People rarely perceive the irony in

People rarely perceive the irony inherent in the idea of preserving the wilderness."wilderness”cannot be defined objectively : it is as much a state of the mind as a description of nature. By the time we can speak of preserv­ing and protecting wilderness, it has already lost much of its meaning: for example, the Biblical meaning of awe and threat and the sense of a sub­ limity far greater than the world of man and unencompassable by him.“Wilderness" is now a symbol of the orderly processes of nature. As a state of the mind, true wilderness exists only in the great sprawling cities (see Figure lOd, p. 144) .