not a work of scholarship but of imaginativenintellectual synthesis that in betternand less frivolous times would havenbeen published by a sober trade house.nIts thesis, stated succinctly by the author,nis straightforward. “In context,nideas of wilderness (Paleolithic, ancient,nmodern, and postmodern) appearnas historically inevitable. If thenhypothesis that the idea of wilderness isnlinked with the developing character ofnhuman existence is cogent, then thencontemporary wilderness philosophynrepresents more than the extolling ofnthe recreational value of wild nature,nretrograde romanticism, or mystical escapenfrom an over-populated, industrialized,nanxiety-ridden, polluted, andnviolent world.” Instead, it develops thenunderstanding that, “We are not thenprivileged children fashioned in thenimage of God but coordinate interfacesnof the historical process of nature. Wendo not impose value on a valuelessncosmos; rather, we are sensitive registersnof values created through the unfoldingnof time.” Thus, “the emergingnpostwilderness philosophy is more thannenvironmentalism in new guise. It representsna convergence of scientific researchnand reflective thought on thenpremises that the human and culturaln— including the ethical, theological,nand philosophical — are linked with thenmaterial and organic. . . . [T]he ideanof wilderness in postmodern contextnis … a search for a new meaning —nfor a new creation story or mythologyn— that is leading humankind out of anhomocentric prison into the cosmicnwilderness.”nAccording to Oelschlaeger, Paleolithicnman did not regard himself asnexisting at a remove from nature, butnrather as a complementary part of it.nHe lived in reverential’and nonexploitivenharmony with the natural worldnand thought of it in all its interwovennand mutually supporting aspects as ansacred entity, filled with spirits andnsymbolized as the Magna Mater. Thenconcept of wilderness was one he hadnno means of recognizing. For perhapsntwo hundred thousand years — “thenhegemony of the Great Hunt” —nmankind lived the archaic life of thenhunter-gatherer before the Mesolithicntransition to “agri-culture” occurred.nOelschlaeger denies emphatically thatnany economic motive or “longing forncivilization and abhorrence of wildnnature” led to “agri-culture”; he suggestsnthat population pressures, climatologicalnchanges, and human naturenhelped bring about the shift. Althoughnhuman beings continued to inhabit ansacralized cosmos, “Once humans becamenagriculturalists, the alrhost paradisaicalncharacter of prehistory was irretrievablynlost,” since farmers assumednthe task of subduing the wilderness andnmen acquired the habit of drawingnboundaries between nature and culture.nThis process Oelschlaeger associatesnwith “the so-called Fall”: “ThenNeolithic mind no longer thought ofnitself as the child of Magna Mater.n…” Agriculture begot in turn thenmental and material preconditions forntheology and philosophy and the emergencenof modern civilization, until history,nas it is said, began at Sumer. Asnagriculturalists worked at taming andnmanaging nature, men began to wondernwhether the world were not in factndesigned for their own ends; but althoughnthey ceased to worship animalngods and began reverencing anthropomorphicnones instead, no major changenin religious attitudes occurred until thenHebrews and “the birth of historicalnconsciousness.” The Hebrew prophetsnwere the first people to associate truthnwith the supernatural rather than withnthe natural, while during “classical antiquitynhuman effort was effectivelynredirected from the physical and economicnworld to the intellectual andnspiritual.”nOelschlaeger is easier on Judaismnand Christianity than many criticsnof his type have been, stressing thendegree to which the Old Testamentnsupposedly incorporates Paleolithic andnNeolithic attitudes sympathetic to nature.nNevertheless, the fusion of elementsnof Greek rationalism with Hebrewnand early Christian thought (“anpeculiar combination of Attica withnJerusalem”) produced ultimately thenconcept of wilderness that has “fatefully”ndirected the development of Westernncivilization over two millennia. Innthe course of this period, the “Judeo-nChristian” idea of the wodd as havingnbeen created by a loving Father in sixndays for the benefit of His children wasnreplaced by the Newtonian-Cartesiannone of the world as a mere machine,ngoverned by immutable laws that madenchanges in it impossible and built by annnnimpersonal God, whose animals werenalso machines and where the boundarynbetween mind and matter was absolute.nBoth of these ideas were finally supersedednby the evolutionary view developednby Darwin, which led to thendiscovery of “the inescapability of time”nand revealed “the impossibility of andivine or Parmenidean vantage pointnfrom which to describe reality.” By thenevolutionary concept, the errors of thenpast twelve thousand years have beennrevealed, and contemporary man isngranted the choice of continuing onnwhat Bill McKibben in The End ofnNature calls “the defiant road” ornaccepting the “humble” one throughnthe rediscovery of the wisdom of hisnPaleolithic forebears and the creationnof what Oelschlaeger terms an “oldnew”nsynthesis, a “posthistoric primitivism.”nOelschlaeger reveals his hostility tonChristianity by degrees. His use fromnthe beginning of the book of “B.C.E.”nfor “B.C.” is an early warning sign.n(Whether Max Oelschlaeger believesnin the divinity of Christ or not, does henreally disbelieve in His historical existence?nPlenty of agnostics, acknowledgingnthe findings of modern Biblicalnscholarship, have granted that much.)nIn due course, he condemns the intolerablenarrogance of accepting one’s selfnas made in God’s image and set at thenhead of creation. Since Christians,nJews, Mohammedans, and others regardnthis idea as a truth revealed bynGod to man, and not by man to God,nOelschlaeger’s indignation is patentlynsilly. For Oelschlaeger, God as a transcendentnBeing is nonexistent: rather,n”the entire physical universe [may] benthe medium of expression of the mindnof a natural God. In this context, Godnis the supreme holistic concept, perhapsnmany levels of description aboventhe human mind.” As for the argumentnfrom design, Oelschlaeger claimsnit was exploded by George P. Marsh,nwhose Man and Nature appeared fournyears after The Origin of Species andnwhom Oelschlaeger credits with havingnproved that, “the notion of anynprimal consonance simply could not benreconciled with the facts.”nUnfortunately for Deep Ecology,nthe notion is nonsense that while Godnmight have made the universe in ansingle act of creation lasting six days, itnis impossible for Him to have created itnJANUARY 1992/31n