Letter: Is the hunt antique pageantry or sentimental sadism?
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Your support makes all the difference.ROGER SCRUTON's article shows how much the creation of an image of nature in line with our own wishes is very much alive. From a medieval view of humanity as part of God's hierarchy, through the metaphor of Newton's Clockwork Universe, and 19th-century survival of the fittest, our own desires have generated a picture of "Nature" that suits us. In turn, the image, once created, provides self-justification for our own actions. Scruton's writings show that he has learned nothing from this long history of self-conceit.
He paints a rural picture, where dogs and mounts are bound into a mystical union with their masters. He shares the grand indifference of those 18th- century landlords, who, in pursuit of the pastoral idyll, removed the cottages of the workers from their view, to maintain a Nature of their own dreams.
GEOFF GOODE
Bottesford, Leics
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