OCR Text |
Show 282. place to place, establishing a farm and then selling it. The farmer's philosophy was simple: "Culture is an orchard apple; Nature is a crab." Men who suspected "in the manufactures of Nature something essentially coarse," were limited by their own lack of finer senses. This had been the message of Thoreau's "Wild Apples," and "The Natural History of Massachussets." Only the godlike of men might appreciate the ambrosial qualities of fruit, and "a deeper and finer experience" was the true aim of science. So the wild wool came into Muir's dialogue. "Wild wool is finer than tame," he said, "finer than the average grades of cultivated wool." Such a fine discovery was the result of Muir's finer senses. The quality of Nature's product could be considered in terms of use "because fine wool is appreciable by everybody alike. ..." When Muir's friend responded that a wild sheep was deficient in quantity of wool, Muir could respond that wild wool wasn't made for socks, but for the sheep who wore it. "I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made for itself," he insisted. Wild species were designed to take care of themselves, unlike orchard apples and domestic sheep. We all know what happened to them when they were abandoned. Nature "would throw the one to her caterpillars, the other to her wolves." Were it not for the exercise of individualizing cares on the part of Nature, the universe would be |