Wild and tame
In their classification of the natural world, Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries,
expressed the same attitude to plants as they did to animals, with a rigid distinction between
useful 'crops' and useless 'weeds'. To the progressive farmer, a weed was, and still is, the
vegetable equivalent of vermin, to be hacked down, uprooted, poisoned and burned. The hierarchy
of plants parallelled human society, with the noble oak at the top and the lowly buttercup at the
bottom. Weeds and nettles were like the common people, unwanted and springing up everywhere.
A more neutral attitude was adopted by the early scientists, who recognized that even
weeds and
wild plants might be useful. Apothecaries had always believed that many neglected wild plants
were valuable medically. Early botanists and naturalists allowed nothing to be categorised as
weeds in their attempt at 'objective' classification, and included wild plants as well as domestic
ones. From the seventeenth century scientists began to study nature in its own right.
In zoology, the distinction between wild and tame was also abandoned. Some scientists
even
recognised that all systems of classification are man-made devices to order the world. While
attempting to draw up a neutral taxonomy, they criticised the vulgar error that birds, beasts and
plants could respond sympathetically to human beings.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, with the growth of a Romantic sensibility,
a new attitude
to plants developed, which went beyond the neutral. Weeds and wild plants began to be
appreciated for themselves and for their success in escaping man's rapacious hand. John Clare
devoted many poems to the beauty of plants that farmers hated: ragwort, yarrow, rushes, thistles
and poppies in the corn. The Romantics preferred the common wild flowers to cultivated blooms,
the violet which grew and died by the brook unseen by man, to the rose above the cottage door.
While most people continued to see the natural world largely in terms of its potential use, the
Romantic poets and travellers went to the opposite extreme of the scientists' objectivity, giving way
to the 'pathetic fallacy', and seeing in nature a reflection of their own moods and feelings.
Gilbert White's much-loved Natural History of Selborne (1789) reflects
this new benign attitude to
nature, advocating a simple life in peaceful coexistence with other organisms. As a 'philosopher'
this curate and naturalist was intent on recording 'the life and conversation of animals' in his parish,
but it proved one of the most important early contributions to field ecology. He was particularly
struck by the way 'Nature is a great economist' for 'she converts the recreation of one animal to the
support of another!' The smallest organism is important to the overall harmony in the economy of
nature. 'Earthworms,' he observed, 'though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain
of nature, yet if lost would make a lamentable chasm. But White still believed that Nature required
a helping hand to eradicate obnoxious insects from her economy, and to improve her stock for
human benefit.
Animal welfare
Despite the biblical justification for man's dominion over nature in the Judaeo-Christian
tradition, the
good Christian could find passages which reminded him to be lenient in his rule. One should not
only turn the other cheek, but help the ass of one's enemy when it lay under its burden (Exodus
23:5; Deuteronomy 25:4). Animals, like humans, should be allowed to rest on the Sabbath (Exodus
23:5). Above all, 'a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast' (Proverbs 12:10). But
these
isolated examples of putting down the rod, did not challenge the overwhelming sense of dominion
that Christians felt over the rest of nature. Cruelty was condemned, not because the victims
suffered, but because it was felt that those who torture animals would end up torturing their fellows.
'If any passage in holy scriptures seems to forbid us to be cruel to brute animals,' Aquinas had
asserted confidently, 'that is either . . . lest through being cruel to animals one becomes cruel to
human beings or because injury to an animal leads to the temporal hurt of man.'
In the seventeenth century a few writers in the Christian tradition began to question
man's alleged
sovereignty over other creatures. The Cambridge Platonist Henry More thought that creatures were
made 'to enjoy themselves', as did the naturalist John Ray. Sir Matthew Hale argued that cruelty to
beasts was 'tyranny', 'breach of trust' and injustice. A strict interpretation of the Christian doctrine
of stewardship, made it difficult to condone killing animals for sport. Samuel Pepys for one, thought
animal sport provided 'a very rude and nasty pleasure'. Even if animals had been created for man's
sake, as Genesis taught, that did not provide grounds for ill-treating them.
Philosophy in this case came to the support of the feelings. Creation could not be
considered
solely for man's use, since it was increasingly difficult to believe that nature had an end at all.
Greek teleology was abandoned for a purposeless world. Francis Bacon and Descartes had
rejected the notion of final causes in natural history, while for Spinoza all final causes were human
inventions. David Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (published in 1779)described
'a blind nature, impregnated with a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without
discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children'. Even Kant in his Critique of
Teleological Judgment (1790) was unable to find 'any being capable of laying claim to the
distinction of being the final end of creation'.
The shift in consciousness was so great in the eighteenth century, that by 1769 the
English
naturalist Edward Bancroft considered that the 'arrogance of humanity' had created the delusion,
that the whole of animate nature had been created solely for its use. By the end of the century, the
new sensibility towards the creation became increasingly apparent. Animals were no longer brutes
or beasts, or even fellow creatures, but companions and even brothers. In a burst of revolutionary
fervour, Coleridge extended the notion of fraternity from the human sphere to the animal world, and
to 'A Young Ass' - 'Poor little Foal of an oppressed race!' - exclaimed: 'I hail thee Brother.'' Blake,
for whom everything that lived was holy, found a fellow in the insects: Am not I A fly like thee? Or
art not thou A man like me?
Byron not only condemned capital punishment, but attacked angling as that 'solitary
vice'. He took
to task the author of The Compleat Angler (which had, since its first publication in 1653,
by 1800
gone into nearly four hundred editions or separate reissues).