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eternity, are united in his nature, and the derannds of that nature draw 

 upon the resources of two worlds. Cla^'sify these wants according to 

 the force of emphasis with which each call forj supply, and a single 

 one will stand first and foremost upon the catalogue. ";^ The most imme- 

 diate, imperative, and infle.xible of all wants, from the cradle to the 

 coflBn, is the want of material sustenance. Starve man's ra*" ral sensi- 

 bilities and he will still live; withdraw all intellectual aliment and he 

 can still flourish and fatten as an animal; consign him to solitude and 

 crush his social nature and he still sustains a sort of vegetable life ; in 

 short, blot out from his moral and intellectual skies all truth, and science, 

 and beauty, and sublimity, and his heart yet beats with the pulsations 

 of a rude existence; but once withdraw his daily rations and man dies — 

 the race is extinct. Neglect them as we may all other wants incident 

 to humanity, whether material or moral, in this we must be true to 

 iiature — the first to be supplied and the last to be withstood, to man 

 as an inhabitant of earth — it is omnipresent and omnipotent. No 

 wonder, then, that, in recognition of this primal necessity of human na- 

 ture, God made the first man a tiller of the ground ; thus recording in 

 the historjf of creation itself the fact that life is the greatest of heaven's 

 orifts, and horticulture the noblest of arts. No wonder that this same 

 necessity has employed the thoughts and directed the pursuits of earth's 

 millions, from that day to this. No wonder that the ancients deified 

 those forces of nature which produce the fruits of the field, wurshipping, 

 most devoutly, the goddess of the golden harvest and the waving grain. 

 No wonder that the moderns, from the same incitement, have anxiously 

 sought all the aid that industry, and science, and art can bestow, to de- 

 velop the wealth which is hidden in the soil. No wonder, I say, at all 

 this; for the great problem that will force itself upon the attention of 

 every age is: Hoio can the million best he fed? And the full solution 

 of such a problem will be the highest achievement of science — the 

 loftiest conquest of industry and art. 



But farther: the wants of humanity, whenever it has emerged from 

 barbarism, have given rise to various and distinct pursuits. Every voca- 

 tion in life is founded upon antecedent necessity, real or fancied. Now, 

 it seems to me, the intrinsic dignity imd wortliiness of each pursuit 

 should be determined from the character of the want it suppli«e. 



