This could be interpreted as a re-envisioning of Pinchot's directive that could stand Hadley's test of time. "The greatest good" and "the greatest number," are no longer defined in purely human terms, because Leopold felt that in the long run, this was self-destructing.
He wrote:
"In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."
"In human history, we have learned (I hope) that the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating. Why? Because it is implicit in such a role that the conqueror knows ex cathedra, just what makes the community clock tick, and just what and who is valuable, and what and who is worthless, in community life. It always turns out that he knows neither, and this is why his conquests eventually defeat themselves."
This is the particular place where Pinchot and Leopold differ. Pinchot, high on the knowledge of the emerging science of forestry, believed that foresters had the information they needed to understand how a forest works. And based on this knowledge and his guiding principle, they could make sustainable land use decisions. However, once Leopold acknowledged that he could not, nor could any human at this point, know the land community well enough to take a beneficial dictatorial position to it, he had to back away from Pinchot's approach -- as Pinchot might have done himself had he lived long enough and see the kinds of things Leopold had seen.
Leopold comes in the end to the conclusion that ethics will have to guide us, more than economic considerations or short-sighted self-interest:
"When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."
Perhaps Hadley's test of time has shown how truly Leopold was a disciple of the spirit of Pinchot. In the 1990s, American foresters have integrated Leopold's Land Ethic into their professional code, and a group called the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics formed to work for greater attention to Leopold's ethic within day-to-day decisions in the Forest Service.
Q: Aldo has had a profound impact on the development of American ecological conscience. Was it really Leopold or was it human progress through Thoreau, Muir, Darwin, Evans, and Schweitzer that influenced Leopold....
Marybeth Lorbiecki : Well, it was both. How does any progress of thought occur but through an individual's interpretation and expansion of a community's philosophical heritage according to his or her personal experience.
Leopold was extremely well read, far beyond just the parameters of American philosophical history, and he gained much from all those people you mentioned, but from so many more: Teddy Roosevelt, William Temple Hornaday, Ouspensky, the Bible, Charles Elton, L. H. Bailey, Victor Hugo, Cicero, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Lao-Tzu, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Herodotus, Izaak Walton, and the list goes on and on. And that is not even really hitting upon the everyday people and scientists he met who had ethical stances that he appreciated, including members of his own family.
So, though he was a product of his time and place, he wasn't an inevitable entity. And he wasn't the only person then or since who has felt and philosophized as he has about conservation. But he is remembered for the power of his specific articulation of these feelings and philosophies (based on his personal, scientific, and social observations), despite their possible flaws or incompleteness.
In a way, Leopold's life story exemplifies the line of ethical progression that Americans seem to be on. As I see it, though, we are still in Leopold's early years, and it does not seem the least bit inevitable to me that we shall make it as a people to the wisdom of his later years (though I hope and believe that we shall!) I think any attempt to get the public to start talking about the concept of a land ethic will help us on our journey.
