Conservation of natural resources; Country life; Earth (Planet); Natural resources; Nature
Lack of training in the realities drives us to find satisfaction in all
sorts of make-believes and in play-lives. The "movies" and many other
developments of our time make an appeal wholly beyond their merits, and
they challenge the methods and intentions of education.
There are more fundamental satisfactions than "thrills." There is more
heart-ease in frugality than in surfeit. There is no real relish except
when the appetite is keen. We are now provided with all sorts of things
that nobody ever should want.
The good spiritual reaction to nature is not a form of dogmatism or
impressionism. It results normally from objective experience, when the
person is ready for it and has good digestion. It should be the natural
emotion of the man who knows his objects and does not merely dream about
them. There is no hallucination in it. The remedy for some of the
erratic "futurism" and other forms of illusion is to put the man hard
against the facts: he might be set to studying bugs or soils or placed
between the handles of a plow until such time as objects begin to take
their natural shape and meaning in his mind.
It is not within my purview here to consider the abstract righteous
relation of man to the creation, nor to examine the major emotions that
result from a contemplation of nature. It is only a very few of the
simpler and more practical considerations that I may suggest.
The training in solid experience naturally emphasizes the righteousness
of plain and simple eating and drinking, and of frugality and control in
pleasures. Many of the adventitious pleasures are in the highest degree
pernicious and are indications of weakness.
Considering the almost universal opinion that nature exhibits the
merciless and relentless struggle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth, it is significant that one of the most productive ways of
training a youth in sensitiveness and in regard for other creatures is
by means of the nature contact. Even if the person is taught that the
strong and ferocious survive and conquer, he nevertheless soon comes to
have the tenderest regard for every living thing if he has the naturist
in him. He discards the idea that we lose virility when we cease to
kill, and relegates the notion to the limbo of deceits. This only means
that unconsciously he has experienced the truth in nature, and in
practice has discarded the erroneous philosophy contained in books even
though he may still give these philosophies his mental assent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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