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Show 31 really, Nature's jack-of-all-trades, master of none? It was absurd. The alligator ruled the swamps because he was made in and for the environment which was his home. Yet Muir knew that there was a "numerous class of men" who had a "precise dogmatic insight of the intentions of the Creator," and regarded Him in anthropomorphic terms, as a "civilized, law-abiding gentleman." For these men, the Creator simply provided His sheep, whales, cereals, cotton, iron, etc. But Muir had learned that all the world was not given to Man. He knew that Man could not walk on water, and asked, "Why does water drown its lord?" He believed that men were made from the same material as all other creatures, "from the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund." He could no longer believe the "closet researches of clergy," and refused to see Nature through the eye of Christian dogma. After this rebellion, he could "joyfully return to the immortal truth and immortal beauty of Nature." AN ETHICAL DILEMMA: BEARS, COYOTES, MEN, AND SHEEP Well, I have precious little sympathy for the myriad bat eyed proprieties of civilized man, and if a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man I would be tempted to side with the bears. - Draft version, Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf With these words Muir concluded the section of his journal which recorded his experiences in Florida's swamps and forests. Later, when he revised this passage, he decided that men were |