The other evening, skirting the Links, we came upon a field, where,
among the brown and green nobbly grass, was gathered a sort of
parliament of creatures: rooks on the fences, seagulls and peewits
wheeling overhead, plovers strutting and wagging their tails; and,
undisturbed by the white darting of rabbits, a covey of young
partridges, hopping leisurely in compact mass.
Is it because we see of these creatures only their harmlessness to us,
but not the slaughter and starving out of each other; or is it because
of their closer relation to simple and beautiful things, to nature;
or is it merely because they are _not human beings_--who shall tell?
but, for whatever reason, such a sight does certainly bring up in us a
sense, however fleeting, of simplicity, _mansuetude_ (I like the
charming mediæval word), of the kinship of harmlessness.
I was thinking this while wading up the grass this morning to the
craig behind the house, the fields of unripe corn a-shimmer and
a-shiver in the light, bright wind; the sea and distant sky so merged
in delicate white mists that a ship, at first sight, seemed a bird
poised in the air. And, higher up, among the ragwort and tall
thistles, I found in the coarse grass a dead baby-rabbit, shot and not
killed at once, perhaps; or shot and not picked up, as not worth
taking: a little soft, smooth, feathery young handful, laid out very
decently, as human beings have to be laid out by one another, in
death.
It brought to my mind a passage where Thoreau, who understood such
matters, says, that although the love of nature may be fostered by
sport, such love, when once consummate, will make nature's lover
little by little shrink from slaughter, and hanker after a diet
wherein slaughter is unnecessary.
It is sad, not for the beasts but for our souls, that, since we must
kill beasts for food (though may not science teach a cleaner, more
human diet?) or to prevent their eating us out of house and home, it
is sad that we should choose to make of this necessity (which ought to
be, like all our baser needs, a matter if not of shame at least of
decorum) that we should make of this ugly necessity an opportunity for
amusement. It is sad that nowadays, when creatures, wild and tame,
are bred for killing, the usual way in which man is brought in contact
with the creatures of the fields and woods and streams (such man, I
mean, as thinks, feels or is expected to) should be by slaughtering
them.
Surely it might be more akin to our human souls, to gentleness of
bringing up, Christianity of belief and chivalry of all kinds, to be,
rather than a hunter, a shepherd. Yet the shepherd is the lout in our
idle times; the shepherd, and the tiller of the soil; and alas, the
naturalist, again, is apt to be the _muff_.
But may the time not come when, apart from every man having to do some
useful thing, something perchance like tending flocks, tilling the
ground, mowing and forestering--the mere love of beauty, the desire
for peace and harmony, the craving for renewal by communion with the
life outside our own, will lead men, without dogs or guns or rods,
into the woods, the fields, to the river-banks, as to some ancient
palace full of frescoes, as to some silent church, with solemn rites
and liturgy?