The Return to Nature

Like primitive peoples, men in civilized societies commonly believe in the possibility of an ideal state of health and happiness. But, instead of expressing this belief through legends and folklore, they are apt to rationalize it in the form of philosophical theories and to assert that a healthy mind in a healthy body can be achieved only by harmonizing life with the ways of nature.

As a reaction against the pompous formality of the Grand Siècle, the latter part of the eighteenth century proved particularly receptive--in theory at least--to the gospel that all human problems could be solved by returning to the ways of nature. Almost everyone but Voltaire listened with ecstasy when Jean Jacques Rousseau asserted that man in his original state was good, healthy, and happy and that all his troubles came from the fact that civilization had spoiled him physically and corrupted him mentally. "Tout est bien sortant des mains de l'auteur des choses," wrote Rousseau, "tout dégénère entre mains de l'homme." The ideal man was therefore the savage, untainted by civilization; the ideal life demanded direct communion with nature and independence from conventions. "Hygiene," Rousseau claimed, "is less a science than a virtue," and at the turn of the century Thomas Beddoes echoed this attitude in the revealing title of his book Hygeia, or Essays Moral and Medical on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of our Middling and Affluent Classes. Sickness being the result of straying away from the natural environment, the blessed original state of health and happiness could be recaptured only through abiding by the simple order and purity of nature--or, as Voltaire said in maliciously paraphrasing Rousseau, through learning again to walk on all fours.

Rousseau's sentimental message, if neither original nor profound, was at least eloquent and timely. To a world satiated with the refinements of the eighteenth-century civilization it brought the naïve but attractive picture of a life in which men would be free of vices and of physical ailments because free of unnatural wants and worry--as was assumed to be the case for primitive peoples. Even the most uncritical followers of Rousseau acknowledged, of course, that sophisticated Europeans could hardly be brought back to a state compatible with primitive life--happy and healthy as it might prove to be. In L'Ingénu Voltaire made much fun of the theme by describing the behavior of a Huron Indian in France. Despite the simple manners of the young savage, the uninhibited play of his natural appetites and instincts led to extremely embarrassing situations in the social milieu of Europe.

While the charm of primitive life was much talked about in the salons, it is not apparent that many literary Europeans seriously considered emigrating to the American forests or to the South Sea Islands. Instead they imagined or pretended that the values of primitive life could be recaptured by modifying the physical aspect of Europe to make it more nature-like. Under the influence of John Locke, and particularly of Horace Walpole, the English landscape architects had already begun to develop a new type of scenery which they thought natural because free of geometrical design. Their ideal was to compose the landscape not by artificial rules but in accordance with the topographical and other natural peculiarities of the place. Their guide was Pope's admonition to "consult the genius of the place in all." In order to bring out the true "genius" of English scenery, Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton, and their followers ruthlessly destroyed the beautiful classical gardens that had graced Tudor life and, for the sake of informality, allowed cattle to graze along synthetic serpentine rivers in view of the noble English mansions. Even the French fell under the sway of this doctrine and come to scorn the formal magnificence of their parks and gardens. They imitated the seminatural style of the English gardenists and landscape architects despite Horace Walpole's warning that France could never match the luxuriance of English scenery because of lack of verdure and of water. "They can never have as beautiful landscapes as ours," he wrote, "till they have as bad a climate." Carrying the fashionable craze for nature to an absurd but charming extreme of logic Marie Antoinette built on the edge of the park of Versailles her synthetic Hameau where powdered marchionesses played with her at haymaking and tending cows, thereby pretending to experience the idyllic simplicity of rustic life.