“We
read the English poets; we study botany and zoology and geology, lean and dry
as they are; and it is rare that we get a new suggestion. It is ebb-tide with
the scientific reports, Professor ______ in the chair. We would fain know
something more about these animals and stones and trees around us. We are ready
to skin the animals alive to come at them. Our scientific names convey a very
partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur
to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people
who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race. How little
I know of that arbor-vitae when I have learned only what science can tell me!
It is but a word. It is not a tree of life. But there are twenty words for the
tree and its different parts which the Indian gave, which are not in our
botanies, which imply a more practical and vital science. He used it every day.
He was well acquainted with its wood, and its bark, and its leaves. No science
does more than arrange what knowledge we have of any class of objects. But,
generally speaking, how much more conversant was the Indian with any wild
animal or plant than we are, and in his language is implied all that intimacy,
as much as ours is expressed in our language. How many words in his language about
a moose, or birch bark, and the like!”
—From
the Journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), March 5, 1858.
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