The preservation of culture is chiefly a cause of conservatives; that of the environment, liberals. I will not attempt to distinguish how many conservatives are greatly concerned about the environment without having made a name for it, any more than I will try to distinguish the other cause in their rivals. Let it be enough that they have each made their respective reputations and that those reputations, however unjust, are not random.
The natural environment suffers from pollution and overuse; culture, from pollution and neglect. Physical consequence demonstrates the importance of the physical world; elective behavior indicates the importance of culture. The environment is tangible; culture, abstract. The first sustains life; the other, civilization. And as neither party is worth a Wiemar pfennig without life and civilization, so they must admit their interest in both.
There are numerous close, if not strict, analogies to be made between the physical and intellectual worlds. And since so much has been written on behalf of their obstinately opposed proponents, the reader may be pleased to find a few words on their similarities and complement.
The physical world gives us our diet, is constitutional and formative, gives us strength and stature. The intellectual word is alike a diet to us, constitutional and formative, giving us intelligence and judgment, range and penetration, sympathy and caution.
The physical and intellectual worlds are both adjacencies, communities, capable of spreading controversy and agreement, prosperity and poverty, facility and disease, and foster independence or the contrary according to the dispositions of the powers of each.
One should not doubt the power of culture more than the power of earth. It is useless to speak of mental abuse and deny that the mind may be abused; to speak of hurtful words and deny the power of words to harm; to speak of the inspiration of art and deny its power to oppress. All things are horrible, delightful or indifferent, according to their usage and their potency.
One should not deny the power of overuse to harm that which is limited and which we cannot create.
One should not deny the power of neglect to destroy that which depends on our creation and our maintenance.
Pollution is relative, like the nomination of weeds, which are no weeds at all where they are not rampant and consuming. There is that in other worlds which is destruction on earth, and that on earth which is destruction abroad.
The pollution of anything is defined by the dissolution of that body to which it is introduced or the destruction of the invader by the body. A weed is a weed when it ruins the farmer’s crops, and the crop is ruined when he loses that which people go to the market to buy, or when that which he sells poisons those who eat it.
The culture is ruined when it supplies what is not desired; or, being desired, disorders them who consume it.
Nature is tended for our sustenance and ease; culture, for our understanding and pleasure.
Every season, the caretaker must carefully inspect his charge. Houses rot from dark spaces, trees die of creeping plagues, the devouring worm is hidden by the leaf. And all disasters are a warning never to be reckless of anything, not even (where the worst is on the wing) of time.
