This paper was the banquet presentation at the conference Making Environmental History Relevant in the 21st Century, a joint meeting of the History Society and the American Society for Environmental History in March 2001. The author’s George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation, was published in the University of Washington Press’s Weyerhaeuser Environmental series in 2000.

MARSH’S MAN AND NATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

BY DAVID LOWENTHAL

an and Nature is a title that crosses Mtime: Marsh’s 1864 classic speaks to our own environmental angst. engrossed Marsh first and last; “forest- born,” he held that few people had “as good a claim to personality as a respectable oak.”1 Man and Nature’s key chapter is “The Woods,” whose loss had triggered far-reaching global impacts. “The too general felling of the woods,” he sums up, is “the most destructive among the many causes of the physical deterioration of the earth.”2 Rapid runoff and loss from forest clearance were for Marsh man’s worst wound to nature, forest renewal the prime remedy. Yet his title proved troublesome. It was a problem at the outset because Marsh’s publishers feared “Man and Nature” too vague to make its point; the phrase seemed metaphysical, not material. Hence the sec- ond edition reversed title and subtitle. Less memorably crisp, “The Earth as Modified by Human Action” was candidly down-to- earth. All through life Marsh stressed his “earthy, material” “mudpile” bent.3

George Perkins Marsh, conservationist and author of the 1864 Man and Nature, or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. An acclaimed linguist, lawyer, congressman, and diplomat, he served 25 years as U.S. envoy to Turkey and then to Italy. He helped found and

guide the Smithsonian Institution. ARCHIVES, WOODSTOCK, VERMONT BILLINGS FAMILY

FOREST HISTORY TODAY | SPRING/FALL 2001 57 “Man and Nature” today poses a dif- foreseeable and incalculable, varying with Linguistic history confirmed deforesta- ferent problem, one unseen even when time-scale, technology, and social condi- tion: many ancient Italian towns bore Harvard reissued the book in 1965. But tion. Human agency was also morally tree-names like abete, àcero, càrpino, castag- soon afterwards, feminism began to imbued. Free-willed men ought to steward no, fàggio, fràssina, noce, pino, quèrcia. But proscribe the inclusive use of “man”; nature: they were answerable for any dam- by Marsh’s time these towns were devoid “human” or “humankind” became de age they did, whether from ignorant zeal of forest—and also of their former pros- rigueur. Environmental like other history or insensate greed. perity. Owing in part to geological caus- today bends to the vogue for salving our Thus began environmental history as es, but largely to “man’s ignorant forebears’ linguistic sins. It was hard for now seen. Well-informed on tree growth disregard of the laws of nature” and atten- the publisher of my new biography to and riparian regimes, soil absorption and dant “tyranny and misrule, . . . the fairest allow “man” in the generic sense Marsh erosion, Marsh deployed natural science and fruitfulest provinces of the Roman meant. Harder still to leave nature as to explain and animal history, Empire” were now exhausted, decrepit, “her”: despite Marsh’s deference to resource use, and land cover change. He infertile, barren.7 nature’s needs, he saw man as being reviewed dune control and watershed “above” and “conquering” “her.” management, irrigation and empolder- THE PREHISTORY OF The modern vogue for regendering ment, domestication and desertification, ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY man and nature barely scratches the sur- from the Alps to Appalachia, the Sahara to face of awkward lexical change. The long the Great Salt Lake, the Roman Campagna Marsh’s precursors were of course not century since Marsh has seen nature not to the Mississippi, Midwestern prairies to blind to man’s links with nature. Indeed, only neutered and idolized but national- the Po plain. natural history mirrored human history, ized, politicized, economized, not to for- His chronicles blend data from things the book of nature echoed the annals of get poisoned, purified, and cloned. The and from words— mountains and man- mankind. The earth gave food and shel- myriad meanings of nature explicated by uscripts, topography and toponymy. Why ter, sanctuary and spirit. The reciprocal Raymond Williams4 continue to metas- had Old-Norse no name for sand dunes? effects of locale and life had long intrigued tasize. And if like Marsh’s publishers we Because “only since the comparatively historians, who invoked landscape and ter- seek a down-to-earth proxy, we fare no recent destruction of the forests of rain, climate and , to explain why peo- better with “environment” or “landscape,” Jutland [had] the shifting coast-downs ples differed. In Western thought, both of which today are as messily multi- excited any interest as a source of danger dominion over nature was divinely form as “nature”. to the cultivated soil.”6 Like Darwin, decreed and spurred by Enlightenment Marsh devised an archaeology of knowl- science. To environmental determinists edge long before Foucault coined the nature was mankind’s master, to apostles MARSH’S PIONEERING phrase. But where Darwin built evolu- of progress mankind’s servant. But both ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY tion from fossil beings and reproductive stressed the two realms’ disparities and Our convenors’ aim—an environmental processes, Marsh derived ecology from scanted their parallels. Nature was mun- history to inform public policy—was also fossil language, artifacts, and landforms. dane and mindless, humans alone fash- Marsh’s: he termed it “important to the Darwin rewrote biological history as life ioned in God’s sublime image. This chasm interests of the American people to show science; Marsh fused environmental with made it clear to most, with Cambridge the evils resulting from too much clearing human events in a history combining Regius professor Charles Kingsley, that and cultivation, and often so-called man and nature. “history is the history of men and women, improvements.”5 His method was histor- For instance, ancient brickwork in and of nothing else.”8 ical: chronicling Old World environmen- Rome pointed to fuel scarcity owing to Later seers tried to tailor human his- tal follies and nascent reforms, he cited : tory to supposed laws of nature. Marx and past events to explain present conditions. Hegel likened social progress to the Man and Nature was the first historical The oldest bricks are very thin, and growth of living organisms. Toynbee and glimpse of human global impact. very thoroughly burnt. A few genera- Eliade equated the rise and fall of social Before Marsh, human agency was muf- tions later the bricks were thicker and orders to fixed planetary orbits; econo- fled by biblical prophecy or dominated by less well burnt. In the [late Empire] the mists ascribed fluctuations of boom and terrain and climate. Man’s link to nature bricks were still thicker, and generally bust, even war and peace, to sunspot was foreordained: for certain doom, as soft-burnt. This is due to the abun- cycles.9 But such analogies are too sim- 17th century divines said; or for predes- dance and cheapness of fuel in earli- plistic to explain complex and contingent tined progress, as 18th century er, and its growing scarceness and history. Historians rightly dismiss meta- philosophes held. Marsh scrapped airy pre- dearness in later, ages. When wood narratives that account for the cosmos but judgment for attested fact: he showed that cost little, constructors could afford to collapse at every aberrant event. They also human impress had differed with locale, burn their brick thoroughly; but as the mistrust environmentalism, both the old intensified over time, reflected myriad price of fire-wood advanced, they were determinism that makes society a pawn diverse causes and choices. Man and Nature able to consume less wood in brick- of all-powerful nature, and the new prim- chronicles manifold effects—beneficial and kilns, and the quality and quantity of itivism that fears to upset nature’s fragile harmful, intended and unsought, deliber- brick used in building were gradually harmony. Environmental history has ate and heedless, immediate and remote, reversed in proportion. pretty well outgrown such shibboleths.

58 FOREST HISTORY TODAY | SPRING/FALL 2001 Human history is still unique within like the conversion of Australian forest into the remotest planets, but the observa- the vast saga of nature. The changes and grassland and desert by Aboriginal fire — tions of six thousand years have added stases of mankind’s brief annals conform are seen to act in tandem with far swifter nothing to our knowledge of the irreg- little with the longer-range shifts and disruptions—such as the extirpation of ularities of our own seasons. rhythms of global and stellar time-spans. major fauna by precolumbian North Consciousness, imagery, and communi- American hunters. Meanwhile, cosmic Science had dispelled fears of planetary cations unexampled in the biosphere make aberrations beyond mankind’s present con- collision, but left earthquakes and volcanic human history singular and human impact trol episodically impact both natural and eruptions in fearsome limbo. formidable. Memory and intent, awareness human history. In short, the closer one peered, the less of death and of former and future lives, The refutation of Clements’s ecologi- constant nature looked. “Disturbing caus- uniquely enrich our annals with hindsight cal paradigm, Mart Stewart’s “splendid es, infinite in number, and various in oper- and foresight. In sum, brief recency, tran- consensus” of the 1960s and 1970s, deprives ation,” undermined every presumed scendent awareness, and archival cumula- us of what seemed a sure model of regularity and subverted general laws. “Led tion set human history apart.10 nature.11 But the collapse of old certitudes to expect uniformity, we are embarrassed is, in my view, not dismaying but liberat- and confounded with variety.”14 So too ing. The unknown is no longer shunned with the interplay of slope and sediment, GROWING CONVERGENCE but embraced. For example, consider atti- water and soils, predator and prey, in every OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY tudes toward irreversibility. Conservation spot on earth. “The equation of animal and This caveat aside, the current melting-pot dogma once enjoined doing nothing that vegetable life is too complicated a problem of environmental history and earth sci- could not be undone. This stultifying man- for human intelligence to solve,” he added ence promises a feast of novel insights. date applied alike to nature, to buildings, in Man and Nature. Hence the environ- While historians learn to grapple with and to works of art. But now we realize mental future could never be foretold.15 environmental science, biologists and geol- that reversibility is a chimera: nothing can Least knowable was the effect of ogists perforce turn historical. Gone are ever be wholly undone, both culture and human agency. “We can never know how yesterday’s equilibria and enduring cli- nature run in the one-way stream of time. wide a circle of disturbance we produce maxes, Frederic Clements’s and Howard To come to terms with time’s arrow is in nature when we throw the smallest Odum’s stable states deranged only by more fruitful, as well as wiser, than to pebble into the ocean of organic life.”16 remote and rare events or by human inter- yearn for untenable reversion. Landscapes And as we are ever able to hurl more and ference. In their stead is a nature buffeted are better relished as living ephemera than bigger pebbles we keep outstripping our by episodic uncertainties, whose dating as dioramas fixed in amber.12 calculus of their impact. This insight has and outcomes demand historical appraisal even greater resonance today, notes in ways familiar to human annalists. In trac- William Meyer, now that “the secondary, MODERN RELEVANCE ing what has happened on earth, even in distant, and surprising effects of which OF MAN AND NATURE galactic space, scientists study vestiges of Marsh spoke have become common- historical events—volcanic eruptions, mete- Marsh’s Man and Nature presages many place.” More alert to the invisible and the or impacts, earthquakes, tsunami, fire, shifts modern insights in environmental history. unexpected, we are less bemused than of climate and ocean currents—much as Here I discuss three: ecological ignorance Marsh by nature’s inconstancy.17 But we prehistorians and archaeologists do. always outpaces knowledge; small is potent; have not adopted his resultant ecological The more we learn of natural and human might forever alters the earth. humility. Marsh came to terms with human histories, the more evident their nature’s “baffling complexity, its inherent fusion becomes. No history of forests or Ignorance unpredictability, its daily turbulence”;18 fire can ignore human impact; a merely What made the everyday world so many who followed forgot his humbling natural saga of domestication or of epi- bizarrely baffling? The issue piqued Marsh cautions. demics would be a contradiction in terms. in an 1847 lecture at Harvard, even as he A true overview of any locale requires urged Congress to secure science in the Small is potent integrated chronicles of rocks and soils, new Smithsonian Institution.13 Some quirk All levels of being, from tiny to huge, and animals, early tribal and later revealed the remote in nature while shape ecological outcomes. Undue heed national peoples—histories not segment- obscuring the near; scholars could “decom- to what is big or prominent blinds men to ed by separate disciplines, as before, but pose the sunbeam” but were unable “to causal links and nuances. Darwin saw how synthesized in commingled narratives. weigh a scruple”: incremental deviations over millions of Also being bridged is the traditional years transformed living forms beyond temporal chasm between natural and The astronomer can predict with recognition; Marsh stressed the cumula- human history. To be sure, farming and unerring precision the courses of the tive impact of myriad tiny beings, the industry vastly magnified human impact, stars in all past and all coming time, aggregate weight of the least of human but it is now common knowledge that yet no seer can tell whether favorable agencies. “We habitually regard the whale hunters and gatherers were no strangers or adverse breezes will impel the ship and the elephant as essentially large and to ecological debacle. Prehistory grades that this day ventures forth upon the therefore important creatures,” but rock with little break into history proper. uncertain deep. . . . We know the place, layers owe little to their bones, whereas Processes operating over many millennia— the dimensions, the specific gravity of diatoms and other microscopic creatures

FOREST HISTORY TODAY | SPRING/FALL 2001 59 make up strata thousands of feet thick nature’s quasi-balance. Humans were nature would have meant regression from over much of the earth. De minimis non unique among predators in the magnitude science’s clear benefits to primeval hunger, curat lex, “the law does not concern itself and purpose of their impact. “Wild ani- fear, and superstition. Reform entailed not with trifles,” was a good legal maxim but mals have [n]ever destroyed the smallest ceasing to impact nature but taking care a poor guide to environmental history.19 forest, extirpated any organic species, or in doing so. Growing human might Like accretions of organic decay, [caused] any permanent terrestrial demanded not relaxing but ordering a human impacts multiply step by step to change.” By contrast, “man pursues his more intense manipulation. Damage staggering effect. Thus erosion escalated victims [un]limited by the cravings of wrought by human agency might be by clearing and cultivating might at length appetite, [and] unsparingly persecutes, repaired only by human agency. No less thicken the earth’s crust beneath deltas even to extirpation, thousands of organic than Marsh, we inhabit a world indelibly and estuaries, and so shift the global cen- forms which he cannot consume.” marked by being managed. ter of gravity. Such a process might be Human damage was swift, pervasive, unquantifiable, its end result obscure. But and enduring; “the wounds . . . are not FUTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL “we are never justified in assuming a force healed until he withdraws the arm that HISTORY to be insignificant because its measure is gave the blow.” And often not for years to unknown, or even because no physical come, perhaps forever. On land cleared Whether bettered or botched, man and effect can now be traced to it.”20 fifty years before in Marsh’s native nature in the 21st century will become This point is amplified in Man and Ver mont, springs still dried up, rivulets more entwined. So will their histories: Nature’s last (1884) edition. “Cosmic forces dwindled, as unchecked runoff depleted new ecological dilemmas will make it of little comparative energy may, by long aquifers; fire-charred Mount Tom might imperative to know how man and nature continued or often repeated action, pro- need centuries to form “a stratum of soil shaped one another in the past. Not only duce sensible effects of great magnitude . thick enough to support a full-grown for- resource managers but the concerned . . as the sum of an almost infinite num- est.” Against such assaults nature is large- public will need awareness of environ- ber of infinitesimal impulses.” Ordnance ly helpless. Species wiped out are never mental history. Let us hope our numbers discharge might “accelerate or retard the reborn. Woodlands cleared may never and training meet the need. rotation of the earth, or even . . . deviate recover. “When the forest is gone, the Barring global catastrophe, growing the earth itself from her orbit.” Every deed great reservoir of moisture stored up in technical nous portends a nature ever may leave a physical imprint that science its vegetable mould is evaporated, and more manmade, both for good and for ill. could in time reveal, and future mathe- returns only in deluges of rain to wash How far the earth becomes garden or matics might “calculate even these small away the parched dust.”23 dunghill depends partly on attitude, part- cosmical results of human action.”21 Such Here and there men replant forests, ly on action; but the imprint of human a calculus could be crucial to mankind’s stem inundations, drain swamps, vegetate agency will be ever more manifest, per- welfare; carefully harnessed technologies dunes; but stewardship is rare. Instead, sistent, and inescapable. Of course no might shape a well-husbanded, reforested neglect and greed lay waste the world. locale is ever solely manmade—or whol- world. Plainly salient in the context of ly wild. But human impress will augment global warming, Marsh’s prevision “is still [In] parts of Asia Minor, of Northern even where we most closely copy nature. ahead of its time.”22 Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine As in restoration forestry, we will refash- Europe, . . . the operation of causes set ion the earth neither as it was nor as it Man’s powers for good and ill in action by man has brought the face would have been but for us, but as a cre- The dark menace, yet also the bright of the earth to a desolation almost as ative mix of natural and human rhythms promise, of culture’s impress on nature complete as that of the moon . . . The and disturbance regimes. was Marsh’s most profound insight. earth is fast becoming an unfit home for How will we gauge our hybrid scenes? Conventional Western wisdom had rated its noblest inhabitant, and another era “Sight is a faculty, seeing, an art,” wrote human influence either benign or negli- of equal human crime and human Marsh; “in general the eye sees only what gible. Nature was designed by an omnipo- improvidence . . . would reduce it to it seeks.” To see nature in full was, he felt, tent Creator who gave mankind dominion such a condition of impoverished pro- “the power most important to cultivate and bade him subdue and cultivate an ductiveness, of shattered surface, of cli- [yet] hardest to acquire.”25 We as his heirs earth thus rendered ever more fruitful. matic excess, as to threaten the are both more and less alert. Eagerness to Marsh exposed this saga of certain depravation, barbarism, and perhaps see has surged in America since the 1960s. progress as delusive. Mankind had fouled even extinction of the species.24 This reflects public concern in issues from as well as fructified the earth. Man and NIMBY to nuclear, stoked by media-hyped Nature limned enrichment less than ruin— Even more than Marsh we now see alarm, by rising personal wealth, and, as ruin made worse by every technologic how malign and enduring our impinge- Sam Hays has shown, by a shift from valu- gain. If undisturbed by man, terrain and ment often is. Aghast at the havoc, some ing land as provider not only of material soils, flora and fauna were in the short idealize nature free of human sway. The goods—timber, food, fuel—but also of term nearly “constant and immutable.” dream is futile. We can amend our impact intangibles—health, recreation, beauty, But man’s “self-conscious and intelligent but cannot curtail its intensity. Our impress sense of place.26 The spread of tourism will aiming as often at secondary and on nature will be ever greater—and graver. presages a similar global shift. As in remote as at immediate objects” shattered To Marsh, giving up dominion over forestry, “sustained yield” and “multiple

60 FOREST HISTORY TODAY | SPRING/FALL 2001 use” will cease to denote extractive drain in his day an ideal seldom preached, in which he had made such a sacrifice.”30 and come to encode ecological sense. ours more preached than practiced. Marsh initially trusted “enlightened self New visual habits at once enlarge and interest, for which [Americans] are cramp environmental awareness. Some remarkable, [to] introduce the reforms, STEWARDSHIP THEN AND NOW schooled by the screen then learn to look check the abuses, and preserve us from around. In the 1960s, the dominance of The root concern of Man and Nature was an increase of [the] evils” of gutting the print culture atrophied my landscape the welfare of future generations. “Man woods.31 Unlike Old World serfs, American architect students’ vision. They knew how has too long forgotten,” thundered Marsh, yeomen owned the land they tilled and to design specific sites, but could not relate “that the world was given to him for could hope to profit from their own their gardenesque jewels to a broader usufruct alone, not for consumption, still improvements. But the growth of unprin- milieu. Today not only designers but less for profligate waste.” Not for our own cipled corporate monopoly dimmed anthropologists and litterateurs exalt but for our offspring’s sake we need to Marsh’s faith in both enlightened self-inter- “landscape” as a visual metaphor for in- mend our prodigal and thriftless ways, est and “the diffusion of general intelli- depth discernment. “thus fulfilling the command of religion gence,” and he deleted this hopeful line The downside is that visual media dif- and of practical wisdom, to use this world from later editions of Man and Nature. fuse worldwide images ever more alike. as not abusing it.”28 Above all this required Abuse of nature could be curbed, resources As difference and variety dwindle, local restoring forested terrain. “The preserva- protected, the common weal served, only and regional settings become more simi- tion of existing woods, and the far more by public ownership or control. Over-gov- lar, less worthy of note. And the spread of costly extension of them where they have ernment also risked abuse by officials. “But pictures demeans the felt milieu; when been unduly reduced, are among the most the corruption thus engendered, foul as it surfing the Internet is so easy, why endure obvious of the duties which this age owes is, does not strike so deep as the rotten- actual waves? Copies, duplicates, and cults to those that are to come.” Such action ness of private corporations.” Unless “the of the virtual devalue the tangibly unique. Marsh felt “especially incumbent upon sacred right of every man to do what he Artifact and scene are sundered from Americans” deeply indebted to pioneer will with his own” were rescinded, disas- locale, experience confined to displays forebears’ “toils and sacrifices”—a debt ter loomed.32 of simulacra. No longer within a place, repayable only “by a like self-forgetting As with woods,33 so with waters; subject to vagaries of climate and terrain, care for the moral and material interests Marsh insisted on public ownership in a the interactive viewer becomes a topo- of our own posterity.”29 1874 irrigation report to Congress. Private logical gamester. Digital artifice deletes But could Americans who heeded the control led to “vested rights and monop- environment. past so little learn to steward the future? olies liable to great abuse.” The huge cap- A restless mobility severed them from ital outlay needed for irrigation squeezed home, from forebears, and from tradition. out small landholders, leaving only hired MARSH AS MODERN MENTOR? “It is rare that a middle-aged American laborers lacking any “proprietary interest I am often asked what Marsh would do dies in the house where he was born, or in the land they till.” In Italy, where Marsh today. How would he judge our environ- an old man even in that which he has was then American envoy, irrigation had mental views and acts? The query is high- built,” lamented Marsh. “This life of inces- long since eliminated the rural middle ly American—it never comes up in the Old sant flitting is unfavorable for the execu- class. The moral as well as the physical World. In one sense it is naively ahistori- tion of permanent improvements.” future of America meant not just pro- cal: how could a 19th-century mind fath- Because “the longest life [of any individ- tecting but actively favoring smallholders. om our modern plight? In another it is ual owner] hardly embraces the seedtime Social and economic equity in the arid devoutly hopeful: might musing on a fore- and the harvest of a forest, the value of its West required declaring “all lakes, rivers, bear’s ideas enhance our own? Noting how timber will not return the capital expend- and natural water-courses the inalienable recall of Abraham Lincoln has changed, ed and the interest accrued” for many gen- property of the State.” Long-term water- Barry Schwartz shows that such ques- erations. “It requires a very generous spirit rights concessions must also be prohibit- tions—often posed to Lincoln buffs—tran- in a landholder to plant a wood on a farm ed, lest changing environments or needs scend the issue at hand: seeking wisdom he expects to sell, or which he knows will render such concessions injurious to from a past mentor helps to free us from pass out of the hands of his descendants.” future public interests.34 the our own immediate mental confines.27 So “the planter of a wood must be “The sacred right of every man to do But another era’s lessons, however salu- actuated by higher motives than those of what he will with his own” has scarcely tary, cannot simply be recycled. Marsh’s an investment”—the future wellbeing of abated since Marsh’s day. Land-use con- views stem from a world whose memo- the wider community. And aiding the straints have made marginal gains where ries and mind-set, habits and hopes were future would benefit the present too; environmental health is at risk, but private profoundly unlike ours. They made sense securing “an approximately fixed ratio” property in general remains sacrosanct. in terms of their own time, not our time. among woodland, pasture, and arable Economists preach intergenerational equi- But in reviewing his concerns we may see would reduce the “restlessness” and “insta- ty but seldom apply it. Legislators pay rit- better how we relate to our own world bility” Marsh saw as major defects of ual deference to their grandchildren but and begin to bridge the gulf between the American life. For “the very fact of hav- act like the senator of a century ago, when landscapes we have and those we need. So ing begun a plantation would attach the implored to consider posterity: “Posterity? I end with Marsh’s take on stewardship, proprietor more strongly to the soil for What’s posterity done for me?”

FOREST HISTORY TODAY | SPRING/FALL 2001 61 Some deny any need to forgo imme- of the great world, shares the anxieties of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, diate benefits for the sake of a probably and the hazards of commerce, the toils 1976), 184–89. more competent and fortunate future. and the rivalries of the learned professions, 5. Marsh to Secretary of State William H. One renowned economist scorns “the or the fierce strife of contending political Seward, July 7, 1864, U.S. Dept. of State, imposition of any burdens on people alive factions, or who is engaged perhaps in Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs: Italy: Diplomatic Despatch no. 72, National today . . . in order to add a few percentage some industrial pursuit, and is oftener Archives. points to the incomes of their far richer stunned with the clang of the forge and 6. Man and Nature, 412n42, 414–15; George 35 descendants” a century on. Solutions to the hum of machinery, than refreshed by Perkins Marsh, A Dictionary of English shortages and environmental perils that the voice of the Muses.”42 Etymology, by Hensleigh Wedgwood, Vol. I now menace may indeed emerge. But this Marsh himself was the supreme (A—D), with Notes and Additions (New York, misses Marsh’s further point: concern for model. Lauding “this eminent man, who 1862), 237. future welfare is vital to present interests. studied languages while he practiced law, 7. Marsh, The Earth as Modified by Human Acts of communal care that bind present who divided his time between business Action: A New Edition of Man and Nature to past and future enrich us by extending and politics, who wrote books and deliv- (New York, 1874), 320n; Man and Nature, 10. meaning and enlarging purpose beyond ered lectures on literary subjects, and who 8. Charles Kingsley, The Limits of Exact our shallow single lifespan.36 investigated geographical problems while Science as Applied to History: An Inaugural Stewardship is not innate; it must be he elevated diplomacy,” the Harvard geo- Lecture. Delivered before the University of induced and cherished. In postindustrial grapher William Morris Davis a century Cambridge (Cambridge, England, 1860), 4. society, recurrent imminent crises, cor- ago strongly doubted that “advice on . . . 9. Paul A. Roth and Thomas A. Ryckman, porate avarice, frayed community ties, the national scientific problems can be as well “Chaos, Clio, and Scientistic Illusions of Understanding,” History & Theory 34 (1995): democratic process itself impose a tyran- given by intensive specialists of the mod- 30–44. ny of the present inimical to future con- ern school as by men of a wider experi- 10. David Lowenthal, “Environmental History: cern. The short-term immediacy that ence, of whom Marsh was so admirable From Genesis to Apocalypse,” History Today bedevils us today atrophies collective an example.”43 51:4 (April 2001): 36–42. vision. Like the far-sighted builders of In our yet more specialized present the 11. Mart A. Stewart, “Environmental History: medieval cathedrals, American Founding need for generalists is greater still. Profile of a Developing Field,” The History Fathers had a lively sense of their endur- Nowhere is the tyranny of expertise more Teacher 31 (1998): 351–68 at 356–57. ing importance. They were “painting for obnoxious than in environmental affairs. 12. See David Lowenthal, “Environment as eternity,” so they had to be sure to get When even lethal impacts can be detect- Heritage,” in Culture, Landscape and the things right.37 To instill a like sense of pur- ed only by arcane machines, it is the more Environment: The Linacre Lectures 1997, ed. pose we need our own transcendent pro- urgent that ordinary citizens become Kate Flint and Howard Morphy (Oxford: jects. We might tackle long-term threats broadly familiar with the forces that make Oxford University Press, 2000), 197–217 at like the byproducts of nuclear decay, lethal and shape us. Only so armed can we 209–10. for maybe a million years. Indeed, dealing responsibly use those forces and curb their 13. George Perkins Marsh, Speech on the Bill for Establishing the Smithsonian Institution, with these remote risks is vital if future risks. Rightly wary of flawed and fallible Delivered in the House of Representatives of the 38 generations are to inherit a viable planet. experts, amateurs must cope as best we U. States, April 22, 1846 (Congressional Environmental reform cannot, Marsh can with environmental enigmas that we Globe, 29 Cong. 1 Sess., App., 850–55). 44 argued, be left to the experts. Unless want- admit we can never fully fathom. . ■ 14. George Perkins Marsh, Human Knowledge: ed by society at large stewardship will be Discourse delivered before the Massachusetts spurned as imposed tyranny. Hence he Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, August 26, addressed Man and Nature “to the gener- David Lowenthal is Professor Emeritus of 1847 (Boston, 1847), 18–19, 22, 24. al intelligence of educated, observing, and Geography at University College London. 15. Man and Nature, 91. thinking men.” It made “no scientific pre- 16. Ibid., 91–92. Marsh here referred to “the har- tensions and will have no value for scien- monies of nature,” but he understood such NOTES tific men”; he sought only to “interest harmonies to be relative, not absolute. some people who are willing to look upon 1. George Perkins Marsh to Charles Eliot 17. William B. Meyer, Human Impact on the Earth nature with unlearned eyes.”39 He aimed Norton, May 24, 1871, Norton Papers, (New York: Cambridge University Press, to breach not just the bounds between the Harvard University. 1996), 5–6. sciences but the walls that segregated acad- 2. George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature; or, 18. Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Environmental History and the Ecological eme from active life. He wanted “the Action [1864], ed. David Lowenthal Imagination (New York: Oxford University world of the mind, like the world of pol- (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 170. 40 itics,” to become “a democratic republic.” Press, 1965), 3, 189. Subsequent references 19. Man and Nature, 111–12, 463–64. Populist breadth was a frontier and paginations to Man and Nature are to 20. Ibid., 464–65. Emily W. B. Russell, “Discovery American trait. Early American needs this edition unless otherwise specified. of the Subtle,” in Humans as Components of made “every man a dabbler in every 3. Marsh to Harriet Preston, April 12, 1882, Ecosystems, ed. Mark J. McDonnell and knowledge,” omnicompetent in all and to William Tecumseh Sherman, Feb. 27, Stewart T. A. Pickett, eds., Humans as realms.41 “The American scholar [was] not 1872, both in Marsh Papers, University of Components of Ecosystems: The Ecology of Subtle a recluse devoted to literary research, but Ver mont (hereafter cited as UVM). Human Effects and Population Areas (New York: one who lives and acts in the busy whirl 4. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary Springer Verlag, 1993), 81–90 at 81, 85, classes

62 FOREST HISTORY TODAY | SPRING/FALL 2001 Marsh’s unknowns into (1) obvious activities (Rutland, Vermont, 1848), 17–19. 38. David Remnick, “Future Perfect,” New with subtle effects (fossil fuels and pollution), 32. Man and Nature, 51–52n53, 201–2. Yorker, Oct. 20–27, 1997, pp. 210–18; Stewart (2) subtle activities with obvious effects (DDT 33. Even public ownership, Marsh feared, might Brand, The Clock of the Long Now: Time and and raptor numbers), (3) subtle activities with not save American forests. “The Federal gov- Responsibility (London: Weidenfeld & subtle effects (greenhouse gases and global ernment . . . proved itself unable to protect Nicolson, 1999); Andrew Blowers, “Nuclear climate change). the live-oak woods of Florida, and it more Waste and Landscapes of Risk,” Landscape 21. George Perkins Marsh, The Earth as Modified than once paid contractors a high price for Research 24 (1999): 241–61; Paul R. Portney by Human Action, a Last Revision of Man and timber stolen from its own forests” (Man and and John P. Weyant, Discounting and Nature (New York, 1884), 616–17n. Marsh Nature, 202n138). Intergenerational Equity (Washington, D.C: here enlarges on Charles Babbage’s Ninth 34. George Perkins Marsh, Irrigation: Its Evils, Resources for the Future, 1999). Bridgewater Treatise (2d ed., London, 1838). the Remedies and the Compensations, 43 Cong., 39. Marsh to Charles Eliot Norton, October 17, See also George Perkins Marsh, “The Study 1 sess., Sen. Misc. Doc. 55 (Feb. 10, 1874), 1863, UVM. of Nature,” Christian Examiner 68 (1860): 41. 15–17, 19. John Wesley Powell’s Report on the 40. George Perkins Marsh, “Physical Science in 22. Wilbur R. Jacobs, “The Great Despoliation: Lands of the Arid Region of the United States Italy,” The Nation 7 (1868): 420. Environmental Themes in American (Washington, D.C., 1878), echoed Marsh’s 41. George Perkins Marsh, Lectures on the English Frontier History,” Pacific Historical Review 47 warnings and met similar resistance from Language. First Series (New York, 1861), (1978): 1–26 at 15. land promoters (Donald Worster, A River 15–16. 23. Man and Nature, 41, 37, 24n22, 235n180, 42. Running West: the Life of John Wesley Powell 42. Marsh, Human Knowledge, 4. 24. Ibid., 42–43. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 43. William Morris Davis, “Biographical 25. Ibid., 15. 354–60. Memoir of George Perkins Marsh 26. Samuel P. Hays, Explorations in Environmental 35. Wilfred Beckerman, “Warming to Global 1801–1882,” National Academy of Sciences, History (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Change,” The Times [London], Dec. 11, Biographical Memoirs 6 (1909): 71–80. Press, 1998), 44–45, 150–52, 176, 381–83. 1997; see also his Small Is Stupid (London: 44. Brian Wynne, “May the Sheep Safely Graze? 27. Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Duckworth, 1995). A Reflexive View of the Expert-Lay Forge of National Memory (Chicago: 36. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Knowledge Divide”, in Risk, Environment and University of Chicago Press, 2000), 306–9. Religious Life [1912], transl. Karen E. Fields Modernity: Towards a New Ecology, ed. Scott 28. Man and Nature, 36, 13. (New York: Free Press, 1995), 213–14, Lash et al. (London: Sage, 1996), 44–83; Rolf 29. Ibid., 277. 351–52, 372, 379. Lidskog, “Scientific Evidence or Lay People’s 30. Ibid., 280n250. 37. Quoted in Cynthia S. Jordan, “`Old words’ Experience? On Risk and Trust with Regard 31. Ibid., 259. Marsh first broached this topic in in New Circumstances: Language and to Modern Environmental Threat,” in Risk his Address delivered before the Agricultural Readership in Post-Revolutionary America,” in the Modern Age, ed. Maurie J. Cohen Society of Rutland County, Sept. 30, 1847 American Quarterly 40 (1988): 491–513 at 501. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 196–224.

Conservation Diaries of Gifford Pinchot, edited by Harold K. Steen

From 1889, when he was 24, until 1946, the year of his death, conservationist Gifford Pinchot kept a diary in which he recorded details of his daily activities and encounters. What Pinchot and others were able to accomplish was quite extraor- dinary, and his diaries offer a unique window into the as it evolved.

Diary entries are organized into topical sections, with a narrative introduction by the editor that offers important context and background for each section. Thus readers will be familiar with the individuals described and can fully appreciate the historical significance of entries on topics including Forest Service policies, Pinchot’s dispute with Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger, his relationship with President Teddy Roosevelt and his leadership of the National Conservation Association.

Hardback copies are $29.00 and softcover $19.00 plus $4.00 shipping and handling

The Conservation Diaries of Gifford Pinchot FHS members do not pay S&H. Send checks made payable to the Forest History Edited by Harold K. Steen Society, 701 Vickers Ave., Durham, NC 27701. Call 919/682-9319 for credit card 250 pages, illustrations, index orders and for discounts on ten or more copies. Also available from IslandPress published 2001 at www.islandpress.org.

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