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Show 320 had decided upon two strategies which he would use to improve the relationship between Americans and their environment, and change the course of natural history on the North American continent. The first was his out-of-doors gospel, with its cornerstone of compulsory recreation. The second was his call for government to protect the natural resources of America. They were separate strategies and would require separate campaigns which would take much of his energy for the rest of his years. The first was a matter of educating people, convincing them to change their consciousness and their way of life. Muir's journal suggested that this should be an institutional change like compulsory education. The second would require that government take firm control over the natural resources of the States, and by logical extension, the continent. This was a call for institutionalized stewardship. Both of Muir's programs challenged the prevailing trend toward social Darwinism in America. The more vulgar form of this movement was characterized by William Sumner, who developed a kind of "Naturalistic Calvinism," based on the image of the "industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the protestant ideal," as the model citizen capable of winning the hard struggle against Nature. This kind of man was the hero who could rise in a system of laissez faire capitalism. The social Darwinist thought that Man's duty was to work, and leisure was suspect. When Muir looked at civilization and the "multitude of wants" it engendered, he denounced the "chains of duty and habit which bind us, notwithstanding our boasted freedom." A |