380 WISCONSIN AGEICULTURE. 



complete, and stands fortli adorned as the bride for the bride- 

 groom, ready for the presence and the blessing of its father, and 

 its God. Hence, wars, words, literature, sciences, books, institu- 

 tions, laws, governments, nationalities, so often the great end. 

 the idol deities of individual or national ambition and folly, are 

 only the mere instrumentalities, even when best employed, of 

 this great life-work — the higher elevation of individual hearts, 

 the brighter illumination of individual minds, and the conse- 

 quent higher culture and more perfect adornment of individual 

 fields, homes, and towns — the only great, lasting, and imper- 

 ISHALBE END. Hcnce, for barbarian murderers — who are mis- 

 called heroes, whose end is war ; driveling monks, mis-called 

 scholars, whose end is book ; windy, noisy, sophistical talkers, 

 mis-called orators, whose end is words ; mousing demagogues, 

 mis -called statesmen, whose end is office ; sleepy apostates, mis- 

 called divines, whose end is the creed or the fleece, for them 

 there is no place in this work-world of ours. 



But for war for the right, talk for the truth, piety for the 

 heart, light and science for the head, grace for the gracious, and 

 law for the lawless, there may be, and there is a time and a 

 place, as instrumentalities to an end. 



It is not pretended that either of these three forces, war, 

 words, and work, have ever subsisted alone in human society. 

 But all must admit that war has oftentimes been a leading force 

 on earth ; and words, literature, logomachies, at other tini'^s ; 

 while work, industrial skill and art, are necessarily the dominant 

 forces in all the free states. Where war reigns, labor is plun- 

 dered and enslaved ; where mere words and literature reign, it 

 is cheated and deluded; but where work rules the day, it asserts 

 its just claims, indicates its own rights, and evinces its high ca- 

 pacities before God and man. 



It is true that this reign of words, these so much vaunted 

 ages of literature, as they are called, are already found in alli- 

 ance with the reign of war, or subsisting merely as one of its 

 instrumentalities, or results. It is true also that great good may 

 come to mankind from the great scholastic pets, in such a sys- 

 tem of fraud and plunder, in the reign of words, just as good 



