' 669 



but the same principle applies to all occupations in -whicli the variety 

 of action is small, and the industry a routine.' Even in the professions, 

 as they are technically styled, though the mind cannot remain inactive, 

 yet there is a tendency towards a partial and distorted growth of men- 

 tal power. 



The physician is apt to look at every thing with a medical eye ; he 

 considers everything with reference only to a diseased body ; the whole 

 earth is to him an immense pill-box, or collection of boluses and jalaps and 

 infusions, while all the phenomena of pure mind and the innumerable 

 departments of facts and thought, having no connection whatever with 

 bis peculiar art, may be by him denied, or at least unknown. So the 

 mere lawyer is mentally bound, as he would have all other men both 

 body and soul, by statutes and precedents and interpretations and decis- 

 ions, while the mere technical theologian, perhaps more pitiable than 

 either, never looks upon Nature nor man, the earth nor the heavens, in 

 their own tme light, through the artificial and dogmatic notions of the 

 past ages. And a still more lamentable feature of this one-sidedness 

 is, that these men are apt to be excessively bigoted, and to fancy that 

 all othei-s but themselves are ignorant. Such are not all professional 

 men, such need not be any ; but such are some, and none are more 

 conscious than professional men themselves, that such is the inevitable 

 tendency of their own studies, unless they occasionally and regularly 

 break loose from the trammels of their narrow occupation and range 

 over other fields of thought. 



Now I maintain that the farmer's life is less exposed to this evil than 

 perhaps any other. The range of thought requisite to make a true and 

 superior farmer, is wider and embraces more, and more dissimilar ele- 

 ments than of any other occupation. ^lany branches of natural sci- 

 ence ' have a direct connection with agriculture. Chemistry and Bota- 

 ny yield to it their most valuable secrets, and all that abundant informa- 

 tion and study upon the markets, the distribution of population, and tbe 

 demands for the various useful articles of life, so indispensable to a good 

 manufacturer and merchant, are just as useful to the farmer. 



But besides this stimulus to mental action, the farmer enjoys many, 

 peculiar to his employment. I refer to the nature of soils, complex 

 though they are, a discovery and study of the various processes by which 

 unproductive tracts of country may be redeemed, a study of the peculiar 



