]99 conservation is not enough 



as a practical solution it is far from ideal. Other beasts of 

 prey destroy first the senile and the weaklings; man, if he 

 selects at all, selects the mature and the vigorous for 

 slaughter. The objection to this method is much the same 

 as it would be to a proposal that we should attack the 

 problem of human population by declaring an annual 

 open season on all between the ages of eighteen and 

 thirty-five. That is, of course, precisely what we do when 

 a war is declared, and there are those who believe that the 

 ultimate cause of wars is actually, though we are not 

 aware of the fact, the overgrazing of our own range and 

 the competition for what remains. 



What is commonly called "conservation" will not work 

 in the long run because it is not really conservation at all 

 but rather, disguised by its elaborate scheming, only a 

 more knowledgeable variation of the old idea of a world 

 for man s use only. That idea is unrealizable. But how 

 can man be persuaded to cherish any other ideal unless he 

 can learn to take some interest and some delight in the 

 beauty and variety of the world for its own sake, unless he 

 can see a "value" in a flower blooming or an animal at 

 play, unless he can see some "use" in things not useful? 



In our society we pride ourselves upon having reached 

 a point where we condemn an individual whose whole 

 aim in life is to acquire material wealth for himself. But 

 his vulgarity is only one step removed from that of a so- 

 ciety which takes no thought for anything except increas- 

 ing the material wealth of the community itself. In his 

 usual extravagant way Thoreau once said: "This curious 



