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Show 438. at the end of the last century, it is important that the primary source be always in mind. I do not wish to attack my fellow students. I wish only to remind them which side we are on. I wish only to say a word for wildness, even while immersing myself in this most civilized game. While I find myself repeating the homework assignments of the past, reviewing the significant books on this period by Hans Huth, Leo Marx, Roderick Nash, Robert Shankland, Henry Nash Smith, Donald Swain, Kevin Starr, John Ise, Elmo Richardson, Holway Jones, or Joseph Sax, I need to remind myself that these are only secondary sources. And I find that these writers have committed their own errors in forgetting that they were creating secondary sources. This becomes most obvious in their references to Muir himself. These books, and others like them, form a significant and powerful tradition. They rely on each other, and a student reading them forgets very easily that he is studying the map, and not the territory. The Muir they present is the persona who appeared in his own essays, and in articles and books about him. it is the Muir who has been edited. For instance, The Wilderness World of John Muir is a fine book, but it is Teal's version of Muir's works, selected to present a handsome and acceptable Muir. It is a secondary or tertiary source. Why all this soul-searching? Why should we be suspicious of the very tradition which has allowed us to think seriously and accurately about the relationship between man and environment in American history? Precisely because the tradition |