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Nature That Makes Us Human
Nature That Makes
Us Human
Why We Keep Destroying Nature and
How We Can Stop Doing So

Michel Loreau
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Loreau, Michel, author.
Title: Nature that makes us human : why we keep destroying nature and how
we can stop doing so / Michel Loreau.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022044802 (print) | LCCN 2022044803 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197628430 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780197628454 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Nature—Effect of human beings on. | Environmentalism.
Classification: LCC GF75.L64 2023 (print) | LCC GF75 (ebook) |
DDC 304.2/8—dc23/eng20230111
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044802
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044803

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197628430.001.0001

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction  1

PART I . HUMANS V E RS US NATURE

1. Homo sapiens, a species among many others . . . but not quite
like the others  9

2. A brief history of the divorce between humans and nature  25

3. Subject and object: The mirror of modernity  45

4. Matter and spirit: The great illusion  57

5. The underside of economic rationality and progress  69

6. Journey to the center of the modern world  81

PART I I . WHERE H UMANS AND NATU RE ARE ONE

7. Letting nature touch us  93

8. Recovering nature in us through our fundamental needs  101

9. Reunifying knowledge of body and mind  113

10. Building a social and economic order that serves life  123

11. Embracing life that flows through us  135

References  145
Index 149
Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all those who helped me in the
writing of this book: first, my wife Claire de Mazancourt, who supported and
encouraged me in this endeavor from start to finish; second, my collaborator
Gladys Barragan-​Jason, who showed fantastic enthusiasm for my book and
provided me with invaluable comments; and third, my sister Dominique
Loreau and my former collaborators Kirsten Henderson and Dalila Booth,
who helped me to improve the book’s content and form.
Introduction

Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, depletion of resources, new emer-

ging diseases: year after year, new scientific reports are raising the alarm about
the disastrous ecological and societal consequences, present or future, of the
unbridled development of human activities. Almost everyone today is either
clearly aware, or at least has a vague perception, that humanity is heading for
major natural upheavals that threaten the very existence of contemporary
human societies. A growing number of people are expressing their concerns
about this state of affairs, or even are engaging in small-​scale transformation
of their lifestyles. And yet, nothing—​or very little—​is being done collectively
to stop or slow down the social and economic machine launched at breakneck
speed toward the wall of our planet’s ecological limits, which is getting dan-
gerously close. Scientists continue to sound the alarm, politicians get busy,
international conferences are taking place, people are worried, but nearly eve-
rything continues as before. Only the recent Covid-​19 pandemic has shaken
humanity out of its apparent lethargy: suddenly the threat was perceived
as immediate and—​unthinkable until then—​more than half of humanity
agreed to remain confined for several months, thereby sharply reducing its
economic activity and its ecological impact. But no sooner did the pandemic
appear to be slowing down than powerful voices called for a resumption of ec-
onomic activity, when all the evidence suggests that the damage from climate
change and biodiversity loss will soon be far greater than that of the Covid-​19
pandemic.
As a scientific ecologist, I have devoted most of my research activities to
establishing, in a rigorous and systematic way, the consequences of current
biodiversity loss for the functioning and stability of ecosystems and its longer-​
term consequences for human societies (Loreau et al. 2022). I have also sought
to raise awareness among the general public and political decision-​makers
at the highest level of the importance of biodiversity loss and its ecological
and societal consequences. I have devoted a lot of time and energy to pro-
moting, on an international level, an integrative biodiversity science, as well as
a science-​policy interface in the field of biodiversity and ecosystems (Loreau
2010). These efforts have resulted, among others, in the creation of the IPBES

Nature That Makes Us Human. Michel Loreau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197628430.003.0001
2 Introduction

(Intergovernmental science-​policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem

Services). I believe that all these efforts have been useful, but, like many of
my fellow scientists, I have come to recognize that knowledge is not enough
to generate action. The high level of understanding that science has reached
about climate change, biodiversity loss, and their consequences is now more
than sufficient to justify a profound transformation of our societies, our way
of life, and our relationship with nature before it is too late.
Why, then, do we collectively continue to destroy nature and let the cli-
mate change when science tells us clearly that, in doing so, we are in danger
of running to our own collective destruction? There are a number of reasons
for this deplorable state of affairs. On an individual level, it is difficult both to
project oneself into the distant future and to give up the comforts of modern
life. On a collective scale, it is difficult to agree on a fair distribution of the
efforts to be made. In general, it is simply difficult to change unless we are
forced to. But there are also deeper reasons for this, which are less immedi-
ately apparent as they permeate contemporary thinking. In particular, the
separation between humans and nature is one of the most powerful myths of
Western civilization, a myth deeply rooted in the great monotheistic religions
and in modernity. The protection of nature clashes with the collective belief
that humans have the right, and even the duty, to dominate nature and trans-
form it for their own benefit.
Many authors, writers, and philosophers have already written about the
causes and consequences of the separation between humans and nature in
modern society. Reading the many books on this topic, however, it seemed
to me that something was missing. First, each author naturally tends to de-
velop an idea that is dear to him or her and thus to focus on a particular aspect
of the general problem. This view from a particular perspective is often very
rich and intellectually stimulating, but at the same time it does not allow the
problem to be considered in its entirety and to draw all its consequences. In
particular, as an ecologist, I felt that many of these contributions lacked a bio-
logical dimension, which is fundamental for understanding both humans and
nature. Second, many of the books on this topic are essentially critical, that is,
they question a number of presuppositions or historical developments that
have led to the separation between humans and nature as we know it today.
They do not, however, seek to lay the foundations for an alternative worldview
that would enable us to overcome the global ecological crisis that contempo-
rary society is entering head-​on.
This book is the result of my efforts to fill these gaps. I have used knowledge
from a variety of disciplines and approaches—​including biology, ecology,
physics, psychology, anthropology, economics, history, philosophy, and
 Introduction 3

personal development—​to try to understand why we keep destroying nature

today and how we could stop destroying it tomorrow. I realize that this is an
ambitious goal, that my knowledge is limited, and thus that my book might
disappoint some specialists in the various disciplines from which I use certain
elements to feed my argument. In particular, several chapters of my book give
pride of place to philosophy, and I am not a philosopher. Other chapters deal
with economics, and I am no more of an economist. But, as the saying goes,
economics is too serious a thing to be left in the hands of economists. I like-
wise believe that philosophy is too serious a thing to be left in the hands of
philosophers, because it touches on the worldview that guides all our thoughts
and actions. Anyone who is interested in the meaning of his or her life and in
his or her place in the world should be able to call upon and use philosophy.
The same is true, by the way, of my own scientific discipline, ecology. Ecology
has been used by many people for all kinds of purposes for the last sixty years
or so. Personally, I do not see this as a problem as long as everyone remains
aware of the limits of whatever use they make of it, according to their skills
and knowledge.
Recent scientific findings have also given me the firm conviction that we are
going to face profound ecological and social upheavals in the coming decades,
and thus that we can no longer afford to continue thinking as we have in the
past. The so-​called natural and social worlds will inevitably become increas-
ingly intertwined, so that the traditional division of the scientific endeavor
into “natural” and “human” sciences no longer provides us with the means to
understand current challenges. More fundamentally, I will show in this book
that the separation between body and mind underlies the modern separa-
tion between humans and nature and that a reunification of the entirety of
human knowledge, whether it comes from the body or the mind, is essential
to recover the lost unity of humans and nature. Therefore, I believe that we
no longer have a choice: we need to return to a more holistic, integrative, and
universal approach to human knowledge if we are to have any chance of over-
coming the ecological and societal crisis that lies ahead.
This book contains two parts. Part I aims to deconstruct the myths of
modern society that generate and perpetuate human domination over nature.
It begins by establishing some biological foundations of human nature, which
most of the ideologues of modernity have deliberately denied or ignored to
justify the superiority of the human species over the rest of the living world.
It then summarizes the main causes and historical stages that have led to the
divorce between humans and nature as we know it today. Finally, it seeks to
unpack the main founding myths of modernity that still shape our way of
thinking and that lead us to accept the subjugation and destruction of nature.
4 Introduction

These powerful myths include the duality of subject and object, the duality
of matter and spirit, the rationality of modern economy, and the centrality of
humans in the modern worldview.
My aim in Part I of the book is not to make an exhaustive critique of modern
rationalism, which has already been done by numerous authors from mul-
tiple angles. Rather, the question that concerns me is the following. Modern
rationalism is a fairly recent ideological construction, although in truth, as
we shall see, it is the result of a long historical trajectory that has unfolded
since the Neolithic revolution. Science, which is one of its most emblematic
products, is constantly accumulating knowledge that calls into question its
very foundations and shows that it is only one worldview among many others.
It also demonstrates unequivocally that modern society is heading for its own
demise by endangering the biosphere and the climate system that allowed
it to flourish. Why, then, despite the repeated questioning and warnings of
science, does the belief in modern rationalism remain so tenacious? Why is
it that the critique of this worldview, which has already been made on nu-
merous occasions, remains largely inaudible outside a relatively small circle of
philosophers or believers? Why do the very serious threats posed by climate
change, biodiversity loss, and changes in the functioning of the biosphere for
present and future human societies almost systematically take a back seat in
political decisions, or are simply denied? In order to answer these questions,
it is essential to clearly identify the core collective beliefs that lie at the root
of modern society’s inability to substantially modify its relationship with na-
ture. These beliefs are a powerful obstacle, without us even being aware of it,
to all individual or collective attempts to overcome the ecological crisis we are
entering on a planetary scale. This obstacle must be removed so that a new
worldview more suited to current conditions can emerge.
In contrast, Part II of the book seeks to identify a few avenues that could
enable human societies to break the current deadlock and take a new path,
that of the flourishing of life on Earth. This path is based on a simple obser-
vation: humans have a nature that defines them as a unique species beyond
their many cultural differences, and this nature is not only made up of flesh
and bone, but also of a set of fundamental human needs. These needs are
more than the basic physiological needs that are usually discussed; they also
define the deep aspirations that all human beings share. The expression and
satisfaction of their fundamental needs reconnects people to nature, as these
needs are the manifestation of life within them. At the same time, it restores
the unity of body and mind and thus of the different forms of knowledge
that come from body and mind. For as long as we ignore the body as the pri-
mary source of knowledge, we cannot prevent our mind from reasserting its
 Introduction 5

supremacy over the body, and, as a result, the supremacy of humans over na-
ture. The economy, which today is essentially concerned with the creation,
accumulation, and distribution of abstract social wealth, must place itself at
the service of life, and, in particular, of the satisfaction of fundamental human
needs. Only in this way can the current conflict between economic develop-
ment, human development, and nature conservation be resolved.
This book will undoubtedly leave many questions unanswered, and that is
fine. It does not pretend to provide a set of ready-​made answers to questions
that are among the most fundamental that humanity has asked itself since the
Neolithic revolution. It is up to present generations to invent a new relation-
ship with nature that will allow the human species to flourish in the midst of a
flourishing nature. This challenge, unprecedented in history, requires humans
to rethink almost everything they have been used to, from their existential
aspirations to the form and content of the contemporary global economy.
A book cannot claim to meet such a formidable challenge on its own. I just
hope that my book will shed some useful light on the questions that need to be
asked and how they can be answered.
 PART I
HUMANS VERSUS NATURE
1
Homo sapiens, a species among many
others . . . but not quite like the others

Popular imagery has it that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment freed
humans from the backward thinking of the Middle Ages, a dark age in human
history. Nothing could be further from the truth. In particular, as we will see
in the next chapter, the modern philosophical thought that emerged from the
Renaissance was largely based on the worldview developed by Christianity
and the other monotheistic religions. In this worldview, humans possess char-
acteristics that make them a species apart, radically different from any other
living species. Humans were created in the image of God, the Bible tells us,
with the mission of conquering and dominating the Earth and all the other
living beings on it. Humans have a soul, Descartes echoes, unlike plants and
animals, which can therefore be considered as machines at our disposal.
This concept may make people smile today, but it is nevertheless the one that
still permeates all contemporary civilization. The great philosopher Martin
Heidegger said less than a century ago that man is a “world creator,” whereas
animals are “world impoverished.” And despite the immense progress in sci-
entific knowledge since Descartes, contemporary science continues to be fas-
cinated by what makes humans different from all other species.
Before examining the origins and consequences of the separation between
humans and nature that has been increasingly asserted in the course of the his-
tory of Western thought, let us begin by establishing some scientific foundations
on the point of convergence of humans and nature, namely the nature of humans
themselves. Are humans a unique species, radically different from any other
living species, or, on the contrary, are they an animal species like any other?
First of all, it should be noted that the question thus posed is ambiguous,
which has led to endless debates between philosophers and biologists. From
a biological point of view, every species is by definition unique, in the sense
that it has a set of characteristics that distinguish it from other species. At the
same time, every species is connected to the same genealogical tree of life; it
has a history and certain characteristics common to all other species. Humans

All figures courtesy of the author

Nature That Makes Us Human. Michel Loreau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197628430.003.0002
10 Humans versus nature

are like the humpback whale, the housefly, or the E. coli bacteria in our gut: we
share a wide range of structures and processes that ensure the basic func-
tioning and reproduction of our cells. Humans are therefore necessarily both
a unique species and a species like any other, just as the humpback whale, the
housefly, and E. coli.
Once this is understood, the debate on human nature suddenly looks an
awful lot like the old question of whether a bottle is half empty or half full.
But in the case of the human nature debate, this comparison obscures the
high stakes of the different worldviews implied by the half-​empty and half-​
full bottles. For example, it is not difficult to see that the view that humans
differ radically from all other species (the half-​empty bottle) leads quite natu-
rally to the thesis of the separation between humans and nature. Conversely,
if humans are essentially an animal species like any other (the half-​full bottle),
there is little reason to consider that they are not an integral part of nature.
From a strictly biological point of view, the question has lost much of its
relevance today. Scientific advances in recent decades, notably in molecular
biology, neurosciences, and animal psychology, have shown that the bottle is
not half full, but over 99% full. Humans are so similar to their primate cousins
that the idea of a radical break between humans and all other animal species
seems almost absurd. For example, the genetic material of the human spe-
cies differs from that of the chimpanzee by only about 1% (the figures differ
somewhat depending on the method used) and most of these differences are
in so-​called neutral genes, i.e., genes that have no obvious effect on the char-
acteristics of the two species. We are therefore left to speculate whether a dif-
ference of the order of one-​tenth of a percent in genetic material could take
humans out of the animal kingdom.
However implausible it may seem, this possibility should not be completely
ruled out, though, since it is conceivable that a major innovation involving a
small number of genes could have occurred recently in the evolution of the
human species. We must therefore seriously examine the arguments put for-
ward by those who still believe in a radical break between humans and the rest
of the tree of life.
The first thing to note is that all these arguments refer to the superior intel-
lectual capacities of the human species (Schweitzer & Notarbartolo-​di-​Sciara
2009). The list of properties presented as unique to humans is long; it includes,
in particular, their soul, self-​awareness, empathy, thought, language, culture,
morality, and use of tools—​all characteristics that highlight the intelligence
of humans as opposed to “beasts.” The word “beast” itself comes from the old
French beste, which also means “stupid,” “dumb.” Plants and animals are sup-
posed to be stupid; by contrast, humans are supposed to be intelligent. Even
 Homo sapiens 11

assuming that the above properties were really unique to humans (which, as
we shall see, they are not), they highlight the circular nature of the reasoning
based on these arguments: first, a list is drawn up of what is supposed to be
unique to humans, and then it is declared that it is precisely these properties
that make humans a superior species, distinguishing them from all other spe-
cies. Plato already pointed out the fallacious nature of this reasoning almost
2,400 years ago. According to Plato, a crane with the same intelligence and
narcissism as humans would likewise divide living beings into two catego-
ries: cranes, objects of veneration, on the one hand, and all other living beings,
reduced to the rank of “beasts,” on the other.
But let us ignore this elementary error of logic for the moment and take a
closer look at the list of human intellectual capacities, which does look impres-
sive at first sight. I will not dwell on the human soul, a concept probably too
vague to be tested by scientific facts. Ironically, however, note that the word
“animal” comes from the Latin word anima, which means soul. Theologians
and philosophers of the Christian era were so intent on stripping animals of
any human-​like attributes that they even sought to remove what defined them
in the first place!
Let us start with self-​awareness, which has long been claimed to be absent
in animals. Although this concept covers a mental reality that everyone can
easily perceive internally, it is much more difficult to define precisely what
it is. Therefore, it is equally difficult to establish its presence or absence in
other creatures in the absence of verbal communication with them. Self-​
awareness is a complex property, which is now known to have at least three
dimensions: bodily self-​awareness, social self-​awareness, and introspective
awareness (DeGrazia 2009).
It may seem surprising to talk about bodily self-​consciousness when
Christian religion and modern philosophy have so accustomed us to separ-
ating the mind from the body and glorifying the mind over the body. Yet it is
the form of self-​consciousness that plays the most important role in our lives
because it shapes our identity in the face of the outside world. Bodily self-​
awareness is related to physical sensations; it allows us to perceive our body as
distinct from the external world, as well as its internal state (hot, cold, hunger,
pain, etc.). Many animals seem to have this primitive form of self-​awareness,
which makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view. Indeed, bodily
self-​awareness allows for a flexible and efficient response to multiple internal
and external disturbances; it thus contributes to maintaining the bodily integ-
rity of the organism and ensuring its survival.
Social self-​awareness is the ability to conceive of ourselves as part of a so-
cial unit and to take account of differences in social status in our behavior. It
12 Humans versus nature

is present at least in mammals with developed social behavior, particularly

in primates and cetaceans, for whom it is an important asset considering the
major threat that being ousted by a dominant conspecific in the event of inap-
propriate behavior represents.
Finally, introspective self-​awareness is the awareness of one’s own mental
states, such as feelings, desires, and beliefs. Several recent experiments have
demonstrated that primates possess awareness of their own mental states. For
instance, in one such experiment, monkeys were taught to control a joystick
to make choices on a computer screen. If they got the answer right, they were
given food; if they got it wrong, they had to wait before they could play again,
which they hated. They were then given the option of choosing an icon that
allowed them to skip a test if they thought it was too difficult. They quickly
learned to use this option wisely. This experiment therefore demonstrates that
these primates were assessing their confidence in their ability to pass a test,
thus demonstrating a form of introspective awareness (DeGrazia 2009). In
another experiment, chimpanzees were asked to choose photographs of their
faces representing their emotions when they watched videos of scenes evoking
more or less positive or negative emotions. Without any prior learning, they
correctly associated the photographs with their own emotional state, as meas-
ured independently by their body temperature (Parr 2001). This shows that
chimpanzees are able not only to assess their internal emotional state, but also
to choose an abstract representation that corresponds to it, demonstrating a
well-​developed introspective self-​awareness.
Thus, there can no longer be any doubt that self-​awareness is not unique to
humans, but that it is present in many animals, at least in the elementary form
of bodily self-​consciousness, and sometimes even in the more elaborate form
of introspective self-​consciousness as we humans know it. But perhaps self-​
awareness is, after all, still too elementary a cognitive property to distinguish
humans from animals. What about apparently more elaborate properties like
empathy?
Empathy is often defined as the ability of a person to project onto another
person his or her own mental state if he or she were in the situation expe-
rienced by the other person. In its most developed form, empathy implies
a relatively high level of representation of the “self,” as it requires the ability
not only to mentally project the concept of “self ” onto the other person, but
also to anticipate how this “projected self ” would feel in the situation experi-
enced by the other person, and finally to assume that this mental state of the
“projected self ” equals the actual mental state of the other person (Schweitzer
& Notarbartolo-​di-​Sciara 2009). Thus, empathy necessarily implies self-​
awareness: one cannot hope to understand the mental state of another person
 Homo sapiens 13

without first being able to assess one’s own mental state. If it could therefore
be demonstrated that an animal feels empathy toward another animal, this
would also mean that this animal possesses self-​awareness.
Numerous experiments with laboratory rats and mice have demonstrated
the existence of empathic reactions toward fellow animals since the late 1950s
(de Waal 2009). The first such experiment began with a classical setup in which
rats were taught to obtain food by pressing a lever. The pressing of the lever by
one rat was then associated with an electric shock sent to another rat, visible
to the first. The rats quickly stopped pressing the lever to obtain food. This
response was completely unexpected at the time. Why did these rats not con-
tinue to gorge themselves regardless of their companions who were writhing
in pain near them? The interpretation given at the time was that the rats
feared for their own well-​being when they saw their fellow rats in distress. But
this interpretation is obviously inconsistent: how could a rat that had never
been subjected to any such experiment fear for its own welfare when it saw a
fellow rat exposed to an unknown situation? It seems much more likely that
a rat’s distress would induce an emotional distress response in its fellow rats.
Multiple experiments were then conducted to analyze the causes of similar
responses in other animals, notably laboratory mice. The conclusion of these
experiments is unequivocal: it is the pain or distress response of a known con-
specific that causes the sensitization to pain or distress, regardless of how it is
caused. Interestingly, this empathic response does not occur in the presence
of an unfamiliar conspecific, indicating that it is not automatic.
Is this empathy? There is no doubt that the rats and mice in these
experiments project an emotional state onto a fellow animal with whom they
have made prior contact, which represents a form of empathy. But this does
not necessarily mean that the rats, mice, primates, and other animals that have
been shown to have empathic responses have a highly developed intellectual
representation of the “self.” As with self-​awareness, it is now known that em-
pathy is in the body before it is in the mind. Empathy probably has its roots
in the synchronization of bodies: we are prompted to run, laugh, cry, or yawn
when others do. Cognitive sciences are increasingly demonstrating that cog-
nition itself is not based on purely intellectual processes, but that it involves
the body and its sensations, in humans as in other animals. It is therefore quite
natural that empathy has a strong bodily dimension. As ethologist and prima-
tologist Franz de Waal (2009, 95) put it, “we unintentionally enter the bodies
of those around us.” Their movements and emotions resonate within us as if
they were our own. Like self-​awareness, empathy does exist in other animals,
especially mammals. It is quite likely that it takes more developed forms in the
human species. For example, imaginative empathy allows us to understand
14 Humans versus nature

what the other person is feeling even when we cannot see him or her or when
he or she is an imaginary character in a novel or film. Nevertheless, it is not
imagination that mobilizes empathy. Empathy requires first and foremost an
emotional commitment. Communication at the bodily level comes first; un-
derstanding follows.
Although this scientific knowledge undermines the hypothesis of a radical
separation between humans and animals, the modern skeptic might say that,
on balance, self-​awareness and empathy are still too close to the body to do
justice to the spiritual superiority of humans. Thinking, on the other hand,
requires complex operations of the mind that should allow for a clear separa-
tion. What a disappointment it will be to our skeptic, then, to learn that even
abstract thought is not unique to humans! Cognitive sciences have begun to
take a serious look at this topic, and their results are a stark rebuttal to those
old beliefs deeply rooted in our civilization: not only primates, but even bees
possess the building blocks of abstract thought. Of course, defining thought
is again a delicate operation, but scientists recognize that it includes at least
the following components: on the one hand, distinct states of belief and desire
that interact with one another and with perception to guide behavior; on the
other hand, a structuring of belief states into elementary components—​the
concepts—​that can be recombined in various ways (Carruthers 2009).
Ingenious experiments have recently shown that bees do have belief and
desire states that interact with one another to guide their flight behavior, and
that their belief states involve distinct symbols that refer to substances, spa-
tial cues, distances, and directions. Moreover, these symbols are real concepts,
as bees can combine them in many different ways to elaborate flight-​related
thoughts. For example, the concepts of “nectar,” “pollen,” “distance,” “direc-
tion,” and “hive” can be combined indifferently to produce thoughts such as
“the hive is 200 meters north of the nectar,” “the nectar is 200 meters west of
the hive,” or “the pollen is 400 meters north of the hive” (Carruthers 2009).
And we know that the bee does use these thoughts to guide its flight.
In a famous passage in Capital, Karl Marx claimed that “what distinguishes
the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises struc-
ture in imagination before he erects it in reality” (Marx 1965 [1867], 728). It
seems, then, that the bee is much less stupid and different from humans than
Marx and his contemporaries imagined, victims as they were of the anthropo-
centric mirage characteristic of modern civilization. There is little doubt that
overall a human has more diverse intellectual capacities and more complex
thinking than a bee, but this is only a difference in degree, not in kind. In fact,
it would not be surprising at all if bees had higher intellectual capacities than
humans for specific tasks such as distance assessment and spatial orientation,
 Homo sapiens 15

as these play a more crucial role in their daily lives than in the daily lives of
humans. A recent study showed that bees can count and even have the concept
of zero (Howard et al. 2018), an abstract concept that had long been regarded as
one of the greatest feats of the human mind. We are now discovering that even
plants—​which have traditionally been considered the most “stupid” organisms
because they have no brains—​have remarkable intelligence and communica-
tion skills, albeit in very different forms from our own (Mancuso 2018).
Another intellectual ability that has long been considered the prerogative
of humans and their abstract thinking is known as “theory of mind.” Theory
of mind refers to the ability of an individual to attribute mental states, such as
intentions, goals, beliefs, and knowledge, to other individuals, in other words
to know what they know, intend, or believe. Until recently, it was thought that
this ability existed only in humans and that it developed in children around
the age of four. This belief has, once again, been overturned by recent scien-
tific studies using ingenious eye movement–​tracking technology in place of
the traditional verbal response choice experiments, which are inappropriate
for young children and animals. These studies have shown that primates, like
young children, are able to anticipate the behavior of a person searching for
a hidden object where they themselves know it is not. Our primate cousins
are therefore able, like us, to know that other individuals hold false beliefs
(Krupenye et al. 2016).
If self-​awareness, empathy, and thought are present, at least in primitive
form, in animals other than humans, it may be less surprising to learn that
the same is true of language and culture, which for a long time were also con-
sidered to be the prerogative of the human species. Admittedly, scholarly
debates continue to rage over these issues because of their strong emotional
charge, as they do over self-​awareness, empathy, and thought. But, if you look
at it, these debates boil down to definitional problems that are, after all, quite
secondary. Indeed, it is always possible to arrange to choose a definition that
applies only to the human species—​this is the crane syndrome highlighted by
Plato. If we free ourselves from the obsession with finding a characteristic that
separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom at all costs, we can only
be intrigued and amazed by the unsuspected skills of animals, which share
much more with us than we previously thought.
Even in humans, language is commonly defined as the ability to express
thought and communicate through a system of signs (whether vocal, ges-
tural, graphic, tactile, olfactory, or other). If we stick to this common defini-
tion, there is again no doubt that many other animals have language. Take the
case of bees. We have seen that bees have a form of thinking that involves the
concepts of distance, direction, and quality of a food source. We also know
16 Humans versus nature

from the classic work of Karl von Frisch that bees communicate informa-
tion about the distance, direction, and quality of a food source to each other
through a highly symbolic “waggle dance.” The combination of these two
skills is precisely what is commonly defined as language.
Examples of language skills abound in primates and some birds. It is
well known that chimpanzees can be taught human sign language. Some
experiments have even shown that chimpanzees understand the abstract idea
of category; they can use the sign “dog” to refer to any kind of dog or “shoe” to
refer to different kinds of shoes. Better still, some chimpanzees spontaneously
create unlearned combinations of signs to express new ideas. Further away
from humans, parrots also have remarkable linguistic skills. Contrary to pop-
ular belief, parrots do not just stupidly repeat what they hear; they think, use
abstract concepts, and can communicate their thoughts using their vocal ap-
paratus, which allows them to establish verbal communication with humans.
Perhaps the best-​known example is Alex, the African gray parrot trained and
studied by ethologist Irene Pepperberg as part of a scientific project on parrots’
ability to understand human language (Pepperberg 2009). Alex could identify
and name about fifty different objects, seven colors, and five shapes; he could
count to six and understand concepts such as “bigger than,” “smaller than,”
“same as,” and “different from.” Most importantly, he seemed to understand
perfectly the meaning of what he heard and said. He answered any questions
about shapes, colors, materials, and numbers correctly, which means that he
understood not only the meaning of the words for a particular color or shape,
but also the concept of color or shape itself. He also knew what he wanted
and communicated it to the experimenter. For example, when he was tired
of the experiments, he would say, “Wanna go back” (to his cage), and if the
researcher displayed irritation, he would try to defuse it by saying “I’m sorry.”
Although these examples of chimpanzees and parrots being trained to express
their thoughts using human language are somewhat artificial, they do dem-
onstrate that these animals have cognitive and linguistic abilities that are very
similar to those of humans, and therefore that these abilities are not unique to
humans. These examples of animals “speaking human” even contain a good
dose of irony, because, to my knowledge, no human has yet managed to speak
chimpanzee or parrot.
What about culture? Until recently, culture was thought to be the most
significant difference between humans and other animals, so much so that
culture and nature are still commonly contrasted, as if they were two sep-
arate worlds. Only humans, it seemed, possessed the ability to shape their
behavior on the basis of a set of shared knowledge and practices transmitted
within a social group, whereas animals had an innate behavior, fixed once
 Homo sapiens 17

and for all by their instinct and genes. We now know that this is not the
case. On the one hand, humans are much more similar to each other, be-
yond their cultural differences, than appears at first sight—​we will come
back to this issue in Part II of this book. On the other hand, animals also
shape their behavior according to their social environment, thus creating
cultural differences between populations that are passed on from genera-
tion to generation.
The first examples of cultural learning and transmission were observed in
Japanese macaques by primatologist Kinji Imanishi and his colleagues in the
late 1940s. These researchers noted significant differences in social norms and
feeding behavior between different groups of macaques, which they attrib-
uted to social learning. They then witnessed firsthand the social learning of
a new feeding behavior when a young female washed sweet potatoes before
eating them, a behavior that had never been observed before. This behavior
was quickly adopted by the young female’s playmates, then by her mother, and
finally spread to the entire colony. Since then, examples of culturally learned
and transmitted behavior in social animals have multiplied, particularly in
primates and cetaceans. For example, chimpanzee populations in Africa differ
in dozens of learned behaviors, including the use of leaves, branches, and
stones for communication, play, or foraging. The use of these tools is specific
to each population and transmitted within it through a mixture of imitation
and social learning. Similarly, whales and dolphins are organized into groups
with their own vocal dialects. A recent study even succeeded in experimen-
tally initiating a new feeding cultural trait in wild vervet monkeys (van de
Waal et al. 2013).
It is therefore becoming increasingly clear that, far from being in opposi-
tion to it, culture belongs to nature. The same applies to morality. The modern
conception of morality is strongly rooted in rationalism, in particular in
Kant’s philosophy, which bases moral behavior on a conscious choice made
by rational human beings. But this view has been challenged by recent studies
in neurosciences, human psychology, and animal psychology (Hauser 2006).
This work has showed that moral decision-​making is primarily driven by
emotions; it activates parts of our brain that go back to the transition from
cold-​blooded reptiles to the caring, loving, infant-​feeding mammals that we
are (de Waal 2005). There are several famous medical cases of people who had
suffered deep damage to the frontal lobes of the brain after a serious accident.
Perhaps surprisingly, these people had retained all their intellectual facul-
ties, but they had a strongly disturbed emotional behavior and were unable to
make decisions, especially of a moral nature. The study of these medical cases
revealed that the damaged regions of the frontal lobes were areas of the brain
18 Humans versus nature

where reasoning and emotional perception and expression processes are inte-
grated (Damasio 1994).
Thus, paradoxically, emotions underlie morality. Rationalizations often
come after the fact, when we have already reacted according to our species’
predispositions. This observation may seem surprising because we have been
educated to believe otherwise, but many moral choice experiments support
it. Hypothetical examples can illustrate quite simply the limits of logical rea-
soning in our moral choices. Imagine, for example, an enlightened dictatorial
political leader who decided to kill anyone who might carry the coronavirus
responsible for the recent Covid-​19 pandemic. By doing so early enough, he
would probably have killed far fewer people than the pandemic did, thereby
saving many lives. Such a policy would be perfectly rational, and yet it would
be met with disgust and would be considered immoral by most people. This
example shows that, contrary to the doctrines of rationalism and utilitari-
anism, humans do not work for the well-​being and happiness of the many if
their behavior violates the fundamental inhibitions of our species. Note that
the power of emotions in moral behavior does not mean that rationality is un-
important. Rational thinking allows organizing our emotional responses in a
coherent and systematic way, thereby cementing human communities around
shared rules of action and behavior. These are very important skills for highly
social animals like humans.
If morality is fundamentally rooted in emotions rather than in reason, it
seems difficult to exclude rudimentary forms of morality in animals. The
more we study animals and humans, the more we are struck by the similarity
of their behaviors and skills. A recent study, for example, revealed the exist-
ence of post-​traumatic stress disorder in elephants. Young elephants that have
witnessed the killing of their parents show severe behavioral disorders in ado-
lescence: they become abnormally aggressive and sometimes proceed to wan-
tonly slaughter other animals. Hyperaggression, however, disappears in the
presence of adult males (Bradshaw et al. 2005). The similarity with humans is
striking: it is as if young elephants, traumatized by the killing they witnessed,
lost their moral bearings in the absence of strong family or social ties. It is pos-
sible that the role played by intellectual judgment is more limited in elephants
than in humans in the choice of their behavior—​although in reality we just
do not know. In any case, the result is the same: both humans and elephants
are capable of being violent, but a secure emotional climate, combined with a
probably varying degree of reasoning about the consequences of their actions,
leads them to curb this violence and find a more peaceful form of expressing
their needs.
 Homo sapiens 19

A final feature that has long been considered the prerogative of human in-
tellectual genius is the making and use of tools. We now know that many other
animals, especially primates and birds, use tools to search for food. Since Jane
Goodall’s pioneering work on the behavior of chimpanzees in the wild, we
have known that they use a wide range of tools. The making and handling of
these tools sometimes requires a complex chain of operations that demand
a high degree of anticipation, coordination, and manipulation (Beyries &
Joulian 1990). Termite fishing provides a good example. Chimpanzees first
inspect termite mounds and locate their entrances before the rainy season to
prepare for fishing. At the time of termite swarming, which takes place at the
beginning of the rainy season, they select and shape thin wooden sticks, carry
them to the previously identified termite mounds and then use them for the
actual fishing. This consists of carefully inserting a stick into a hole in the ter-
mite mound, waiting for the termites to cling to it by biting, then removing
the stick from the hole and eating the clinging termites. In the intentionality
and high complexity of the tasks involved, termite fishing is not fundamen-
tally different from human tool use. Other examples of the same type can be
found in birds. For example, some Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos Islands
use cactus spines as skewers to prick insects from tree branches and eat them.
Not content with just using the thorns they find, they modify their size and
shape to make them more effective tools.
Ants may be even more impressive, not so much because of the complexity
of their individual behavior, but because of the social organization of their
livelihood production techniques. Ants collectively raise and exploit other
living things for their livelihood—​in other words, they invented agriculture
long before humans did. Many species of ants raise aphids in the same way
as we raise cows or sheep: they herd them, protect them from predators and
parasites, and milk them for a sweet substance called honeydew. Mushroom
ants in the tropics, on the other hand, cultivate a species of mushroom they
use as food. The fungus is carefully cultivated in purpose-​built gardens; the
ants supply it with cut leaves for growth and even carry a filamentous bac-
terium that produces antibiotics to protect the cultivated fungus from other
parasitic fungi (Currie et al. 1999).
Wherever we look, we see that science is systematically destroying, one by
one, all the old prejudices that claimed to make humans a species apart, at the
top of creation. Only a few nostalgic philosophers still insist on defending the
idea that there is a radical divide between humans and animals (Ferry 1992;
Bimbenet 2011). As I mentioned above, it is always possible to find a differ-
ence between humans and any other animal so great that this difference seems
20 Humans versus nature

infinite and therefore qualitative; but it is also possible to find a difference as

great, if not greater, between two animals belonging to different species.
The relativization of the place of humans in the world and in the history
of life brought about by modern biology may be experienced by some as a
painful loss of illusion, just as was the replacement of the geocentric con-
ception by the heliocentric conception of the universe a few centuries ago.
But above all, it invites us to a magnificent opening to the world around us.
Essayist Jeremy Rifkin (2009, 104) speaks of this opening in beautiful words:

What scientists are finding is that human beings share a much richer history with
our fellow mammals than previously thought. We now know that mammals feel,
play, teach their young, and show affection and, at least some species, have a ru-
dimentary culture and express primitive empathic distress. We are finding kindred
spirits among our fellow creatures. Suddenly, our sense of existential aloneness in
the universe is not so extreme. We have been sending out radio communications to
the far reaches of the cosmos in the hopes of finding some form of intelligent and
caring life, only to discover that what we were desperately seeking already exists
and lives among us here on Earth.

Although Homo sapiens is not a creature apart, although it is part of the

tree of life and has much more in common with other living beings than has
been acknowledged so far, it is nevertheless a species distinct from others
and therefore unique in its own way. Indeed, like any species, humans have
a unique combination of characteristics that define them as a species. Now, it
is essential to understand the uniqueness of the human species to understand
the conflicting relationship it has established with the rest of nature.
A set of biological characteristics distinguishes humans from other pri-
mates, such as standing, a prehensile hand, the development of the cranium,
and a particularly long period of care for the young. There is no doubt that
the combination of these interrelated characteristics played a key role in the
hominization of early humans. But what has made Homo sapiens such a spe-
cial animal that it comes to conceive of itself as alien to the world of which it
is a part is apparently the development of the prefrontal cortex of the brain,
which is the seat of the so-​called higher cognitive functions such as rea-
soning and language. As I pointed out earlier, thinking and language as such
do not distinguish humans from other animals. But the development of the
prefrontal cortex has increased the ability of humans to create associations
between concepts, leading to the acquisition of a new capacity for creative
supposition, that is, to entertain thoughts that explore the possible without
 Homo sapiens 21

necessarily aiming at truth or adequacy with experience (Carruthers 2009).

Some believe this new capacity for creative supposition stems from the im-
portance of tracking large animals, when early humans developed the activity
of hunting and moved from a frugivorous to an omnivorous diet. Indeed,
tracking requires the ability to read and interpret animal tracks as visible signs
of an invisible reality (Morizot 2018). In any case, the human capacity for cre-
ative supposition does not seem to have any equivalent in the rest of the an-
imal kingdom. In other words, we seem to be the only animal species to tell
stories about things that do not exist—​and, in the process, to tell ourselves
stories, to mystify ourselves.
The significance of this biological innovation cannot be underestimated.
Although it represents only a minor change in our biological makeup, the
ability to make fiction has opened up new and unsuspected horizons for the
human species. Narratives and fictions allow us not only to imagine things
that do not (or do not yet) exist, but also and above all to do so collectively.
Shared narratives and fictions are a powerful lever to bind together human
communities around common goals and actions. They give humans an un-
precedented ability to cooperate in large numbers and thereby increase their
collective power. As historian Yuval Harari (2011, 42) rightly notes: “One
on one, even ten on ten, we are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees.
Significant differences begin to appear only when we cross the threshold of
150 individuals, and when we reach 1,000–​2,000 individuals, the differences
are astounding. ( . . . ) The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the
mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and
groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.”
Shared narratives and the development of sophisticated languages that
accompanied them greatly contributed to increasing the internal cohesion
of human groups, as well as the divergence and conflicts between groups,
thus paving the way for an extraordinary cultural diversification. This ac-
celerated cultural evolution in turn reinforced the importance of shared
narratives in group identity. Every human society is characterized first and
foremost by its own vision of the world, by a narrative of its origins, by a
set of collective fictions that governs how its members interact with one
another and with the other animate and inanimate beings that constitute
their environment. These collective fictions define the contours of its mode
of action in the world, its social organization, and the technical progress
that can take place in it (Descola 2005). They give rise to myths, religions,
utopias, science, and thus, directly or indirectly, to everything that makes up
modern humans.
22 Humans versus nature

But this biological innovation does not only have advantages. Fiction and
culture have come to assume such an importance in the development of
human beings that they tend to overshadow their fundamental nature and
needs. Homo sapiens seems to be the only species that has difficulty in seeing
itself as a species (Maslow 2006 [1971]). Cats seem to have no trouble being
cats; they show no signs of wanting to be dogs instead—​their instincts seem
to be perfectly clear. By contrast, our biological essence and instincts are
harder to perceive. Extrinsic learning often relegates our deepest impulses
to the background, at least in our mind. We have great difficulty in accepting
ourselves as we really are; we often dream of being something we are not, and
we may even spend our entire life trying to make this dream come true. The
stories we tell ourselves, individually and collectively, often take precedence
over our most basic needs, to the point that we ignore or deny our needs de-
liberately, resulting in inner conflicts, neuroses, and dreams of domination.
The separation of humans from nature is first and foremost a separation of
humans from their own nature. Stories then turn into History, for better or
for worse.
2
A brief history of the divorce
between humans and nature

Humans are, in many ways, animals like any other. Why, then, have they come
to see themselves as alien to nature, that is, to the rest of the world around
them? Why do modern humans display such a sense of singularity, superi-
ority, and even rejection toward nature?
Any question about the causes of a phenomenon invites an infinite number
of answers. Every phenomenon is the result of an extraordinarily complex set
of processes, more or less close or distant in space and time, that contribute to
its manifestation here and now. Young children understand this intuitively.
Every parent has experienced being overwhelmed by a flood of “Why?” from
their child when they reach the age of three, only to find, bewildered, that
no answer satisfies their curiosity. Each answer is invariably followed by an-
other “Why?” and so on until the parent is tired of answering. This can be
interpreted as a game, and it is, for the child often derives some pleasure from
it, but it is a serious and salutary game because it invites us to rediscover with
the child inside us that causality is infinite and that our automatic answers are
nothing more than convenient ways of simplifying our daily lives.
So, I do not believe that there is a single cause for the divorce between
humans and nature that characterizes modern society. Many books have
examined this question and have proposed a wide range of more or less com-
pelling hypotheses. It is not my aim here to examine these hypotheses in de-
tail. In fact, many of them are complementary and difficult to distinguish.
What interests me is rather to understand the cluster of factors that contrib-
uted to the emergence of the modern relationship between humans and na-
ture and that contributes to its perpetuation today. This cluster exists because
the separation between humans and nature has been established gradually,
over the course of a long if tumultuous history.
I need to start with the earliest history, namely the evolutionary history of
the human species. There is a fairly widespread idea, especially among my
biologist colleagues, that the destruction of nature by humans is the expres-
sion of an innate destructive behavior of the human species. If this idea were

Nature That Makes Us Human. Michel Loreau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197628430.003.0003
26 Humans versus nature

correct, it would provide a simple answer to the question posed and save me
the trouble of writing this book. Jared Diamond, who has written remarkable
books on the development and decline of human societies in relation to their
natural environment, is one of the biologists who have popularized this thesis.
In his book The Third Chimpanzee, Diamond (1992) offers a fascinating evolu-
tionary perspective on the human species, but also a rather pessimistic view of
human nature since, according to him, humans have always engaged in geno-
cide and the destruction of their environment and biodiversity. More recently,
psychologist Thierry Ripoll (2022) has even gone so far as to argue—​against a
great deal of scientific evidence to the contrary—​that it is the biological struc-
ture and functioning of their brains that drive humans to desire more and
more. Thus, according to him, modern capitalism and the contemporary de-
struction of nature would be inevitable consequences of the evolution of the
human brain.
There is no longer any doubt that humans have had a destructive impact on
their natural environment for quite a long time (Johnson et al. 2017). Perhaps
one of the most dramatic examples of this destructive impact is the extinc-
tion of several thousand endemic bird species on the Pacific islands following
human colonization over the past 30,000 years (Steadman 1995). Does this
mean that humans are destructive by nature? It is interesting to note that, on
the basis of detailed observation of contemporary hunter-​gatherer peoples,
some ethnologists and ecologists have come to the diametrically opposed
conclusion that most hunter-​gatherers are, on the contrary, particularly re-
spectful of their natural environment and the living beings that inhabit it. So,
who is right?
In truth, humans are neither intrinsically destructive nor intrinsically re-
spectful of nature. Like any living being, humans have needs to satisfy, and they
adopt behaviors or strategies that are more or less adapted to the satisfaction
of these needs. All life is a continuous process of creative destruction and de-
structive creation. Every living being uses and modifies physical, chemical, and
biological elements of its environment to grow and sustain itself; in doing so, it
destroys the form in which these elements were present to create and maintain
its own form and function. Thus, the plant uses solar energy and a number of
nutrients in the soil and in the atmosphere to create and maintain its own plant
form and function; the herbivore consumes the plant to create and maintain
its own herbivore form and function; the carnivore eats the herbivore to create
and maintain its own carnivore form and function; and the bacterium uses the
dead bodies and residues of the plant, herbivore, and carnivore to create and
maintain its own bacterial form and function. Each of these living beings at
once creates itself, destroys the elements of its environment that serve to create
 The divorce between humans and nature 27

it, and transmits these elements in new form to the next link in the chain of life.
It is therefore futile to try to separate in the abstract what is creation, what is de-
struction, and what is respect for life. It is all a matter of context, of balance or
imbalance, of direct or indirect consequences that are more or less beneficial or
harmful to the various links in the chain of life.
That humans are not fundamentally, congenitally destructive will be ob-
vious to anyone who has raised a child in an atmosphere of caring and self-​
fulfillment. Children are spontaneously curious and attracted to other living
beings, especially animals, with whom they often establish a strong empathic
connection. I have not known any child who spontaneously enjoyed de-
stroying life; the few children I have known who engaged in destructive be-
havior did so as a tragic expression of a lack of love or recognition they were
suffering. If their fundamental needs are fully met, there is no reason why
human beings should not transform their spontaneous empathy for other
living beings into a respectful attitude toward nature. If their fundamental
needs are not met, however, they will develop strategies to try to satisfy at
least their most basic needs, even if it means destroying their environment
and thus the very conditions for their long-​term survival. Thus, the real ques-
tion is this: what are the ecological and cultural contexts that explain, on the
one hand, the destructive impact of humans during the colonization of the
Pacific islands and, on the other hand, the respectful attitude toward the rest
of nature of many contemporary hunter-​gatherer peoples?
Recent studies suggest that the destructive impact of human colonization of
the Pacific islands was, in fact, much more limited during the Paleolithic than
previously believed. Many of the documented endemic bird extinctions on the
Pacific islands probably occurred in the Neolithic period as a result of deforest-
ation and the development of agriculture (Steadman 1995). A recent compre-
hensive analysis of archaeological and paleontological records concluded that
there was no evidence for widespread species extinctions on islands following
human colonization during the Paleolithic globally (Louys et al. 2021). It is not
until the Neolithic, when large-​scale changes in human social organization,
technology, dispersal, and demography took place, that humans visibly affected
island ecosystems. We will return later to the transition from the Paleolithic to
the Neolithic as a key historical event that generated major changes in the rela-
tionship between humans and nature. For the time being, let us simply observe
that the endemic bird extinctions that occurred on the Pacific islands following
human colonization do not support the hypothesis that humans have had a
systematically destructive impact on their environment since the beginning
of their existence as a species, and thus that they are congenitally destructive.
Many other examples of species extinctions during the Paleolithic that have
28 Humans versus nature

been attributed to humans also show no evidence of a causal relationship with

destructive human behavior. In particular, there is a long-standing scientific
debate about the causes of the extinction of large mammals and other slow-
growing animals between fifty and ten thousand years ago on all continents
except Africa. A popular hypothesis is that humans drove large animals to ex-
tinction through hunting after colonizing new regions or continents. This hy-
pothesis, however, seems at best an oversimplification. Instead, recent studies
suggest that large mammal extinctions in the late Quaternary resulted from a
combination of factors, including climate change and a wide range of human
direct and indirect impacts (Koch & Barnosky 2006).
Paradoxically, the example of the Pacific islands could even be used in sup-
port of the opposite hypothesis that Paleolithic hunter-​gatherers were rela-
tively non-​destructive. Indeed, the colonization of new territories by humans
constitutes, in itself, a particularly favorable context for adverse consequences
for endemic fauna because it brings together species that were not previ-
ously in contact and thus have not had the opportunity to adapt to each other
during their evolutionary history. The Pacific islands provide a particularly
good potential example of this rule. First, these islands are small and highly
isolated, two factors that are known to greatly exacerbate the impact of exotic
predators, whether human or non-​human. The extinction of endemic species
as a result of the accidental or deliberate introduction of a predator or a di-
sease to remote islands is a well-​established phenomenon in ecology. Second,
most of the endemic species that became extinct there were rails that had lost
the ability to fly in the absence of predators prior to human colonization. As a
result, they were particularly vulnerable and defenseless in the face of any sort
of predation. It is not difficult to imagine that even moderate hunting pres-
sure could lead to the rapid disappearance of their populations under these
circumstances, which is probably why the hypothesis that humans caused
bird extinctions during the Paleolithic was accepted uncritically. Given that
human colonization was so highly conducive to the extinction of flightless
endemic rail species on these remote Pacific islands, what looks surprising, in
fact, is not so much that there were extinctions, but rather that there were ap-
parently so few extinctions before the Neolithic.
It is quite possible that Paleolithic hunter-​gatherers developed an attitude
of respect toward nature as observed in a number of contemporary hunter-​
gatherer peoples, despite, or perhaps as a result of, the adverse impacts they
may have had on their natural environment. This hypothesis would make
sense from an evolutionary point of view. It may be useful to recall here
that the genus Homo appeared nearly 3 million years ago and that our spe-
cies Homo sapiens appeared nearly 300,000 years ago. Since the Neolithic did
 The divorce between humans and nature 29

not begin until about 11,000 years ago and did not spread until much later,
this means that most of the evolutionary history of the human genus and of
the modern human species took place in the Paleolithic. Therefore, most of
the traits that define human nature are inherited from a time when only the
hunter-​gatherer lifestyle existed. Furthermore, it seems that for most of the
Paleolithic period, the human lifestyle was essentially that of a gatherer, with
hunting only appearing at a later stage. It is quite possible that the spread of
hunting led some human populations to temporarily overexploit the large
species of mammals, birds, and reptiles that offered them particularly rich
and accessible resources, leading some of them to extinction, especially when
colonizing new territories. The colonization of new territories, however, is a
relatively rapid event in the evolutionary history of hominids—​on the order
of a few hundred or thousand years, out of an evolutionary history of about
3 million years. For the rest of their evolutionary history, the human genus
and species lived in a relatively stable environment (at least on the scale of
a human lifetime, not counting longer-​term climatic and other environ-
mental changes), upon which humans were closely dependent for subsist-
ence and survival. In this context, an in-​depth knowledge of the living beings
around them was essential. Since humans did not have access to sophisticated
instruments and technology at that time, in-​depth knowledge was based on
patient and detailed observation of plants and animals. An attitude of accept-
ance and respect is an obvious asset under these conditions.
Anthropological studies of contemporary hunter-​gatherer peoples have
profoundly changed our view of human history and prehistory over the
past decades. These studies have shown in particular that hunter-​gatherers,
who have preserved a “primitive” way of life close to that which probably
prevailed during the Paleolithic period, enjoy a remarkable quality of life in
many respects. This high quality of life contrasts strikingly with the modern
cliché of the “caveman,” who is supposed to live like a brute and be constantly
threatened by famine and disease. Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (2017
[1972], 14, 36) argued that the exact opposite is true. According to him,
the “subsistence” economy of primitive societies is, in fact, a society of af-
fluence, whereas modern society is a society of scarcity: “A good case can
be made that hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than
a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and
there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in
any other condition of society.” “The world’s most primitive peoples have few
possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of
goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a rela-
tion between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of
30 Humans versus nature

civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious distinc-

tion between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation—​that can
render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any
winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo.”
What modern civilization has reified in the form of a “nature” external to
humans is, in the eyes of the hunter-​gatherer, a world populated by creatures
animated by the same life breath as he or she is and to which he or she belongs
inseparably (Descola 2005). There is no hierarchy of living beings with
humans at the top. Most animals are conceived as persons with souls, which
gives them attributes identical to those of humans, such as self-​awareness,
intentionality, emotional life, and respect for ethical precepts. For Native
Americans (of both North and South America), hunting is conceived as a so-
cial interaction with beings who are fully aware of the conventions that govern
it. It is therefore by showing respect to hunted animals that one ensures their
complicity, without which hunting would not be possible. Furthermore, the
nomadic lifestyle of many hunter-​gatherer peoples leads them to exploit a lim-
ited amount of resources in any one place before migrating to other more suit-
able areas (Sahlins 2017 [1972]). Thus, neither their worldview nor their way
of life predisposes these peoples to exploit other living beings in a brutal and
excessive manner—​although, of course, they offer no guarantee that any form
of overexploitation be excluded, especially when colonizing new territories.
This is not to indulge in the old myth of the Golden Age. The hunter-​
gatherer way of life has aspects that may seem cruel to modern humans—​
at least to those who enjoy all the benefits of modern comfort. In particular,
births, deaths, and thus population size are largely regulated by the constraints
of nomadism. Individuals who are either too old or too ill to participate
in long-​distance walking to new territories are unlikely to survive. The
worldviews and beliefs of hunter-​gatherers, which are extraordinarily diverse,
are, like those of modern humans, stories that they tell themselves and that re-
flect particular historical trajectories. Thus, they should not be seen as truths
against the excesses of modernity. But in many respects, it does seem that the
hunter-​gatherer way of life that prevailed in the Paleolithic was an age of rela-
tive affluence and simplicity, of which humanity may have retained a nostalgic
memory in the idealized form of the myth of the Golden Age. This may ex-
plain why some populations decided to convert back to gathering and hunting
when conditions permitted. For example, a recent genetic study revealed that
the last hunter-​gatherers of Madagascar, the Mikeas, actually originated from
a population of farmers and herders who had converted to a hunter-​gatherer
lifestyle (Pierron et al. 2014). Other hunter-​gatherers, such as the Hadza of
Tanzania, have long refused to adopt any agricultural practices, claiming that
 The divorce between humans and nature 31

this would entail too much work, whereas gathering and hunting effortlessly
provided everything they needed (Sahlins 2017 [1972]).
If the hunter-​gatherer way of life that has prevailed during most of human
history is largely incompatible with a separation between humans and nature,
where, then, did this separation come from? There is some disagreement as to
the ultimate origin of this separation, but much agreement as to its subsequent
historical development. Ecofeminism places the origin of human domination
over nature in patriarchy (Mies & Shiva 2014), as the domination of men over
women leads directly to the domination of humans over nature insofar as
women symbolize the “natural” side of humankind, particularly through their
role in procreation. Others place it in the emergence of social hierarchies,
which probably preceded patriarchy, with the domination of humans over
nature being an extension of the domination of humans over other humans
(Bookchin 2010). Still others emphasize factors such as animal domestica-
tion, as humans subjugated large animals and transformed them from objects
of respect and admiration into mere possessions (Mason 2005), or the emer-
gence of alphabetic writing, which gradually disconnected humans from their
direct sensorial experience of the world (Abram 1996). In any case, all of these
factors were inextricably intertwined in the Neolithic revolution that began in
the Middle East about 11,000 years ago and that has largely shaped modern
Western civilization, one of whose unique features is precisely the separation
of humans from nature (Descola 2005).
The Neolithic revolution was particularly profound and rapid in the Middle
East, where it was accompanied by the domestication of a large number of
plant and animal species for the production of food resources, the emergence
of agriculture and pastoralism, and the transition from the nomadic lifestyle
typical of hunter-​gatherers to a sedentary lifestyle. But this upheaval in the re-
lationship between human populations and their environment set in motion a
wider revolution in the whole of social life. In particular, it led to considerable
increases in birth rate and population density, which were then offset by an
equally significant increase in mortality following the appearance of epidemic
diseases and wars, for which a high population density is a fertile breeding
ground. Finally, it favored the emergence of a complex social organization, hi-
erarchically divided into social classes and regulated by an increasingly pow-
erful state.
The modern ideology of progress presents human history as a steady pro-
gression toward a better life free from natural constraints, but all the evidence
suggests that this has not been the case. On the contrary, the Neolithic revolu-
tion seems to have been an extraordinarily painful bifurcation in human his-
tory. Certainly, a small minority of the wealthy and powerful benefited from
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 “He’s that obstinate, that he be,” said the old gardener, who
always came when any one was called, answering to any name if it
were called loud enough.
He was deaf, so it was best to make sure: besides, his wife had
lately died and he felt lonely if left entirely to vegetables.
“He just does it for the sake of contrariness,” he went on; “at his
age he did ought to know better—but he don’t mean half he does—if
you don’t take no notice of him he’ll come skeewithering back.”
And skeewithering back Marcus came, and resting his head on
Elsie’s lap looked up into her face with that in his eyes that must
forever disarm all feelings of anger, hatred, and malice against
uncles—even uncles!
“Why, oh, why were you called Marcus?” she asked, and Marcus
said, in his own particular manner of speech, that he had often asked
himself the same question—and would now ask her.
Elsie remembered well the day Marcus had arrived—already
named—in a basket. When she had opened the basket she had
seen the smallest of black spaniels, and the blackest of black dogs,
whose mother, judging by his neck, might have been a swan, and
whose father, judging by the rest of him, the best spaniel ever bred.
When she questioned the suitability of his name she discovered that
he looked the wisest thing in the world—that a philosopher beside
him must have lost in seriousness of demeanour. On his forehead
there stood, strongly pronounced, the bumps of benevolence—so as
Sibyl had named him Marcus, Marcus he remained.
The other Marcus was then nothing more than the forgotten name
of a negligible brother—the children’s uncle—on the other side.
 III

If a sister knows not a brother’s heart he has none to know.

“D EAREST SIBYL,” wrote Marcus, “why didn’t you tell me you

were in London and taking Diana to her first dance? I had
always meant to give her a pearl necklace for her coming-out ball. I
will take her, of course, while you are abroad, on one condition, and
that is that she isn’t always rushing off to her aunt in the country. I
dislike that woman, as you know. I dislike all strong-minded, self-
opinionated women. You are quite right, she is no fit companion for a
girl of Diana’s age. Who has a better right to Diana than I have? I
can’t have Miss Carston interfering. Sibyl, my dear, I am longing to
see you.”
Hardly had he written the words when the telephone bell rang at
his elbow.
He lifted the receiver and heard Sibyl’s voice telling him he was a
darling old owl. In answer to his gentle reproof she said, Of course
she had written to tell him she was bringing Diana to London, but
she had forgotten to post the letter! Couldn’t he have guessed that?
There was the same tenderness in the voice there had always been.
She used the same absurd endearments she had always used. He
knew she must be unchanged. Might she come and see him? Now?
At once? She would!
He put back the receiver—and was astonished at his emotion. The
force of his feelings shocked him. He had imagined himself past
caring for anything very much. His life was so easy—so well ordered
—so few demands were made upon him, except for money—and
those were easily met. There was nothing to disturb him—nothing to
excite him—except perhaps now and then a rather bigger venture
than usual in the city—which as a rule meant more money (he was
lucky) with which to buy china, glass, prints, anything he liked, and to
his manifold likes his room testified. His house was beautiful and the
things in it were chosen for their beauty. For these things he had
come to care because he had been left alone in the world. He liked
to think of himself as neglected. He had felt for his sister a deep
affection and she had chosen to marry and leave him.
He couldn’t compete for her love. He never competed. Even as a
collector he had suffered from this amiable inability to assert himself.
Now he deputed others less sensitive to buy for him. In his young
days, before he had gone to America, he remembered at an auction
losing a vase he had particularly wanted. He had allowed himself to
be outbidden by a girl with wide, grey eyes—who wore dogskin
gloves. He could have outbidden her, but something had moved him
to pity. Her gloves probably—they betrayed such a lack of social
knowledge. It was a blue vase he would have bought. He loved the
colour of it—the feel of it. She could have known nothing of the feel
of it, for she held it in gloved hands, for which lack of feeling and
understanding he pitied her—pitied her ignorance. She held the vase
upside down to look at the mark: even about that she was undecided
—or else she was short-sighted, which probability the clearness of
her eyes questioned. Having examined the mark, she handed the
vase back to the man from whom she had taken it and sharply bid a
figure to which Marcus could have gone if he had wished. But he had
not. So the vase became hers and she looked him straight in the
eyes—and her eyes said “Beaten!”
“Goth!” thought Marcus as he recalled the scene. “She held the
vase in gloved hands. Vandal—nice grey-eyed, clean, ignorant
woman—” But he had thought of her oftener than he knew in those
days, bemuse for a certain time he had thought of her every time he
had seen a woman whose eyes were not grey.
Marcus, thinking now only of his sister, walked to a mirror that
hung on the wall between two windows and looked at himself
anxiously. Would she find him changed? At forty-six he was bound to
look different, a little grey, of course. That did not matter, so long as
she was not grey. He lit a cigarette; then put it down unsmoked,
remembering that as a girl she had hated the smell of tobacco. Then
he went to the window and ran up the blind; then pulled it down
again halfway: not too strong a light, he decided; and pulled all the
blinds down halfway. It would be kinder to Sibyl. Or should he pull
them right up and face the worst? Leave her to face the light? A taxi
stopped in the street below. It was absurd, but he was too nervous to
go down and meet her and he counted the seconds it would take
Pillar to get upstairs, to open the door. One! He must have been
waiting in the hall. Supposing she were grey-haired, old, and
wrinkled—or fat—? How should he keep it from her that he was
shocked, distressed, pained? The door opened and in a moment two
arms were round his neck. He almost said, “Where is your
mother?”—was delighted he should almost have said it; wished he
had really said it. What prettier compliment could he have paid this
delightful being he held in his arms?
She was still young—still brown-haired—still impulsive. He held
her at arm’s length—Still in love with Eustace! He could see that: no
woman remains so young who is not in love.
“Marcus, Marcus, you dear funny old thing!”
“Why funny?” he asked, gently disengaging himself from her arms;
“let me look at you again.”
With a feeling of apprehension he knew to be absurd, he looked
again, gaining courage as he looked. Had he overestimated the
youthfulness of her appearance? Did not her pallor detract just a little
from the radiance that had been her greatest beauty? Had he
missed wrinkles? Yes, one or two—finely drawn, put in with a light
hand, emphasizing only the passage of smiles—nothing more. If she
had lost anything in looks she had gained much in expression. He
might have left the blinds up. Her eyes were large. There were
women he knew whose eyes got smaller as they grew older; that he
could not have borne. Sibyl’s eyes were just as they had always
been. They had lost naturally something of their look of childlike
questioning. That he did not mind. The childlike woman he had long
ceased to admire. He read here true womanliness; a depth of real
understanding, and a certain knowledge of the big things in life—
things that mattered.
 “Sit down,” he said, and he drew her down on to the sofa beside
him. “She looked like a rose, did she?”
“My Diana?”
Marcus nodded. “Pillar saw her.”
“Did he say she looked like a rose? Well, then it must have been
very evident.”
“Not necessarily,” said Marcus, unconsciously championing Pillar.
Not that he altogether trusted Pillar’s taste. He had shown in the
Louvre, Marcus remembered, a weakness for Rubens’s women. He
might have admired the consummate technique of a great master
while deploring a certain coarseness in his choice of subjects, but he
had not done so—
“Is she pretty?” asked Marcus.
“She’s rather delicious.”
“When is she coming to see me?”
“At any moment, but she’s a will-o’-the-wisp. She comes and goes
as she wills.”
“She’s slight, then?”
“Oh, slight! You could pull her through a ring.”
Marcus was glad of that.
“Now tell me about your dear self, Marcus.”
There was so little to tell, he said.
“Not when everything interests me—Give me a cigarette.”
“But you used not to—” he began, handing her his cigarette case.
“Smoke? No—but Eustace likes me to sit with him, and we smoke
—you get to like it in hot climates.”
“I shouldn’t have let you smoke if you had been mine.”
“No?” she laughed gently. “Dear old Marcus!”
 Looking at Sibyl, and finding her so perfectly satisfying to his
artistic sense, he fell to wondering what Diana was really like. And
whom she was like? He dared not ask. He had no wish to hear she
was like her father. She could not be like her mother or the papers
would be bound to have got hold of it. He was glad they hadn’t—but
still girls far less pretty were advertised.
“I’m so glad,” said Sibyl; “it shows you won’t let Diana.”
“Smoke? No, certainly not.”
“You don’t know Diana—I must tell you about her—a little about
her, without saying she is like her father, is that it?” She laughed—
how gay she was! When she had told him that little, omitting that
much, she asked: “Does she sound nice?” And Marcus, smiling, said
she sounded delicious.
“She is.”
Marcus laughed; this was the old Sibyl back again, with all her
enthusiasms, the same charming companion she had been as a girl.
Because of that charm of hers, he liked to think, he had not married.
“Sibyl, is she like you?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes.”
He breathed again.
“And I so wanted her to be like her father,” she added.
“I suppose so—Is his sister—the one you call Elsie—married?”
“No.”
“You said she had no children—”
“She hasn’t.”
“But naturally. It was hardly necessary to say it, was it?”
And Sibyl laughed. Marcus needed just what she was going to
give him, a disturbing young thing to live with him. Marcus dreaded
it, although he would not have said so because of that sister he so
disliked, who wanted Diana.
 “I won’t have Diana running off whenever Miss Carston chooses to
send for her. That I think you understand.”
“But there will be times when you will want to get rid of her. You
won’t want to give up travelling, will you?”
“Couldn’t she come with me?”
“You can’t conceive, dear, the trouble a woman is travelling. You
would hate to have to think of some one else—another place to find
in a crowded train—another person’s luggage to look after—another
ticket to lose—you would hate it.”
“Then I shan’t travel.”
“But surely it would be easier to send Diana to Elsie than to do
that.”
“I detest that woman—”
“She has—nice eyes. You are a dear old thing, Marcus, and not a
bit changed.”
“I never change.”
Marcus waited all day. Diana did not come. He was disappointed.
It showed a want of reverence for the older on the part of the
younger generation. At last he went to bed with a volume of Rabelais
to read (in order to keep up his French). He read until he grew
sleepy. He put out the light and slept until a flash of light awoke him
and he wondered—What was this thing sitting on the end of his bed
in white—a being so slim and so exquisite!
“Darling! the same old Marcus,” the being exclaimed,—“so sleepy
and I woke him up. I couldn’t wait to see him—such years since we
met!”
“Sibyl!” he murmured.
“Not this time, it’s Diana—is she like Sibyl? I am so glad—well,
darling, talk!”
The slim being sat on his bed and sticking out her feet, on which
twin shoe-buckles twinkled, urged him to amuse her. He dreaded
“This little pig went to market” played through the bedclothes. He
saw Diana eyeing the spot where she must know his toes were
bound to be.
“How did you get here?” he asked.
“Pillar opened wide the portal and we walked in. He wasn’t in the
least surprised.”
“Not surprised?”
“Not in the least. He said we might turn up the carpet and dance—
if we liked. He offered us a gramaphone—his own—to dance to.”
“My dear Diana, you ought to be in bed.”
“Ought? Why?”
“It’s time.”
“What is he reading?” She put out her hand. He seized the book.
“A bedside classic, is it?”
He put it under his pillow.
“You look nice in bed,” she said softly, “but not a bit what I
expected.”
“I am not what I was, of course,” he said hastily.
“Are you a Once Was? Poor darling—does it hurt? Do you like my
frock?”
He said he liked it—enormously.
“And my shoes?”
He nodded.
“Mother says I get my slim feet from you.”
“Oh, does she? Do go home, my child. How are you going home?”
“Where are your slippers?” She dived down.
“You’ve kicked them under the bed,” he moaned; “they were
there.”
 “I never touched them; here they are!” She slipped her feet into
them; huge, red morocco slippers they were. Pillar would have
remembered where they had been bought, the day on which they
had been bought, and what kind of a woman she was who had
passed at the moment of buying. They must have been the only size
left in the bazaar. Diana sat on the edge of the bed again and put out
her feet, the slippers swinging like pendulums from the tips of her
toes. “Mummy must retract her words—she spoke in her haste—
Marcus, my Once Was, I’ve been dancing—did you ever dance?”
“Dear child, do go, who is taking you home?”
“Six people. Pillar is taking care of them downstairs—Well, if you
insist, I suppose I must. I shall love to stay with you. You don’t mind
my coming like this—do you? Look at me! D’you like me?”
She was exactly—in theory—what Marcus would have liked
another man’s niece to be, slight, graceful, with just that amount of
assurance he found right in woman; but one does not always want
one’s theories to live with one.
When he awoke a few hours later, he was firmly convinced he had
dreamed and had dreamed pleasantly enough, and he closed his
eyes to dream again; but the dream had vanished. Pillar remained.
He brought him his tea, pulled up the blinds, put his things in order,
stooped and picked up from the floor something that sparkled and
laid it down on the dressing-table.
When he had gone Marcus jumped out of bed, went to the
dressing-table and saw lying upon it a small stone of glittering paste.
He had not dreamed then. He was glad—in a way. Diana would be a
disturbing element in a quiet life—distracting, perhaps, rather than
disturbing.
 IV

A mother may laugh with a master; she goes and

the joke goes with her: the boy stays behind.

S IBYL CARSTON, having arranged things entirely to her

satisfaction, straightway made preparations to join her husband
in that far-off dependency. The preparations were quickly made. She
went down to see Dick at school: walked with him through cool
cloisters, out into the sun; paced close-shaven lawns; drank in the
beauty of it all and expressed a hope that it was sinking into the soul
of her son.
“Oh, rather,” said the son, a little surprised that his soul should be
discussed. He realized the occasion was a special one, otherwise it
was the sort of thing you didn’t talk about. It was there all right, his
soul, he supposed. It stirred to the sound of beautiful music; also
when he read in history of deeds of valour!—you bet it did—at the
greatness of England in general; at the left-hand bowling of one
master in particular. It was all there, but he didn’t want to talk about
it.
“I understand, darling,” said his mother, “but don’t stifle it.”
He wouldn’t, rather not. “But, I say, what’s this about Diana and
this London business and Aunt Elsie? Rough on her, isn’t it?”
“No, darling, I don’t think so. I want Diana to have some fun.”
“There’s lots at Aunt Elsie’s. There are the dogs, they’re good fun,
and the rabbits, and the farm. There’s always something to do there.
Aunt Elsie is jolly good fun, isn’t she?”
“So is Uncle Marcus.”
“Is he?” This doubtfully.
 “He’s my brother, darling.”
“Oh, I see. I suppose you are bound in a kind of way to think him
funny then—you like him in a way.”
“Very much.”
“Aunt Elsie doesn’t.”
“She has never seen him.”
“She jolly well doesn’t want to either.”
“Dick, darling, you will take care of Diana, won’t you?” said his
mother, changing the subject: it was so difficult to keep to any
subject with the good-bye looming in the near distance.
Any one who says good-bye to the child she loves for a long time
(and a year to a mother is an eternity) drinks deep of the cup of self-
sacrifice. Sibyl’s one thought was that Dick should not know what
she was suffering. Of course he knew: but if it were her business—
as mother—to bridge the distance across the sea, to talk of the near
days when they should be together again, it was his—as son—to
pretend he believed her. He assured her it was no distance: he didn’t
mind: it happened to lots of boys: it was all right.
“You will take care of Diana?” she repeated—readjusting the
distance.
“Yes, rather; you don’t want her to marry while you’re away, I
suppose?—because I don’t quite see how I should manage that.”
“I don’t want her to marry while I’m away, of course, although I
hope she may some day.”
“Taboret Major admires her so, I thought I would just ask.”
“He would be young to marry, wouldn’t he?”
“Well, so would she—anyway, he wouldn’t like me to talk about his
private affairs, so don’t say anything about it. And, I say, if you do
see him, I think you’d better not speak to him at all; he doesn’t like
people speaking to him. He’s going to be a great writer—he thinks.”
 Sibyl promised she wouldn’t speak to Taboret Major, but Mr. Wane
she must see. Mr. Wane was Dick’s house-master, and Dick allowed
he was very fairly decent. But Dick had started early in life with
prejudices against masters and it was difficult to overcome them.
When he had come back from his first term at a private school, he
had resented with the whole force of his small being the injustice of
being given a holiday task. Until he had got home he hadn’t known
the beastly thing had come with him. The perfidy of the master had
embittered him. “How could he have wished me a happy holiday
when he knew all the time that he had given me this beastly thing to
do?” he had asked.
It was a difficult question to answer. Masters must answer it for
themselves—at that day when they too must answer questions: not
only ask them.
“Oh, yes, you must see old Wane,” Dick admitted.
“We will walk about a little first—and talk—there is so much to say
—isn’t there?” said his mother.
Dick nodded: she tightened the pressure of her arm on his, and it
spoke volumes. He kicked at the little pebbles in the path, anything
seemed to help. “How high do you suppose that tree is?” he asked.
“It’s awfully old.”
The sun was in his mother’s eyes, she couldn’t see. Neither could
he, but he knew; it was sixty feet high, so it wasn’t quite a fair
question, was it?
“Not quite fair, my Dick.”
So much wasn’t quite fair.
If you can’t talk you can always eat an ice, at least you can if you
are a boy. Sibyl suggested it. “Good business,” said Dick.
The ice was a help—a still greater help, two ices. They seemed to
help the swallowing part of the business and good-byes largely
consist of that. Then Sibyl went to see Mr. Wane and Dick waited
outside—hoping she wouldn’t do anything funny—or try to make the
old man laugh. If Sibyl had been, as a mother, a little less pretty and
charming, it is possible Dick would have been—as a boy—a little
less forward for his age, and might have been possessed of a
character that was less surprising in its strength to his house-master.
It is possible.
Mr. Wane was a just man and honourable, but perhaps, to
convince himself that Dick’s mother had dimples, he may have
emphasized a little more than he need have done certain things that
had been “curiously brought to his notice” about Dick. A certain
sterling honesty of purpose—unusual in so young a boy—Yes, they
were there! Two of them, one on each side of her mouth. A very
pretty mouth—a mouth that told of a certain fastidiousness of
character that appealed to Mr. Wane. He only needed to give one or
two instances, which bore out what he had said about Dick’s
character, and a depth he had suspected, in the eyes of Dick’s
mother, he found and fathomed.
“Show me a boy’s mother!” he was wont to say.
Dick had shown him a pretty mother, and had waited patiently
outside while she talked about him! At last she joined him. Old Wane
came out with her and he was laughing, but he seemed all right,
otherwise.
Dick and his mother walked back through the cool cloisters, out
into the sun and over close-shaven lawns. “Point out to your mother,”
Mr. Wane had said, “architectural features of interest, my boy!” And
Dick proceeded to do it. “That gate, see? It was built—I don’t know
when—in the year, I don’t know what—by—I don’t know who,”—and
his mother was duly impressed. To pay for this knowledge and other
things there must be spent years in hot climates. Money must be
saved so that when Dick was grown to be a man he should look
back to this time as the happiest in his life. If all this and the sense of
its past should sink into his soul, it must help to make him one of
England’s proudest sons.
At the railway station they parted, and Sibyl watched till she could
no longer see her small pink-faced son, who was growing, for all his
smallness—so big, so tall, so reserved.
 After Dick’s mother had left him, an uncomfortable way all visiting
mothers have, Dick, unconscious of that curious nobility of character
that Mr. Wane, somewhat to his own surprise, had endowed him
with, felt very lonely. He hated islands, beastly far-off islands, rotten
places for mothers to go to—what was the matter with England? He
asked Taboret Major, and Taboret Major said, “Nothing, absolutely
nothing—England was all right.” And he and Dick walked down to
the cricket fields (their England) and it was all right.
Mrs. Wane, who had lately been brought to bed of her third son,
was propped up on her pillows and Mr. Wane was sitting beside her.
That he had something on his mind she knew. Mothers always upset
him: they upset boys too; being altogether upsetting things.
“He is a very nice boy—a very nice boy—a particularly nice boy, I
should say,” he said thoughtfully.
He had said it three times, so Mrs. Wane put out her hand and
closing it on his said—“Was she so very charming and attractive?”
And Mr. Wane laughed, for in spite of what Dick knew to the contrary,
“old Wane” could see a joke, and that joke against himself.
“You dear!” he said to his wife, and she answered: “He is a nice
boy—a very nice boy—a particularly nice boy—and there’s another
just as nice—and you might tell his mother so without its causing you
any after pricks of conscience, or remorse.” And she looked towards
the cradle in which slept profoundly Wane Minimus.
“He’s very good and quiet,” admitted his father.
“He knows perhaps,” said his mother, “that his father is one from
whom it is supposed the secrets of no small boy can be hid. By
instinct he knows that: later on I shall tell him that he need not be
quite so good, or so quiet; that although as a schoolmaster it is your
bounden duty to know the secrets of all small schoolboys, as a father
you are just as blind—and just as weak as any other well-
dispositioned father. It is in order to make schoolmasters human that
mothers marry them—there could be no other reason. Now tell me
all about Carston’s mother and just what it was you said to her about
him?”
 That night, as Mr. Wane undressed, he was still a little uneasy.
“He is a particularly nice boy,” he murmured; but this it was that
rankled—Barker’s mother had been down, too, and Barker was a
particularly nice boy—he had faults, of course, so had Dick—but he
had told Barker’s mother of Barker’s faults. He had not spared her:
nor had he cared whether she had dimples or not—perhaps because
she had not.
Before he got into bed he thanked God for the inestimable gift of a
good wife—and he meant it; and of an understanding wife—he
meant that too; and of a beautiful wife—he meant that too—in the
highest sense.
 V

If my sister have a child then am I straightway

an uncle, and who shall save me?

W HEN Diana took up her abode in the house of her uncle, she
arrived late, dressed, and went out again to dinner. That was
not how Marcus would have had her arrive. She must understand
that order was the keynote of his establishment. How otherwise
could he expect to keep so excellent a housekeeper as Mrs. Oven?
Pillar, too, must be considered. She must state definitely when she
would be in to dinner and when not.
“I was not,” she said later, when taxed, “definitely not.”
Marcus dined alone. As he came downstairs dressed for dinner,
he met a housemaid going up, with a glass of milk on a tray. On the
tray there was also a plate, on the plate there was a banana, and
beside the banana lay glistening a halfpenny bun. The meal of some
one’s particular choosing, he should say. In no other way could it
have found its way upstairs in his house. But whose meal was it?
That he had two housemaids he knew. He saw evidence of their
being in the brightness of the brasses, the polish of the furniture, but
he hardly knew them apart. The bun-bearer was one of them. He
went on his way deploring that in his house there was no back
staircase. But for whom could a vagrant banana be?
Tentatively he put the question to Pillar, as ashamed to ask it as
Pillar was to answer it. Pillar murmured something about a
mischance, and Mr. Maitland was quick to admit it. It was certainly
an accident meeting the banana on the stairs; but the meal itself
remained unexplained, and inexcused; it must have been
predestined. Then it struck him that Diana must have brought a
maid. It was quite right she should. He might have guessed it. But a
maid who lived on buns and bananas, could she be efficient?
Marcus dined uncomfortably. The dinner seemed less good than
usual. Gradually it was borne in upon him that it must be Mrs. Oven
who was in bed and who was feeding on buns and bananas. She
had lost her taste, her sense, her gastronomic taste—her sense of
taste. Everything!
Towards twelve o’clock Diana came in, unrepentant and delightful;
she floated in, as it were, on a cloud of tulle, a veritable will-o’-the-
wisp, a thing as light as gossamer, as elusive as a firefly. She had a
great deal to tell Marcus and told him none of it. She was lost in the
depth of his huge sofa—she looked like drifted snow—blown there
by the wind. He didn’t tell her that, even if he thought it. What he did
tell her was that he expected his guests to go to bed early. This in
obedience to an instinct that told him to begin as he meant to go on
—
Diana said she could not go to bed early—that night, at all events.
She would go as early as she could—as early in the morning. “I have
a confession to make. Shall I make it now or wait till to-morrow? In
ten minutes it will be to-morrow. To-morrow never used to come so
soon.”
“Why not now?”
“No, I could not sleep unforgiven.”
“But why should you? What if I forgave you?”
Horrible thoughts flashed through Marcus’s mind. What could she
have to confess? Happier thoughts—what could there be that he
would not forgive? forgive her? There were things he could not
forgive a man. All the things he had heard of modern girls and their
ways passed through his mind, all the things he had ever heard of
men from the days of man’s innocency until now. Then he looked at
Diana. The modern girl was all right; she was delicious. But men—
men? Would they find Diana distracting? Or was it because he was
no longer young that her youth seemed so appealing, her freshness,
her gaiety so infectious? He had always felt he could never have
made a successful or even a comfortably happy father. A creature
like this he could never have let out of his sight: all men would have
become his enemies by very reason of their existence.
“Once Was,” said Diana softly, “why so dreamy? You make me
sleepy. Good-morning!”
She went to bed, unconfessed, unforgiven. Pillar put out the lights
downstairs. Marcus put them out on his landing. Above that it was
Diana’s business. “Don’t forget the lights, Diana,” he called.
At one o’clock in the morning Diana was singing in her bath and
Marcus lay in bed wondering what it was she wanted to confess. He
fell asleep uncertain whether he liked a niece in the house or not. He
had pictured to himself a quiet, mousey niece, demure and obedient!
But how charming she had looked on the sofa!—she got her feet
from him, did she? A great attraction in women, pretty feet; and none
too common. He must see that she gave enough for her boots. It
was where some women economized. He shuddered to think of
women out in the street, on muddy days, in house shoes. Horrible!
Diana came down to breakfast. That was to her credit. To bed late:
yet up early. She looked delicious: not in the least tired and very
fresh and clean. A girl may be both without looking triumphantly so,
as Diana did.
After breakfast with Marcus was a sacred hour, dedicated to his
newspapers and his pipe, yet after breakfast Diana planted herself
on the edge of his chair and proceeded to get to know him. Not until
she had done that, she said, could she make her confession.
“What is it?” he asked, ready to forgive anything, if only that he
might be left in peace.
“I brought Shan’t with me; do you mind?”
“A maid?” he said. “A dyspeptic maid,” he added to himself.
“Well, she’s female—certainly—I’ll say that for her.”
Marcus would have allowed that himself—in spite of her addiction
to zoölogical fare.
 “She’s such a willing little beast. She won’t eat if I go away—so I
had to bring her—see, my Once Was?”
“Oh, a dog? My dear Diana, of course, I can’t have it upstairs, but
Pillar will be delighted to exercise the little beast—”
No dog explained the banana and the milk, but he said nothing.
“Dear child!”—he was feeling very fond of Diana—“I should like to
see—whatever you call it—is it trained and—”
“Shan’t! Shan’t!” called Diana up the stairs. “Come! Hurry up!”
“It was a funny way to talk to a dog,” thought Marcus. If at that
moment he had looked up from his paper he would certainly have
thought it a funny dog that walked into the dining-room. “Well?”
Marcus turned in answer to the interrogation and beheld a small
girl of four or five, standing, beaming at him, the very quintessence
of willingness and loving-kindness. “We-ell?” she repeated.
There are those in life who carry the mackintoshes of others; who
leave the last fresh egg for others; the early peas for others; the first
asparagus for others; who look up trains for others; find servants for
others; houses for others; who cry with others; who laugh with
others. They are as a rule spinsters who do these things and they do
them gladly—even the crying. Yes! Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to, Shan’t
for short, was a spinster, and Marcus recognized her as one of those
born to do things for others. She could laugh and cry at the same
time, run faster than any child of her age to do your bidding. She
could soothe your pain with her smile: and touch your heart with her
laugh. These things Marcus did not as yet know. But he was glad
directly he saw her that she was not a dog, and he grudged her
neither the milk, nor the bun, nor the banana, nor the distracting of
Mrs. Oven from the cooking of his dinner, which said much for the
fascination of Shan’t.
There she stood longing to do things, aching, benevolence
beaming from her eyes. “Well?” she repeated.
“Good gracious!” said Marcus, and he got up and stood looking
down with amazement on this small person, who stood so willingly
waiting. Suddenly she looked at his feet and like a flash she was
gone.
“Who in the world is it, Diana?” he asked sternly, but his heart had
become as water, and his bones like wax. Here was the child of his
dreams, the child he had played Hide-and-Seek with, told his longest
stories to, taken to the Zoo, saved from drowning.
“That’s Shan’t-if-I-don’t-want-to! That’s one of her names, but she
always does want to. She’s the jolliest little beggar in the world.
Mummy says I can’t have her for my own, but she is my own and I
am hers. Here she is. She is bound to have fetched something for
you. For Heaven’s sake, say ‘Thank you.’”
She had fetched his slippers. Now Marcus Maitland would rather
go without breakfast than breakfast in slippers, but he said, “Tha-ank
you.”
“Now,” said Diana, “if by chance I ruffled your hair she’d be off for
your hair-brushes before you knew where you were.”
“I don’t know where I am, as it is,” said Marcus, edging away from
the devastating hands of Diana. He loathed his hair ruffled.
“Put on your slippers,” said Shan’t, pointing to his feet.
“But I have only just put on my boots.”
“Put—them—on and don’t—argue,” said Shan’t.
“But—”
“Pe—lease!” Shan’t looked at him, and Marcus, feeling about as
determined as a worm can feel under the steady pressure of a
garden-roller, stooped down and began to unlace his boots. To do it
properly he must have a button-hook. Could Shan’t know to what an
exquisite discomfort she was putting him?
“No,” said Diana, “you needn’t. No, Shan’t, you can fetch
something else.”
“No, sit down, Shan’t,” commanded her uncle. “I want to look at
you.”
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