I Have Landed (54 page)

But is all cultivation—hedgerows? topiary?—crippling and misuse? The loaded nature of ethical language lies exposed in Jensen's false claim, quoted just above. Let us consider, in closing, another and opposite definition of democracy that can certainly claim the sanction of ancient usage. In a 1992 article, J. Wolschke-Bulmahn and G. Groening cite a stirring and poignant argument made by Rudolf Borchardt, a Jew who later died by Nazi hands, against the nativist doctrine as perverted by Nazi horticulturists:

I cannot state a preference in this wide sweep of opinions, from pure hands-off romanticism to thorough overmanagement (though I trust that most of us would condemn both extremes). Absolute answers to such ethical and aesthetic questions do not exist in any case. But we will not achieve clarity on this issue if we advocate a knee-jerk equation of “native” with morally best, and fail to recognize the ethical power of a contrary view, supporting a sensitive cultivation of all plants, whatever their geographic origin, that can enhance nature and bring both delight and utility to humans. Do we become more “democratic” when we respect organisms only in their natural places (how then, could any non-African human respect himself), or shall we persevere in the great experiment of harmonious and mutually reinforcing geographic proximity—as the prophet Isaiah sought in his wondrous vision of a place where the wolf might dwell with the lamb and such nonnatives as the calf and the lion might feed together—where “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.”

Clinton, W. J. 1994.
Memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies
. Office of the Press Secretary, 26 April 1994.

Druse, K., and M. Roach. 1994.
The Natural Habitat Garden
. New York: Clarkson Potter.

Gould, S. J. 1991. Exaptation: A crucial tool for an evolutionary psychology.
Journal of Social Issues
47(3):43–65.

Gould, S. J., and R. C. Lewontin. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B
205:581–98.

Groening, G., and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn. 1992. Some notes on the mania for native plants in Germany.
Landscape Journal
11(2):116–26.

Jensen, J. 1956.
Siftings
, the major portion of
The Clearing and collected writings
. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour.

Paley, W. 1802.
Natural Theology
. London: R. Faulder.

Smyser, C. A. 1982.
Nature's Design: A Practical Guide to Natural Landscaping
. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press.

Wolschke-Bulmahn, J. 1995. Political landscapes and technology: Nazi Germany and the landscape design of the
Reichsautobahnen
(Reich Motor Highways). Selected CELA Annual Conference Papers, vol. 7. Nature and Technology. Iowa State University, 9–12 September 1995.

Wolschke-Bulmahn, J., and G. Groening. 1992. The ideology of the nature garden: Nationalistic trends in garden design in Germany during the early twentieth century.
Journal of Garden History
12(1):73–80.

W
E
SHUDDER AT THE THOUGHT OF REPEATING THE INI
tial sins of our species. Thus, Hamlet's uncle bewails his act of fratricide by recalling Cain's slaying of Abel:

Such metaphors of unsavory odor seem especially powerful because our sense of smell lies so deep in our evolutionary construction, yet remains (perhaps for this reason) so undervalued and often unmentioned in our culture. A later seventeenth-century English writer recognized this potency and particularly warned his readers
against using olfactory metaphors because common people will take them literally:

This quotation appears in the 1646 work of Sir Thomas Browne:
Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or, Enquiries into Very Many Received Tenents [sic], and Commonly Presumed Truths
. Browne, a physician from Norwich, remains better known for his wonderful and still widely read work of 1642, the part autobiographical, part philosophical, and part whimsical
Religio Medici
, or “Religion of a Doctor.” The
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
(his Latinized title for a plethora of false truths) became the granddaddy of a most honorable genre still vigorously pursued—exposés of common errors and popular ignorance, particularly the false beliefs most likely to cause social harm.

I cited Browne's statement from the one chapter (among more than a hundred) sure to send shudders down the spine of modern readers—his debunking of the common belief “that Jews stink.” Browne, although almost maximally philo-Semitic by the standards of his century, was not free of all prejudicial feelings against Jews. He attributed the origin of the canard about Jewish malodor—hence, my earlier quotation—to a falsely literal reading of a metaphor legitimately applied (or so he thought) to the descendants of people who had advocated the crucifixion of Jesus. Browne wrote: “Now the ground that begat or propagated this assertion, might be the distasteful averseness of the Christian from the Jew, upon the villainy of that fact, which made them abominable and stink in the nostrils of all men.”

As a rationale for debunking a compendium of common errors, Browne correctly notes that false beliefs arise from incorrect theories about nature and therefore serve as active impediments to knowledge, not just as laughable signs of primitivity: “To purchase a clear and warrantable body of truth, we must forget and part with much we know.” Moreover, Browne notes, truth is hard to ascertain and ignorance is far more common than accuracy. Writing in the mid-seventeenth century, Browne uses “America” as a metaphor for domains of uncharted ignorance, and he bewails our failure to use good tools of reason as guides through this
terra incognita:
“We find no open tract . . . in this labyrinth; but are oft-times fain to wander in the America and untravelled parts of truth.”

The
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
, Browne's peregrination through the maze of
human ignorance, contains 113 chapters gathered into seven books on such general topics as mineral and vegetable bodies, animals, humans, Bible tales, and geographical and historical myths. Browne debunks quite an array of common opinions, including claims that elephants have no joints, that the legs of badgers are shorter on one side than the other, and that ostriches can digest iron.

As an example of his style of argument, consider book 3, chapter 4: “That a bever [sic] to escape the hunter, bites off his testicles or stones”—a harsh tactic that, according to legend, either distracts the pursuer or persuades him to settle for a meal smaller than an entire body. Browne labels this belief as “a tenet very ancient; and hath had thereby advantages of propagation. . . . The Egyptians also failed in the ground of their hieroglyphick, when they expressed the punishment of adultery by the bever depriving himself of his testicles, which was amongst them the penalty of such incontinency.”

Browne prided himself on using a mixture of reason and observation to achieve his debunking. He begins by trying to identify the source of error—in this case a false etymological inference from the beaver's Latin name,
Castor
, which does not share the same root with “castration” (as the legend had assumed), but derives ultimately from a Sanskrit world for “musk”; and an incorrect interpretation of purposeful mutilation from the internal position, and therefore near invisibility, of the beaver's testicles. He then cites the factual evidence of intact males, and the reasoned argument that a beaver couldn't reach his own testicles even if he wanted to bite them off (and thus, cleverly, the source of common error—the external invisibility of the testicles—becomes the proof of falsity!).

Book 7, chapter 2 debunks the legend “that a man hath one rib less than a woman”—”a common conceit derived from the history of Genesis, wherein it stands delivered, that Eve was framed out of a rib of Adam.”(I regret to report that this bit of nonsense still commands some support. I recently appeared on a nationally televised call-in show for high school students, where one young woman, a creationist, cited this “well-known fact” as proof of the Bible's inerrancy and evolution's falsity.) Again, Browne opts for a mixture of logic and observation in stating: “this will not consist with reason or inspection.” A simpie
count on skeletons affirms equality of number between sexes (Browne, after all, maintained his “day job” as a physician and should have known). Moreover, reason provides no argument for assuming that Adam's single loss would be propagated to future members of his sex:

Book 4, chapter 10—“That Jews Stink”—is one of the longest, and clearly held special importance for Dr. Browne. He invokes more-elaborate arguments, but follows the same procedure used to dispel less noxious myths—citation of contravening facts interlaced with more general support from logic and reason.

Browne begins with a statement of the fallacy: “That Jews stink naturally, that is, that in their race and nation there is an evil savor, is a received opinion.” Browne then allows that species may have distinctive odors, and that individuals surely do: “Aristotle says no animal smells sweet save the pard. We confess that beside the smell of the species, there may be individual odors, and every man may have a proper and peculiar savor; which although not perceptible unto man, who hath this sense but weak, is yet sensible unto dogs, who hereby can single out their masters in the dark.”

In principle, then, discrete groups of humans might carry distinctive odors, but reason and observation permit no such attribution to Jews as a group: “That an unsavory odor is gentilitous or national unto the Jews, if rightly understood, we cannot well concede, nor will the information of Reason or Sense induce it.”

On factual grounds, Browne asserts, direct experience has provided no evidence for this noxious legend: “This offensive odor is no way discoverable in their Synagogues where many are, and by reason of their number could not be concealed: nor is the same discernible in commerce or conversation with such as are cleanly in apparel, and decent in their houses.” The “test case” of Jewish converts to Christianity proves the point, for even the worst bigots do not accuse such people of smelling bad: “Unto converted Jews who are of the same seed, no man imputeth this unsavory odor; as though aromatized by their conversion, they lost their scent with their religion, and smelt no longer.” If people of
Jewish lineage could be identified by smell, the Inquisition would greatly benefit from a sure-fire guide for identifying insincere converts: “There are at present many thousand Jews in Spain . . . and some dispensed withal even to the degree of Priesthood; it is a matter very considerable, and could they be smelled out, would much advantage, not only the Church of Christ, but also the Coffers of Princes.”

Turning to arguments from reason, foul odors might arise among groups of people from unhealthy habits of diet or hygiene. But Jewish dietary laws guarantee moderation and good sense, while drinking habits tend to abstemiousness—“seldom offending in ebriety or excess of drink, nor erring in gulosity or superfluity of meats; whereby they prevent indigestion and crudities, and consequently putrescence of humors.”

If no reason can therefore be found in Jewish habits of life, the only conceivable rationale for a noxious racial odor would lie in a divine “curse derived upon them by Christ . . . as a badge or brand of a generation that crucified their Salvator.” But Browne rejects this proposal even more forcefully as a “conceit without all warrant; and an easie way to take off dispute in what point of obscurity soever.” The invocation of miraculous agency, when no natural explanation can be found, is a coward's or lazy man's escape from failure. (Browne does not object to heavenly intervention for truly great events like Noah's flood or the parting of the Red Sea, but a reliance upon miracles for small items, like the putative racial odor of unfairly stigmatized people, makes a mockery of divine grandeur. Browne then heaps similar ridicule on the legend that Ireland has no snakes because Saint Patrick cast them out with his rod. Such inappropriate claims for a myriad of minor miracles only stifles discussion about the nature of phenomena and the workings of genuine causes.)

But Browne then caps his case against the proposition “that Jews stink” with an even stronger argument based on reason. The entire subject, he argues, makes no sense because the category in question—the Jewish people—does not represent the kind of entity that could bear such properties as a distinctive national odor.