Noble thought but inaccurately attributed

I have to be up and out of the house early this morning to meet incoming electricians at the museum and so had less than the usual amount of time to devote to the search for wisdom.

But I did find this --- a noble thought worth sharing. It took me longer to find an illustration in which the quote was not attributed.

Sadly, there's no indication that Chief Seattle (ca. 1786-1866) ever said it --- he seems most frequently to get the credit; a nameless generic "Native American" comes in second. This probably has something to do with white folks attributing statements to indigenous people without investigating what indigenous people actually had to say.

So I did a little poking around and discovered a couple of things. Obviously, the sentiment here is as old as humanity and has been expressed in many ways.

But the earliest locatable match for the phrasing here seems to go back only as far as “The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge,” a book published by environmentalist Wendell Berry in 1971.

Here's the quote: "We can learn about it from exceptional people of our own culture, and from other cultures less destructive than ours. I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children…"

Whatever the source and without regard to phrasing, it's a thought worthy of holding on to.