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Show 124. levertheless, familiarity with mountains drew the alpinists :o an inescapable conclusion that the mountains were falling lown, and such close observations led to the further assumption that the rockfall and receding glaciers signaled the slow death of the mountains. Leslie Stephen agreed, and spoke of the situation as true and sad, but still announced that the purpose of his book, The Playgrounds of Europe, was . . . to prove that whilst all good and wise men necessarily love the mountains, those love them best who have wandered longest in their recesses, and have most endangered their own lives and those of their guides in the attempt to open out routes amongst them. Even dying mountains could be a source of spiritual insight. Stephen and Whymper justified the activity of mountaineering in aesthetic terms which seemed a diminished version of the spiritual perspective. For instance, Stephen argued, Now the first merit of mountaineering is that it enables one to have what theologians would call an experimental faith in the size of mountains - to substitute a real living belief for a dead intellectual assent. Stephen meant not only that one could measure the magnitude of mountains in terms of muscular exertion, where "every step of the ascent has a beauty of its own," but also, "That which gives its inexpressible charm to mountaineering is the incessant series of exquisite natural scenes which are for the most Part enjoyed by the mountaineer alone." Thus the aesthetic |
