John Muir naturalists are those with John Muir’s beliefs, as extracted from his collected writings and applied to today. I have spoken for them in my book,The Life of the Creative Spirit (H. C. Romesburg, p.152):
John Muir naturalists believe that spiritual prosperity towers above mercantile prosperity. Reacting against the loss of nature, they ask that development be restrained, and the known and untold forms and interlocking relations of nature be sustained. Who in right mind wrecks a mountain for its coal? Where has it been proved that what cannot be advertised, wrapped, and charged for is to be thought lowly of? And however controversial the issue of rights for animals and natural places may be, who dares deny that the first right of everyone is to be happy and content, and this is violated in those whose being is ripped by actions of those that cause animals to suffer; that confine species to smaller and smaller reservations, some consequently going extinct; and that gouge the hills, foul streams and oceans, and level forests to stumps?
For a brief biography of John Muir, click here.
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