THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



194 



words, enough to be enlightenedly selfish in our deahngs 

 with the land. That means, of course, that it is not enough 

 for the farmer to want to get the most out of his farm and 

 the lumberer to get the most out of his forest without 

 considering agriculture and wood production as a whole 

 both now and in the future. But it also means more than 

 that. In the first place enlightened selfishness cannot be 

 enough because enlightened selfishness cannot possibly be 

 extended to include remote posterity. It may include the 

 children, perhaps, and grandchildren, possibly, but it can- 

 not be extended much beyond that because the very idea 

 of "self" cannot be stretched much further. Some purely 

 ethical considerations must operate, if anything does. Yet 

 even that is not all. The wisest, the most enlightened, the 

 most remotely long-seeing exploitation of resources is not 

 enough, for the simple reason that the whole concept of 

 exploitation is so false and so limited that in the end it 

 will defeat itself and the earth will have been plundered 

 no matter how scientifically and farseeingly the plunder- 

 ing has been done. 



To live healthily and successfully on the land we must 

 also live with it. We must be part .not only of the human 

 community, but of the whole community; we must ac- 

 knowledge some sort of oneness not only with our neigh- 

 bors, our countrymen and om: civihzation but also 'some 

 respect for the natural as well as for the man-made com- 

 munity. Ours is not only "one world " in the sense usu- 

 ally implied by that term. It is also "one earth." Without 

 some acknowledgment of that fact, men can no more hve 

 successfully than they can if they refuse to admit the po- 

 litical and economic interdependency of the various sec- 

 tions of the civilized world. It is not a sentimental but a 



