Pliny the Elder

This morning Marilyn called me to look out of the bedroom window. A heron stood on the lawn with a large goldfish in its mouth. That goldfish was my friend. For years I fed it every day and watched it grow from a tiddler into a magnificent specimen. I loved the way that it rose to the wheatgerm pellets that I threw into the pond. The heron struggled to lift off from the lawn and sat on a rooftop working out how to gulp its huge prey down into its gullet. I could only watch in despair.
Pliny was a Roman general who put together as much of the existing knowledge of his day. He always travelled with a book or someone to read him a book. he claimed in his writings to have consulted 20,000 works of knowledge. In practice he had consulted 37,000 works including art, natural history and astronomy. Pliny saw nature as beneficent towards human beings but sometimes cruelly unaware of them. He saw nature as infinite, human beings as finite. For instance by examining the beauty of insects we could become aware of the majesty of nature. We were at the centre of nature but at times our curiosity to us beyond our boundaries. We always had to keep in mind that by exploiting natural resources we could damage the earth. He insisted that we had to be useful to nature. If we acted out of greed we were exploiting our resources.
How relevant to modern day are those views? The BP oil disaster and many tanker spillages show us how human greed goes way beyond human need. What a calling he gave us to live within our resources.