the garden. In interpreting its plan and purpose, one should not forget the Christian paradise theme and the monastic cemetery garden. 200 Quotations from original sources in Schwappach, p. 61. Article JJ of the Council of Agde (Concilium Agathense, 506): "Episcopis, presbyteris, diaconibus canes ad venandum aut accipitres habere non liceat." On the kinds of animals inhabiting the German "Urwald," see Schwappach's chapter, Jagdausiibtmg, pp. 64-70. 201 See the remarks in AMA, pp. 554-556, for the many attempts, largely unsuccessful, to control hunting. **AMA, p. 569. «»Huffel, 1:1, p. 6.

348

Interpreting Piety and Activity

The pleasure garden (not the utilitarian garden cultivated because its plants were medically useful) was often conceived of as a simulation of the Garden of Eden. To cultivate the garden was more than a task for the holy; it was also a reliving of part of the creation. The experience was aesthetic and religious.204 One of the truly great landscape changes in modern times has been marsh, bog, marine, and lacustrine drainage. This extensive drainage of marsh and bog lands, however, seems primarily to be a phenomenon of modern times— mostly since the late seventeenth century—although there are many famous examples from earlier periods, such as the reclamation of the marsh lands of the Po (twelfth century on) and the imperially recruited Dutch immigrants' reclamation in an area of modern Berlin. Desire for land and improvement of health were the powerful motives. That an empirical relationship existed between illness and almost still or stagnant water was realized in ancient medicine. In some parts of Europe, health reasons may have been a controlling cause of drainage. In the old French Mediterranean province of Roussillon, the purpose of drainage was to eliminate the stagnant waters and deadly fevers at Bages, Nyles, and other places; most of the canals of Salange and of the suburb of Elne may have been dug for this purpose; subterranean drains may have been used for the same reason. The Count of Roussillon Guinard had a pond dried up northeast of Perpignan. And sales were made to the Templars of Masdeu for drainage purposes.205 There are on the other hand instances of the creation of artificial ponds. Temporary ponds were used in the Middle Ages in the Dombes and in La Brenne of France (this latter area, more than the Pays de Dombes, still has its lakes and marshes and bogs), thus combining agriculture with fishing and using at the same time the fertile soil particles carried in suspension. Barrages built at the base of the valley dammed up water from the neighboring hills on the exhausted soil; the newly formed pond was allowed to remain until the soil was well rested and fertilized. Then the barrage was pierced, the water flowed off, and the new earth could be plowed. The advantages of this form of migrant fertility, however, were clearly offset by the health dangers.208 16.

CONCLUSION

There were many other activities which involved environmental change, the establishment of towns, villages, and monasteries: the draining of swamps; the making of an occasional polder; and—long before Bremontier and his immediate predecessors—a planting of pine to fix the sand dunes of Leiria, Portugal, 204

See Heyne's discussion, Dos Deutsche Nahrungswesen, pp. 61-100. Brutails, Étude sur la Condition des Populations Rurales du Roussillon au Moyen Âge, pp. 3-4. îoe See the Comte de Dienne, Hist, du Dessèchement des Lacs et Marais en France avant 1789, p. 5. The author gives no exact date for these ponds in the Middle Ages. 205

Interpreting Piety and Activity

349

207

in 1325. Indeed, one meets from time to time in medieval literature an unmistakably joyous and lyrical feeling of creating something new. The evidence is spotty and proves little for the Middle Ages as a whole. A few quotations cannot be made to characterize a millennium. Nevertheless they are interesting in themselves; even the Church saw the advantage of improvements in life coming about through changes of the environment. The old saying, already referred to, that one lives well under the cross, had more than a spiritual meaning; it could also mean economic well-being through the activities of the monasteries of the countryside. Men of the Church saw themselves as spiritual leaders in the creation of a new environment; these attitudes appear early in the activities of the fathers in the West, in the shift from the love of solitude and prayer and the desire for release from the cares of the world to a missionary zeal which included everyday tasks of clearing, building, draining. (The later history of course was much less edifying.) The most general conclusion to be drawn is the conclusion that can also be drawn of the contemporary period: there were many interpretations, and these were based on different religious, economic, and aesthetic values, as are our own. It is often said that what distinguishes the modern from the medieval and classical periods is the modern sense of triumph in the control over nature in contrast with an earlier and unrelenting dependence. Such contrasts rest on an undervaluation of the extent of environmental change in classical and medieval times, on the belief that an advanced technology and sophisticated theoretical science are required for extensive and permanent change, and on a too sharp contrast between the so-called industrial revolution and the industry and technology of the past. One may wonder at the failure of the thinkers of the Middle Ages to create a theoretical science comparable with that of Galileo and Newton; fail they did, but they lacked neither an empirical knowledge of forestry, agriculture, drainage, nor a technology permitting them to induce sweeping and lasting changes in their environment. In fact, they made some of the most drastic changes in landscapes in human history up to that time. An ascetic ideal was the original stimulus in evolving a philosophy of man as a creator of new environments. The early saints purposefully retired from the world, and they fancied that by their clearings they were re-creating the earthly paradise, reasserting the complete dominion over all life that existed before the Fall. The attractive force of these retirements, both to other monks and to the laity, and organized efforts at conversion led to Christian activism, in which taming the wild was a part of the religious experience. One of the many great roles St. Bernard played was to increase the Church's potential for landscape change. Under his influence one can see the Cistercian order changing from remoteness and renunciation to a role of active Christianizing of new 207 Gille, "Les Dev. Technol. en Europe de 1000 a 1400," JWH, 3 (1956), pp. 96-97. No source is given.

350

Interpreting Piety and Activity

and old lands alike. The success of such undertakings depended on practical knowledge and sense like that expressed in the Instituta capituli generalis of 1134; "victus debet provenire de labore manuum, de cultura terrarum, de nutrimento pecorum."208 In the age of the great défrichements, lay ambition and church ambition alike called for activity and change as a part of economic expansion and of conversion. The result was a yearning, to use a modern expression, for control over nature. In the later Middle Ages the interest in technology, in knowledge for its own sake whether to improve thinking or to better the human condition, in clearing, and in drainage and the like betrayed an eagerness to control nature.409 As in all epochs of human history, modification of the physical environment is linked with ideas, ideals, and practical needs. The period of great cathedral building embodied a religious ideal; it also meant vast quarrying; probably more stone was removed from the earth in this period than in any comparable period of the past. In the three centuries from iojo to 1350 stone quarried in France built eighty cathedrals, five hundred large churches, and tens of thousands of small churches. The Christian duties of conversion and lay expansion and colonization meant firing, clearing, burning. The grain and the grape have their practical, their cultural, and their religious history.*10 208 Quoted in Muggenthaler, Kolonisatorische und -wirtschaftliche Tätigkeit eines deutschen Zisterzienserklosters im XII. und XIII. Jahrhundert, p. 103. 809 See White, Medieval Technology and Social Change, p. 79; and Nef, "Mining and Metallurgy in Medieval Gvilisation," CEHE, Vol. z, p. 456. *i°In 1913, Herbert Workman published The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, in which he advanced the thesis that Eastern monasticism had degenerated into "Gnostic extremes" and "idle self-centeredness," that St. Benedict's contribution was that he added objective remedies for the vices of this earlier Eastern subjectivism. In essence St. Augustine had done this in his treatise on monks written earlier. St. Benedict, Workman continued, did not see the momentous consequences of this fusion of the monastic ideal with a philosophy of work. "Benedict did not see—the deserts in which they lived prevented the early monks from seeing—that the introduction of labour was destined, in the long run, to draw back the monk into the world from which he had fled, or, rather, to draw the world after him to the centres of light and peace which his labours created in the wilderness" (Evol. of the Monastic Ideal, p. 157). Important as this development might be for the history of Western civilization (even so unsparing and consistent a critic of monasticism as G. C. Coulton praised St. Benedict and the Benedictine Rule), Workman argued that the combination was fatal to the ideals of monasticism as they were at first envisaged. In fact, he constructs a theoretical history of a monastic order which is cyclical in nature; first, there is the enthusiastic desire for solitude of an original founder who goes to the dark forests, wastes, or deserts; if he gains a reputation, his presence has an attractive force on other monks, the group now attracting more and more, including lay people, so that what had started out as a makeshift hut became an abbey. The tiny enclave became an organized community, and axes and spades cleared the woods and the swamps, and "by the alchemy of industry turned the sands into waving gold, and planted centres of culture in the hearts of forests" (ibid., pp. 219-220). The combination, he claimed, was fatal because of the conflict between renunciation

Interpreting Piety and Activity

35'

The life of Albert the Great provides a clue. He shared with his contemporaries and the Christian thinkers of the past a belief in a designed earth, in nature as a book revealing the artdsanry of God, in the need to know nature for religious and practical ends; he thought also of the role of the environment in cultural matters, and he saw the force of clearing, of burning, of domestication, of manuring. That is what it was, a chain from theology to manuring.

and the wealth which accumulated with toil, leading to worldliness, corruption, decline, with the process again being repeated in another ascetic beginning (ibid., pp. 220-224). Workman was a Methodist minister and a very devout Christian. See also the critical and sympathetic introductory preface to this edition by David Knowles, O.SJB. On the cathedrals, see Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders, p. 5.

Introductory Essay I.

INTRODUCTION

There is considerable justification in this history of ideas for discussing the Renaissance and the age of discovery together. During the Renaissance, interest in classical learning far exceeded that shown by learned men of the Middle Ages: the sources were clearer, they came from the classical world more directly, and there were more of them. The pages of Leon Battista Alberti's (1404-1472) Ten Books on Architecture are eloquent witnesses of direct study. How thoroughly he has read most of the authors who even indirectly contribute to his work and with what a critical eye he has studied Vitruvius! Along with this interest in the ideas of the ancient world there was, if we are to judge the writings of men like Le Roy and Sebastian Miinster, an awareness that something new had appeared in human history, an awareness increased by the results of the age of discovery. Furthermore, judging by the memoirs of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II (1405-1464), in the Renaissance it was possible to combine a love of scenery with historical associations, seeing in the fusion the beauties of land-

356

Part Three: Introductory Essay

scapes altered and unaltered by man. Let us look at these memoirs a little more closely. There is wildness in his Italian landscapes, but reminders of human activities—the olive grove, the vineyard, the ruin—are never far away. The pleasure of a scenic view is often experienced as part of a pontifical duty, a signature, a meeting of cardinals. In "the sweet season of early spring" he follows the Mersa upstream to the baths; the "indescribably lovely" country immediately around Siena, "its gently sloping hills planted with cultivated trees and vines or plowed for grain," overlooks "delightful valleys green with pasture land or sown fields, and watered by never-failing streams." Birds "sing most sweetly" in the thick forests growing naturally or planted by man. Human intrusions—country seats and monasteries—are on every Sienese hill. The party ascends the eel-filled Mersa, progressing from an intensively cultivated entrance "thickly dotted with castles and villas" to the wilder country near the baths. There, about the twenty-second hour, it was his custom to go to the meadows, sitting on the greenest and grassiest parts of the river bank to hear embassies and petitioners, his path to the baths strewn by flowers brought by peasants' wives. He spends a summer at Tivoli in order to avoid sweltering and unhealthful Rome. On the way, a conversation about the Trojan War continues on to the geography of Asia Minor. Later, at his leisure, he wrote a description of Asia, "quoting from Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny, Q. Curtius, Julius Solinus, Pomponius Mela, and other ancient authors passages that seemed to him relevant to an understanding of the subject." How revealing is this passage—the classical essay composed in cultivated landscapes dotted with ruins! It is like Alberti. Ruins are all about in Tivoli; Pius thinks the temple on the cliffs above the Aniene may have belonged to Vesta and he notes traces of a once splendid amphitheatre. A part of the Aniene diverted through the city "serves mills, workshops, and fountains and adds greatly to the beauty of the place." About three miles from the city is the magnificent villa of Hadrian which was built like a big town. "Time has marred everything": ivy now covers walls which once were decorated with embroidered tapestries; briers and brambles grow in the proud places of purple-robed tribunes; queens' chambers are the lairs of serpents. Between die villa and the city are beautiful vineyards, olive groves, trees, including the pomegranates, growing among the vines. The huge and towering masses of aqueducts still stand; even as ruins they attest the costliness of their construction. On the visit to Subiaco, the man-made landscape—the beauty of the vines, the usefulness of river diversion, achievements such as the new vineyards, "heavy with ruddy grapes which had been quarried out of the rock"—again attracts his attention. There is in Viterbo a commingling of city ("there is hardly a house without its spring or its garden") and countryside. "Almost every day at dawn he would go out into the country to enjoy the sweet air

Part Three: Introductory Essay

357

before it grew hot and to gaze on the green crops and the blossoming flax, then most lovely to see with its sky-blue color." Of Mt. Amiata in the Sienese territory he wrote that it is "clothed to the very summit with forests," the upper part, often cloud-capped, is in beech, below the beech are the chestnuts, and below them the oaks and cork trees, the lowest slopes being in vines, cultivated trees, tilled fields and meadows. It reminds one of Lucretius's description which has already been quoted. (V, 1370-1378; see p. 140). The landscape is redolent of the human past. He visits Lake Nemi via the Appian Way whose pavement is still visible. "The road was in many places more beautiful than at the height of the Roman Empire since it was shaded on the sides and overhead by leafy filbert trees which were at their greenest and most flourishing in that month of May. Nature who is superior to any art has made the road most delightful." In this work there are hints of what is to come in greater volume in the following centuries: aesthetic appreciation of nature, the evocative power of landscape, historical associations, ruins whose present aspect, far different from that of their efflorescence, assume a role as ruins, creating a different kind of man-made beauty. Most striking of all is Mt. Amiata; nature and art are alive on the mountainside.1 These ideas came out of the Mediterranean past; others came from the age of discovery. Although it is not my purpose here to review the well-known consequences of that age, it might be well to say something about the intellectual resources which men could use in interpreting the findings made available to them by the travels and the voyages. One of the well-worn themes of European and world history is the expansion of the intellectual horizons made possible by the age of discovery and especially by the voyages of Columbus. We need not elaborate on this theme except to say that the broadening and deepening of the intellectual life of mankind as a result of the age of discovery came about not quickly but slowly and that our most sensitive accounts and appreciations (Giovanni Botero and Father Lafitau, for example) come long after the age of discovery. It is equally important to recognize that men did not greet with empty minds the age of discovery and the questions it raised regarding the relationships of man to nature. The ideas whose history we have been discussing could still do yeoman service. 2.

T H E A G E OF DISCOVERY

The idea of a designed earth, as we shall see, was a commonplace of Renaissance thought, embodying, as did the conceptions of the medieval theologians, both the classical concepts and those derived from the Old Testament. What 1 Although it is an abridgment, the references here are to Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope. The Commentaries of Phts II, trans, by Florence A. Gragg and edited with an intro. by Leona C. Gabel, because of its far greater accessibility. The unabridged trans.

358

Part Three: Introductory Essay

greater proof of the wisdom, the power, and the creativity of God, then, could one ask for than these unexpected tidings from the New Lands? The lushness of the vegetation, the great expanses of the wet tropics, the sight of peoples living in a manner which demanded immediate answers to questions regarding human origins and the migrations not only of man but of domestic animals (the latter in fact a more difficult problem than the former), were but a few of the observations that evoked wonderment. The tales of the voyagers far surpassed in extravagant description anything the theologians and the philosophers had written on the evidences of the existence of God as seen in the works of creation. The world was larger, more full of wonders, and much more of it was habitable than had been thought. "I kept a diary of noteworthy things," said Amerigo Vespucci, "that if sometime I am granted leisure I may bring together these singular and wonderful things and write a book of geography or cosmography, that my memory may live with posterity and that the immense work of Almighty God, partly unknown to the ancients, but known to us, may be understood."2 The discovery of the existence of the antipodes, of climates and environments different from the dry deserts, the Mediterranean, and northwestern Europe reinforced ideas of the God-given fullness, richness, and variety of nature. And secular ideas of climatic and environmental influence could be equally serviceable. While it is true that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries men began to realize that a reading of history and of the reports from the voyages and travels often cast doubt on climatic explanations, it is nevertheless true that they remained favorite explanations, if not for cultural differences, at least for cultural behavior. If one knew nothing of tropical diseases or their causes, if one's knowledge of the daily life and physical activities of primitive peoples was of a very superficial sort, consisting of elementary observations of physical characteristics and subjective appraisals of character, what was more logical than to interpret the spectacle of sleepy natives lying in the shade in the hot warm climates as creatures held in thralldom by their climate? The age-old ideas of environmental influence, far from being discredited, actually increased in effectiveness—not only in the voyages to the New World but in the travels through Eurasia and in die reports about Persia and China. Even the idea of man as a modifier of his environment acquired a dramatic character in the new lands. Men could see with their own eyes the changessome of them temporary it is true—that they could make with fire and clearing in what many considered virgin lands unchanged since the creation. They by Gragg and Gabel is in Smith College Studies m History, Vols. 22, 25, 30, 35, and 43. The Siena country, pp. 154-155; Asia Minor, pp. 190-191; Tivoli, pp. 193-194; Sabiaco, p. 213; Viterbo, p. 261; Mt. Amiata, p. 277; Appian Way, p. 317. * Amerigo Vespucci, Mundus Novus, Letter to Lorenzo Pietro di Medici, trans, by George N. Northrop, p. 12.

Part Three: Introductory Essay

359

could apply experiences and theories which had emerged in scattered localities in Europe regarding the effects of clearing and drainage. Later on, especially in the eighteenth century, the literature on man's changes in the N e w World environment began to grow, and men could realize both their power to change the earth and the value of apparently primeval landscapes as outside laboratories for the pursuit of nature's secrets. In a Relación of Diego de Esquivel (November i, 1579) on the Indians of the province of Chinantla, there is a remarkable passage about health and clearing and the drying of the land in the N e w World. The author contrasts the present with the past conditions of the Indians, the theme being that their populations have declined and thus also their ability to control the growth of swamps and jungles and forests: They live less long and have more illness than formerly because the country was then more thickly populated with Indians who cultivated and tilled the land, and cleared the jungle. At the present time there are great jungles and forests which make all the region wild, swampy and unhealthy. The Indians being [now] so few, and scattered over more than fifty leagues of territory, and the region being damp and rainy since it rains eight months in the year, and they are not able to clear the ground so that the winds play over it and dry it as of old.3 There was a quickening of interest in things both human and divine as new questions were asked about the peoples of the world. It was realized early after the discoveries that revised interpretations of the history of the human race were now required. N e w chapters in the population history of mankind since the days of Noah and his sons had to be written to bring the customs and the characteristics of the newly found peoples within the protective cover of the divine design; to account for the differences (perhaps through climatic explanations) between these people and the more familiar types of Europe, western Asia and North Africa; to explain how, through the manipulation of their environment, they were able to live and clothe themselves. Inquiries would have to be made regarding their innate inventiveness. Was it the product of human intelligence and local circumstances (what was later known as the psychic unity of mankind) that enabled men everywhere independently to put nature to their own uses? On June 4, 1537, Paul III issued the bull, Sublimis Deus, directed to all Christendom (universis Christi fideltbus), declaring that God in his love for the human race created men that they might participate in the good enjoyed by other creatures, that He had endowed them further with the capacity to »Diego de Esquivel, "Relación de Chinantla," in Francisco Del Paso y Troncoso, ed., Papeles de Nueva España, 2nd. Ser., Vol. 4 (Madrid, 1905), pp. 58-68, passage on p. 63. Translated into English (from which the quotation is taken) and included as an appendix to Publication 24 of the Instituto Panamericano de Geografía y Historia, Bernard Bevan, The Chimmtec and Their Habitat, Mexico (?), 1958, p. 139.

360

Part Three: Introductory Essay

attain the Supreme Good, to behold it face to face. Since man was created in order to enjoy eternal life and happiness—but only through faith in Jesus Christ—he must also possess the nature and faculties enabling him to embrace that faith. " N o r is it credible that any one should possess so little understanding as to desire the faith and yet be destitute of the most necessary faculty to enable him to receive it." Quoting Christ's words, " G o ye and teach all nations," Paul further declared that Jesus had made no exceptions, "for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith." (Omnes dixit, absque omni deletu, cum omnes fidei disciplinae capaces existant.) Basing the bull on the text, Euntes docete gentes, Paul said that the Indians of the West and South "and other people of whom W e have recent knowledge," should not be treated as dumb brutes, created for our service and assuming them to be incapable of conversion. Enslaving them cannot be justified. The Indians are truly men, capable of understanding the faith which, according to our information, Paul continued, they wish to receive. (Attendente! Indos ipsos, ut potè veros homines, non solum Christianae Fidei capaces existere, sed ut nobis imotuit, ad fidem ipscan promptissimè currere.) Neither the Indians nor any other peoples later discovered by Christians are to be deprived of their liberty or their property, even though they live outside the faith; any enslavement is null and void. Twenty-five years after the Laws of Burgos ( 1 5 1 2 ) , the sustained denunciations of slavery by Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernadino de Minaya, and Julian Garcés, and their affirmations that Indians were human beings, finally secured the Sublimis Deus of Paul III. Even it did not put an end to the notion that the Indians, on a low scale of savagery, were worthy of nothing better than serving their Christian masters.4 It is difficult to generalize about the opinions held of primitive peoples by observers immediately after the age of discovery. It is true that many were dismissed as wild, naked, and ferocious barbarians or cannibals.1 It has been said that conceptions of the native peoples progressed from the early period when they were regarded as barbarians to the time when they were studied as primitives.* Certainly there is a growing sophistication in observation from 4

The Latin text and an Engl, trans, of the bull, Sublimis Deus, is in MacNutt, Bartholomew de las Casas, pp. 427-431. On Las Casas' activity, see pp. 182-199. See also Lewis Hanke, "Pope Paul III and the American Indians," Harvard Theolog. Rev., Vol. 30 (1937), pp. 65-102, and esp. pp. 67-74 o n Spanish attitudes toward the Indians, on De Minaya, and Bishop Garces; pp. 94-95 on Las Casas and the bull. Hanke thinks Paul m does not deserve the praise usually given him as a friend and protector of the Indian; no pope, he argues, in view of the Catholic faith and of canon law, could have refused to issue the bull. See also the discussion in Ludwig Freiherrn von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, Vol. 5, Geschichte Papst Pauls III, 13th ed., pp. 719-721; Engl, trans., History of the Popes, ed. by Kerr, Vol. 12, pp. 518-520. * Mühlmann, Methodik der Völkerkunde, pp. 18-19. *PIilbid., pp. 15—16. M Ibid., p. 20. K Ibid., pp. 20-21. 93 Ibid., pp. 309-310.

** Ibid., p. 40. Godwin is referring to Persian Letters, No. 108, and to Hume's essay, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations."

»Ibid., chap. 6.

652

Environment, Population, and.

Perfectibility

by Malthus himself, Godwin thinks that "the statesmen and legislators of China, who have proceeded with a steady, and perhaps I may add an enlightened, attention to the subject for centuries, not only have no suspicion of the main principles taught in the Essay on Population, but are deeply impressed with the persuasion that, without encouragement and care to prevent it, the numbers of the human species have a perpetual tendency to decline."96 Racial and cultural intermingling and migrations seem to affect population growth. Could not population increase be ascribed to such mixing, decline to isolation and inbreeding? Crossing seems to improve the breed in both men and animals. "May not the qualities of the present race of Europeans . f . be materially owing to the invasions of the Celts and the Cimbri, the Goths and Vandals, the Danes, the Saxons, and the Normans?"97 In denying that the principle of population is a law of nature, Goodwin in effect said that the numbers and distribution of the world's peoples are basically problems of history and geography. "Population, if we consider it historically, appears to be a fitful principle, operating intermittedly [fie] and by starts. This is the great mystery of the subject; and patiently to investigate the causes of its irregular progress seems to be a business highly worthy of the philosopher."98 Furthermore Godwin, like Malthus, viewed the earth and its resources as a whole, making one of the earliest estimates known to me of its carrying capacity—which he computed to be nine billion people.99 The productivity of the earth can be endlessly improved, substituting the plough for the pasture, and then the spade for the plough. "The productiveness of garden-cultivation over field-cultivation, for the purposes of human subsistence, is astonishingly great."100 The only objection is that less manual labor is desirable in an improved society but there must be a "probation of extensive labor," for the greater part of mankind is as yet unprepared for leisure. Use the resources of the sea, see how many more people can be fed on a vegetable rather than an animal diet, become a world of gardeners! "Nature has presented to us the earth, the alma magna parens, whose bosom, to all but the wild and incongruous ratios of Mr. Malthus, may be said to be inexhaustible. Human science and ingenuity have presented to us the means of turning this resource to the utmost account."101 98 97 98

Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., pp. 365-366. Ibid., pp. 327-328.

69 He estimates that 39 million square miles of the earth are habitable, of which 1.3 million are in China with an estimated population of 300 million. Using the cultivation of China as the standard for possible cultivation and its population as the standard of possible population density, the result is 9 billion: 39 million divided by 1.3 and multiplied by 300 million. Ibid., pp. 448-449.

100 Ibid., p. 49J. 101 Ibid., p. 498.

Environment, Population, and Perfectibility

«53

In Godwin's writings as in those of Malthus there is the conviction that man bestows dignity on the order of nature, that in the continual peopling of the world the changes that man effects will be beautiful and useful. The earth is a better place because of man: Man is an admirable creature, the beauty of the world, which, if he did not exist in it, would be a "habitation of dragons, and a court for owls; the wild beast of the desert would cry to the wild beast of the islands; baboons would dance there; and its pleasant places be filled with all doleful creatures." How delightful a speculation then is it, that man is endowed by all-bountiful nature with an unlimited power of multiplying his species? I would look out upon the cheerless and melancholy world which has just been described, and imagine it all cultivated, all improved, all variegated with a multitude of human beings, in a state of illumination, of innocence, and of active benevolence, to which the progress of thought, and the enlargement of mind seem naturally to lead, beyond any thing that has yet any where been realised.102 Both Godwin's idea of progress and Malthus's principle of population apparently led to a future world of gardeners. Malthus neither ignored this work nor replied to it, contenting himself with a few unflattering sentences about it.103 Behind Godwin's appraisal of the earth is the idea of progress. The physical environment will not be a limiting factor in human advance in the foreseeable future, and there are new hopes in the dawning technological and chemical age. Godwin does not suggest—and neither does Malthus—that these advances will create problems nor that man's relationship to the world of nature by the growth of his numbers and the persistence of his settlement in favored places, might change rapidly. On thei contrary, he is full of hope and cheer as he envisions the forward march of mankind to a complete and permanent occupation of all the earth's lands. 7.

CONCLUSION

By his advocacy of climatic influences, Montesquieu in the Esprit des Lois had provoked some of the most searching thought on social and environmental questions that had yet appeared in Western civilization; he did this by his learning, wit, humanity, dogmatism. In the Lewes Persanes he had a similar effect on population questions and here he had given great weight to moral causes as reasons for modern depopulation. When he pursued these inquiries in the Esprit des Lois, again cultural not environmental causation interested him and he saw clearly the uniqueness of human populations, and he had his own causal population theory; it might even be Malthus without fanfare. 102 108

Ibid., pp. 450-451.

See die last paragraph of the appendix to the 6th ed. of A Principle of Population.

654

Environment, Population, and Perfectibility

"Wherever a place is found in which two persons can live commodiously, there they enter into marriage. Nature has a sufficient propensity to it, when unrestrained by the difficulty of subsistence."104 If Montesquieu's data were poor, if his conclusions about modern depopulation were misguided and provincial, the matters he and his Persians discussed with such earthiness and practicality were indeed important. The dispute over the populousness of ancient nations, fatuous as were some of the arguments, had its rewards; like the more important quarrel over the ancients and moderns of which it was a part, it induced comparisons with the ancient world, it gave prominence to the moral and social consequences of modern slavery, European colonial expansion after the age of discovery, of religion, disease, and morality. It is thus no exaggeration to say that this comparison between the ancients and the moderns, whether in the form of culture, arts, population, morality, and the idea of progress which emerged as a higher generalization from the quarrel set the stage for the debates on social and environmental causation culminating in Malthus and in Godwin's final reply to him. Upon what does one base his thought, on the force of human institutions or the omnipotence of natural law? Godwin's belligerent words, already quoted, state the alternatives clearly and fairly. Malthus's principle "is not the Law of Nature. It is the Law of very artificial life" One sees repeatedly the powerful influence of the idea of progress—as one now sees its modern substitute, faith in science—on population questions. Condorcet and Godwin accept it as a basic principle which gives meaning to civilization, and Malthus denies its inevitability and the perfectibility of man, arguing that progress is uneven and uncertan. Most important was the association of the idea of progress with the environmental limitations of the earth. Malthus and Godwin had extended the argument to include the whole earth, and it was a welcome development despite the obvious pitfalls in considering as a unit an earth so politically, culturally, and religiously divided. Neither thinker was concerned to any degree with environmental change by man. They recognized it but gave little thought to its implications. For Malthus, to be sure, the environment was limiting, but to Godwin it posed few problems crucial to the human race. For their purposes they assumed a stable physical environment. Both men saw that ultimately the earth might be cultivated like a garden, but neither thought that an environment, deteriorating as a result of long human settlement, might offer hard choices in the future. Nor did Count Buffon, but he did see the great influence of man on the land and on all life, and it is to this subject—and to him—that we now in the last chapter turn. 104

EL, Bk. 23, chap. 10.

Chapter 14

TPOQUES

DE

LA

NATURE.

237

font devenues Con domaine ; enfin la face entière de la Terre porte aujourd'hui l'empreinte de la puifiance d e l'homme, laquelle, quoique fuhordonnée à celle de la Nature, fouvent a fait plus qu'elle, ou du moins l'a û merveilleufement

fecondée,

que c'eft à l'aide d e nos

mains qu'elle s'eft développée dans toute fon étendue, & qu'elle ell arrivée par degrés au point de perfé&ion & de magnificence o ù nous la voyons aujourd'hui.

The Epoch of Man in the History of Nature 1.

INTRODUCTION

In Des Époques de la Nature, Count Buffon had named the seventh and last as the age when man assumes an active role, "seconding," to use his phrase, the operations of nature. From a secular point of view man was in control of nature; from a religious, he was completing the creation with unexpected speed. Most of those who held such views were optimistic and believers in the idea of progress, the growth of knowledge enabling man to enlarge his horizons and to refashion his surroundings more to his taste. What pessimism there was, was not organized around a general principle, but there were observations that man must interfere with caution in the economy or equilibrium of nature. Isolated works, however, like Jean Antoine Fabre's Essai sur la Théorie des Torrents, foreshadow new and delicate sensitivities to cultural geography and history, to the longevity of customs and usages which continually—and cumulatively—affect the land.

The Epoch of Man

6j6 I.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMPARISON

More than ever, our problem now is one of selection; it is easy to justify the inclusion of any one work, difficult to explain its inclusion to the exclusion of another. The volume of pertinent material increases enormously and the increase will accelerate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. First, there is the literature—often of broad theoretical interest—which each nation accumulates about its natural resources; by the end of the eighteenth century many of the nations of western Europe, such as England, France, the Germanies, and Sweden, already had impressive collections. Secondly, there are the works of synthesis, particularly the natural histories like Buffon's, which embraced cosmology, geology and historical geology, geography, botany and zoology, ethnology, and mineral resources and their distribution. Natural histories like Buffon's—factual, often compendium-like, composed inductively, concrete in detail but with supporting theory—inevitably considered man's place in nature, the environmental influences on man, and increasingly the man-made changes in nature, visible proof of which lay in the contrasts between environments long settled by man and those remote from his influence. Thirdly, there is the ever-increasing volume of literature about the New World, especially about the United States, some of it clustering around men like Franklin and Jefferson, statesmen and political theorists who are also deeply concerned with pure and applied science and with plans for altering the American landscape. Franklin is well received in Europe, Count Buffon belongs to the American Philosophical Society, Alexander von Humboldt visits Monticello. This literature on the United States, written by Europeans and Americans alike, is distinct from the literature on political and social institutions and the frontier, represented by the works of a De Tocqueville or a De Crevecoeur. Men wrote technical works on the forests, travelers like Count Volney published widely quoted works which carefully described the geography of the country, including the forests, soils, climate, the effects of clearing. Similar in treatment and even more technical is Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia." There are the Bartrams on natural history, Franklin's short essays on population and the equilibrium of nature. The early volumes of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society reveal clearly the scope of learned and scientific interest in the new country. By the late eighteenth century a respectable literature on soils, crops, and farming methods was already in being. One sees in this literature the influence of the English theorists from Tull to Townshend and the Norfolk four-course rotation, but the English methods and theories are not accepted uncritically, for men were learning from observations, without waiting for nods of approval from European theorists, about the effects of maize or tobacco on their land, the dangers of soil exhaustion or of soil erosion, and the nature of manures. A new body of

The Epoch of Man

(>$1

knowledge about the American environment begins to take shape, drawn perhaps from Lavoisier or Sir Humphry Davy but also from far less eminent practical observers like John Lorain, whose comparative study of the methods of clearing used by the Pennsylvania and the Yankee farmers we will be looking into. The essential point is that by the latter part of the eighteenth century opportunities for comparison had increased vastly. The most dramatic comparison was that between long-settled Europe (many of whose lands had been under the plow for centuries, whose forests had been cut to make way for grain fields, vines, orchards, or villages, towns, and cities, many of whose rivers had now become tractable—their courses deepened and straightened— and were attended, as by bridesmaids, by many small canals) and the relatively virgin areas of the colonies of North America. It was also, I think, even more dramatic than the more familiar contrast which Count Volney made, in the Ruins of Empire, between Europe and the Near East with its evidences of present decay and former glory. The European travelers to the New World saw the contrasts; it would be amazing if they did not. They all seemed to agree that here too nature must submit to changes imposed upon it by its new inhabitants. The thoughts of men charged with governing the new land were often on a higher philosophic plane than practical concern with farm policy or the development of the country. They could reach, as they did with Jefferson and his friend the Marquis de Chastellux, a general in Rochambeau's army, a point at which they envisaged the planned creation of a new environment—clearings alternating with woodlands—that would be economically useful, aesthetically pleasing, healthful, and biologically sound. It is obviously out of the question to survey this vast national and systematic literature in this work, but I do wish to select several themes which illustrate this growing awareness of the depth and breadth of human power. They include the influence of research in natural history, especially that of Count Buffon, the greatest of the eighteenth century natural historians, in awakening interest in the effect of man on other forms of life and on the physical environment as a whole. They include themes that since have become of world importance, such as the idea of a primordial balance in nature which civilized man interferes with at his own risk; the contrasting idea of purposeful change to create a better environment, the effects of clearing on climate, of clearing and drainage on health; the cultural aspects of forest protection and torrent control. Great names in the eighteenth century science, Buffon in France, Linnaeus in Sweden, Banks in England, were committed to the advancement of natural history, which in many ways brought the activity of man into bold relief. Collecting for museums, interest in introducing economically useful plants and animals, made men more aware of their role as worldwide distributors of

658

The Epoch of Man

plant and animal life. The voyages of the last part of the century, like Cook's, brought new word of the various ways peoples, rude or polished and of all hues, exploited their natural resources. 3.

C L I M A T I C C H A N G E AND T H E INDUSTRY OF M A N

Although this chapter stresses Count Buffon's contributions, it is necessary to add that others had touched on the subject of man as an active modifier of nature and that Buffon's expositions owed much to a widespread if diffuse interest in it. Montesquieu, for example, whose name is so closely identified with ideas of environmental influence (see above, pp. 568-575), observed that countries had been brought to their present condition by the industry of man, which, indeed, had transformed the physical environment of Europe and that of the Chinese empire. The indigenous peoples of the N e w World had achieved no such successes. Eighteenth century students were impressed by the fact that its population could not be compared with the large numbers of people living in Asia, Africa, and Europe. 1 This failure, it would seem, explained the contrasts between the landscapes of the N e w World and those of Europe and China whose industrious populations had lived there long enough and were sufficiently numerous to achieve these great historical transformations. This sensible observation, buttressed by his erroneous belief in the decline of world population in modern times, led him to emphasize the importance of population increase and the active intervention of man in the natural environment.4 Correlations are made between population densities and land use practices, the pasturelands supporting only a few, grain lands more, vineyards even more. Human industry becomes more intense with the grains and the vines. Rice culture is the best example of all; men substitute their labor for that of cattle, and this "culture of the soil becomes to man an immense manufacture." Apparently unconcerned with the problems of forest use since the ordinance of 1669, Montesquieu says that countries with coalpits f o r fuel "have this advantage over others, that not having the same occasion for forests, the lands may be cultivated." The statement does show, however, the dynamic quality of his thought, the coal relieving the economy of its dependence on the forests, which can now be sacrificed for agricultural clearing; it shows, however, little appreciation of the forest as a vital element in the landscape.3 Although Montesquieu's fears—that the population of the modern world 1

Chinard, "Eighteenth Century Theories on America as a Human Habitat," PAPS,

V o l . 91 (1947), p . 28. * See above, p. J79, and The Persian Letters, and EL, Bk. 23, chaps. 1 - 4 , 10-19, 24-26.

' EL, Bk. 23, chap. 14.

tr. Loy (Meridian Books), letters

113-123,

The Epoch of Man

659

was becoming so dangerously low that its few inhabitants could not exploit it and could not keep nature at bay—were unfounded, he shows an awareness of the relationship between population and the exploitation of the earth's resources which is out of keeping with the assumption of the passivity of man in his environmental theories. The world's population must increase. In his Pensées he makes a vigorous appeal for the active intervention of man in nature: The earth always yields in proportion to the exactions made of it. The fish of the seas are inexhaustible; only fishermen, boats, and merchants are lacking. Flocks increase with the people to care for them. If the forests are exhausted, open up the earth, and you will find fuel. Why do you go to the New World to kill bulls solely for their hides? W h y do you allow so much water that could irrigate your fields to go to the sea? Why do you leave in your fields waters which should go to the sea?4 Climatic change was discussed even by literary men. Hume speculated about it in Europe in historical times, concluding that such a change had occurred, and that the wanner climates of his time were owing to human agency alone, because woods which formerly kept the rays of the sun from the surface of the earth have now been cleared off. The northern colonies of America became more temperate with clearing, the southern more healthful.5 Furthermore, Kant had recognized human activity as being among those agencies, past and present, which, like earthquakes, rivers, rain, the sea, wind, and the frost, cause physical changes through historical time. Men build works to keep out the sea, to create land at the mouths of the Po, the Rhine, and other streams. They drain marshes and clear the forests, and by so doing they visibly change the climate of countries.8 The chief interest of these otherwise conventional remarks is that Kant thinks it necessary in the study of physical geography to include man as one of the natural phenomena that bring about environmental change. Interest in the changes made by man in the landscape was stimulated by the theory that the climate changed following forest clearance; reports from the New World claimed that the climate then became warmer. Hugh Williamson, an American doctor, read a paper on the subject before the American Philosophical Society in 1760; its French translation influenced Count Buffon. The people living in Pennsylvania and the neighboring colonies, Williamson said, remarked that the climate has changed within the last forty to fifty years, the winters being less harsh, the summers cooler. Williamson accepts these claims at face value, explaining that man can make local modifications in the general climatic pattern. The coasts of the middle colonies, he says, trend from the northeast to the * Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu, Vol. 1, pp. 180-181. "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, VoL 1,0.434. 4 "Physische Geographie," in lmmanuel Kant's Sammtliche Werke, ed. Hartenstein (Leipzig, 1868), Vol. 8, p. 300. s

660

The Epoch of Man

southwest. The Atlantic, retaining some of the heat gained in summer and warmed by the Gulf Stream, is warmer than the land in winter, hence the violent northwestern winter winds blowing toward the ocean: "The colder the air is over the continent, the more violent will those North-Westers be." What, Williamson asks, would reduce the violence of this wind? Hard smooth surfaces reflect heat better than do rough and irregular ones—a clear smooth field reflects more heat than one covered with bushes and trees. "If the surface of this continent were so clear and smooth, that it would reflect so much heat as might warm the incumbent atmosphere, equal to the degree of heat produced by the neighbouring Atlantic, an equilibrium would be restored, and we should have no stated north-west winds."7 Several observers, including seamen at sea, have reported a declining severity of the northwesters; less severe frosts, snowfall less in quantity and more irregular, have also been remarked upon since the settlement of the province. A cleared field is warmed up in winter more than one covered with bushes or trees. Since the temperature difference between the clearings and the sea is reduced, the frequency, violence, and duration of the winter storms are also reduced. In seeking corroborating evidence from Europe, Williamson comments on a claim made that Italy was better cultivated in the age of Augustus than it is now, but that the climate is more temperate now than it was then, thus contradicting "the opinion, that the cultivation of a country will render the air more temperate."" He replies that even if the winters of Italy in the Augustan age were colder, it is not enough to consider the evidence from Italy alone, for the explanation is not in Italy but in "those vast regions to the northward of Rome"—Hungary, Poland, Germany. The Germans have increased in number, progressed in agriculture since Caesar's time; all these kingdoms were once covered with forests, but only a few remain today. In ancient times, the north winds blowing from the cold and forested north countries chilled Italy; today these northern countries—cleared and cultivated—do not provide the same opportunity for such violent winds; and if the cold is less in Germany and in the adjacent states, it follows that it is also less in Italy. One wonders, as did Noah Webster about a similar argument, how it was possible to ignore the Alps.9 What of the objection that if clearing makes the winters milder, it will also 7 "An Attempt to Account for the CHANGE OF CLIMATE, Which Has Been Observed in the Middle Colonies in North-America," TAPS, Vol. I (2d ed., corrected, 1789)^.339. 8 Williamson, op. cit., p. 340. The source is Barrington Dairies, "An Investigation of the Difference Between the Present Temperature of the Air in Italy and Some Other Countries, and What it was Seventeen Centuries Ago," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. j8 (1768), pp. 58-67. Williamson refers to a passage on p. 64. 'Williamson, op. cit., pp. 340-342.

The Epoch of Man

661

make the summers hotter? Williamson suggests a planned diversification of the landscape with "vast tracts of cleared land, intersected here and there by great ridges of uncultivated mountains. . . ." The warmed air can rise more easily from the cleared tracts than it can from timbered country; its rising permits inflow of colder air from the uncultivated mountains, resulting in both cold and warm breezes. The land winds, and those which might come from the sea or the lakes, will bring a moderate summer.10 Williamson's interests are even broader than this plan to control climate through rational and planned clearing: such artifically induced climatic changes will permit different crops and new plant introductions. As a physician, he sees the importance of studying the effects of clearing on health and of recording the history of disease. While the face of this country was clad with woods, and every valley afforded a swamp or stagnant marsh, by a copious perspiration through the leaves of trees or plants, and a general exhalation from the surface of ponds and marshes, the air was constantly charged with a gross putrescent fluid. Hence a series of irregular, nervous, bilious, remitting and intermitting fevers, which for many years have maintained a fatal reign through many parts of this country, but are now evidently on the decline. Pleuritic and other inflammatory fevers, with the several diseases, of cold seasons, are also observed to remit their violence, as our winters grow more temperate.11 Relationships between the spread of disease and the existence of open spaces, and between certain kinds of diseases and marshes, have been observed since the times of the 1 Hippocratic school, but the idea that man should actively intervene in the environment to prevent disease was most eloquently expressed, it seems to me, by Hugh Williamson and Benjamin Rush, both American physicians. These men saw the relationships of a people to the environment in which it first settles, to the environment which it then alters, and finally to the succeeding alterations resulting from agriculture and plant introductions, drainage, and public health measures. Many eighteenth century writers were interested in climatic change. Their theories, as Williamson's essay demonstrates, often consider the role of human agency in modifying the landscape. Noah Webster made a remarkable appraisal of this literature in i799- 12 (See chap. 12, sec. 2, pp. 560-561.) After a crisp analysis of the capricious and casual use of classical sources by modern authors (in which poor Samuel Williams, the historian of Vermont, comes off badly), Webster observes that the distribution of plants characteristic of the 10

Ibid., p. 343. Ibid., pp. 344-34512 "Dissertation on the Supposed Change of Temperature in Modern Winters," in A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects, pp. 119—162. The essay, originally read before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, includes supplementary remarks read to the same academy in 1806, pp. 148-162; quote on p. 119. 11

662

The Epoch of Man

Mediterranean—the fig, pomegranate, olive—has apparently not changed since ancient times, and that probably the winters then were no colder than they are today. From the classical sources, he outlines the probable geographical limits of the olive in ancient times, concluding that its ancient limits are about the same as those marked by Arthur Young for modern times, beginning at the foot of the Pyrenees in Roussillon, then northeast through Languedoc, to the south of the Cévennes, crossing the Rhône at Montélimar, and continuing via the vicinity of Grenoble to its terminus in Savoy.1® Rejecting popular belief in large-scale climatic change in historical times, Webster then examines the possibility that such changes might occur in a restricted area owing to human agency. He takes Buffon to task (and Gibbon and Williams for accepting Buffon's authority) for saying that the reindeer retreated northward to colder regions where it could subsist because the regions in south Europe and France formerly cold enough for the animal have now become too warm for it. I consider this argument as very fallacious. The rane seeks the forest, and flies before the ax of the cultivator, like the bear, the common deer, and the Indian of America. How can the deer subsist in open fields? We might as well expect a fish to live in air, as the rane in a country destitute of woods, and frequented by man. The Hyracanian forest no longer exists; the husbandman has deprived that animal of his shelter, his food, his element. He does not like the company of man, and has abandoned the cultivated parts of Europe How could the rane subsist in an open, cultivated country, when it is well known that his favorite food is a species of lichen [rangiferinusj which grows only or chiefly on heaths and uncultivated hilly grounds? Instead of proving a change of climate, the retirement of the rane seems to have been the natural consequence of cultivation.14 These arguments are similar to many that Buffon himself had expressed, both men pointing out the power of civilized men to alter, by changing their habitat or threatening them, the distribution not only of wild animals but even of primitive peoples. Webster, moreover, is less than fair to Buffon. Buffon does say that the reindeer now is found only in the most northerly countries, that the climate of France because of its woods and marshes was formerly much colder than it is today. There is evidence, Buffon says, that the moose and the reindeer lived in die forests of the Gauls and of Germany. As the forests were cleared and the waters of the marshes were dried up, the climate became milder and the cold-loving animals migrated. Among many factors causing a change in the habitat of the animals were the diminution of waters, the multiplication of men and their works. Buffon is in closer agreement with Webster than the famous lexicographer makes it appear. Both recognize the effect of man's increasing numbers, of his installations, of clearing and drainage, on the distribution of animals.15 Ibid., pp. 133-134. Ibid., p. 135. 15 See Buffon, "L'Élan et le Renne," UN, Vol. « (1764), pp. 8j-86, 95-96. 13

14

The Epoch of Man

663

Webster concluded that for all practical purposes the climate had been uniform since the creation and that there had been no variation of consequence in the inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic. Men, however, could make significant local changes. The contrasts, so typical of men of this period to whom forest clearance is closely connected with the march of civilization, are between the forest and open land; in the former the "vibrations" in air temperature and in the temperature of the earth near the surface are less numerous and less considerable than in the latter. When the earth is covered by trees, it is not swept by violent winds, and the temperature is more uniform. The earth of the forest floor is not frozen in the winter; neither is it scorched in summer. Such extremes are found in open or cleared land, a fact which Webster says disproves the common theory (held by Williamson) that clearing brings a moderation of cold in the winter; in fact, "the cold of our winters, though less steady, has been most sensibly increased." He denies that forces affecting the entire globe have anything to do with climatic change. "It appears that all the alterations in a country, in consequence of clearing and cultivation, result only in making a different distribution of heat and cold, moisture and dry weather, among the several seasons. The clearing of lands opens them to the sun, their moisture is exhaled, they are more heated in summer, but more cold in winter near the surface; the temperature becomes unsteady, and the seasons irregular."18 4.

COUNT BUFFON: O N N A T U R E , M A N , AND THE HISTORY OF N A T U R E

Count Buffon repeatedly expressed interest in the changes which men had made in their natural environment, particularly the transformations which had accompanied the growth and expansion of civilization and the migration and dispersion of human beings and their domesticated plants and a n i m a l s throughout the habitable parts of the earth. He considered this question of the physical changes in the earth brought about by human agency in more detail than had any of his contemporaries, indeed more than any man in Western science or philosophy until George P. Marsh's Man and Nature was published in 1864. His interest in the physical changes in the earth peculiarly associated with the activities of man were philosophical, scientific, and practical. These changes, he thought, had been necessary to create civilization and to permit its growth and diffusion. "Wild nature is hideous and dying; it is I, I alone, who can make it agreeable and living." Dry out the marshes, he said, make their stagnant waters flow in brooks and canals, clear out the thickets and the old forests with fire and iron. In their place make pastures and arable fields for the ox to plow so that a "new nature can come forth from our hands."17 18 17

Webster, op. cit., pp. 147,184; see also p. 162. "De la Nature. Première Vue," HN, Vol. 12, p. xiii.

664

The Epoch of Man

Buffon's ideas are also pertinent to contemporary theory regarding the origin and growth of civilization. Many of the most famous thinkers of the century—Condorcet, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Turgot, and Herderhad written on such themes as the progress of mankind, the significance of cultural inertia, and environmental influences which caused some peoples to progress and others to lag behind. These studies included theories of the origin of human society and of the arts and sciences. They involved also speculation regarding physical environments hospitable to early civilization. Were they harsh, unhealthful, and forbidding compared with the comfortable landscapes of civilized life? On this question BufFon took an unequivocal stand. He had little patience with romanticizing about the state of nature, of primitive society, or of primeval environments. T o Buffon, the power of nature is immense, living, and inexhaustible. Its divine origin is manifest in the creation. On earth, man whose power is also of divine origin, is destined to further the plans and intentions of nature. In this teleological conception, nature is virtually personified. Man is a "vassal of heaven," a "king on earth," and his position on earth is central and crucial. Man can bring order to it, improve it. By increasing his own numbers he increases nature's most precious productions.18 A great source of men's power lay in their ability to live in and adapt themselves to many climates, but he thought men were more efficient in adapting themselves to the extremes of cold than to those of heat. The history of man's migrations and dispersions showed how ancient this adaptability was; in his migrations, taking with him his arts, his techniques of agriculture and knowledge of plant and animal domestication, he could transform nature in each new area in which he settled in accordance with the tastes he had acquired. With time, with new discovery and exploration, he would be living throughout the whole habitable world, creating a nature in great contrast to the world of primeval nature. Man is not only adaptable; he is intelligent, inventive, and able to profit from the accumulated knowledge of the past. These qualities enable him to exercise an immense power in changing nature. Man is a creative being whose accomplishments not only accumulate with time but expand through space. Buffon repeatedly distinguishes between man and the animals in this respect: their life, their manner of living, their habitats, and their geographic distribution are governed much more by the environment than is the human wanderer who intrudes upon them, changing their lives and habitats, if indeed he condescends to spare them. The theme of migrating and adaptable man thus is set in sharp contrast with the theme of die less mobile plants and animals whose distribution, if uninterfered with by man, is controlled by climate. It is part of a primordial " / « A , p.xL

The Epoch of Man

665

harmony characteristic of the creation. "It would seem that nature had made the climate for the species or the species for the climate in order to obtain more rapport, more harmony in its productions," a truth applying even more forcefully to vegetation, for each region (pays) and each degree of temperature has its own kind of plant life.19 Regions which had never been inhabited by man, however, had little attraction for Buffon. On their heights were the dark, thick forests, their debris covering the forest floor and choking out all life. There were the stagnant waters, the fetid marshes of their lowlands, useless alike to inhabitants of land or water. And between them was a wasteland of thickets and useless brambles having nothing in common with the meadows of inhabited lands. No doubt Buffon shared a widespread eighteenth century attitude toward nature, a nature in the words of Roger Heim, well cared for, ordered, a little too well raked, embellished with decorations.20 It is, however, the same feeling which one observes in the English writers of an earlier date, like Ray and Sprat. They desired to win new land from the moors, the fens, the old forests. They gloried in the ideal of a beautiful village resting in well-tilled fields. They had faith in technology and in the possibility of improving the individual and society. They admired science and its methods and applauded the advances of knowledge; they saw that nature also could be improved with this new knowledge, itself the product of an awakened curiosity. In his essay on nature, Buffon, a lover of exclamation points, writes "Qu'elle est belle, cette Nature cultivée! que par les soins de l'homme elle est brillante et pompeusement parée!" Man is nature's most noble product; and nature, cherished by man, multiplies itself in desirable ways under his care. Flowers, fruits, grains, useful species of animals, have been transported, propagated, and increased without number; useless species have been eliminated. Mining has advanced. Torrents have been restrained and the rivers directed and controlled. The sea has been conquered. Land has been restored and made fertile. The laughing meadows, the pastures, the vines and the orchards of the hills whose summits are crowned with useful trees and young forests, the great cities arising on deserted places, roads and communications, are but a few reminders "of power and of glory, showing sufficiently that man, master of the domain of the Earth, has changed it and renewed its entire surface and that he will always share the empire with Nature."21 If the style of this quotation seems pompous to the modern taste, the ideas which it contains are worth expressing: the activity of man in artificially multiplying domesticated plants and animals 19 "Les Animaux Sauvages," HN, Vol. 6, pp. 55-59. The translated quotation is from p. $7. The whole statement is important in the history of ideas of the geographic distribution of animals. See also "De la Dégénération des Animaux," HN, Vol. 14, pp. 311-317. ,0 Heim, "Préface à Buffon," in Bertin, et al., Buffon, p. 7. M "De la Nature. Première Vue," HN, Voi. 11, pp. xiii-xv. The quotation in French is on p. xiii, the translated quotation on p. xiv.

666

The Epoch of Man

and in replacing one kind of vegetation with another, and the importance of cultural diffusion in distributing them throughout the world. Buffon's descriptions of primeval nature are as grim as many which followed the publication of the Origin of Species. They lack the sense of the unceasing and unrelenting struggle for existence emphasized by Huxley, but they carry a warning similar to his, that man reigns over nature by right of conquest, and nature will reclaim her rights and efface the works of man if he becomes lazy or falters through war, poverty, or depopulation.22 To Buffon the history of the earth is like human history: both can be reconstructed by examining the inscriptions, monuments, and relics of the past. In addition, physical phenomena, like the social, are subject to continual change; the earth and life upon it therefore assume different forms in different periods. "The state in which we see nature today," he says in the introduction to Des Époques de la Nature, "is as much our work as it is hers. We have learned to temper her, to modify her, to fit her to our needs and our desires. We have made, cultivated, fertilized the earth; its appearance, as we see it today, is thus quite different than it was in the times prior to the invention of the arts." And again, "One must seek out, see nature in the newly discovered regions, in the countries which have never been inhabited, to form an idea of its former state, and the latter is still quite modern compared with the ages in which the continents were covered with water, fish swam on our plains, or the mountains formed reefs in the seas."*3 This earth history is the subject matter both of the Histoire et Théorie de la Terre with its added notes, proofs, and revisions, and of Buffon's masterpiece, Des Époques de la Nature, which divides earth history into seven epochs. These are the formation of the earth and the planets, the consolidation of the rock in the interior of the earth, the invasion of the continents by the seas, the retreat of the seas and the beginning of volcanic activity, the north as the habitat of elephants and other animals of the south, the separation of the continents, and the power of man aiding that of nature. In the seventh epoch, there begins that "seconding of nature" which leads to the transformation of the earth. Buffon's reconstruction of this early period of human history may be summarized as follows: man had appeared when the worldwide catastrophic convulsions of the preceding epochs in earth history had not yet quite subsided. Even thefirstmen, living under the terror of earthquakes, volcanoes, and wild animals and without the blessings of civil society, were forced to adapt nature to their needs, to unite for self-defense and mutual help in making houses and such weapons as hard flints shaped like an ax. Early men may have ** Ibid., pp. xiv-xv. Thomas H. Huxley, "Evolution and Ethics. Prolegomena," in Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays, pp. 9-11. " " D e s Époques de la Nature," intro., hereinafter "EN," HNS, Vol. 5, pp. I-J; the quotations are translated from pp. 3 and 4, respectively.

The Epoch of Man

667

obtained fire from flints or from volcanoes and burning lavas to communicate with one another and to make open clearings in the thickets and the forests. With the help of fire, the land was made habitable, while with their stone axes, they cut trees, working the wood into weapons and other tools which pressing need suggested to them. In their inventiveness, they could devise weapons to strike at a distance. Gradually family groups consolidated into small nations, and those whose territories were limited by the waters or hemmed in by the mountains became so populous that they were forced to divide up their lands among themselves. "It is at this moment [i.e., with the land division] that the Earth became the domain of man; he took possession of it by the labor of cultivation, and from this one can trace the subsequent appearance of attachment to one's native land and to civil order, administration, and lawmaking."24 This description of the activities of early man strongly resembles—in outline if not in actual details—Lucretius' famous account of the early development of human culture." In his writings, Buffon clearly appreciated the role of fire in human history. Firing and clearings are mentioned often in the literature relating to the New World, and they were commonplace practices in the Europe of his day. Buffon's description suggests also the conclusions of modern research in demonstrating the ease with which early man, with simple tools and the use of fire, can make important, lasting, and widespread changes in the environment. T o Buffon, early man is something else than a frightened animal adapting himself to a terrifying environment. These efforts of early man, however, were slight compared with the accomplishments of a civilization which Buffon believed to have existed about three thousand years before his time in an area from the fortieth to the fiftyfifth degree of north latitude in Central Asia. Buffon was impressed with the report of Peter Simon Pallas, the German natural historian, of evidences of cultivation, arts, and towns scattered in this part of Asia, which Pallas thought were survivals of an ancient and flourishing empire; perhaps Buffon is also anticipating one of the major interests in the nineteenth century study of man, the search for the Aryan homeland. According to Buffon's theories of historical geology, this region (southern Siberia and Tartary of his day) was best suited to the development of civilization because it was in a relatively tranquil part of the earth, sheltered from inundations, distant from terrifying volcanoes and earthquakes, more elevated and consequently more temperate than the other; in "this region in the center of the continent of Asia" with its pleasant climate, clear skies for observing the stars, and fertile earth to cultivate, men attained knowledge, science, and then power. This ancient civilization was destroyed by a people driven out of the north by overpopulation; here Buffon uses the old idea of the northlands as an officina gentium advanced 24 Ibid., pp. 225—227 (intro. to the 7th Epoch). ** Lucretius, De rerum natura, V. 1245-1457.

668

The Epoch of Man

as early as the sixth century by Jordanes. Many of the achievements of this civilization were lost, but agriculture and building techniques survived intact and were diffused and improved, their progress following the great centers of population: first, the ancient Chinese Empire and then Atlantis, Egypt, Rome, and Europe. "It is thus only about thirty centuries ago that the power of man was combined with that of nature and spread over the greatest part of the Earth." Among these great and purposeful changes were the domestication of animals, the drying up of marshes, the control of river courses and elimination of cataracts, forest clearance, and land cultivation. With art, science, and exploration, even isolated parts of the world have become his domain: "Finally the entire face of the Earth bears today the stamp of the power of man, which although subordinate to that of Nature, often has done more than she, or at least has so marvellously aided her, that it is with the help of our hands that she has developed to her full extent and that she has gradually arrived at the point of perfection and of magnificence in which we see her today."28 These strong words represent Buffon's true belief in the creative power of man; if he often faltered in his faith in human nature and despaired of man's destructiveness and his propensity to war, it nevertheless was the nature "si merveilleusement secondée" by man that had meaning for him, a transformed nature that was living proof of man's place in the natural order and of his power in molding it to his desires. 5.

COUNT BUFFON: O N FORESTS AND SOILS

That Buffon, himself a farmer, nurseryman and plant breeder, an experimenter in forest plantings, should have something to say about forests is to be expected; what he has to say, however, at first appears contradictory, for he advocates both the destruction and conservation of the forests. This seeming inconsistency can be explained by analyzing the role of the forest in Buffon's theory of the earth. Buffon advanced as one of the five basic facts about the earth the proposition that the heat emitted by the sun and received by the earth is quite small in comparison with the earth's own heat and that solar heat alone would be insufficient to maintain living nature.27 The internal heat of the earth is being dissipated and it therefore is imperceptibly but relentlessly growing colder, the sun's heat alone being insufficient to arrest this tendency. Buffon underestimated the amount of solar radiation and he knew nothing of the greenhouse effect. Since he knew of the heat of the earth's interior, as experienced in deep mine shafts, he concluded that the heat loss from the earth exceeds the 28 "EN," 7th Epoch, HNS, Vol. j, pp. 228-237. The quotations are translated from pp. »36,237. p. 6.

The Epoch of Man

669

heat gain from the sun. Man can therefore increase the effectiveness of solar heat by deforestation, permitting the sun's heat to reach and warm up the surface of the earth, thus compensating, at least in part, for the heat lost because of the cooling of the earth. Buffon here relied on reports from the New World that the climate became warmer after forest clearance, being particularly impressed with the paper, already discussed, which Hugh Williamson had read before the American Philosophical Society on August 17, 1770, and which was later translated into French.28 Combining his theory with the reports on climatic change, Buffon concluded that it was possible for man to regulate or to change the climate radically.29 In proof he chose an unfortunate example. Paris and Quebec, he said, have about the same latitude and elevation. (Buffon knew that latitude and elevation alone do not determine the climate as he here assumed they do.) Paris would be cold, like Quebec, were France and the countries bordering upon it deprived of their population, covered with forests, and surrounded by waters. By making a country healthful, that is, by clearing away the accumulated dead organic matter, draining swamps, cutting down trees, and settling people on its lands, it will be provided with sufficient heat for several thousand years. According to his reasoning, Buffon said, France in his day should be colder than were Gaul and Germania two thousand years ago, but it is not colder because the forests have been cut, the marshes drained, the rivers controlled and directed, lands covered by the dead remains of organic life cleared; if these changes had not been accomplished, modern France would be even colder than Gaul or Germania had been.80 In further proof, he cites the deforestation, scarcely a century earlier, of a district around Cayenne (there are many references to French Guiana throughout the Histoire Naturelle), which caused considerable differences in air temperature, even at night, between the cold, wet, dense forest, into which the sun seldom penetrated, and the clearings; rains even began later and stopped earlier in them than in the forest. Man's power, however, is limited. He can make warm air ascend but he cannot make cold air descend. His power of lowering the temperature of the hot deserts is thus largely confined to creating shade; it is easier to warm up the humid earth of a dense forest by clearing than it is to plant trees in Arabia to cool the hot dry sands. For such environments, he suggested that a forest in the midst of scorching desert might bring rain, fertility, 28 Hugues Williamson, "Dans Lequel on Tâche de Rendre Raison du Changement de Climat qu'on a Observé dans les Colonies Situées dans l'Intérieur des Terres le l'Amérique Septentrionale," Journal de Physique (Observations sur la Physique, sur VHisto'vre Naturelle et sur les Arts), Vol. 1 (1773), pp. 430-436. The quotation from Williamson given at the end of Des Époques de la Nature is an inexact quotation from the French translation (HNS, Vol. j , pp. J97-J99). » This discussion is based on "EN," 7th Epoch, HNS, Vol. j , p. 240. 84 Ibid., pp. 140-241.

670

The Epoch of Man

and a temperate climate; this idea was based on the very old belief that trees attracted clouds and moisture.81 With the exception of the hot deserts» Buffon thought it important to increase temperature at the surface of the earth because all life is dependent upon heat. In making solar heat more readily available at the earth's surface, man can modify what is harmful to him by opening up useful clearings. "Happy are the countries where all the elements of temperature are balanced and sufficiently well combined to bring about only good effects! But is there any one of them which from its beginnings has had this privilege, any place where the power of man has not aided that of nature?"82 Thus by systematic deforestation, or planting where called for, man could convert lands of unequal endowment to lands of temperate qualities. Men's bodies—tiny furnaces they were—even heated up the earth, and man's use of fire increased the temperature of every place he inhabited in numbers. "In Paris, during severe cold spells, the thermometers in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré [in the northwestern part of Paris] register two or three degrees colder than in the Faubourg SaintMarceau [in the southeast] because the northwind is modified in passing over the chimneys of this great city." 33 Buffon saw no good in thickets, dense forests, accumulated organic debris, poisonous swamps—fundamentally, I think, because (in an era long before the microbiology of the soils was understood) he believed they safeguarded moisture at the expense of heat. Forests kept away heat necessary to the maintenance and multiplication of life; they were inimical to nature and to civilization. The role of man, in the past as in the present, has been one of creating harmonious balances in nature in places where they were needed. Buffon, however, would not have advocated the deforestation of a modern country. His interest in forests began early in life; he had studied and experimented and he had read well-known English books on forestry like John Evelyn's Silva: or, a Discourse of Forest-Trees. Like many French writers before him, he warned of the perils in deforesting his country. His essay on the conservation of forests (1739), combining exhortation with practical advice, was a plea for conservation, for better administration and better regulation, for satisfying the needs of the present while not forgetting the welfare of posterity. All forest projects could be reduced to two tasks: "to conserve those which remain, to renew a part of those we have destroyed."*4 French forests in the old fays of Brittany, Poitou, La Guyenne, Burgundy, and Champagne had been destroyed to be replaced by wasteland and thickets; these lands should be restored.38 In 1742, he complained that men had learned 81 32

88

Ibid., pp. 241-143. Ibid. The translation is from p. 246.

Ibid., p. 243. HNS, Vol. 2, pp. 249-271. The quotation is on p. 241. This work, "Sur la Conservation & le Rétablissement des Forêts," is reprinted from Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, Mémoires, 1739, pp. 140-156. 88 Ibid., p. 259. 84

The Epoch of Man

671

through observation and experiment much about the practical arts like agriculture but they knew little of forestry: "Nothing is less known; nothing more neglected. The forest is a gift of nature which it is sufficient to accept just as it comes from her hands." Even the simplest ways of conserving forests and of increasing their yield were ignored.36 He showed continuing interest in the effects of local deforestation when he took part, around 1778, in the Compagnie pour l'Exploitation et ï1 Épuration du Charbon de Terre, an organization interested in coal as an industrial resource, in coke making, and in relieving the drain on the forests of the kingdom.87 His attitudes toward the forests can be reconciled in this way: large areas inimical to man had to be cleared to make the earth habitable, but once societies were established on them, the forests were resources which had to be treated with care and foresight. Buffon classifies soils into three groups: clays, calcareous earths, and vegetable earths (terre végétale) composed mostly of the detritus of plants and terrestrial animals. There are two kinds of this vegetable earth: leaf mold {terreau) and limon, the residue representing the final stages in the decomposition of the leaf mold. These soil types are seldom found in pure form in nature. Soils are mixtures of them, a soil concept neglected by chemists and mineralogists who, he says, study the clays and the calcareous earths, slighting the vegetable earth.88 This vegetable earth is always thicker in uninhabited virgin lands than in inhabited countries, for it naturally increases in places from which man and fire (his agent of destruction) are absent. The thick, centuries-long accumulations of vegetable earth are confined to virgin lands. Vegetable earth is thinner on mountains than in valleys or plains because the limon is washed down from the highlands by streams and deposited on plains. This soil would remain fertile if it were not overworked; where it has been destroyed, only dry sands or bare rocks remain, unlike the rich leaf mold and limon of the virgin lands.8* In inhabited regions, the vegetable earth is more thoroughly mixed with the vitreous sands and the calcareous gravels because the plowshare turns up the lower layers of the inorganic soils. This thin layer of vegetable earth which covers the earth's surface is "le trésor des richesses de la Nature vivante," the "magasin universel des élémens [«c] qui entrent dans la composition de plupart des minéraux."40 These organic soils contain minerals which, like iron, give the yellow stain to limon. They are vital to mankind 8« Ibid., pp. 271-290. This work, "Sur la Culture & Exploitation des Forêts," is reprinted from Histoire de VAcadémie Royale des Sciences, Mémoires, 1742, pp. 233-246. ï7 Bertin, in Buffon, quotes a passage from the Mémoires de Bachaumont (1780) in which he mentions government interest in treating coal as a means of arresting the degradation of the forests of the kingdom caused by forced cutting owing to the excessive use of wood in domestic hearths and in the industrial arts (pp. 212-213). M "De la Terre Végétale," HNM, Vol. 1, pp. 384, 388. "Ibid., pp. 389-390. « Ibid., p. 416.

799). PP- iJ7-'4i; quotes on pp. 140-142. 102 Adam Seybert, "Experiments and observations, on the atmosphere of marshes,

TAPS, Vol. 4 (1799). PP- 4'S-43°; q u o t e o n P- 429-

690

The Epoch of Man

for lack of water, and the arable lands which were formerly in swamps convince him that it was colder in the days when settlements were fewer. Clearing entices the sea breezes inland because the earth and the atmosphere above it are now warmer than the water. The contrast thus is between a stable country unaltered by man—with regular seasonal changes, the course and appearance of nature varying little from one age to another—and an altered land whose seasons fluctuate, become more irregular, inconstant, and uncertain.103 Similar ideas reappear in the writings of Count Volney whose travels in many parts of the long-settled and well-used Old World made him sensitive to the appearance of apparently virgin lands.104 It is, in fact, a great temptation to embark upon a digression about Volney, for his writings on geographic subjects well deserve study. He was acquainted with current theory that forests attracted rainfall and that clearing promoted aridity; he had also studied the writings on this subject of earlier foreign travelers and of American residents. A belief is widespread in the United States, he says, "that very perceptible partial changes in the climate took place which displayed themselves in proportion as the land was cleared." Citing earlier observers, including Peter Kalm, Samuel Williams, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Jefferson, he adds that he has collected similar testimony on the course of his journey and that a sensible alteration in the climate of the United States is an "incontestable fact." On the Ohio, at Gallipolis, at Washington in Kentucky, at Frankfort, at Lexington, at Cincinnati, at Louisville, at Niagara, at Albany, everywhere the same circumstances have been repeated to me: "longer summers, later autumns, and also later harvests; shorter winters, snows less deep, and of shorter duration, but cold not less intense." And in all the new settlements these changes have been represented to me not as gradual and progressive, but as rapid and almost sudden, in proportion to the extent to which the land is cleared. Volney sees what is happening in America as a historical process with no surprises, for climatic change followed settlement in Europe and no doubt in Asia and in the entire inhabited world.105 In Kentucky he sees changes occurring in even less altered country; again, his observations are supported by the testimony of those who had experienced their consequences. Drought seems to keep pace with clearing. Nevertheless, many Kentucky streams have had more abundant waters since the woods were cut down; with the removal of the thick leaf-bed of the forest, rainwater was no longer retained. With clearing and plowing, it sank in the ground, forming "more durable and abundant 103 The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, pp. J7~6J. Williams gives experimental evidence for ground temperature change; he is not certain, however, if clearing is the only cause of a change in climate. iM View of the Climate and Soil of the United States of America, pp. 7-8. 105 Ibid., pp. 266-278; quotes on pp. 266, 268-269. Volney discusses Samuel Williams at some length; also see his very realistic description of prevailing diseases in the U.S. and their probable social and environmental causes, pp. 278-332.

The Epoch of Man

691

reservoirs." He is so committed, however, to the forest-rainfall theory that he fails to see a real problem here. One might add that the relation of forests to stream flow is still a much studied and controversial problem.106 In such writings, one sees clearly the pros and cons of clearing as they were then understood. Forest clearance was required for the extension of civilization, for public health, and for the promotion of agriculture necessary for this extension, but it threatened also to defeat these purposes by diminishing the water supply in springs and brooks and thus perhaps even bringing about permanent aridity. Volney's remarks call attention again to the question which to me is the most interesting of all, that of man's place in nature as it was then understood. The activities of European man, in an environment which up to this time had existed in an apparently unchanged form since the creation, set him off sharply from his natural surroundings, even though he was part of them, while the Indians seemed fused with theirs. Early travelers, it is true, occasionally were aware that indigenous peoples altered their environment to a noticeable degree; they saw—and some quite early—their fires and the effects on plant and animal life. William Wood, for example, in the early seventeenth century describes the underwood growing in swamps and wet low places. T h e Indians, he says, customarily burn this wood in November when, owing to the dryness of the grass and of the leaves, it is possible to burn the underbrush and debris easily. If there were no burning, the area would become impassable, thus spoiling the Indian hunting. The burned areas therefore are evidence of Indian settlement, for "in those places where the Indians inhabit, there is scarce a bush or bramble, or any combersome underwood to bee seene in the more champion ground. . . . In some places where the Indians dyed of the Plague some fourteene yeares agoe, is much underwood, as in the mid way betwixt Wessaguscus and Plimouth, because it hath not been coorect, beene burned. . . ."10T T o the travelers of advanced civilizations, however, the contrasts between the apparently virgin land and the land settled, cleared, and under cultivation are vivid; and the processes of nature going on from the creation until the Europeans came obviously had been interfered with after their arrival. If one wished to know about soil fertility, John Bartram wrote, he could inspect the riverbanks of lowlands which are annually enriched by floodwaters carrying their mud and debris. Before clearing, many hazels, weeds, and vines grew in these lowlands, entangling the debris brought down by the streams in flood; its subsequent decay kept the soil rich. After clearing the lowlands and planting them, an opposite effect was noticed: the floods no longer deposited the debris but passed over the land, carrying off in addition soil from the cleared land. A stream with a pronounced gradient would deposit coarse sand on the pp. 25-26. William Wood, New Englands Prospect (1634). Reprinted with an intro. by Eben Moody Boynton, pp. 16-17. 106 Ibid., 197

692

The Epoch of Mm

lowlands. Further, when the higher grounds are trod and pastured, the rain creates gullies, bringing down more coarse sand or clay than before. "As I have observed when I was in y® back parts of y* Country above 20 years past when ye woods was not pastured & full of high weeds & ye ground light then ye rain sunk much more into ye earth and did not wash & tear up ye surface (as now)." In a narrow sense this is one of many interesting early warnings of soil erosion in the United States; in a broader sense it is a recognition that human activity, directly, or indirectly through domestic animals, in upland areas or on lowland clearings alters the natural processes of erosion and sedimentation. W e have already seen that the physico-theologists of the seventeenth century were much impressed with the role of soil deposition in the design, the carrying of soil particles from uplands to plains and deltas being a physical process fundamental to the life of die human race.108 Jared Eliot himself marveled at the physical changes that had taken place since the first settlement of New England, whose colonists, small in number, had come from a cultivated to a thickly forested and unimproved country, with little in their former experience to guide them, with no beasts of burden or carriage; "unskill'd in every Part of Service to be done: It may be said, That in a Sort, they began the World a New."10* He also understood the process by which a valley was enriched through sedimentation at the expense of denuding the hillsides and depriving them of their fertility. Implicit in the ideas of careful observers like Bartram and Eliot, I think, is the realization that the new processes under human control should be acceptable biological substitutions for those processes going on before human interference. When our fore-Fathers settled here, they entered a Land which probably never had been Ploughed since the Creation; the Land being new they depended upon the natural Fertility of the Ground, which served their purpose very well, and when they had worn out one piece, they cleard another, without any concern to amend their land, except a little helped by the Fold and Cart-dung, whereas in England they would think a Man a bad Husband, if he should pretend to sow Wheat on Land without any Dressing.110 The comparison of the work of man in the new land with an act of creation, which is frequently made by early writers on America, recurs in Eliot's enthusiastic praise of drainage. Take a View of a Swamp in its original Estate, full of Bogs, overgrown with Flags, Brakes, poisonous Weeds and Vines, with other useful Product, the gen108 See the undated letter from John Bartram to Jared Eliot published in Jared Eliot, Essays upon Field Husbandry m New England and Other Papers, 1748-1762. Ed. by Harry J. Carman and Rexford G. Tugwell (New York, 1934), pp. 203-204.1 am indebted to Angus McDonald's Early American Soil Conservationists, USDA Misc. Public. No. 449 (Washington, 1941), for the references to Bartram, Elliot, and Lorain. 109 Jared Eliot, op. cit., p. 7. 110 Ibid., p. 29.

The Epoch of Man

693

uine Offspring of stagnant Waters. Its miry Bottom, and Harbour to Turtles, Toads, Efts, Snakes, and other creeping Verm'n. The baleful Thickets of Brambles, and the dreary Shades of larger Growth; the Dwelling-Place of the Owl and the Bittern; a Portion of Foxes, and a Cage of every unclean and hateful bird. Then see it after clearing, ditching, draining, burning, "and other needful Culture" have transformed it. Behold it now cloathed with sweet verdant Grass, adorned with the lofty wide spreading well-set Indian-Corn; the yellow Barley; the Silver coloured Flax; the ramping Hemp, beautified with fine Ranges of Cabbage; the delicious Melon, and the best of Turnips, all pleasing to the Eye, and, many, agreeable to the Taste; a wonderful Change this! and all brought about in a short Time; a Resemblance of Creation, as much as we, impotent Beings, can attain to, the happy Product of Skill and Industry.111 Human activities, however, might interfere with the harmony of nature, and man must proceed with awareness and caution. Benjamin Franklin's example of the blackbirds and the corn illustrates, as did Darwin's cats-to-clover chain in 1859, the workings of the web of life. Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good. In New England they once thought blackbirds useless, and mischievous to the corn. They made efforts to destroy them. The consequence was, the blackbirds were diminished; but a kind of worm, which devoured their grass, and which the blackbirds used to feed on, increased prodigiously; then finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their blackbirds.112 10.

N A T U R E AND REASON H A R M O N I Z E D

The most thoughtful and sustained contemporary discussion of the effects of the American settlement known to me is by John Lorain (ca. 1764-1819) whose Nature and Reason Harmonized in the Practice of Husbandry was published posthumously in 1825. Lorain is a practical man, aware, however, that land use practices of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are not mere techniques but belong to a philosophy of nature. Such an attitude has not been unusual in Western civilization among writers on agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry, partly, I think, because of the strength of the design argument, partly also because these men felt close to the field, the clearing, and the barnyard and saw them as part of the economy of nature. Wild and untamed nature did not horrify Lorain as it did Count Buffon; it 111

Ibid., pp. 96-97. The Origin of Species. Modem Library Giant ed., p. 59 = Chap. 3; Franklin, "To Richard Jackson," Writings, ed. Smyth, Vol. 3, p. 135. Curiously similar to the example cited by Derham's editor. See chap. VIII, note 16;. Quoted in Chinard, "America as Human Habitat," PAPS, Vol. 91 (1947), p. 40. 112

694

The Epoch of Man

is described dispassionately as an interdependent natural system. In the lonely forests every piece of ground is covered with vegetation, the smaller trees, shrubs, and annuals growing at proper though not regular distances between the large trees. "The whole gradually [descends] in size from the largest trees to the mosses." Nature carefully spreads vegetation wherever it can, even on fallen tree trunks, the plants sinking with them and taking root in the earth as they decay.118 Large living trees often stand on the durable wood of fallen timber. Each year new fallen leaves cover the vegetation of yesteryear, preventing grasses from growing and injuring nature's design. This covering is screened in winter by stems and branches, in the summer more effectively by the foliage. Fermentation and decomposition provide food for plants, enrich the soil, "and also minutely divide and keep die soil more open and mellow for the ready admission of their roots, than could be effected by the general mode of cultivation pursued in fields." Foliage, branches, dead trees, and other plants produce a "prodigious mass of decaying vegetation." It is full of life; the larger animals, reptiles, birds, find shelter here. "Every leaf and every crevice in the bark or elsewhere, is thickly peopled." Animalcula live off the decaying vegetation, other animalcula and worms find similar food in the soil. "It is also probable that incalculable tribes of animalcula . . . live plentifully on the dead carcasses and on the scraps and crumbs left by the large ones: added to this, the quantity of animal matter is prodigiously increased, by the creation of animals of every size, whose existence either in part or altogether depends on preying on others." The smaller animals of a limited life-span multiply fast; alive, their excreta return to the soil and manure it; dead, their remains greatly increase it. The cumulative mass of manure from all forms of animal life is adequate for die purposes for which nature intended it. It was certainly a very wise provision of nature, to cause the greater part of this matter to exist in small bodies. This has vastly increased the quantity, and promoted the ready and effectual application of it. If the whole or the greater part of this prodigious bulk of animal matter, had been made to exist in the larger animals, they could not have been supported; neither, could the manure furnished by them have been so intimately blended with the soil, as is the vegetable matter, which we all see has been made to exist in plants, that spread over and cover the surface of the habitable parts of the earth. There is something wonderful in the blending of animal and vegetable matter. "The fertilizing effects of this perfect system of economy, is equally as clearly seen in our glades and prairies, as in our forests, where nature is suffered to pursue her own course." Lorain has described here a system of nature without man; in the hierarchy of plant and animal life, individual species have varying rates of population growth. Life and death are closely interrelated, and in the life cycle the small individual bulk of vast numbers of organisms and the manufacture of fertil111

Nature and Reason Harmonized m the Practice of Husbandry, p. 24.

The Epoch of Man

695

izers by decomposition are vital in maintaining the stability of the environment.114 T o Lorain the creations of civilized man—the term is his—bring about a new order in this primordial cycle of the natural world. "The living as well as the dead vegetation found in his way is destroyed and the grounds are cultivated. By these means, by far the greater part of the animalcula within, as well as upon the soil are destroyed." If the agriculturist keeps his lands in grass, keeps livestock to graze on it, and spreads their manure over the soil, then "nature is assisted by art, and the fertility of the soil is considerably increased."118 By these methods man creates acceptable artificial substitutes for that portion of the process he has eliminated; but if a backwoods farmer plows and crops, paying no attention to grass or to stock, the cycle is broken and the soil is exhausted. Lorain is impressed with the role of animalcula in the economy of nature untouched by man. After clearing, the quality of their excreta will be inferior to that produced under natural conditions, but even in artificial processes, the grasses will provide them with much food. Farmers have too casual an attitude toward them, he says, paying too much attention to the annoyances they endure. "Although it would appear at least probable, that neither man, nor the domesticated animals in which he seems to be more immediately interested, could have existed in any thing like the same numbers, or have been supplied with an abundance of nutriment, if animalcula had not been created, [sic] The same may be said of weeds, notwithstanding slovenly farmers complain still more loudly of the injury done by them."116 Lorain's conception of the biology of the soil—the importance of the animalcula and of the accumulation and subsequent decomposition of organic matter in the cycle of life and death which insures the continuity of nature—explains his fear of soil exhaustion (caused by continual plowing and cropping) and erosion when the soil is exposed to the injurious action of the sun, wind, rain, and melting snow.117 In an interesting passage notable for the posterity argument and for the ease with which the biblical curse on man and the land is dispatched, Lorain says such ruinous practices bring about poverty of soil and of purse. Posterity, "heirs of the wretchedness introduced by their inconsiderate forefathers," has the Herculean task of counteracting this curse of poverty. "Whether Satan is also the instigator of this evil, I do not presume to determine, but certain I am, that it is much greater (so far as farming be concerned), than the curse entailed on the soil by the fall of Adam. That seems to consist simply in brambles and thorns, including in these, such other vegetation as would compel man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow." The curse is irrevocable, but it is *lbid., pp. 2J-26. Ibid., pp. 26-27.

n

115

™lbid., p. 27. 117 Ibid., p. j 17.

696

The Epoch of Man

also a mild decree from Heaven, for man need only remove these obstacles to plant growth for a flourishing agriculture and the satisfaction of rational wants. "But when the hand of folly introduces the additional curse of poverty on the soil, this insatiable monster, like Aaron's serpent, swallows all the rest." This "hand of folly" is the perpetual plowing and cropping which destroy nature with little or no attention to the priceless decaying living matter or to livestock.118 Lorain's graphic comparisons between the clearing methods of the Pennsylvania and the Yankee farmers reveal their efficacy and their rudeness. He is critical of both, but more severely critical of the Pennsylvania fanner primarily because he breaks the organic cycle in nature. These descriptions have a universality that transcends their value as descriptions of early farming practices in the United States, for with few changes they could well apply to the clearings of Neolithic man, surprising results coming from simple tools and perseverance. The Pennsylvania farmer begins his clearing by girdling the timber. The land is then logged off and the grubs are taken out by the roots. The smaller trees are also cut down and logged off. This logging continues with no thought of possible exhaustion even if stone coal could be used for fuel. In the war against the trees, the Pennsylvania backwoods farmer believes his crops are multiplied in proportion to the area of land he clears, and as a perpetual plower and cropper he invites soil exhaustion.119 In criticizing the backwoods farmer, Lorain grants that soils formed and remaining free of human interference for ages may not be stable. Torrents and winds may sweep organic matter away. Hillsides and hillocks are susceptible of denudation even under natural conditions; hence, in cultivating them great care is needed to form water furrows to prevent washing away the soil on hillsides and declivities. The steeper parts can be put in grass, for "it is useless and very injurious to cultivate grounds, from which the soil must be soon washed away." 120 Man thus can interfere in two fundamental processes of nature: the cycle of growth and decay when he fails to return humus to the soil, and the normal relation between highland erosion and lowland stream deposition by failing to provide an adequate vegetative cover to control the natural tendency toward the gradual removal of upland soils to the lowlands. With his perpetual plowing and cropping, his inadequate attention to grass, and his failure even to use the barnyard manure accumulating in his yard, the Pennsylvania farmer is far more destructive than is the Yankee, who does all in his power to increase his livestock, and who clears his woods by burning (waiting, however, until everything is so dry that the fire burns the soil; enough 1 1 8

p . Jl8. p.jj3. "»Ibid., p. 339.

The Epoch of Man

«97

moisture should be retained in order to keep the fire from penetrating deeply in the soil and destroying too much organic matter). T h e Yankee farmer finishes chopping down the already fallen timber and scalps off the grubs level with the ground; he then cuts down all the trees so that they fall regularly side b y side. Some log off the timber before, some after, the fire. In any event, the farmer awaits an opportune dry period for the firing. T h e cleared ground is then worked with a heavy harrow, and the texture thus created favors the processes of vegetation. "Die salts in the ash and the organic matter that has escaped the flames can also produce very large crops. T h e Pennsylvania farmer is careless of the humus and manuring; the Yankee, of fire. Like others witnessing the extension of settlement and cultivation, Lorain saw the contrast between the patient accumulations of slowly acting nature and the dramatic changes which man could make in days or even in hours. "Perhaps a better method could not be devised for clearing woodlands, or a more profitable first course of crops be introduced, if it were not that b y far the greater part of the animal and vegetable matter which nature had been accumulating for a great length of time, is destroyed in a day or two, b y the destructive and truly inconsiderate and savage practice of burning." T h e ruin is compounded when the two methods are joined: Yankee burning with Pennsylvania continual cropping. 121 T h e humus theory of the soils may have been responsible for part of this emphasis, but in the main, the concept of the economy and unity of nature was the matrix from which the warnings came. In the preceding discussion, I have made no attempt to explore these attitudes as a chapter in American history. A practical and utilitarian attitude toward change, most dramatically by deforestation, seems to have had an early and powerful hold, as in Richard Frame's poem, " A Short Description of Pennsilvania" [1692]: Although I have a good intent, Yet hardly can express, How we, through Mercy, were content In such a Wilderness. When we began to clear the Land For room to sow our Seed And that our Corn might grow and stand, For Food in time of Need, Then with the Ax, with Might and Strength, The trees so thick and strong Yet on each side such strokes at length, W e laid them all along. So when the Trees, that grew so high Were fallen to the ground, Which we with Fire, most furiously T o ashes did Confound. 111

Ibid., pp. 335—336.

The Epoch of Man

698

T h e American examples also illustrate the impact of clearing, the dramatic contrasts between supposedly pristine and altered lands, and between the long time processes of nature and the short ones of man. Jared Eliot, John Bartram, John Lorain, and others saw evidences of destructive interferences in biological processes apparent in soil erosion and exhaustion, overcropping, burning, and deforestation. W h a t they feared, I think, was that European man in the N e w W o r l d was failing to understand the organic cycle in nature, from life to death and from decay to life, and its importance to human welfare. 122 11.

T H E TORRENTS OF THE V A R

Let us return to the Old W o r l d to examine a question that interested an eighteenth century French engineer, Jean Antoine Fabre. It is an uplandlowland problem, and man is in the center of it. Fabre's work begins a new chapter in Western natural science and engineering whose nineteenth and twentieth century practitioners will study torrents carefully and publish on them voluminously. 123 Fabre was chief engineer of bridges and highways in 122 The following works are valuable guides into the complex history of American attitudes toward nature: Arthur A. Ekirch, Man and Nature in America; Hans Huth, Nature and the American; Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden; Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America; and John K. Wright, Human Nature in Geography, especially chap. 14, "Notes on Early American Geopiety." See the works of Gerbi, Chinard, and McDonald already cited for early American attitudes to nature in general, and to the forests, the soil, to humus, etc. Frame's poem (quoted in part by Huth, p. 5) is in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware 1603-^07, pp. 301-305. See also the papers of Ralph Brown, published posthumously in AAAG, Vol. 41 (1951), pp. 188-236: " A Letter to the Reverend Jedidiah Morse Author of the American Universal Geography," pp. 188-198; "The Land and the Sea: Their Larger Traits," pp. 199-216; "The Seaboard Climate in the View of 1800," pp. 217-232; and " A Plea for Geography, 1813 Style," pp. 233-236. In the third essay, Brown discusses several writers that 1 have mentioned and gives more examples; see esp. the discussion of climatic change, pp. 227-230. I do not agree, however, with his statement that "Volney evaded the question [that the climate was changing] altogether" (p. 227). See note 105 above. Josephine Herbst, New Green World (New York, 1954), on John Bartram and the early naturalists, shows the importance of scientific traveling, plant collecting and introductions, and attitudes toward nature of the early American naturalists; Jefferson's writings also illustrate this contemporary interest in environmental change. See Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Jefferson: " T o the Miamis, Powtewatamies, and Weeauks," on the advantages of cultivation, raising animals, and of the civilized arts, p. 459; " T o Brother Handsome Lake," on a similar theme, p. 461; " T o the Choctaw Nation," on the advantages of cultivation over hunting, p. 465; " T o the Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation," on a similar subject, pp. 478-479; " T o Little Turtle, Chief of the Miamis," pp. 497-498; " T o Captain Hendrick, the Delawares, Mohiccons, and Munries," pp. 502-503. See also his comments in "Notes on the State of Virginia" on winds and clearing, Query 7, pp. 619-620. In his intro. to the Carman and Tugwell ed. of Jared Eliot's Essays upon Field Husbandry in New England and Other Papers, 1748-1162, Rodney True discusses Eliot and the modifications which Americans made of English soil and agricultural theory of Tull, Townshend, and others. Surell, A Study of the Torrents in the Department of the Upper Alps, 2nd ed., V o l 1, trans. Augustine Gibney. T o my knowledge this trans, has not been published; a carbon

The Epoch of Man

699

the Département du Var; his studies of torrents and their control, published in 1797, were based on areas of France, the departments of the Var, BassesAlpes, and Bouches-du-Rhone, in which he had worked and which he knew well. He had also studied the courses of the Rhône and the Durance. Alexander Surell, one of the most remarkable nineteenth century students of the High Alpine torrents of France, was critical of his work, but it was a kindly criticism that understood the pioneer nature of Fabre's contribution. Surell thought Fabre's observations, stated virtually as aphorisms, detracted from their scientific value, and he chided him with giving too much space to reasoning without giving evidence in support of his deductions, so that it became difficult to distinguish between his observations and surmises, the certain and the doubtful. Curiously, Fabre had criticized his predecessors for the same faults. Fabre's short studies are symbolic of new inquiries into old practices, into the relation between mountain and plain, and into the effect of stream flow on settlement. Such researches were greatly expanded in the nineteenth century, as studies of man's modifications of the environment, divorced from idealism, meliorism, philosophy, and religious considerations were made with reference to cultural and economic policy, but on a far higher plane than a purely engineering outlook. Fabre was certainly an imaginative pioneer in this new trend. His pages are notable for a sense of time and history (earth history and human history), and a skepticism which makes him critical of theory. Environmental change owing to natural causes, Fabre says, is characteristic of the earth's history since the creation. Rain, storms, avalanches, freezing and thawing, clearly make such changes, their cumulative effects being greatest at the present, decreasing as one goes backward in time to the creation. Then mountain slopes were stable, appearing quite different than they do at present, for they were not degraded nor were massifs separated from one another by valleys. The causes producing the effects now observable on the landscape have been operative since the creation, and in a great number of places existing slopes are so steep that the mountains are no longer stable.124 Although the waters of the earth and of streams have reduced and dissected these primitive massifs, they are neither the sole nor the principle cause of tearing down the mountains. Fabre thinks that alternating freezing and thawing cause these steep precipices on the flanks of mountains (perhaps he is referring to the Matterhorn type of glacial landforms) as well as the avalanches which follow in their wake. Degradation results usually from gullies, the copy of it is in the Forestry Library of the University of California at Berkeley. The fact that earlier technical French works are hard to come by in this country makes John Croumbie Brown's studies especially important; in his Reboisement in France are generous excerpts from many eighteenth and nineteenth century French students of torrents including Fabre and Surell. 184 Essai, pp. j-6.

7oo

The Epoch of Man

frightful ravines so often torn out of the sides of mountains. Powerful avalanches can take rocks and boulders with them down the slope, but snow is not necessary to reduce the mountains; freezing and thawing are sufficient to accomplish their wearing away. Avalanches make soils extremely friable, and they even crack and weaken stones. To Fabre, who wrote before glaciation was understood, the history of the earth is marked by constant changeby dissection, heating and cooling of rock, avalanches from melting snow, and deposition of alluvium at the mouths of rivers.125 A man with such a vivid conception of the operation of natural processes in transforming the earth's surface throughout time would also be sensitive, I think, to the acts of man or other geologic agents which might accelerate the processes, or which might keep them at their present rate, taking measures to control them if they are harmful. It is the study of the torrent which unifies Fabre's work. The best lands in the mountains, he observes, lie along streams; they are exposed tofloodswhich become more severe with deforestation because rainwater collects in a much shorter time and the water of rivers rises much more rapidly. The fertile banks are thus eroded away, the bed is enlarged and elevated as a result of the deposition of its load. The damage is not confined to mountains; the disharmony is apparent in the building up of the banks of rivers, in deposition along the Mediterranean, the shallow river mouths inhibiting navigation. Torrent control at the source will bring about better agriculture, preserve the fine streamdeposited soil particles (limon), enhance the opportunities for irrigation.12* Fabre's explanation for the slight progress made so far in torrent control is of considerable interest. Many authors have tried to express mathematically the laws governing stream flow, but this general theory cannot be applied to these rivers because of the infinite variety of conditions. One must study the actual course of the river. Furthermore, students of the subject have lacked a point of view; observations have been desultory and often have been made out of pure curiosity. The fundamental cause of torrents, according to Fabre, is the destruction of the mountain woods. Foliage and branches intercept a considerable part of the rain, while the rest of the water, falling drop by drop and at sufficiently long intervals,filtersinto the soil. Vegetable earth, gradually accumulating in undisturbed conditions, absorbs a considerable quantity, and shrubbery may bar the way, controlling at their source torrents which may have formed despite all these other obstacles. When the woods are destroyed, water from gentle rain or from storms cannot be absorbed into the earth as fast as it accumulates, and no shrubbery breaks up and divides the torrent's course. Clearings on the mountains loosen the soil, diminish the cohesiveness of the earth materials of which the mountain is formed, thus encouraging the formation of torrents. The law of the ancien régime, which permitted clearIbid., pp. 9-10. ** Ibid*, p. vii. m

The Epoch of Man

ing on slopes if sustaining walls were constructed at intervals on the slopes, was futile in a great number of areas because people planted two or three crops and then abandoned the land; they could not make enough from their crops to pay for the walls. Fabre lists (unfortunately without elaboration) seven kinds of disasters that ensue from these two causes: ( i ) The forest is ruined. (2) Vegetable earth in many mountainous areas, earths which formerly provided abundant sheep pasture, are washed away, leaving denuded and dry rocks. (3) Properties along river banks are ruined. The character of holdings at the foot of mountains has also been changed by deposits of the torrents. (4) Damage to downstream and river-mouth navigation, formerly an infrequent occurrence, results from the division of watercourses owing to torrents. (5) Strife and quarreling occur on both banks of a stream; when it had only one bed it formed a permanent boundary. (6) A much more rapid deposition of alluvium than formerly at river mouths such as the Rhone impedes navigation. (7) The waters of the springs which feed the rivers are diminished in volume. Water no longer infiltrates the soil, and there is only surface flow off the mountains despoiled of their vegetable earth. If the springs diminish, the streams too will lose volume. Fabre seems to be comparing stream flow under natural conditions with a less stable regime characterized by torrential flow during heavy rains, followed by diminished volume, the instability being consequent upon deforestation and clearing. Fabre's remedies are technical ones, and we need not discuss them here, but we should mention the assumption upon which the proposals are based. In essence, Fabre advocates the restoration of natural conditions in the mountains, allowing trees to grow where enough vegetable earth still remains. Restoration can be promoted by protecting young trees and with strict enforcement of goat laws. These measures may be supplemented by the conservation of existing woods. Equally strict measures should be adopted regarding clearings; none should ever be permitted, for any reason, on a slope of one in three. The old law was too tolerant of such excesses. Clearings on lands of less declivity should also be strictly controlled. If they are allowed, they should be made in transverse horizontal strips, with intervening uncultivated strips (about five toises —about thirty-two feet—wide) for woods to grow in. These belts should be used in lieu of the sustaining walls; they would permit the destruction of torrents which may have been forming above. Fabre advocates strict legal supervision by the communes of all clearings. Since nature is more active when aided by human industry, acorns, beechnuts, or the seeds of other trees could be sown on the steep slopes, areas lacking sufficient soil for trees could be put in grass, and the turf would resist the formation of torrents and create useful pasture as well. 127 m

Ibid., pp. 131-134.

702

The Epoch of Man

This far-sighted French engineer saw the widespread effects of age-old practices in the mountains on social and economic conditions in southern Provence. He saw that man must understand his power to create conditions favorable to the movement of things, whether they are soil particles or rocks. By simulating through restoration the natural conditions which formerly prevailed, he can control the speed of water, its volume, its absorption into the earth, its runoff. Man can imitate natural processes by the mass planting of trees on hillsides, but in permitting the washing away of the vegetable earths, he can make these processes irreversible.128 Social conditions including ancient custom are thus directly related to physical processes: anticipating a theme stressed by Marsh in 1864, the notion of the irreversibility of certain kinds of environmental change is introduced, a far more pessimistic idea than a simple warning about damage to a single holder or to a commune. 12.

THE SOCIETY ISLANDS: A UNION OF NATURE AND ART

Areas that are different, both culturally and physically, naturally offer different examples. County Volney in Kentucky sees different effects than does Fabre in the Alpine lands of Provence. Let us find a last illustration from another New World, Oceania, which Cook and the Forsters described. Both Forsters notice changes which man makes in the natural environment, for they are interested in science, in society, and in nature. Neither of the Forsters admires environments, whether inhabited by Tahitians or Europeans, which are unchanged by human culture. In both cases the influence of Buffon is clear and acknowledged.129 Johann Reinhold Forster says that the changes made by man are not the least of those which the earth has undergone. Where man has not attempted any change, nature seems to thrive; but this impression is only an appearance, for it languishes and "is deformed by being left to itself." Such observations are inspired by Buffon: Decaying and rotting trees accumulate, the ground cover is thick, mosses, lichens, and mushrooms suffocate and bury all that vegetates and thrives. Stagnant waters and swamps make the surroundings unhealthful. But man eradicates plants which are useless to him and to the useful animals; he opens up passages "for himself and his assistants" through the woods and luxurious vegetation; he preserves and cultivates the useful plants; he keeps noxious effluvia from the air and channels the swampy waters. By drying out the earth he promotes husbandry and then, where needed, he can irrigate. The emphasis thus is on the role of man in increasing the beauty of the earth and its usefulness to him. The significant acts are the opening up of nature, so to speak, by making passageways, by increasing air circulation, by encouraging the evaporation of surplus 128 Selections from Fabre's work are published in trans, in Brown, Reboisement in France, pp. 5J-59. 129 Obs., pp. 135—137; G.F., "Ein Blick in das Ganze der Natur," Sammtlicbe Schriften, Vol. 4, pp. 316-315-

The Epoch of Man

703

water. New Zealand and Tahiti illustrate the contrasts Forster is making. In Tahiti the breadfruit, the apple, the mulberry, and beautiful gardens have in part replaced the native vegetation. The beauty of the Society Islands is an expression of the union of nature and art. The plains are inhabited and cultivated like gardens, with planted beds of grass, with fruit trees and dwellings, while the sides of some hills are wooded and the highest summits are covered with forests. This is the kind of primitive life and environment which both Försters admire—a life based on cultivation of plants and on improvement of the beauty of natural surroundings. The reason for this praise of cultivation and plant growing is that the Försters consider them to be pathways to civilization, encouraging it more than do pastoralism and a dependence on animals.1** In their general and all-encompassing views of nature, both Försters follow Buffon. In his essay, "Ein Blick in das Ganze der Natur," Forster says, "An Biìffons Hand sei uns denn heute ein Blick ins Heiligthum vergönnt! Dann erst empfinden wir die Würde unserer Wissenschaft, wenn der ganze Reichthum der Natur und ihres grössern Schöpfers sich unserm innern Sinne majestätisch entfaltet!"131 He paraphrases and even directly translates several passages from Buffon.182 As it is with Buffon, too, appreciation for the beauty of nature is combined with a realization of its usefulness. And the sea, like the land, is not dead or infertile; it is a new kingdom (ein neues Reich) as productive and as populous as the land. Man, the highest being in the creation, should come to the help of nature, for beauty and perfection of the whole are its general end. Since, unassisted, the earth is burdened with the ruins of its own production, Forster, like Buffon, sees man opening and clearing it, drying up its stagnant waters and swamps. In his essay on the breadfruit tree, one of the most interesting of George Forster's writings, he says that man is probably responsible for the distribution of this plant, that it is not found in uncultivated places. In his migrations, man seems to have carried it with him and spread it throughout the South Seas from the Asian mainland. In a striking paragraph, Forster speaks of the incomparablerichnessof life in the island groups, particularly Java and Sumatra, of the western Pacific near the Asian shore where the breadfruit is also found. The general area, he thinks, is a kind of hearth of plants, listing many valuable products which have come from it. He notes improvements made in the plant by artificial selection, and there are interesting paragraphs on its manifold uses; until the work of Rumpf, he says, the virtues of this tree, a "modest beauty" {eine sittsame Schöne), were unsuspected in the outside world long after the discoveries in the Pacific.184 George Forster also showed considerable interest in the contrast between 110

Obs., pp. 135-137,161-163,177-178. »ai "Ein Blick in das Ganze der Natur," SS, Vol. 4, p. 310. 182 See for example "De la Nature. Première Vue," HN, Vol. 11, p. xiii, and "Ein Blick in das Ganze der Natur," SS, Vol. 4, pp. 324-326. IM «Der Brothbaum," SS, Vol. 4, pp. 329, 332-341.

704

The Epoch

of

Man

inhabited and uninhabited lands. In a charming passage describing activities at Dusky Bay, on the southwest coast of South Island, New Zealand, he describes an apparently primeval forest, its climbing plants, shrubs, and rotten trees being perpetually succeeded by new generations of trees, by parasitic plants, ferns, and mosses from the rich mold derived from the rotten timber. The animal creation afforded further proof of a primeval environment untouched by man, and numbers of unsuspecting birds "familiarly hopped upon the nearest branches, nay on the ends of our fowling pieces." (Soon they were more cautious, made so by a sly cat on board.) 184 At Dusky Bay within a few days the superiority of civilization over barbarism was quickly demonstrated. "In the course of a few days, a small part of us had cleared away the woods from a surface of more than an acre, which fifty New Zealanders, with their tools of stone, could not have performed in three months." A confused, inanimated heap of living plants and decayed residues was converted "into an active scene." Trees were felled, a better passage was made for the rivulet to wind to the sea, the men prepared casks, brewed a drink from the indigenous plants, and they fished. Caulkers and riggers worked on the sides of the boat and the masts. The noise of the anvil and hammer resounded on the hills. An artist, in his sketches, imitated the animal and the vegetable creation. A small observatory with the most accurate instruments was set up, while the plants and animals attracted the notice of philosophers. "In a word, all around us we perceived the rise of arts, and the dawn of science, in a country which had hitherto lain plunged in one long night of ignorance and barbarism!" Then, as quickly as it was created, it vanished like a meteor as the men reimbarked and left the bay.188 But in this passage Forster is not talking about the peoples of the Society Islands but about the primitive New Zealanders. He sees no cleavage between civilized societies and the more simple ones, as BufFon did, in seconding the hand of nature. The Tahitians, too, are capable of creating new beauty in the landscape, in joining art with nature. 13.

CONCLUSION

By the end of the eighteenth century, the cumulative observations and insights of many generations had placed the idea of man as a modifier of nature in new perspective; it was still, however, too diffuse, too casually handled, except by Buffon, to attain the philosophic importance it deserved. Such recognition was not achieved until later in the nineteenth century in the writings of Marsh, Shaler, Reclus, Woeikof, and many others. The conviction that earth history had been more complex than the creation, the deluge, and the retirement of the waters, that the changes the earth has undergone im v r w , V o l . I, pp. 1 2 7 - 1 2 8 . 1 » VRW, V o l . 1, pp. 1 7 7 - 1 7 8 , 1 7 9 .

The Epoch of Man

705

since the creation are the results of natural processes (notably in Fabre), that its history may be divided into epochs, suggested that man had also contributed to earth history. This conception of man as a geographical agent in a historical continuum along with other historical agents of change was the message of Buffon, who also saw the great historic significance of domestication. The idea that man creates in the domesticated animals secondary agents of change subservient to him, that he makes massive substitutions of life forms (also well developed by Buffon), transforms conceptions concerning the nature of landscapes dominated by man. The study and observations of uninhabited environments, or those sparsely inhabited by primitive peoples thought to be existing in ageless harmony and equilibrium owing to the interplay of natural forces, dramatized the role of man as an outsider intervening in a primordial balance of nature. The contrasts between the New World and the Old did not engender this idea, but they were powerful schoolmasters. John Lorain is an excellent example, but there are many others who see man as an accelerator of natural processes, as an interloper substituting his choices in a world which already has been well and judiciously furnished by the Creator. The apparent timelessness and permanence of nature is illusory as time-conscious man destroys or makes changes in nature in a matter of hours or days. Buffon's ideas were not lost on George Forster, and Forster's were not lost on Humboldt. Fabre's torrents led to other and more searching Alpine adventures. Their works and those of many others whom I have mentioned or neglected to mention became building blocks for Marsh's great synthesis Man and. Nature in 1864, whose pages on the significance of human changes of the environment were nourished on activities with which men had long been familiar: drainage, clearing, irrigation, canal building, firing, plant introductions, domestications. The great transformations of the earth's surface which were now to come through the Industrial Revolution, as we can divine in the pages of Buffon and Malthus, can now barely be seen on the horizon. But the Industrial Revolution—how unfortunate this term is—does not displace these older forms of environmental change; it supplements them. The shepherd and goatherd are still in Cyprus, the charcoal burner is in the Ardennes, the tree girdler in New England, but it will not be long before men will look on the vistas of the new Lièges, the Manchesters, the Düsseldorfs. With the eighteenth century there ends in Western civilization an epoch in the history of man's relationship to nature. What follows is of an entirely different order, influenced by the theory of evolution, specialization in the attainment of knowledge, acceleration in the transformations of nature.

A historian of ideas throws his own pebbles into the water, and the concentric ripples he creates naturally are different from those of another. If the pebbles are thrown close enough together, the ripples visibly interfere with one another; if far enough apart, the interferences may not be discernible. So one person's pebble might be another's ripple, the choice of what is to be discussed deciding what is central and what is peripheral. If instead of the idea of a designed earth, I had chosen the idea of an artisan-deity; instead of environmental influence, the idea of culture; instead of environmental change, the idea of technology, what now are the stones would have become the ripples. And so I thought in summary it might be worthwhile to say a few words about each of these ideas, the wider fields of which they are a part, and how they often confronted or interfered with one another despite divergent historical backgrounds, and to follow the discussions with some observations about certain periods of unusual significance in the history of these ideas. In

Conclusion

their development, in the changes and accretions coming about through time and circumstance, in their application at different times and places to different situations, they neither completely lost their original identity nor did they retain it. This process is typical of the history of an idea; it is like the history of a culture, which changes and innovates, accepting this, rejecting that, abandoning something as useless or obsolescent, retaining something held dear, each new synthesis preparing its own opportunities for further change, retention, or innovation. The idea of a designed earth, the doctrine of final causes applied to the natural processes on earth, is an important segment—but only that—of a much broader and deeper body of thought suffused throughout all types of writings: science, philosophy, theology, literature. This is the idea of teleology in general. One cannot deny, however, its immense historical force in the field of nature and earth study, nor the reinforcements to the broader area of ideological explanation coming from its use here. The idea of a designed earth, whether created for man or for all life with man at the apex of a chain of being, has been one of the great attempts in Western civilization, before the theory of evolution and modern ecological theories emerging from it, to create a holistic concept of nature, to bring within its scope as many phenomena as possible in order to demonstrate a unity which was the achievement of an artisan-creator. It is a doctrine at home with the religious interpretation of nature, with pre-evolutionary thought which was congenial to the belief in special creation and the fixity of species. (Evolution, admittedly, could be and has been interpreted as part of a design.) The combination of special creation and fixity of species meant the existence of harmonies in nature from the beginning. It is a mistake, however, to speak of the design argument without including the criticism it evoked, in the ancient world centering mainly around the Epicurean philosophy, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by such thinkers as Spinoza, Buffon, Hume, and Kant. Protagonists of both sides contributed to the idea of a unity in nature because it was not the order that was in dispute but the nature of it, the validity of the artisan analogy, and the relation of this order to the creative activity of a deity. As this idea developed through the centuries, it drew sustenance from many different sources; obviously it has affinities with the literature on nature. With exaltation at the beauty of nature comes wonderment as well, and the belief that man comes closer to the heartbeats of the creation when he is alone in primordial harmonies, away from other men and their artifacts, because unlike the haunts of men these are sacred precincts. It is self-evident that these need not be religious ideas but many of them are. In natural history the design argument was favorable to the study of associations of things and their interrelationships rather than to taxonomies. Of necessity there was the conception of an interlocking in nature—much of it was crude, unnecessarily anthropocentric, too full of the spirit of wonderment rather than inquiry—and yet the effect was to

7o8

Conclusion

see man and nature as a whole, to see life on earth in all its manifestations as a great living mosaic sustained by inanimate nature. Much has been learned since the end of the eighteenth century in the study of nature based on evolutionary theory, genetics, ecological theory; but it is no accident that ecological theory —which is the basis of so much research in the study of plant and animal populations, conservation, preservation of nature, wildlife and land use management, and which has become the basic concept for a holistic view of nature —has behind it the long preoccupation in Western civilization with interpreting the nature of earthly environments, trying to see them as wholes, as manifestations of order. It is easy to see also why the phrase "man's place in nature" has in recurrent forms been one of the great themes of our period—indeed it has continued to the present, as so much of the literature on modifications of the environment and nature protection proves. Man is of nature, a part of it, yet there is good reason for the age-old dichotomy. Why is there? It is too simple to put it down to a narrow preoccupation with man. Few of the men whose writings we have reviewed could be accused of this. It is, I think, because early in this period (it is already relatively late in the history of thought if we bear in mind that the "Theology of Memphis" dates from about 2500 B.C.) the fundamental cleavage of human from other forms of life was recognized. It was recognized by Sophocles, in the Genesis verses, by Panaetius, by Philo the Jew as he marveled at the ability of unimpressive men to force beasts far larger and stronger than they to obey them. Skill, combining the powers of hand and brain, was an obvious human attribute. The countless examples in the ancient world alone of the long tradition of artisanry, of the accumulation from generation to generation of skills, of lore, of knowledge, influenced the men who were trying to see the human world existing in the natural one. Furthermore, the dichotomy was tied up with the question of purpose and meaning in the creation. I know of no more dramatic contrast illustrating this fact than that cited in the first chapter, the contrast between Balbus the Stoic and Lucretius the Epicurean. The Stoic sees the beauties of the earth about him and concludes that such an astonishingly wonderful creation could not be for the sake of plants that lack intelligence or for the dumb animals; it could only be for the sake of a being like man who partakes of the divine and the gods themselves. The Lucretian-Epicurean position on this was unflattering to both the nature of man and the nature of the earth: how is it possible to conceive of a world made for man when so many are wicked and stupid, so few good and wise, when the physical constitution of the earth is so obviously imperfect? In such a philosophy, lacking a benevolent Mother Nature, man achieves his place in nature, not by sharing the attributes of a divine artisan, but by imitation of natural processes and learning from them or by working hard to supply his needs on the principle that necessity is the mother of invention. Christian thought is saturated with the idea, too, because so much Judeo-

Conclusion

709

Christian theology has been concerned with the creator and the creature and because man, sinful and wicked as he is, is a special creature of God. In no other body of thought have the ramifications and implications of man's place in nature been discussed with more thoroughness than in the literature on design and teleology in nature. Since the design argument applied to the earth was an all-encompassing attempt to bring a unity into the observed phenomena—nonliving matter, plants, animals, and man—it is only natural that it involved the other two ideas, but they, as we have seen, also enjoyed an independent existence and history of their own. The idea of environmental influences on culture is as important historically for the questions it suggested as for its own intellectual and philosophical content. It is part of that broad and ancient contrast between physis and nomos, between nature and law or custom. It is an idea deeply involved with interpreting the endlessly fascinating array of human differences, rich new materials for which were furnished in the ancient world during the Hellenistic period, in the modern by the age of discovery. It probably grew out of medicine; travel and voyaging have both helped it along, for men apparently lived everywhere—in deserts, on hot sandy coasts, near swamps, in mountains—and brought it into disfavor as examples appeared which contradicted it. If one is inclined to emphasize its monistic nature, the attempt to explain all culture as a product of environment, one should also remember that it had a relativist side which came out clearly after the Reformation when climatic factors were thought to be active in determining religious observances if not fundamental doctrine. The important point in its impingement on ethical and religious theory was the implication that people living under a certain environment could be expected to act as they did, the environment rather than human frailty being responsible for shortcomings. Thus climate was a favorite explanation for inebriety or sobriety of whole peoples. Nomos, however, was never completely forgotten. Men's customs, their governments, their religions, were great cultural molding forces. These truths were seen in the Hippocratic writings; they were seen with greatest clarity, during our period, in the eighteenth century. Theories of environmental influence are compatible with design arguments because adaptation of life to environment is assumed in both cases; both provided answers to the question why men were living where they were, how they prospered, why and how they Lived in inhospitable and bleak environments. In the modern period, continuing a trend noticeable in the ancient world and culminating in Hume's essay, theories of environmental influence have had strong affiliations with writings on national character; more often than not they have encouraged monolithic summation: the Germans, the French, the Arabs, could be characterized in a f e w sentences. On the other hand, they were safeguards—albeit negative ones—against a purely cultural determinism. Surely it is a mistake to think the history of civilization can be

7io

Conclusion

written purely as cultural, social, or economic history; it is significant that during the period discussed the most impressive works in this field were written in the eighteenth century and that the outstanding example, Herder's Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, makes full use of the historical, ethnographic, and geographic knowledge then available. In the eighteenth century, the writings of Montesquieu, Wallace, Hume, and particularly Malthus bring to maturity and influence a different kind of environmental theory, emphasizing not the elements of climate or the physical differences in environment but the limitations which the environment as a whole imposes on all life. This idea in varying forms has produced some of the most polemical writing of the last century and a half. The idea of design in nature really focused attention on God as artisan, man and nature being in the subordinate position as the created. The idea of environmental influence centered on nature; if it were expressed within a religious context, God was there as creator and man was largely plastic in the molds of nature. The idea of man as a modifier of nature, however, centered on man; if the idea is expressed in a religious context, God often becomes an artisan purposefully leaving the creation unfinished; nature is there to be improved by human skill. In many ways it is the most interesting of the three ideas because it assumes choices; different results come from different skills. Its sources lie, I think, in ideas of artisanry and order-bringing, and when man's activity is seen within a religious framework, he becomes a finisher of nature, set on earth as its guardian and custodian. One of the most distinctive aspects of this idea is the fundamental distinction, often implicit, between the nature of human and animal art. It was not that animals or lowly insects lacked skills—we need only read the homilies on the ants and bees and the eager moralizing in them. In the ancient world, the distinction was implied in the combined power of hand and mind. In the modern, the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, and the development of the idea of progress throw light on the nature of the human endowment: it is greater because what is known in one generation may be communicated to the next, and an accumulation of skills, knowledge, artisanry, may take place, and over a period of time broaden the gulf between human and animal skill. In secular thought, the idea in general has optimistic overtones, especially with men like R a y and Buffon (despite some sour notes). The pessimism comes later in the nineteenth century with more frequent communication of ideas, knowledge of the historical depth of the changes, and observation of the unprecedented pace of the changes consequent upon the increase in technological ability and the growth in world population. The historical march of this idea has been from local to more general observation and generalization. A t the present day it is all-pervasive, a natural and expected outcome of the tremendous force of human agency.

Conclusion

711

In the long time-span covered by this work, certain periods stand out when intensifications of thought clustered about one or more of these ideas. In the ancient world I would single out the Hellenistic period for special emphasis. It is true that the sources of these ideas go far back in time, but they begin to take on life and shape in the Hellenistic age and the Hellenized Roman period that followed. So, for example, there are Chrysippus, Panaetius, and Posidonius; Epicurus and Lucretius; Polybius and Strabo; Eratosthenes, Theophrastus, and Theocritus, to say nothing of the writers of a later period, such as Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Varro, and even Columella and Plutarch. A philosophy of resource development seems to go hand in hand with the economic and political aspirations of the Hellenistic monarchs. It is hard to forget those Greeks in foreign lands, impatient for their olives, their wine, their wool, their fruits and vegetables, and the kind of experimentation this impatience in part brought about and the changes in the appearance of the land it caused. The confrontation of Epicureanism with Stoicism, especially in Cicero's De natura deorum and Lucretius' poems, broadened the idea of design and deepened the criticisms of it. Both had the idea of a unity in nature, to both came more evidence from the world of nature and of man. Communication over the Hellenistic world by a common language—New Testament Greek is written in it—and encouragement by the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, especially, to maintain the customs of native cultures engendered, I believe (one cannot prove this), a more self-conscious awareness of cultural differences than had existed before. If the geographical and ethnological writings of Posidonius had survived in whole rather than in garbled fragments in the works of others, one might see this. The second is the early Christian period centering on the writings of such men as Basil the Great and St. Ambrose and reaching a climax in St. Augustine, although one can see the preparations in Tertullian and Origen. Part of these are homiletics, part are polemics, part are apologetics. From Origen's Contra Celsum to St. Augustine's City of God what stands out is the need for the new religion to defend itself. In its early beginnings, the literature reaches back into still essentially Hellenistic Alexandria which in Gilson's words had been "for a long time a sort of clearing house for the religions of the Roman Empire." There was a meeting of ideas from different sources in the writings of Basil, Ambrose, and St. Augustine, and ideas of nature, nature appreciation (not always but in the vast majority of cases for religious reasons), conceptions of the creator and the created, came from the various matrixes of religious feeling and belief, natural history, ancient philosophy and science. Viewed in this light St. Augustine's writings are most important syntheses and collations as well, bringing together not only Christian ideas but Hellenic, Hellenistic, and Roman ideas of nature and religious interpretations of it,

712

Conclusion

granting, as we must, the contradictions and the difficulties in exploring that intractable subject, the Christian view of nature, once one has advanced beyond the first easy assertions. The design argument in Christian form and applied to nature observable on earth is filled out in this period; and one can recognize the continuity from the homilies of Basil the Great to Ray's Wisdom of God, both exceptional works in their genre. This period was strong in exegesis, preeminent in examining the idea of creation. The theme of the creator and the created dominated the design argument from this period to the natural theology of the eighteenth century, which could make use of recent scientific discovery. Both the Hellenistic and the early Christian periods, therefore, were notable for an interest in nature and natural history. In the former period, it was manifest in both Stoic religious belief and in the antireligious philosophy of Epicurus as expressed by Lucretius. In the latter, it is strong in St. Basil and in St. Augustine; St. Ambrose, his teacher, is inspired by the nature imagery of Virgil even though it is transformed into religious symbolism. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was another such period, and the most important contributions to the three ideas made during the Middle Ages come from it. It is the period of Albert the Great, of Thomas Aquinas, of The Romance of the Rose, of naturalistic motifs in religious art. Like the Hellenistic, it was a period of great activity, resource development, building of cathedrals and cities, with opportunities for contrasts and interpretation. It is not improper for our purposes to think of the Renaissance and the age of discovery, insofar as our ideas are concerned, as compatible partners; one brought news and criticism of the past, the other news from abroad. Both enforced revisions of a fundamental kind. They widened the scope of ideas and knowledge of ancient thought—as witness Alberti's history of architecture— and the age of discovery revealed that both men and the environments in which they live were far more varied than had been realized. Indeed their variety seemed to be inexhaustible. With time the marvelous adaptability of the human race to all kinds of environments was plain for all men to see. This realization, however, does not come to full fruition until the eighteenth century, but it was an important insight in the history of Western thought relating to nature and culture. The penultimate period is the golden age of natural theology in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The religious underpinnings and assumptions are the same as they had always been, but the earth is now seen in ways which suggest more scientific knowledge, leaving behind forever the fantastic, grim, and stark cosmogonies of the past. Profiting from the scientific successes of the age of Newton, the argument as expressed by Ray, Derham, and others becomes a late seventeenth century statement of the case for the fitness of the earthly environment: the earth is suited for life and well organized for it; the conception was achieved partly in the course of rebutting

Conclusion

713

atheism, sometimes vaguely and anoymously identified with modern sympathizers of Lucretius—even Descartes did not escape censure here as an abettor of ungodly thoughts—mainly in rebutting the cosmologists beginning with Burnet who saw too clearly for their own good—and other people's, too— man's sins enshrined and ossified, impressed for all to see and for all time in the constitution of the earth's surface. The last period spans the eighteenth century; here the publication of Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois in 1748 and the first volumes of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, beginning in 1749, are the landmarks. Only a few sentences need be added to what has already been said of it. The thinkers of this period garnered much from the past; they added much of their own. Their contributions were only possible because of the increased knowledge of the world's peoples and the earth's environments—Buffon's Variétés de l'Espèce Humaine and Théorie de la Terre are examples—that had been accumulating since the age of discovery. It was not only increased knowledge of primitive peoples, of the Indian, Muslim, or Chinese and the places in which they lived. Europeans knew more about their own history, customs, and lands, too; one can see this truth already in Bodin. The ideas of the eighteenth century with which this work is brought to a close were generated in a preindustrial world; it may even be permissible to call it also a traditional society if we do not imply that such a society does not change. One might regard them as an introductory chapter to a work which continues the history to the present, but I prefer not to think of them as preludes (the term to me implies that their worth lies in their introducing something better that follows) but as a closing, once and for all, of a period in the history of Western civilization. The ideas generated by growing industrialization of the Western world, the theories about the origin and evolution of life and of human culture, the growing specialization of knowledge that come with the nineteenth century and continue on to the present, are more appropriately cast in the role of preludes. The design argument explaining the nature of earthly environment really looked upward to the creativity and activity of God; the idea of environmental influence, to the force and strength of natural conditions; the idea of man as a modifier of nature, to the creativity and activity of man. In exploring the history of these ideas from the fifth century B.C. to the end of the eighteenth century, it is a striking fact that virtually every great thinker who lived within thi? 2300-year period had something to say about one of the ideas, and many had something to say about all of them.

Bibliography

Ackerknecht, Erwin H. "George Forster, Alexander von Humboldt, and Ethnology," Isis, Vol. 46 (19JJ), pp- 83-95. Acosta, José de. Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (Sevilla: Casa de Juan de León, 1590; reprinted Madrid: Ramón Arìglés, 1894). 2 vols. Acosta, Jose de. The Natural and Moral History of the Indies. Trans, from the Spanish by Edward Grimston, ed., with notes and intro. by Clements R. Markham (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1880). Adam of Bremen. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. Trans, from the Latin with intro. and notes by Francis J. Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). Adams, Frank D. The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (New York: Dover Publications, 1954 [1938]). Adams, John. The Works of John Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1852-1865). 6 vols. Adelard of Bath. "Die Quaestiones naturales des Adelardus von Bath," ed. Martin Miller, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Bd. 31, Heft 2, 1934Aeschylus. The Choephori. Text, intro., comm., trans, into English by A. W . Verrall (London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 1893). Agricola, Georgius. De re metallica. Trans, from the first Latin ed. of 1556 by Herbert C. Hoover and Lou H. Hoover (New York: Dover Publications, 1950 [1912]). Alan of Lille (Alanus de Insulis). "Opera omnia," PL, Vol. 210. —. The Complaint of Nature. Trans, from the Latin by Douglas M. Moffat, Yale Studies in English, No. 36 (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1908). Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus). Beati Alberti Magni, Ratisbonensis Episcopi, Ordinis Praedicatorum, opera quae hactenus haberi potuerunt. . . . Studio et labore R. A. P. F. Petri Jammy. . . . (Lugduni: Sumptibus Claudii Prost, Petri et Claudii Rigaud, Frat., Hieronymi de la Garde, Joan. Ant. Huguetan. Filii. . . . 1651). 21 vols. Cited as Works, ed. Jammy. — . "De animalibus," Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Hermann Stadler, Vols. 15-itì (1916). — . "De causis proprietatum elementorum liber primus," Works, ed. Jammy, Vol. 5, pp. 292-329. — . "De natura locorum," Works, ed. Jammy, Vol. 5, pp. 262-292. — . "De vegetabilibus," Works, ed. Jammy, Vol. 5, pp. 342-507. Alberti, Leon Battista. Ten Books on Architecture. Trans, from the Latin into Italian by Cosimo Bartoli and into English by James Leoni. Ed. Joseph Rykwert (London: A Tiranti, 1955; repr. of 1755 ed.). Alexander Neckam. Alexandri Neckham de naturis rerum libri duo. Eld. Thomas Wright (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863), being Vol. 34 of Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores = Rolls Series. Allbutt, T . Clifford. Greek Medicine in Rome (London: Macmillan and Co., 1921). Ambrose, St. "Hexaemeron." Edited with a German trans, by Johann Niederhuber, BDK, Vol. 17. — . "Hexaemeron libri sex," PL, Vol. 14, cols. 131-288. —. Letters. Trans, from the Latin by Sister Mary Melchior Beyenka (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954). Amilaville, d\ "Population," Encyclopédie ou Dictiormaire Raisonée des Sciences, des

716

Bibliography

Arts, et des Métiers (2nd. ed., Lucca: Vincenzo Giuntini, 1758-1771), Vol. 13, pp. 70-84. Anon. "The So-Called Letter to Diognetus," edited and translated by Eugene R. Fairweather, The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 1, Early Christian Fathers (London: SCM Press, 19J3), pp. 205-224. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A. D. $2$. Eds. the Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. American reprint of the Edinburgh ed. rev. by A. Cleaveland Coxe (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 188J-1907). 10 vols. Anthes, Rudolf. "Mythology in Ancient Egypt," in Samuel Noah Kramer, ed., Mythologies of the Ancient World. Anchor Books (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1961), pp. 15-92. Anton, Karl Gottlob. Geschichte der teutschen Landwirtschaft von den ältesten Zeiten bis zu Ende des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts. (Görliz: Christian Gotthelf Anton, 1802). 3 vols. Apelt, Otto. Die Ansichten der griechischen Philosophen über den Anfang der Cultur (Elsenach: Hofbuchdruckerei, 1901). The Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Revised Standard Version (New York, Toronto, Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1957). The Apocrypha. An American Translation by Edgar J. Qoodspeed. Modern Library Paperbacks (New York: Random House, 1959). Apochrypha. See also Enoch. Apollonius Rhodius. The Argonautica. Trans, from the Greek by R. C. Seaton. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Wm. Heinemann, 1955 [1912]). Arbuthnot, John. An Essay Concerning the Effects of Air on Hitman Bodies (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, 1751 [1733]). Aristotle. Metaphysics. Trans, from the Greek by Richard Hope. Ann Arbor Paperbacks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, i960 [1952]). — . "On Length and Shortness of Life." Trans, from the Greek by W. S. Hett, Aristotle. On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, on Breath. Loeb Classical Library (London: Wm. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1935). —. Parts of Animals. Trans, from the Greek by A. L. Peck. Loeb Classical Library (London: Wm. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937). —. Política. Trans, from the Greek by Benjamin Jowett (Rev. ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), being Vol. 10 of W. D. Ross, ed., The Works of Aristotle Translated into English. —. Problems. Trans, from the Greek by W. S. Hett. Loeb Classical Library (London: Wm. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936-1937). 2 vols. Armstrong, A. H. Plotinus (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953). Arnaud, François. "Notice historique sur les Torrents de la Vallée de l'Ubaye," in Demontzey, Prosper, L'Extinction des Torrents en France par le Reboisement (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1894), Vol. 1, pp. 408-425. Arndt, Johann. Vom Wahren Christenthum (Leipzig: J. S. Heinsius, 1743). Arnim, Ioannes ab, ed. Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (Lipsiae: in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1905-1913). 3 vols. Arnobius of Sicca. The Case Against the Pagans. Trans, and annotated by George E. McCracken (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1949). 2 vols. Athanasius. "Oratio contra Gentes," PG, Vol. 25, cols. 1-95. Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Trans, from die Greek by Charles B. Gulick. Loeb Classical Library (London: Wm. Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 19271957). 7 vols. Athenagoras. "A Plea Regarding Christians." Edited and translated by Cyril C. Richardson. The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 1, Early Christian Fathers (London: SCM Press, 1953), pp. 290-340.

Bibliography

7'7

Augustine, St. The City of God. Trans, from the Latin by Marcus Dods, George Wilson, Glenluce; and J. J. Smith. Modern Library (New York: Random House, 1950). —. Confessions. Trans, from the Latin by R. S. Pine-Coffin. Penguin Classics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1961). — . "Contra Epistolam Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti liber unus," OCSA, VoL 2 j, pp. 431-477— . "Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta très," OCSA, Vol. 2J-26; NPN, Vol. 4. — . "Contra Julianum," OCSA, Vol. JI. — . "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim," OCSA, Vol. 7, pp. 40-381. — . "Epistola 137," OCSA, Vol. 5, pp. 160-174. — . "Epistola 205," OCSA, Vol. 6, pp, 108-119. — . "In Joannis Evangelium," Tractatus 23, OCSA, Vol. 9. — . "In Psalmum 39," OCSA, Vol. 12, pp. 261-293. — . "In Psalmum 44," OCSA, Vol. 13, pp. 9 1 - m . — . "In Psalmum 45," OCSA, Vol. 12, pp. 383-398. — . "In Psalmum 108," 16th Disc, on Psalm 118, OCSA, Vol. 14, pp. 585-588. — . "In Psalmum 136," OCSA, Vol. IJ, pp. 243-262. —. Oeuvres Complètes de Saint Augustin. French and Latin text. Trans, into French and annotated by Péronne, Vincent, Écalle, Charpentier, and Barreau (Paris: Librairie de Louis Vivès, 1872-1878). 34 vols. — . "Of the Work of Monks (De opere monachorum), NPN, Vol. 3, pp. 503-524. —. On Christian Doctrine. Trans, from the Latin by D. W . Robertson, Jr. (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958). — . "On the Holy Trinity," NPN, ist Ser., Vol. 3, pp. 1-228. — . "Sermones ad populum," ist Ser., 46, OCSA, Vol. 16, pp. 251-285. — . "Sermones ad populum," ist Ser., 80, OCSA, Vol. 16, pp. 566-573. — . "Sermones ad populum," ist Ser., 158, OCSA, Vol. 17, pp. 485-492. — . "Sermones ad populum," 2nd Ser., 241, OCSA, Vol. 18, pp. 237-245. Ausonius, Decimus Magnus. The Mosella. Trans, from the Latin into English verse by E. H. Blakeney (London: Eyre & Spottswood, 1933). Averroès (Ibn Rochd). Traité Décisif sur l'Accord de la Religion et de la Philosophie Suivi de l'Appendice. Arab text with French trans., notes, and intro. by Léon Gauthier (3rd ed.; Alger: Éditions Carbonel, 1948). Avicenna. "Das Lehrgedicht über die Heilkunde (Canticum de Medicina)." Trans, from the Arabic into German by Karl Opitz, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Medizin, Vol. 7, Heft 2/3 (1939), pp. 150-220. Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning. Everyman's Library (London: J. M. Dent & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1954 [1915]). — . "The Natural and Experimental History for the Foundation of Philosophy: or Phenomena of the Universe: Which is the Third Part of the Instauratio Magna," The Works of Francis Bacon, eds. James Spedding, Robert L. Ellis, and Douglas D. Heath, Vol. 5 (being Vol. 2 of the translations of The Philosophical Works. . . . London: Longman & Co., etc., etc., 1861), pp. 131-134. — . "New Atlantis," Ideal Commonwealths. Rev. ed. by Henry Morley (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901). —. Novum Organum (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901). — . "Of the Vicissitude of Things," [1625], Bacon's Essays and Wisdom of the Ancients (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, n.d.), pp. 292-300. Bacon, Roger. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon. Trans, from the Latin by Robert B. Burke (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1928). 2 vols. Bailey, Cyril. Epicurus, The Extant Remains. With Short Critical Apparatus Translation and Notes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926). —. The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928). — . See also Lucretius.

7.8

Bibliography

Baker, Herschel. The Wars of Truth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952). Baldwin, Charles S. Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (to 1400) Interpreted From Representative Works (New York: Macmillan Co., 1928). Barber, W. H. Leibniz in France From Arnauld to Voltaire. A Study m French Reactions to Leibnizianism, 1670-1760 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). Barclay, John. Mirrour of Mmdes, or Barclay's Icon Anhnorum. Trans, from the Latin by Thomas May (London: T . Walkley, 1631). Bark, William Carroll, Origins of the Medieval World. Anchor Books (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1960). Baron, Hans. "Towards a More Positive Evaluation of the Fifteenth-Century Renaissance," ¡HI, Vol. 4 (1943), pp. 21-49. Bartholomew of England (Bartholomaeus Anglicus). De proprietatibus rerum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1492). — . See also Humphries, William J. Basil of Caesarea (Basil the Great). "The Hexaemeron," NPN, 2nd Ser., Vol. 8, pp. JI107. Bates, Marston. The Forest and the Sea (New York: Random House, i960). Bauer, George. See Agrícola. Beazley, Sir Charles R. The Dawn of Modern Geography (London: J. Murray, 18971906, Vol. 3; Oxford: Clarendon Press). 3 vols. Bede [the Venerable]. A History of the English Church and People. Trans, from the Latin by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955)— . "Hexaemeron," PL, Vol. 91. Behm, E., and Wagner, H. "Die Bevölkerung der Erde, II," Petermanns Mitteilungen Ergänzungsband 8, No. 3J (1873-1874). Benedict, St. The Rule of St. Benedict. Trans, from the Latin by Sir David Oswald Hunter-BIair (2nd ed., London and Edinburgh: Sands & Co.; St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1907). Latin and English. Bentley, Richard. A Confutation of Atheism. See Eight Sermons Preached at the Hon. Robert Boyle's Lecture, etc. —."Eight Sermons Preached at the Hon. Robert Boyle's Lecture in the Year MDCXCII," The Works of Richard Bentley, D. D. Collected and edited by Alexander Dyce, Vol. 3 (London: Francis Macpherson, 1838), pp. 1-200. Berger, Hugo. Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (Zweite verbesserte und ergänzte Auflage, Leipzig: Veit & Co., 1903). Bernard, St. (Bernard of Clairvaux.) Life and Works of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux. Trans, by Samuel J. Eales (2nd ed.; London: Burns and Oates; New York: Benziger Bros., 1912). 2 vols. Bertin, Léon, et al. Bujfon (Paris: Museum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle, 19J2). Bevan, Bernard. "The Chinantec and Their Habitat," Instituto Panamericano de Geografía y Historia, Publication 24 (Mexico? 1938). Appendix has an English translation of Diego de Esquivel's Relación de Ch'mantla. Bibliothek der Kirchenvater, hrsg. by O. Bardenhewer, Th. Scherman, and K. Weyman (Kempten & München: ist Ser., J. Kösel, 1911-1928, 61 vols.; 2nd Ser., J. Kösel and F. Pustet, 1932-1938, 20 vols.). "Das Bibra-Büchlein," ed. Alfred Kirchofï, Die ältesten Weisthümer der Stadt Erfurt über ihre Stellung zum Erzstift Mainz (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1870). Biese, Alfred. The Development of the Feeimg for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times. Trans, from the German (London: G. Routledge and Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 190$). —. Entwicklung des Naturgefühls im Mittelalter und m der Neuzeit (2nd ed.; Leipzig: Veit & Co., 1892).

Bibliography

719

—. Die Entwicklung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen und Römern (Kiel: Lipsius 4 Tischer, 1882-1884). 2 vols. Billeter, Gustav. Griechische Anschauungen über die Ursprünge der Kultur (Zurich: Zürcher & Furrer, 1901). Bion. See Greek Bucolic Poets. Bloch, Marc. "Avènement et Conquêtes du Moulin à Eau," Annales 59i 60-61, 178, 202, 357, 379-380, 406, 505, 707, 710; utilitarian and aesthetic attitudes toward, 52; Clemente of Rome on, 178; a school and training place for man, 191; F. de Gomara on its beauty and diversity, 362-363; its resources as limiting factor in population growth, 373, 623, 633, 636, 639; inclination of its axis an evidence of design, 408, 414; Woodward on, 409-411; antediluvian, 412; Leibniz on progress of its cultivation, 477-478; as fit environment for life, 510; as theater of human history, 539; history of, 666, 668, 669-700 Earth as a mother: myth of, 13-14; Philo on, 14; Plutarch on, 36; Columella on, 136; St. Augustine on, 197 East, the unchanging: Chardin on, 554, 571, 595 East-West contrasts, 279-280 Ecology: succession in, 194; and physicotheology, 423, 425, 427, 633; and Goethe, 536; antecedents of, 707-708 Ecosystem, 6, 379, 511 n. 25, J49-550

753

Eden, Garden of, 153, 164, 235, 273, 347-348 Education: relation of, to climate, 593 Egypt: civilization of, 21, 36-38, 89, 90, 128 Element: concept of, 63-64 Elements: four, 9-10, 12, 64, 263-265 passim-, and observation, 10, 154, 241 Emasculation and self-mutilation, 514 Empedocles: and four elements, 9-10; and Parmenides, 63; on existence of life before sun's creation, 193 n. 52 Encyclopedists: of Middle Ages, 209, 256, 262164, 271 Engineers: in Hellenistic Age, 125 Environment: hard and soft, 87, 547; cosmicized, 117, 303; Plato on relict, 121; sacred of Prussians, 330; fitness of, 408, 427, 535, 543; adaptation to, 549-550 Environmental change by human agency. See Nature, modifications by human agency Environmental influence, theories of: sources, 80; types, 80-81; in Hippocrates, 87; in Herodotus, 89; in Thucydides, 91; PseudoXenophon, 91-92; Plato, 92; Aristotle, 93-95; Polybius, 95-96; Agatharchides, 96-97; Posidonius, 98; Athenaeus, 101; Floras, 101; Seneca, 101; Horace, 101; Tacitus, 103; Gcero, 103; Strabo, 103-105; Vitruvius, 105; static quality of, 109; and theories of cultural development, 109; temperate climates and civilization, 110; Philo on, 110; Josephus, i i o - i i i ; Ptolemy, 113-114; Servius, 114-115; and Christian theology, 254; as theories of adaptation, 255; and design argument, 255, 519-520; and political theory, 256; and classical continuities in Middle Ages, 256; Orosius, 257; Cassiodorus, 257-258; Paul the Deacon, 259-261; and Goth's love of liberty, 260-261; John the Scot, 261-262; and religion, 263, 447; and astrology, 265-266; Albert the Great, 268-270; Bartholomew of England, 271-273; Thomas Aquinas, 274, 276; Giraldus Cambrensis, 279; Gunther of Pains, 286; Botero, 369; Alberri, 430-431; relation to history in early modern times, 432-433; Machiavelli, 433; Bodin, 434-447; and cultural relativity, 439, 440; Louis Le Roy, 447; Du Bartas, 448-449; Charron, 447-448, 552; Burton, 456-457; critique of early modern ideas of, 460; Herder, 539, 570; Humboldt, 545; from Bodin to Montesquieu, 551; Fontenelle, 552-553; Chardin, 554; Du Bos, 556562 passim-, Arbuthrtot, 562-565; Montesquieu, 577, 580-581; Voltaire, 582-583; Helvetius, 583-584; Diderot, 584-585; Hume, 585-587; Buffon, 587,591; Rousseau, 592-593; Condorcet, 594; Dunbar, 596, 601; Falconer, 601-605; Ferguson, 605; Robertson, 605; Forster, J. R., and George, 610-620 passim-, Malthus, 636; John Adams, 685; summary, 709-710 Environmentalist!!, cosmic, 15

7Î4

Index

Epicurean philosophy, JI, 55, 62-65, 66, 67, 73 Epidemics: Lucretius on, 101 Epimetheus: myth of, 41-42 Equatorial regions: habitability of, 235, 437438 Erosion, 389, 41 j , 465, 691-692 Eternal recurrence. See Recurrence, eternal Ethiopia, 96, 259; people of, 21, 112 Ethnology: Greek, 8; in Hellenistic A g e , 2021; in Hippocrates, 8j; in Herodotus, 89; classical, 100-101, 103; Caesar on, 103; T a c itus on, 103; astrological, 15, i n , 265-266, 280, 282, 437, 460; and Genesis 2, 164; and religion, 167; of the South Seas, 612; comparative, in 18th cent., 621 Evelyn, John: on environmental change b y man, 485-491; on forest conservation, 485486; and Darwin, 487; and historical perspective of, 488; and advocacy of draining, 488489; on London's air pollution, 489-491; m. 134, 670 Evil: St. Augustine on, 197-201; and secondary causes, 234; Hume on natural, 529; Lisbon earthquake as physical, 521; physical, and tout est bien, 549 Exegesis: biblical, 176; and number, 188; and Averroes, 222; as a sociology of knowledge, 222; in Maimonides, 222; and Ramon Sibiude, 239; importance of, 253; allegorical, 283; m. 379, 712. See also Hexaemeron literature Exemplarism, 237-238. See also Nature, as a book Extinctions, 480, 677-678 Falconry: and nature study, 224-225; Frederick II on, 224 Fallow land, 132 Farmers: in Attica, 133-134; Yankee and Pennsylvanian, 696-697 Fencing: effects of, 487 Fertilizers, 345, 672, 694-695 Final causes, 64, 375-378, 502, 517-521, 523 Fire: Lucretius on discovery of, 139; and origin of metallurgy, 139; and the forest, 2 94; 3 " . 344-345. 492. 667, 696-697 Florus: effects of hard climate, 101 Fontenelle, Bernard: on constancy of nature and observable differences, 390; on influences of climate and culture, 458-459, JJ2-JJ3. J5J. 559 Food: Greek interest in, 21; and national character, 455; and melancholy, 457 Forest: retreats as paradise, 294; uses of, in Middle Ages, 294, 320-321, 324-326, 336-337, 341, 493; history of word, 325 n. 122, 327; conservation, 326-327, 329-330, 336-339, 342, 345, 347, 669-671; as habitat of living things, 344; fires, 344; Chastellux and Chateaubriand on, 686. See also Deforestation Forster, George: and scientific voyages, 502;

and Humboldt, 543-544; and South Seas, 616, 618-619, 7°3 - 7°4 Forster, John R., 502; and South Seas, 611-618, 703 Fossils, 409 Four elements. See Elements, four Francis. See St. Francis Franciscans: and observation of nature, 237 Franklin, Benjamin: on reproductive power of life, 624, 693 Frederick II: his Art of Falconry, 224-225 French, national character of, 452, 556, 593 Frontier in Middle Ages: and United States of 19th cent., 289-290 Galen: on humors, 11, 111; Bodin opposes, 444; m. 83, 460 Galileo: on final causes, 376, 505 Garden: in Middle Ages, 347-348 Genesis: and population questions, 166-167, 512

.

Genesis 1, 151-153, 159, 163-164, 193, 198, 202, 646 Genesis 2, and ethnological thought, 164 Genesis 3, curse on nature, 153, 162, 164 Genesis 6, 154 Genesis 8, 408 Genius: clustering of, 444-445, 454, 554-555 Geographic march of civilization. See Civilization Geography: cultural, 18, 365, 547-548; relation to religion, 35, 167, 173-174, 283-284, 364; late T u d o r and early Stuart, 432 n. 8; physico-theology in history of, 505, 515517, 597-598; need for, 5 «¿-517; Kant's interest in, 534-535; defects of education in, 538; and aesthetics, 546; and art history, 546; Rousseau's sympathy for, 593 German culture, 443—444 Giles of Rome: his Errores Philosophorum, 224 n. 160 Gilson, Etienne: on Minucius Felix, 176-177; on Tertullian, 177 n. 1; on Arnobius, 180 n. 6; on Irenaeus, 183 n. 11; on Origen, 184 n. 14; on Alan of LUe, 217 n. 136; on Muslim threats to Christian theology, 220 n. 148; on exemplarism, 238; on condemnations of 1277, 250 n. 257 Giialdus Cambrensis, 279; m. 256 Glassmaking: in forests, 340 Goats: destructiveness of, 142-143, 342-343; Buffon on, 675; Fabre on, 701 G o d : his care f o r the world, 5, 36-39,151-153, 162, 179, 213, 513; as creator, 153-154; his covenant with Noah, 154; wisdom of, in Psalm 8, 157; creativeness of, in Corinthians I, 161-162; as artisan, 202-203; ™ control of nature, 208; revealed in his works, 376, 396, 467; wrath of, 523 n. 57 Gods: proofs of existence of, 55-56, 59, 229, »39-140. 4»9. $*8, 530

Index Godwin, William: on progress and environmental limitations, 634-636; on population, 649-652 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: coolness to teleology of, 535-536; m. 543 Golden Age, 7, 118, 131-134, 139, 140, 143, 408 Goodman, Godfrey, 381 Goths: love of liberty and climate, 260-261, 43*. 449 Graunt, John: his work on bills of mortality, 398-399. 4°3. 416. 49°-49J Grazing, 321-322, 323-324, 328-329, 334-335, 342> 492 Gregory of Nyssa, 298 Groves: sacred, 135, 310 Gruerie: meaning of, 326-327 Grunebaum, Gustave E. von: on Thomas Aquinas and Muslim scholasticism, 220 and n. 147; on Muslim ideas of geographical influence, 255 n. 3; on geographic march of civilization, 277 Gunther of Pairis, 285-286 Habitats, animal: in Job, 155-156; destruction of, by man, 662, 674 Hahn, Edward, m. 58,673 Hakewill, George: refutes idea of senescence in nature, 383-389; on man perfecting nature, 478;m. 70, 134 Hale, Matthew: man and nature, 400-403; design argument and population theory, 403— 404; man as steward of God, 405, 480-482; m - 495. 534. Harmonic analogy, 17 Harmony, preestablished: of Leibniz, 477, 507 Harpalus: and plant acclimatization, 124 Health: concepts of, in antiquity, 11; and drainage, 348; Arbuthnot's conception of, 563-564; public, 573, 604; and climate, 18th cent, summary, 621; and disease, 647, 661; and clearing, 687-689 Hehn, Victor, 137 Hellenistic Age: characteristics of, 18-25; and urbanization, 33; teleological and antiteleological ideas during, 62, 73-74; and environmental change during, 122-127; architecture and engineering in, 125 Helvetius, Claude A.: his dismissal of climatic influences, 583-584 Herder, Johann G. von: 537-543; on Voltaire and Lisbon earthquake, 524, 538; Buffon's use of, 538, 539-540; criticism of Montesquieu, 569-570; m. 12, 406, 612 Heresy, 218, 222, 232, 233 Hermetical writings: on order and purpose in the cosmos, 75-76, 146, 266 Herodotus: teleology of, 40-41; general ideas, 88-89; on the Nile, 89-90, 127; on influence of hard environments, 90-91, 104; m. 8, 18, 38, 262 Hesiod: on cultural history of man, 131-133

755

Hexaemeral literature: nature of, 163-164, 174; links with Genesis 1, 177, 189-190; relation to creation, 187; in Philo, 187; in Basil of Caesarea, 189-190; in St. Augustine, 196; and iconographical representation, 247 Hippocrates: his medical corpus, 5; on humors, 11, 80; Airs, Waters, Places, Edelstein on textual problems of, 82-83; o n culture and environment, 82-88; and Problems of Aristotle, 94; on present ways of living, 119-, his influence in Middle Ages, 256; and Bodin, 443; and Burton, 457; respect for, in early modern times, 460; and Herder, 540; attitude toward, in 18th cent., 552; and Arbuthnot, 562-563; and Montesquieu, 567-568; and Falconer, 601 History: typical chronology of sacred, 167; and environmental change by human agency, 289-292 Hodgen, Margaret, 363 n. 12 Holbach, Paul Henri d': critic of final causes, 520; nature not a work, 521; and Voltaire, 523 Holy Land: Hakewill on physical decline of, 478 Homosexuality, 217 Horace: on rural life, 31-32; on atmosphere of Boeotia, 101 Hottentots: Locke on, 583; J. R. Forster on, 6i 3 House: Vitruvius on development of, 108 Humboldt, A. von: on Basil's hexaemeron, 177; on pastoral stage unobserved in New World, 142; on vegetation, 543-548; and G. Forster, 543-544, 611; on environmental stimuli and map of Chimborazo, 547; on settlement, 547-548; and Dunbar, 600; and Malthus, 643; m. 12, 119, 596, 616 Hume, David: 525-529; and climatic theories, 585-587; and senescence in nature, 629; on population history, 629, 630,651; on climatic change by man, 659; m. 552, 621 Humors: theory of, 10-12, 80-81; Avicenna on, 264; Bodin on, 438-439; Evelyn on, 490; Du Bos on, 557 Humus; 410, 424 Hunting: reservation of forests for, 326, 338; passion for, in Middle Ages, 346-347; prohibition of, 347 Huxley, Thomas H., 482, 666 Hydrologic cycle, 193, 388, 413, 510 Hymn to Sun, 36-38 Iconography, 247 Ideas: stemming from daily life and observation, 49, 71-72, 272, 295-296, 392, 624 Indians: of Chinantla, D. de Esquivel on, 359; Garces against enslavement of, 360; Sublimits Dens of Pope Paul III on humanity of, 360; Acosta on origin of, 366-368 Industrial Revolution, 705

7 56

Index

Insects: and design, 76, 205, $33,677 Institutions: effects of, on culture, 7-8 Invention: independent, 108, 167, 607-608; and climate, 587 Irenaeus: shortcomings of knowledge of nature, 183 Iron mills: Evelyn on, 487 Isaiah: curse on earth, 162 n. 32; and Cedd's founding of a monastery, 306 Isidore of Seville: as transmitter of classical knowledge, 115, 208-209, 227; and environmental influences, 2J7-258, 264; geography of, 260, 264, 272 Islands: encourage rise of civilizations, 616 Isocrates, 127-128 Isolation: effects on culture of, 7, 282, 593-594 Israel, lost tribes of, and America, 367 Jefferson, Thomas: and Buffon, 681-682; m. 685 Jerome. See St. Jerome Jerusalem, 303 Job, Book of, on God as creator of an ordered world, 155-156 John, Chrysostom: on nature as a book, 203, 205 John the Scot: his theophany, 209-212; Gilson on his theophany, 238; environmental causes of human differences, 261-262 Josephus: on Greek historians, 1 1 0 - 1 1 1 Kahn, Charles H., 8-9,10, 17 Kalm, Peter: on North America, 541, 609, 683, 685-686 Kames, Lord: on pastoralism, 142; on climate and degeneration, 595-596; m. 545, 616 Kant, Immanuel: on teleology in nature, 529535; and George Forster on race, 619; on environmental change by man, 659; m. 50, 509 Keill, John: defense of final causes, 412-414; m.74 Kepler, Johannes: on final causes, 376 Kliger, Samuel: on climate and Gothic love of liberty, 261 n. 17 Klimata, the seven: in Posidonius, 98; in Art of Falconry, 226; in Ibn Khaldun, 255 n. 3; mixtures in, 265; traditional classification of, 267; in Albert the Great, 267; in Diderot's Encyclopédie, 584 Koran, Latin translation of, 218 Labor: dignity of, in Christian thought, 302306, 350 n. 210 Lactantius: on utility of earth to man, 180-181 Lafitau, Joseph Francois: on Indians, 361; Robinson's objections to, 608 Land: late study of nonagricultural, 137; multiple uses of, 470 n. 21; historical sequence in occupation of, 642 Landscapes: ancient, J . Bradford on, 146-147; Buffon's distinction between natural and cultural, 679-680

Lamarck, Chevalier de: on adaptive evolution, 549.620 Las Casas, Bartolome de, 360, 367 Law: and environmental change in Middle Ages, 316; and climate, 432 Lefebvre des Noettes, Richard: inventions and environmental changes, 318-319 Leff, Gordon: on John the Scot's view of nature, 212 n. 125; on condemnations of 1277, 250, n. 257; on Duns Scotus, 251; on Thomas Aquinas, 251 Leibniz, Gottfried W.: defender of final causes, 377, 506-508; on preestablished harmony, 477; on human knowledge, 477; optimism of, 477-478; on progress in earth's cultivation, 477, 478, 636; on partial views, 505506; on the Cartesians, 506; and advances in the study of life, 507; on invention, 507; on monads, 507; on law of sufficient reason, 508; on principle of plenitude, 508; on rationality and morality in the universe, 508 Le Roy, Louis, 447 Leucippus: and classical atomist theory, 64 Liberty: and the Goths, 261; reigns in mountains, 576-577 Life: Origen on, 184; existence of before sun's creation, 193 and n. 52; fecundity of, 624 Linnaeus: and design argument with reference to plants and animals, 510-512; m. 624 Lisbon earthquake, 515, 521-522, 524 Locke, John: on moral causes, 583 Logos: creativity of, in Posidonius, 54 London: Evelyn's plan for, 489-490 Lope de Vega: on the New World, 362 Lorain, John: on land uses in 18th cent. America, 693-697; m. 685 Lorris, Guillaume de. See Romance of the Rose Love: and the four elements, 63 Loveioy, Arthur O.: principle of plenitude, 5 6; in Plotinus, 77 and nn. 122, 123 Lucretius: his organic analogy, 7; his feeling for nature, 29-30; and Theophrastus's teleology, 50-51; and Democritus, 65; Epicureanism of, 67; on design argument, 68-69; on senescence in nature, 70-72, 135; teleology in, 70; on niggardliness of nature, 72-73; environmental biology in, 101; on wisdom of gods, 134; on animal domestication, 138-139; on forest fires and origin of metallurgy, 139; summary, 140; on environment changed by man, 140; and Arnobius, 179; and Celsus, 185; and Hakewill, 386; m. 17, 357, 381,667 Ludwig of Bavaria: forest regulations of, 339 Lull, Ramon. See Ramon Lull LyeÙ, Charles: versus physico-theologists, 548; anticipation of his ideas in Buffon, 679-680; m. 646 Machiavelli, Nicolò: on soil and civilization, 4H-434

Index Macrocosm: in Greek thought, 17; Stoic idea of sympathy and, 57; Maimonides on, 223; Paracelsus on, 465—466; m. 413 Maimonides, Moses: on creation and design, 222-224 Mâle, Êmile: on love of nature in Middle Ages, 173; on medieval religious art and nature, 245-246; m. 2J3 Malthus, Thomas R.: general ideas, 502, 637638; and Siissmilch, 515, 649; on fecundity of life, 624, ¿40-641, 648; on populousness of ancient nations, 632; and Condorcet and Godwin, 634,635; and Godwin, 640,649-650, 653; and birth control, 638-639; on earth as a limiting factor, 639; and distribution of world population, 639-641; on concept of land, 639-640, 643; and modifications of nature by man, 641-642, 649; pessimism of, 642; his concepts of soil, 642; and Humboldt, 643; and institutional reform, 644; and progress, 644-645; on nature of man, 645; optimism of, 645-646; and religion, 646-647; and disease, 647; philosophy of, 647-648; human passions in, 648; m. 6, 399, 422, 581 Man: significance of his erect carriage, 42, 52, 117, 187; as apex of creation, 52, 57, 60; on origin of, 96, 261, 401-402; as creator of novelty in nature, 116; as steward of God, 152, 155, 168, 236, 311-312, 405, 463, 480-482; and rationality, 185-186; evaluations of human nature, 198; St. Augustine on his nature, 201; as finisher of the Creation, 293, 427-428, 466, 506, 529; reasons for his creation, 405; adaptability of, 459-460, 590; uniqueness of, 463464; an amphibious piece, 475-476; as exterminator of life, in Buffon, 677-678. See also entries under Man's; and Nature, modification by human agency Man's dominion over nature: and Genesis, 151, >59» 193; and daily observation, 166; in Psalm 8, 166; and relation of, to God, 168; Bede on, 205-206; Neckam on, 206; Thomas Aquinas on, 236; Philo on, 295; Origen on, 297; Gregory of Nyssa on, 298; ideas of monks on, 310; after the Fall, 311. See also Nature, control of Man's Fall: Raven on, 163 n. 34; symbolism of, 163 n. 35; St. Augustine on, 200; Neckam on, 206; John the Scot on, 212; Albert the Great on, 228-229; Thomas Aquinas on, 236; and cultural diversity, 262; and his dominion over nature, 311, 349; and curse on nature, 379; Woodward on, 409; Whiston on, 411; F. Bacon on, 471-472; Lorain on, 695 Man's place in nature: Stoic and Epicurean views, 67; in Stoicism, 145; in Psalm 8, 155; in Job 38, 156; Lactantius on, 181; Philo on, 189; St. Augustine on, 198; Maimonides on, 222-223; Ramon Sibiude on, 240; in The Romance of the Rose, 243; Albert the Great on, 270-271; Cosmas Indicopleustes on, 300-

757

301; H . More on, 395; Hale on, 400-401,405, 480; Ray on, 420-421 ; in physico-theology, 425, 504; F. Bacon on, 471-472; T . Browne on, 475; Linnaeus on, 5 1 1 ; Busching on, 515— 516; Kant on, 533-534; in Malthus and Godwin, 653; Buffon on, 590,664,668,684; Wm. Robertson on, 684; summary, 708-709 Manuring, 136-137, 316 n. 95 Maritime location: effects of, on culture, 7, 102, 431 Marsh, George P.: on human changes of environment, 149,663, 679, 702, 704, 705 Marshes, 680, 689 Marxism, 550, 646, 649 Maulde, René de: on use of forests in Middle Ages and Renaissance, 323-324, 326-327; m. 3 Ì6 Maury, Alfred: on Salic law on forest protection, 344 Mediterranean environment, 10, 39, 85, 148,155 Memphite theology: J . A . Wilson on, 36-38 Metallurgy: origin of, 139 Metals: agricola on civilizations' need of, 469 Metempsychosis, 296, 580 Meun, Jean de. See The Romance of the Rose Microcosm: in Greek thought, 17; Stoic idea of sympathy and, 57; Paracelsus on, 465-466 Microscope, 375,417, 506-507, 526 Middle Ages: modern study of, 172-173, 288289, 319 Migration: causes of, 259-261 Milton, John: and theories of climatic influence, 449 Minerals: Seneca on distribution of, 61 Mining, 290, 340; Agricola's defense of, 468-469 Minucius Felix: on the earth as a planned abode, 176-179 Moisture: and thinking, 81-82, 102,158 Monads: Leibniz on, 507 Monasteries, 303-309; selection of sites for, 306-307, 312; Thomey abbey, 313; land use by Troarn abbey, 331 Monastic siting: Orderic Vital on, 312 Monks: labor of, G . Coulton on, 289 n. 1, 314 n. 87; friendship with animals, 346 Monogamy: Botero on, 371; Graunt on, 398; and Christian religion, 514; Montesquieu on, 573-J74. 617 Montaigne, M.: and Ramon Sibiude, 238; influence of place, 450 Monte Cassino: poet Mark's description of, 303-304 Montesquieu: senescence in nature, 134; revival of environmental theories, 502, 551; Siissmilch on, 512; Herder on, 540; reception of his L'ésprit des Lois, 566-567; influences on, 567-568; sources of his ideas, 567-568, 574 n. 64; and sheep's tongue experiment, 569; on climate and religion, 571-572, 579-580; on China, 572, 577; cultural relativism in,

7j8

Index

573; on drunkenness, 573; on public health, 573; on slavery, 573; on peoples of Asia and Europe, 574-575; and Plutarch, 576 n. 69; on liberty in mountains, 576-577; population theory of, 578-579, 627-629, 653; and A. Ferguson, 605; on clerical celibacy, 627; Godwin on, 651; and cultural milieu, 653-654; on environmental change by man, 658; m. 12, Moon: Plutarch on life on, 74-75 More, Henry: physico-theology of, 395 Moschus: feeling for nature in, 28-29 Mountains: necessary in the design, 376, 413, 419; attitude to, 411; as alembics, 413; and liberty, 576-577 Münster, Sebastian: cosmography of, 363-366 Music: of spheres, 17; Polybius on, 95-96 Muslim theology. See Theology, Muslim Muslim thought: and ideas of environmental influence, 255 n. 3 Myth: concepts of order and purpose in, 3; personification of natural forces, 5; celestial archetypes, 117; man as orderer of nature, "7 National character: Greek interest in, 8; Servius on, 115, 209; Medieval interest in, 263; Bodin on, 435; 17th cent, interest in, 451; Bishop Hall on, 451; Overbury on, 451-451; Barclay on, 452-454; Temple On, 454-455; changed by diet, « 5 ; Du Bos on, 559; Arbuthnot on, 564; Helvétius on, 584; Hume on, 586; 18th cent, interest in, 621; and environmental theories, 709. Natural history, 416,419-420,423-424, 508-509, 587-588, 621, 657-658, 707 Nature: constancy of, 7, 165, 380-382, 384, 387, 389-390, 416; as proof of God's existence, 36, 175, 392; niggardliness of, 72-73, 165, 433, 527, 529, 549, 636, 645; struggle in, 77; curse on, 153-154, 162-165, 212, 232, 236, 481; rejection of, in Christian thought, 162, 181; beauties of, 392, 395, 397; asymmetry in, 397; light of, 466; chaos of disharmony in, 508; blindness of, 529-530 Nature as a book: in Athanasius, 203; in St. Augustine, 203-204; in Alan of Lille, 204; in E. Curtius, 204-205; in Thomas Aquinas, 232; in St. Bonaventura, 237; in Ramon Sibiude, *38 Nature, conceptions of: 3; ecosystem, 6; principle of plenitude, 6; balance, harmony, and unity of, 6, 14-15, 17, 380, 391, 393, 502, 508, 519, 527-528, 547, 693-698 passim, and astrology, 16; and terrestrial unity, 17; in Stoicism, 51-52; utilitarian view of, 57-58, 198-199, 395, 397, 423-424; Yahweh, God of an ordered universe, 155; in Book of Job, 155-156; in Psalm 104, 157; in Romans 1:20, 161; in Psalms, 165; creator and the created,

165-166; Judeo-Christian idea of habitable world, 168; providence creates for rational nature, 185; St. Augustine on, 175, 198-199; as movement powered by the love of God, 212; in Alan of Lille, 216-217; in Thomas Aquinas, 230, 232-233; in The Romance of the Rose, 241, 245; in 12th and 13th cents., 245; in Duns Scotus, 251; in 17th cent., 378379, 391,406,414-415; in 17th and 18th cents., 424; in Wotton, 391; in Ray, 394, 419; in Leibniz, 505-506; teleological view of, 508509; geometrical view or, 509-510; in Linnaeus, 511; in D'Holbach, 521; in Hume, 524-526; in Kant, 532; in Goethe, 536; as parent and teacher, 542, 549; in Humboldt, 543; in Malthusian theory, 647; dignity of, bestowed by man, 653; in Buffon, 664, 680682; weakness of, in New World, 681-685; in the Forsters, 703 Nature, feeling for: Scully on sacred landscapes, 12-13; in Hellenistic Age, 13, 24-25, 32-25, 32-33; in Homer, 13, 25, 32; in Apollonius Rhodius, 26-27; in Theocritus, 27-28; in Bion, 28-29; i n Lucretius, 29-30; in Virgil, 30; in Tibullus, 31-32; in Horace, 31-32; in Columella, 32-33; in Varro, 32-33; contrasts between natural and cultural landscapes, 3233; in Panaetius, 51-52; in Plotinus, 77-78; in Christian thought, 151, 196-197; in Psalms, 157-158, 165; in Proverbs 8, 158; in the Wisdom literature, 158; in Ecclesiasticus, 160; in Middle Ages, 173, 207, 245-246; in St. Augustine, 199; and cloister foundings, 207; in St. Bernard, 213-214; in St. Francis, 214215; in Villard de Honnecourt, 246-247; in manuscript of Benedictbeuern, 247-248; in Gunther of Pairis, 285-286; in Pope Pius II, 355-357; i n Ray, 418; in Barclay, 452-453; in Kant, 533-534; in Humboldt, 546-547; in Dunbar, 600; in G. Forster, 703 Nature, man's control of: in ancient world, 116—117; and human memory, 146; Philo on, 295-296; modern ideas on, contrasted with earlier ones, 349; modern interest in, 425-427, 494; and idea of man as a geographic agent, 461-462; and domestication,'463; optimism of in I7th-i8th cent., 471, 478; F. Bacon on, 472-473; Descartes on, 476; Hale on, 480485; purposive nature of, 495-496; and technology, 496. See also Man's dominion over nature Nature, man's place in. See Man's place in nature Nature, modifications by human agency: in myth, 117; in antiquity, 119; in Sophocles' Antigone, 119-120; in Plato's Critias, 119120; in Hellenistic Age, 122-123; Isocrates on, 127; Herodotus on, 127; Strabo on, 128; Eratosthenes on, 128-129; and significance of domestication (see also domestication),

Index 129,136,463; Theophrastus on, 129-130; and soÜ fertility, 131; and the natural order, 135; and arable land, 137; in Stoic philosophy, 138, 144; Lucretius on, 138; Varro on, 141-, Virgil on, 143; Cicero on, 145; in Hermetical writings, 146; ancient and modern contrasts, 149; in Christian thought, i j i , 293; in Psalm 8, 157; in Middle Ages, 175, 206, 288 n. 1, 290, 292-293, 318-320, 323-324, 331, 3jo; Lactantius on, 181; Origen on, 185, 297; Philo on, 187-188, 295; St. Bernard on, 214; in The Romance of the Rose, 242; Albert the Great on, 270, 314-316, 3 j i ; as history, 289-292; and theology, 294; by monastic settlements, 294, 302, 308-309, 312, 313; and attitude of early Church Fathers, 295, 301; Tertullian on, 296; Gregory of Nyssa on, 298; St. Ambrose on, 298-299; St. Augustine on, 299300; Theodoret on, 300; in Cosmas Indicopleustes, 300-301; and creations in the wilderness, 312-313; and undesirable changes, 316, 495; and law and custom, 316-317, 322-330, 333; and destructiveness of domestic animals, 342-343; and deforestation, 345; and Age of Discovery, 358-359; Sebastian Münster on, 365; Botero on, 371; Henry More on, 395; in early modern period, 427-428, 462, 471, 484485, 494-497; in 17th cent, thought, 425, 471, 478; Ficino on, 463-464; Alberti on, 464-465; Leonardo da Vinci on, 465; Paracelsus on, 466-467; in F. Bacon's New Atlantis, 474475; Hakewill on, 478; Burton on, 479-480; Hale on, 480-482; Ray on, 483-484; and optimism of modern interpretations, 484-485, 494-497, 704-705; Evelyn on, 485-491; in French Forest Ordinance of 1669, 494; Biisching on, 516; Kant on, 531, 659; Herder on, 541-542; Kalm on, 541-542, 686; Du Bos on, 559; Montesquieu on, 577, 658; Rousseau on, 594; Malthus on, 641-642, 649; modern literature on, 656-657; and climatic change, 659; Hume on, 659; and destruction of animal habitats, 662; Noah Webster on, 663; in Buff on (see also chap. 14), 663,676; Chateaubriand on, 686; in New World, 686-698; Chastellux on, 686-687; B. Rush on, 687-688; T . Wright on, 688; Seybert on, 689; Volney on, 690-691; Bartram on, 691-692; uniqueness of by European man, 691-693; Jared Eliot on, 691-693; and harmony of nature, 693; Lorain on, 695-697; and pristine and altered nature, 698; and study of torrents, 698-699; Fabre on, 699-702; J. Förster on, 702; in 18th cent, thought, 704-705; summary, 710 Nature, senescence in. See Senescence in nature Necessity: idea of, in Democritus, 65; the mother of invention, 68, 73, 88, 180, 185, 297, 466. 547. J«7. 597.