Relationship to Nature
On the other band, man’s relationship to nature is more than a matter of “wise use.” He shares this world with other beings whose “rights” deserve to be recognized. The history of science and also religion is a story of man’s struggle with his own geocentricism. The message that Rachael Carson gave us in Silent Spring relates a current episode in that story. Albert Schweitzer has expressed the attitude of humility in terms of “reverence for life” which identifies the moral principle that the good consists in the preservation, enhancement, and exaltation of life, and that destruction, injury, and retardation of life are evil. The world presents a spectacle of “will-to-live” contending against itself. One organism asserts itself at the expense of another. Man can only preserve his own life at the cost of taking lives. One who holds the ethic of reverence for life injures or destroys only out of necessity. Never does such a person kill other beings from thoughtlessness [5]. There is a curious similarity in the messages of Rachael Carson, the scientist, and Albert Schweitzer, the theologian.