In reading Rachel Carson's writings, I found that she had a deep respect for Albert Schweitzer and was influenced by his philosophy. That induced me to pick up a book at the Tattered Cover about Schweitzer. Here is a small excerpt summarizing his views about nature and life:
"The formation of drops of rain, of snowflakes, and of hailstones had always been a special puzzle to me. It hurt me to think that we never acknowledge the absolutely mysterious character of Nature, but always speak up so confidently of explaining her, whereas all that we have really done is to go into fuller and more complicated descriptions, which only make the mysterious more mysterious than ever. Even at the age, it became clear to me that what we label Force or "Life" remains in its own essential nature forever inexplicable.
Thus I fell gradually into a new habit of dreaming about the thousand and one miracles that surround us, though fortunately the new habit did not, like my earlier thoughtless day-dreams, prevent me from working properly. The habit, however, is with me still, and gets stronger. If during a meal I catch sight of the light broken up in a glass jug of water into the colors of the spectrum, I at once become oblivious of everything around me, and unable to withdraw my gaze from the spectacle.
The great error of earlier ethics is that it conceived itself as concerned only with the relations of man to man. The real question is, however, concerning man's relations to the world and to all life which comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is holy to him, that is the lives of plants and animals as well as the lives of men.
