Letter: Is the hunt antique pageantry or sentimental sadism?

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